Reviews
Honest, first-hand verdicts on the gear worth your money.
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Smartphones
Xiaomi 17T Pro: I Took It to Asia as My Main Camera
Ten days across Macau and Taipei with this as my only camera, and it kept up. The Leica Authentic mode gives photos actual character when everyone else's are turning samey, the 5x telephoto is the upgrade I care about, and on-device LUTs for LOG video are the most underrated feature on any phone right now. Thermals embarrassed flagships costing twice as much, and it ships with a 100W charger in the box. Long exposure still lags OPPO, and the speakers are ordinary.
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Smartphones
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: (Almost) The Perfect Smartphone
Not perfect — the battery needs tuning and the privacy display trades away some clarity. But for the way I actually use a phone, it's a banger: that f/1.4 main camera, true unthrottled multitasking, and freedom from ecosystem lock-in.
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Smartphones
iPhone 17: The Truth After 2 Months
Strip away the status of owning the top one and the iPhone 17 isn't just enough — for most people it's the better choice: lighter, cheaper, ProMotion at last, 256GB standard, and none of the Pro Max drama. Sweet, almost boring, in the best possible way.
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Smartphones
Galaxy Z Fold 8: Do These 15 Things First
Your Fold 8 has arrived. Here's exactly how to set it up properly, and the settings Samsung doesn't exactly advertise.
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Smartphones
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 review: the new shape changes who should buy it
The 4:3 screen and a battery that finally lasts make this the most interesting Samsung in years — but the telephoto, Flex Mode and any stylus hope are gone. Buy it if your phone is mostly a screen you look at.
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Apps
The best macOS Tahoe apps in 2026: 9 utilities that fix what Liquid Glass forgot
Nine small utilities — most free or pay-once — that remove the friction Tahoe's gorgeous new coat of paint left behind. Install Thaw, Maccy and Supercharge first.
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Wearables
Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro: This Ruined All Other Smartwatches For Me
A £249.99 watch with a titanium bezel, sapphire glass and a 1.92in AMOLED that hits 3,000 nits, and a battery that genuinely runs five to six days. Living with it through Paris, China and jet lag that wrecked my sleep, it never once made me think about charging. The paywalled extras in Huawei Health are the one real gripe, but almost everything that matters is free on the watch itself.
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Smartphones
OPPO Find X9 Ultra: This Smartphone Makes Others Look Lazy
A Hasselblad in your pocket, and for once the PR line holds up. True 10x optical zoom achieved by folding light five times, LUTs you can import yourself, and a battery that shrugs off a full shoot day. It runs warm and the selfie camera struggles in low light, but this is the phone making everyone else look lazy in 2026.
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Smartphones
HONOR 400 Lite review
Under £300 gets you a premium-feeling phone with a class-leading 3,500-nit display, all-day battery and genuinely useful AI — exceptional value.
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Desktops & Laptops
M4 Mac Mini — is it worth the hype after months of heavy use?
Months of 4K editing, 300-track Logic sessions and LLM work later: the M4 Pro Mac Mini is absurd value — just don't max the upgrades, that's Mac Studio territory.
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Smartphones
HONOR Magic 8 Pro: They Said This Was Impossible
Three months in, calling this a smartphone feels outdated. Honor solved the impossible triangle: extreme performance, two-day endurance and serious optics, without a brick. The 200MP telephoto with the industry's largest sensor is the star, and the eye comfort tech is the quiet win. Samsung and Apple, over to you.
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Smartphones
OPPO Find X9 Pro: Better Than the iPhone 17 Pro Max?
A complete camera phone with a battery that finally suits photographers and travellers. The Hasselblad teleconverter is not a gimmick, it turns this into a mini professional camera, and the 7,500mAh silicon carbon cell is a today battery. This is the pre-iPhone era of genuine innovation all over again, in the best way.
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Tablets
M5 iPad Pro: Did Apple Just Kill Samsung DeX?
The M5 iPad Pro is a superb machine that most people shouldn't buy, because iPadOS 26 just made the M2 and M4 Pros dramatically better for free. The software finally caught up with the hardware, and for pure window management it now feels nicer than DeX. I never thought I'd say that out loud.
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Smartphones
iPhone 17 Pro Max: The Best iPhone in the Last 5 Years
The most impressed I've been by an iPhone since the 13: the telephoto is why you buy it, RAW made me fall back in love with iPhone photography, and the display finally doesn't feel like a downgrade next to an Ultra. If you want the absolute best and you're staying with Apple, this is the one.
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Smartphones
Galaxy S25 Ultra: Quality Speaking Louder Than Words
Samsung nailed it this year. The best display I've used on any smartphone, colours finally natural out of the box, context-aware AI that actually saves time, and log video at last. It feels like the S21 Ultra and S23 Ultra did: one of the good years.
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Wearables
Garmin Epix Pro (Gen 2) Sapphire: Foolish to Compare With an Apple Watch
It took me a year to work out that comparing this with an Apple Watch Ultra is the wrong exercise entirely. The Sapphire display is the best thing about it, the heart rate sensor finally keeps up with what your body is actually doing, and I charge it once every three weeks. Garmin's software update process is still a mess, and Spotify took a twenty-minute detour through a desktop app. Worth it anyway.
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Wearables
Garmin Epix (Gen 2), Six Months On: Goodbye Apple Watch Ultra
I was sure I'd drift back to the Apple Watch Ultra and I never did. The Garmin is honest with you in a way the Apple Watch isn't, the data is easier to reach, and five or six days of battery means sleep tracking stops competing with charging. Garmin Pay still won't work with my bank, the heart rate takes 20 to 30 seconds to catch up, and it isn't a proper smartwatch. It doesn't pretend to be, and I like that.
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Wearables
Apple Watch Ultra Review: It's About Time
The most beautiful display on any digital watch I'd tried, haptics and buttons that are a genuine delight, and call quality good enough that I actually started taking calls on my wrist. As an average dad rather than an ultramarathon runner, it earned its place. The sleep tracking still needed a third-party app to be truly useful, and Siri in the wind is a lost cause, but Apple smashed this one.
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Audio
Shure SM7B + Rode PSA1: for sure a great combo
Moving the SM7B off the desk and onto the PSA1 killed the vibration noise without a shock mount — a great-sounding combo, once you survive assembling the arm.