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Between the hardware to run the games and then the cost of the ever-growing backlog, itself, we tend to invest heavily into the hobby. When we invest in hardware, we want to know that our games are going to look and play at their highest quality. Spending your money on a Lenovo Legion gaming PC means you can trust that you’re buying premium smart technology. Lenovo Legion gaming PCs are powered by the Intel® Core™ i9 processor, ensuring that the time you spend in your favorite games is rendered by one of the fastest gaming processors available on the market today.

The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 9 pairs the Intel® Core™ i9 processor with an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU and 16 GB of DDR 5 memory, a combination that produces incredible results and stunning visuals even in resource-intense games like Cyberpunk 2077. Some of us just want to spend an entire weekend planet-hopping in Starfield. A Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 9 can not only give you that freedom, but it looks, plays, and sounds great, too, thanks to a 16-inch anti-glare IPS display with a narrow bezel and support for HDR.

The power isn’t just there for gaming, either. Lenovo’s line of Legion PCs is perfect for multitasking and productivity. If you’re going to be locked in the dorm for some late-night study sessions, you’re going to want to give yourself plenty of brain breaks. You can count on your Legion PC to switch effortlessly between your favorite game worlds and your latest assignment, tackling both so you can work smarter, not harder. The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen9 is priced at $1829, making it the perfect back-to-college companion for work and recreation. 

Brands you can trust

Lenovo has been in the business of developing cutting-edge technology that is focused on innovating around the needs of real people around the globe for more than 35 years. Purchasing a Lenovo Legion gaming PC is buying into the idea that tech and gaming products should be designed with the people who use them in mind. The power of Intel helps Lenovo push the technology available forward while remaining accessible to everyday users. Your time is precious, and you want the time and money you spend in your favorite virtual worlds to be worth it. Lenovo and Intel are the perfect pairing to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your hardware so you can enjoy your games the way they were intended to be experienced.

AMD is well and truly on top of its game. Want the best gaming CPU possible? Get an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Need to throw lots of cores at a rendering project? Use an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X or a Threadripper Pro 7995WX, if money isn't an object. The same is true for servers, AI mega-computers, consoles, and handheld gaming PCs—AMD rules the roost. And yet with its forthcoming Zen 5 chips, AMD is also driving an increasingly larger wedge between the CPUs it has for mobile platforms and those for the common desktop PC.

Just a few years back, the only significant differences between a Ryzen CPU in a laptop and one in a desktop were the number of cores, clock speeds, and amount of L3 cache. These were typically all lower for mobile chips to keep the chip smaller and help keep it within a certain power budget. The cores themselves, though, were exactly the same between the two.

Take AMD's Z1 Extreme chip in the Asus ROG Ally. That has eight cores, 16 threads, a boost clock of 5.1 GHz, and a power limit of 30 W. Each of those cores is precisely the same Zen 4-powered core that you'll find in a Ryzen 9 7950X, a Threadripper Pro 7995WX, or even an Epyc 9654. They just share a smaller amount of L3 cache.

But when AMD developed Zen 4c, a compact version of the 'normal' Zen 4 core, things started to change. For example, the original Ryzen 5 7540U laptop APU had six Zen 4 cores inside it, but then the chip giant updated it so that four of those cores used the Zen 4c architecture. 

"No human being would ever know the difference," AMD claimed, but that's not entirely true. The Zen 4c cores don't boost as high as the Zen 4 cores.

However, In terms of instruction throughputs, latencies, and capabilities, there's no difference between them. It's a fundamentally different approach to Intel's hybrid CPU design, where the P-cores and E-cores are not very similar at all.

With the forthcoming Strix Point APUs (and possibly the hulky Strix Halo ones, too), AMD seems to be shifting a little more toward Intel's way of thinking. The Ryzen AI 9 365 boasts 10 cores, with four of them being Zen 5 and the remaining six being Zen 5c. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that the former gets to share 16MB of L3 cache, whereas the latter has to make do with just 8MB.

And that's not the only change. Some early deep-dive tests of that chip design strongly suggest that AMD has tweaked the capabilities of the SIMD/vector units in APU's cores compared to those expected for the desktop Zen 5 chips. At this stage, it's not clear how (or if at all) AMD is managing the threads on these new APUs, as it's clear that any being processed on the Zen 5c cores will not be processed as quickly as those on the normal cores—lower clocks and less L3 cache, shared across a greater number of cores, is only going to slow things down a bit.

Early benchmarks suggest that isn't actually an issue (so perhaps AMD is doing some fancy thread management under the hood) but it does mean that Ryzen APUs in laptops are becoming increasingly more disparate, in terms of hardware and capabilities, than Ryzen CPUs in desktop PCs, which are made up of only one type of core, Zen 5.

Is that a bad thing? Well, one can argue that, so far, this just seems to be the case for AMD's new APUs and the high-end laptop processors could well just be like the current Ryzen 9 7945HX—essentially a Ryzen 9 7950X but with lower clocks and a much lower power limit. 

Intel has a full gamut of different architecture designs for its laptop chips, from the hulking Raptor Lake-based models that are like the 7954HX, through to the current multi-tiled Meteor Lake Core Ultra range, and down to the nearly-here Lunar Lake chips for low-power, ultramobile platforms.

The Zen architecture, followed by the move from monolithic to chiplet manufacturing, saved AMD from eternal gloom. That sole core design could be applied everywhere in the processor market, from handheld PCs to massive server chips. Now it would seem that AMD is taking a leaf from Intel's book and increasing the segmentation across its chip portfolio.

This could be a design born of necessity, of course, as it could well be the case that 'normal' Zen 5 cores just aren't power efficient enough to be used in energy-limited applications, such as APUs in laptops. I say cores but I'm really talking about the whole CCX, the core complex, as one cannot leave L3 cache from the equation.

As a reminder, the four Zen 5 cores in the Ryzen 9 AI 365 and 370HX share a total of 16 MB of L3 cache, akin to 4 MB apiece. However, the Zen 5c cores (six in the 365, eight in the 370HX) get just 8 MB and that will certainly impact performance. Less cache means fewer transistors, which ultimately means the whole CCX consumes less power.

Another aspect to the point of these design choices being a necessity is AI. The NPU (neural processing unit) in the Strix Point chip takes up no small degree of valuable die space and there's an argument to be made that the die space and power budget for the NPU could have been put to better use—that ship has long sailed now, of course.

I'm pretty sure if it wasn't present, though, then the new APUs could sport 12 full-fat Zen 5 cores with plenty of cache, purely from comparing how much space they take up compared to the NPU.

But what if all of this isn't about power consumption or AI? What if it's simply about increasing the portfolio segmentation between laptop and desktop processors? Now, I know what you're thinking—there's little to no overlap between these markets, as the vast bulk of purchases of laptops are not made by individuals who are stuck between considering getting a portable PC or a hulking big desktop.

And it's not like AMD is doing an Nvidia, where it uses the same model name for desktop and laptop GPUs, even though the latter are all at least one tier lower down. For example, laptops boasting an RTX 4090 aren't sporting an AD102 inside them—it's an AD103, the same chip used in RTX 4080 graphics cards. You are absolutely not getting 4090 desktop performance on a 4090 laptop.

One might criticise AMD's Ryzen AI branding but at least it's not giving its APUs the same name as its desktop chips. Nobody is ever going to confuse a Ryzen AI 9 370HX with a Ryzen 9 9950X, for example. Well, there's always going to be somebody who doesn't understand the difference but at least any confusion that does arise isn't intentional.

I don't think AMD is trying to deliberately make its new Ryzen APUs any less capable than desktop Ryzens, it's just that this is the unfortunate side-effect of trying to keep chips as small and as energy efficient as possible, all while offering more cores than ever before, as well as riding along on the now-ubiquitous AI bandwagon.

Strix Point and Strix Halo look like they're really good APUs, but it's still a shame that we'll probably never get to see one that's a cross between something like a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and a Radeon RX 7700 XT.

That'd be an incredible APU, better than Halo Point, but its cost of manufacturing and power consumption means it's unlikely to ever see the light of day. One can still dream, yes?

Speaking to YouTube channel Kallaway (via Tech Crunch), El Zuck took aim at what he sees as the competition's overly messianic approach to AI development.

"I find it a pretty big turnoff when people in the tech industry talk about building this 'one true AI,'. It’s almost as if they think they’re creating God or something. That’s not what we’re doing, I don’t think that’s how this plays out,” Zuckerberg said.

He also criticised what he saw as a monopolistic approach to AI development. "Some people are saying that there's going to be the one true big AI that can do everything and I just don't think that that's the way that things tend to go. I get why if you're in some AI lab you want to feel like what you're doing is super important, like 'we're building the one true thing for the future'."

"But I just think realistically that's not that's not how stuff works. It's not like there was one app on people's phones that people use. There's not one creator that people want all their content from, there's not one app that people want all their content from, there's not one business that people want to buy everything from."

He has a point, although he makes it without any sense of irony. After all, Meta gives every bit the impression of wanting to own absolutely as much of our digital lives as humanly possible.

Facebook started off as an online directory for college students to check out how hot their classmates were. Now it wants in on all your social activities, on everything you sell, the messages you send, who you date, the works. If Zuckerberg's Metaverse isn't his attempt to make Meta the universal app for pretty much everything, I'm not sure what it is.

Indeed, the cynical might suggest that what's really driving Zuckerberg's comments is his fear that Meta is increasingly being marginalised in the AI space. Apple recently chose to go with OpenAI for its AI technology on iPhone, iPad and Mac, for instance, which threatens to make Meta's products less relevant to a very, very large customer base.

Much of the rest of the interview covered Zuckerberg's vision of the future, which largely involves smartglasses gradually replacing smartphones. Zuckerberg doesn't see that happening immediately, he still thinks we'll have phones in our pockets in 10 years. It's just we'll be reaching for them a lot less often.

Add in head-up displays and wristbands that intercept signals from the brain, allowing users to do things like type with little to no actual hand movement, and you get an idea of the future according to The Zuck. It's a bit creepy.

Whatever, it's a broad ranging interview and you don't need to be a fan of Zuckerberg or really even think much of what he says makes sense to find it interesting. For better or worse, he's unarguably an extremely influential figure with an dominant position in social media and the ability to spend billions of dollars pushing technology and how we use it in whatever direction he fancies.

Three months after officially announcing the 3.1 update to its FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology suite, five games from Sony have all been patched to the new system. Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and the two Spider-Man games now sport an improved shader-based upscaler and decoupled frame generation so that more PC gamers can enjoy the same boost in performance, but with better-looking results than before.

When AMD announced its third generation of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) with its Radeon RX 7000-series GPU launch in November 2022, many PC gamers hoped that it would include an upgrade upscaler but it transpired that FSR 3.0's only new feature was a shader-based frame generation system.

The FSR 2.2 upscaler was still being used and while it does a serviceable job, in terms of increasing frame rates, its visual quality could be noticeably worse than Nvidia's DLSS Super Resolution in some games.

That's the first big change in FSR 3.1 as AMD has improved its shader algorithm for the upscaler, claiming that it has "improved temporal stability, reducing flickering and shimmering, and enhanced ghosting reduction and better detail preservation" than the old system.

On its blog announcing the public launch of the update, AMD has a short comparison video of FSR 2.2 and FSR 3.1, but tech YouTuber Daniel Owen has done a more in-depth look, comparing the new system to Nvidia's DLSS.

In Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, the improvements are very clear to see, or rather, where the older upscaler struggled, the new one is markedly better. You're not getting any additional performance as such, just far less flickering and shimmering where you've got an object rapidly moving or characters with lots of fur on them.

Something else that FSR 3.1 brings to the table is a decoupled frame generator. In FSR 3.0, you could only use AMD's frame interpolator with its shader-based upscaler. One of the first games to roadtest the separation of the two was Ghost of Tsushima, allowing graphics cards such as Nvidia's RTX 30-series and Intel's Arc range to run their own upscalers but with AMD's frame generator.

Now that FSR 3.1 has been fully released, four more games have been patched to follow suit—Horizon Forbidden West, the aforementioned Ratchet and Clank, Spider-Man Remastered, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. At some point very soon, the port of God of War: Ragnarok will also get updated to the new version.

AMD has streamlined the FSR software package for developers and added support for Vulkan and the Xbox platform, so we should hopefully see FSR 3.1 being used in all forthcoming game releases. The SDK for the updated tech will be publicly released next month so we should be able to see what changes AMD has implemented under the hood of its upscaler to improve the visual quality of the system.

Actually, no. Security outfit 0patch (via Neowin) says it's going to effectively extend Windows 10's lifespan by at least five years with its own security updates. What's more, unlike Microsoft's Windows Update service, which is famously intrusive, usually requires rebooting and can eat up a lot of time, 0patch says it takes a totally different approach.

To quote 0patch itself, it aims to deliver, "miniature patches of code (“micropatches”) to computers and other devices worldwide in order to fix software vulnerabilities in various, even closed source products. With 0patch, there are no reboots or downtime when patching and no fear that a huge official update will break production."

Its updates are said to be as easily reversible as they are installable, making it straightforward to undo any changes that cause problems.

Of course, you also have the option of stumping up for what Microsoft calls its Extended Security Updates service for Windows 10. That kicks in immediately upon the end of Microsoft's standard support program for Windows 10.

What's not known for now is how much the Microsoft Extended Security Updates service costs. Meanwhile, 0patch charges 24.95 EUR (call that $27) for an annual subscription.

It's pretty hard to judge comparative effectiveness for this kind of product, especially as Microsoft's service doesn't begin for over a year. But we certainly like the sound of 0patch's lightweight approach that doesn't require reboots. Its five-year commitment also beats the three-year limit on Microsoft's paid service.

Either way, it's good to know that you have at least two options for keeping a Windows 10 box running a while longer after the standard security net is pulled away.

The Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi aims to give users more than they'd expect from a Mini-ITX motherboard. Rather than trying to cram everything onto a two dimensional PCB, Asus has gone into the third dimension. It's shifted several features onto riser cards, and there's an additional USB connected audio device that also functions as something of an external dock. The Strix X670E-I WiFi is an impressive engineering showcase that goes a long way to eliminating the compromises inherent to Mini-ITX motherboards, though the ability to install many M.2 drives is a still a step too far.

At $399 / £409 / AU$639, it's an expensive piece of kit to be sure, but it's still competitive against upper mid-range ATX options and well below the price of flagship boards. It's a board for those that want the ultimate AMD Mini-ITX system. And, it's already got a BIOS with support for next-gen Ryzen 9000-series processors.

The clunkily named Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi features a 10+2+1 phase VRM with 110a per stage. It's easily able to handle the demands of a Ryzen 9 7950X processor, and surely the high-end SKUs to launch in the future. The heatsink isn't what you'd call gigantic, but there is a small embedded fan there in case things get a bit toasty. It supports up to DDR5-8000 memory, but who knows what it might be capable of when next-gen processors make their debut.

The board features both a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and primary M.2 slot. There's a second slot that supports a Gen 4 drive. These are stacked together. This section of the board is mightily impressive. It incorporates a detachable daughter board for the second slot, and there are layers of heatsinks dedicated to cooling the chipset at the bottom of the stack, and the two drives that sit atop it. There's another small fan that cools the whole assembly, but this can be set to only spin up when it all gets a bit hot under the collar. Note that a Gen5 SSD will inevitably end up reaching higher temperatures than you'd see compared to an isolated drive on an ATX board. Decent case airflow is still a must, which can be tough to achieve in a small form factor build.

The two M.2 drives are joined by two SATA ports. That's about the only weakness of the board. File hoarders will not be satisfied with support for just four drives, though with USB4 on board, you could always add speedy external drives.

The two SATA ports are contained on a daughter board that Asus calls the FPS-II card. It connects to the board via a pair of USB Type-C connectors and it contains the aforementioned SATA ports, the case headers, USB 2.0 headers, an overclocking mode switch and clear CMOS button. It's a relatively simple but clever way to claw back some of that limited Mini-ITX PCB space.

Even more impressive is an external USB connected device called the ROG Hive. It's an external sound card that's based around a Realtek ALC4050 codec, but also includes an ESS Sabre 9260Q DAC.  This is a key example of thinking literally outside the box, as such components and their associated circuitry would not be possible to jam into the limited space on a Mini-ITX PCB.

The Hive offers a lot more though. It features a Precision Boost Overdrive button, programmable flex button, and another 10Gbps Type-C port plus another Type-A port that allows BIOS flashbacks. It's an impressive and notably well-built little device.

The rear I/O puts nearly every other Mini-ITX board to shame. The highlight is a pair of USB4 ports, both of which can drive Type-C monitors. These are joined by five Type-A 10Gbps ports and three USB 2.0 ports. Ten ports on the rear of a Mini-ITX board is a rare thing, and with the various headers, plus the ports on the ROG Hive, it really is loaded on the USB front.

There's a HDMI port, and you get Intel WiFi 6E and 2.5G LAN. It would be nice to get 5G LAN and/or WiFi 7, but this is an X670 board. WiFi 7 wasn't available when it launched and 5G LAN was considered a flagship tier feature. You'll have to wait for X870 boards if you want faster networking.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

Gone are the early days of niggles and flaky DDR5 memory support on the AM5 platform. The ROG Strix X670E WiFi has received well over a dozen BIOS updates and during my testing displayed none of the issues that I encountered during the first wave of X670 launches. X670 and Socket AM5 can be considered a generally mature platform.

The board's performance was consistent, and it was happy with my Samsung based G.Skill DDR5-6000 test kit, which was not always the case on some other boards I tested with pre-Ryzen 7000-series launch BIOS.

I came away seriously impressed by the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi. It somehow manages to cram a high-end feature set into a Mini-ITX form factor with few compromises. I love the inclusion of dual USB 4 ports in particular, and the ability to run a PCIe 5.0 SSD and a next-gen PCIe 5.0 GPU is welcome too.

The ROG Hive is also a highlight. It's a great idea to shift space-hogging audio circuitry away from the PCB and into an external device. But rather than just designate it as an external sound card, Asus went well beyond this and included some useful features with even more USB ports, and even an AMD PBO button.

And speaking of USB ports, Asus gives you another eight ports on top of the USB4 ports on the rear panel. The Hive adds more, and with the case USB headers, The X670E-I offers a really comprehensive set of USB ports for all manner of devices and peripherals.

The only glaring weakness of the board is its storage complement. Asus could have included a third M.2 slot on the rear of the board, or made the FPS-II card a little bigger with an extra two SATA ports. The latter might have been too much of an ask from its USB-C connection though. 

At $399 / £409 / AU$639, the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi is an expensive proposition, but not overly so given what it manages to cram into its diminutive size. There are plenty of ATX boards around that price. Given its unique characteristics, and the inclusion of the ROG Hive and the daughter boards, there would have been a lot of R&D effort involved, so it's understandable for Asus to charge a premium based on that alone.

With AMD stating it intends to support AM5 for years to come, it's a good investment too. After BIOS updates, you'll be able to pop in a high core count Ryzen 9 9950X, future X3D models, and surely Zen 6 CPUs as well. 

The Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi stands out as a premium Mini-ITX motherboard for users looking to build a high-end AMD system. We have no problem recommending this little ROG board. It's in a class of its own.

That's because, for the most part, they're pretty much the same gaming mouse, albeit with one important difference. All DeathAdders have a distinct curve to their shell and are for right-handed people only, whereas Vipers are symmetrical and, in theory, are suitable for left-handers.

There's a good reason why I'm mentioning the Viper V3 Pro but I'll come to that in due course. For now, let's consider what's on offer with the new DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed. A scan of the specifications would lead anyone to think that this is just a cheaper, more basic version of the DeathAdder V3 Pro, the best wireless gaming mouse round. And they'd be right.

But they'd also be slightly wrong because, in my humble opinion, the V3 HyperSpeed is better than the V3 Pro. Yeah, sorry to just throw that out so early in the review, but it's important that I set the table first and then fill it with tasty morsels.

Let's start with the optical sensor, the device that scans the surface the mouse rests on and tracks its motion. Where the Focus Pro 30K in the V3 Pro boast a maximum DPI of 30,000 and a maximum speed and acceleration of 750 IPS and 70 g, the DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed offers figures of 26,000 and 500/40 respectively. Yes, they're lower but unless you're a professional e-sports person, you're honestly not going to tell.

It's the same with the 2.4 GHz wireless system. Razer's HyperSpeed connection is very low latency and glitch-free and the version that comes with the V3 Pro allows the polling rate to be set to 8,000 Hz. That's extremely fast but also rather unnecessary, as it significantly eats into the mouse's battery life and lots of older games will spit out the dummy when using it.

The V3 HyperSpeed is a mere 1,000 Hz like most wireless gaming mice, but just like the optical sensor, that's honestly fine. It wasn't that long ago when PC gamers would eschew wireless and USB-wired mice in favour of those using the PS2 socket, because of the low polling rate, but that's no longer the case.

With this rate, the operating system checks for a mouse input every millisecond and unless you have the physical reactions of a cat, any input lag in a game will be down to some other issue in your PC and certainly not this mouse.

You can see all of this in the above charts collated by using Mouse Tester. I've included some 1,000 and 8,000 Hz results for the Viper V3 Pro to highlight just how small the difference between the two really is. The position and velocity tracking is accurate, smooth and consistent, and the small hiccups in the update times are more indicative of the PC used, not the mouse.

As already mentioned, using polling rates higher than 1,000 Hz on a wireless mouse greatly increases the device's power consumption. By using the standard rate and a less potent sensor, Razer's been able to fit a lighter battery inside the V3 Hyperspeed, compared to the DeathAdder V3 Pro, and it lasts a little longer, too.

One could argue that having hardware with greater capability is always going to be the better choice but that's only true if there's not much price difference. As it so happens, Razer has launched the DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed at $99.99/£99.99/€119.99/AU$179.95—that's a full $60 cheaper than the V3 Pro, a 40% reduction. The V3 HyperSpeed certainly isn't a 40% less capable gaming mouse, that's for sure.

However, this is a review, so it's time to be more critical and I'll begin with the subjective aspects. I really liked how the V3 HyperSpeed felt in my hand and the side buttons were perfectly placed just above where my thumb naturally rested. I also liked its ridiculously low 55 g weight, which quite surprised me as I typically prefer a meatier mouse—I suspect the shape of the shell had something to do with this, though, as it was easier to grip and move about than the Viper V3 Pro.

I didn't like how loud the primary mouse buttons were. The substantial clicks and clacks weren't noticeable when gaming with a headset but with speakers or just normal usage, it began to grate on my nerves after a while. Likewise, the mouse wheel—sturdy, chunky even, and with its positive-feeling rotation, switching weapons in games was a delight. However, scrolling through a webpage or large document was somewhat tedious.

Now for the objective criticism. The plastic used for the upper body of the V3 HyperSpeed is coated with a material to give a smooth touch. I can certainly vouch for how smooth it feels but whatever that material is, it attracts grease and grime like a magnet. If you have sweaty hands, it'll look oily and grubby in no time.

Razer claims that the mouse has eight programmable buttons but really it's just a standard five in number. One could argue this is a matter of semantics but three of those 'buttons' happen to be the forward/backward motion of the wheel and the DPI cycling/power switch in the base.

It's great that Razer has made all of the controls fully programmable, via its Synapse software, but I'd argue that the base button isn't one that's ever likely to be set to an important macro or the like.

Lastly, there's the HyperSpeed wireless connection system. Razer has furnished the DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed with a high-quality braided USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable, a Type-C to Type-A adapter block, and a 2.4 GHz wireless dongle. It all works very nicely and the mouse also supports Razer's 8,000 Hz HyperPolling dongle, which is a $30 separate purchase. None of the above is the issue, though.

When I grabbed the HyperPolling dongle included with the Viper V3 Pro, I was a little surprised to find it didn't work with the V3 HyperSpeed. It would seem that the Viper's 8,000 Hz wireless system isn't the same as the separately purchasable HyperPolling dongle or, at the very least, it's been configured to only work with the Viper. That's a wholly unnecessary and confusing product fragmentation.

It's not a fault of the DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed, of course, but the HyperSpeed dongle supports multi-device connects and appears to be fully universal, whereas HyperPolling isn't. I also can't help but feel that many consumers are going to get more than a little confused between Razer's HyperSpeed and HyperPolling nomenclature.

All of the negative aspects of the new DeathAdder model are quite minor in the grand scheme of things and none of them put me off using the mouse regularly. As a diehard vertical ergonomic mouse user, I was surprised by how often I reached for the V3 HyperSpeed during work and it's been the go-to mouse for my household's nightly gaming sessions.

Razer has done a fantastic job of taking its best gaming mouse and making it a lot more affordable, without sacrificing what the DeathAdder brand means to the gaming community. Its understated looks hide a seriously capable mouse and the lack of super-fast polling rates and laser-accurate sensors arguably makes it a better mouse for the vast majority of PC gamers out there.

Yes, TP-Link's latest and greatest Wi-Fi 7 router, the Archer GE800, is what you might call a distinctive shape, and if you put it on display with some model TIE Interceptors and a CR-90 corvette or two it might blend in, or at least have people wondering which part of the expanded universe it comes from.

This is no simple shuttlecraft, however, but a fully armed and operational... [that's enough -ed] battle... er... Wi-Fi 7 router with five fast Ethernet ports for smuggling data away from Imperial probe droids and capable of downloading the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs [you're fired -ed]. Look, the antennas are merged into two panels that stick up like the Netgear Nighthawks of old, OK? And they look like wings.

The box is huge, and emblazoned with 'dominate the competition'—a slogan most probably aimed at gamers unless there's some kind of competitive networking event we're unaware of. And while a Wi-Fi World Cup might be fun, we suspect a certain amount of performance-enhancing plugs might be involved. 

Your first challenge is to get it out of the plastic wrapping, which clings tightly to the angles and flat plates of the router. It's fully assembled, with no antennas to screw in, but you'll be forced to put it down on a desk before committing it to the cupboard or shelf just to take in the sheer majestic size of the thing. Footprint-wise, it's the size of a small laptop, but a laptop that rises six inches into the air. Between the wings there's even an active cooling fan—it really is like a laptop.

An Ethernet cable and a phone SIM tool—for poking the recessed reset button—are included, plus a power brick which came with a US-style three-pin plug that connects to the brick with a cloverleaf connection—watch out in your region if you have to replace the cable, as cloverleafs are less common than kettle leads. One of the 10 Gbps Ethernet ports is for the WAN hookup, but there's also an SFP+ port for direct fibre connections (the one on the review model is filled with an easily removable rubber bung) and you can even combo the two together for unheard of amounts of internet. Setup is a case of connecting to the Wi-Fi hotspot using the password (or QR code) printed on the bottom, and using the phone app or web interface to create passwords and go through a few simple questions. It's a very fast and easy process.

Assuming the Ethernet ports are at the back, it's one of the few routers to be deeper than it is wide, and as you're going to want the front and back of the unit to be accessible—there are buttons for WPS, Wi-Fi switch-off and more on the front, plus a USB port and on/off switch alongside the Ethernet on the back—it's going to be better installed sideways, so that it doesn't hang over the edge of a shelf and you can appreciate the RGB.

Oh yes. The coloured lighting plague that has led to desktop PC cases looking like Fourth of July celebrations and laptops projecting manufacturers' logos onto our knees has taken root on this router, with multi-hued LEDs buried in the vertical antenna plates and behind grilles that now, to return to the previous tortured Star Wars metaphor, look like engines. 

You can turn it off. There's a dedicated button. Use it.

The Archer GE800 is certainly not cheap, but it certainly is fast, and while the benefits of Wi-Fi 7 may be best experienced on a network with a particularly fat connection to the wider internet and a lot of separate devices to share those megabits between, a router like this is an upgrade for anyone still labouring away with Wi-Fi 5. One of the Ethernet ports is a ‘gaming port' which will prioritise your traffic if you plug your gaming PC into it, but really with a router operating at this level network congestion should be the least of your problems. There's automatic QoS on-board too, which claims to detect and optimise gaming traffic without you having to interfere—though you can tweak it—and Homeshield security. You even get access to the Gamers Private Network VPN service.

The published wireless throughput figures are as huge as the box it comes in, offering a whopping 11.5 gigs of 6 GHz bandwidth to play with, and over a gig on the longer-ranged 2.4 GHz band, which will be useful for that relative who hasn't updated their phone since 2010 (it is of course backwards compatible) and for when your fridge downloads a firmware update. You're not going to get all that in one go, even if you're transferring data to a networked SSD array, but it can be shared out among a lot of devices without succumbing to slowdown or latency. Some of this capability comes from using the latest version of the Wi-Fi spec, and some from a Qualcomm chipset that not so long ago we'd have been calling a flagship smartphone.

In testing, the GE800 manages something close to a perfect score, with no weird peaks and troughs. Each network gets faster as we move up the GHz scale, and there's a distinct drop off in transmission speed as the client device is moved away from the server and a few walls and a floor are put in between. It's all exactly as the Force predicted.

It may be large and expensive (though it's actually not the priciest router on the market), but there's no arguing with the results. If your wallet and shelving can take it, and you have a fast internet connection you want to distribute among multiple devices that can use Wi-Fi 7—or think you will have in the near future—then the TP-Link Archer GE800 has got your back with this one.

The main sell of the Razer BlackWidow V4 75% is that it's fully hot-swappable. Priced at $180/£190, it's a more affordable keeb offering this functionality when compared to the competition. This can be evidenced when contrasting with the pricier Asus ROG Azoth 75% at $250 / £270 and the full-size Mountain Everest Max at $200 / £190. It's rare when the boomslang brand can come out as the king of value given the company's boutique status and branding, but I'll take it. 

My review unit comes pre-loaded with third-generation Razer Orange tactile switches which are said to deliver a quiet typing experience. I can verify this; they are notably quieter than the manufacturer's Green Clicky switches but are a touch louder than its Analog Optical switches that you'll find in the likes of the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro TKL. 

While no other sets of switches are included, you can buy new switches from Razer for $25 / £25 a piece. It would have been nice to have an extra set in the box to play with, but that would have seemingly undercut the more aggressive pricing here.

Handily, Razer has included a multi-tool for pulling keycaps and switches in the box. The Razer BlackWidow V4 is held together with just five Phillips head screws for ease of access. Once you've lifted the lid, you'll see the tape-enhanced PCB, the plate foam and the plate itself which you can slot the new switches in. The gaming keyboard supports both three and five-pin options, so it takes the manual labor of having to build a board entirely from scratch.  

Razer claims that the BlackWidow V4 75% has been made with an “optimized typing experience” in mind. As there's no way to change the actuation here, the company has instead fine-tuned a solution. From my experience, even as I write this review, I can say that it's among the best gaming keyboards that I've typed on, which surprised me given the form factor. It feels like a bigger deck than it is despite taking up less room than a TKL equivalent. 

What's also neat is how the design ethos of the full-size Razer BlackWidow V4 has been accurately carried over with the 75% version. This is evident in the new shrunken-down media roller in the top right matching the original in all but length, and the media buttons. You now get two instead of four, acting as pause and mute, but they get the job done. What's won me over, though, is the extra plush wrist rest, which is incredibly comfortable. A joy to use after becoming accustomed to harder plastic rests over the last few years. It may not sound like much, but if you work from home or want something to take into the office, it can make a difference. 

Speaking to the form factor, the 75% variant does a solid job of skirting the line of size and function. It's a touch smaller than a tenkeyless model, but larger than a 60% variant as touched upon above. That means you're benefiting from a full function key row and page keys. It does result in the overall board looking a little short and tall, but in practice, it works well. If you ever found a 60% too cramped to game or work on then maybe this slightly bigger deck could sway you. 

Gaming on the Razer BlackWidow V4 75% is a great experience. I've been spending more hours than I care to admit running through Dark Ages England in Assassin's Creed Valhalla and this deck did an excellent job of feeling sharp and responsive whether I was in combat situations with a group of irritated soldiers or on horseback through the fields. It also performed well in more immediate titles such as The Finals; just a couple of games in, and I was used to the smaller travel time of my hands to hit the keys against my usual full-size deck. 

It wouldn't be a Razer product if it didn't feature Chroma RGB in some capacity and this gaming keyboard is no exception to the rule. There's per-key lighting which can be tailored to your liking in the Synapse software from breathing to audio reactive, spectrum, ambient, etc. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it works well. The lighting is bright and vivid even in the daylight hours and looks especially good contrasting against the all-white design. 

The decision of whether this new deck is right for you is going to depend on your preference. If you're in the market for a hot-swappable gaming keyboard which is cost-effective and compact then it's an easy recommendation. However, if you want more advanced features and a larger size then you may be better suited to an alternative, such as those touched on above. 

It's commendable that Razer was able to make this for well under $200 / £200 without sacrificing the build quality, so I think it's worth a go as a first foray into keyboard modding at the very least.

What brought the handheld PC gaming scene to the mainstream most was Valve’s Steam Deck which was first announced in August 2021. Unlike pricier rivals from companies like OneXPlayer, Ayaneo and Ayn, three of the larger boutique manufacturers, Valve aimed to keep the price down at the cost of resolution and raw gaming power. For reference, we gave it 85% in our Steam Deck review from early 2022 and praised its versatility despite a weak screen and a less-than-stellar battery life. Its widespread commercial and critical success opened the floodgates for competition to surface. 

The gap was present because of the quirks of the Steam Deck, which also plague the vastly superior Steam Deck OLED to a lesser extent. That’s because this handheld could only run games that were available on Steam, or were compatible with Linux as the handheld is fuelled by SteamOS and not something more universal than Windows. You can play a vast majority of your Steam library on this handheld, with Valve smartly implementing a Deck Verification system, denoting when a title is unsupported, playable, and verified with in-house thorough testing. 

For the vast majority of people, it’s going to be enough. If you buy a Steam Deck OLED today, you’re getting hands down the best available display with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, HDR, and 1,000 nits brightness which make up for the lower 800p resolution present. That’s where the gaps were starting to show and where other manufacturers seized the opportunity. 

The Asus ROG Ally was originally revealed as an April Fool’s joke before becoming available in June 2023. We described it as the “next-gen Steam Deck” for its more powerful performance courtesy of the Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme chipsets, 120Hz refresh rate, and Windows’ wider software support. 

If you’re talking about the best handheld gaming PCs available, those two fit the bill nicely. The latter machine supports the likes of PC Game Pass, Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games, GOG, and other launchers for a more encompassing selection with a higher resolution of 1080p. But what about if you wanted an even better screen? Well, there’s the Lenovo Legion Go, which keeps everything that made the Ally a success, but adds a Nintendo Switch-like quality with its detachable controllers and bumps the resolution up to 1600p with its 8.8-inch display. Not quite as good as its competition, as you can’t often game in its native resolution owing to the limitations of the Z1 chip. However, that’s three valid options from trusted manufacturers, but then things got complicated. 

Fast forward to 2024 and it’s become more challenging to separate the wave of incoming handheld gaming PCs by their USP. For example, we got our first look at the MSI Claw earlier this year, with many outlets reviewing the machine in March and April. It was generally disliked by critics for its buggy software and high price tag, even surpassing the sticker price of the Lenovo Legion Go ($800) with less to offer. Armed with an Intel Meteor Lake and Arc graphics, it tried to go all in on Team Blue, but couldn’t quite stick the landing. 

In my own hands-on with the MSI Claw at a press event in March, I instantly noticed the step down in build quality, display, and compatibility of some of its competition. Being more expensive than the Steam Deck OLED, Asus ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go from the offset isn’t a good start, especially when games looked and ran as poorly as they did. Simply put, some titles wouldn’t launch, and others would suffer performance issues; greatly disappointing considering this was MSI putting its best foot forward. 

Not a great start, but the Taiwanese manufacturer wasn’t done yet. Enter the recently unveiled MSI Claw 8 AI+ which made its first appearance at Computex 2024 earlier this month. Merely three months after releasing its first handheld gaming PC, comes the next iteration, this time running a Lunar Lake processor with an improved 80Wh battery and a 120Hz eight-inch display. It’s going to run Battlemage (Xe2) graphics and looks to be an out-an-out improvement. While it’s expected to be released towards the end of the year, it begs the question of exactly why the hardware company decided to launch a vastly inferior product only to show the next-gen off in no time. 

The MSI Claw and Steam Deck aren’t the only handheld gaming PCs to receive an upgrade. Enter the Asus ROG Ally X slated for release next month. It features a larger 80Wh battery and an improved SSD than the original with other mid-generational ergonomics tweaks to the design. There’s also a bump up to 24 GB LPDDR5X RAM at 7,500 MT/s, some of the fastest memory in the form factor, which could drastically improve gaming performance in 1080p with the same Z1 Extreme chipset at the helm. 

While these mid-generational upgrades are alluring, they call into question the longevity of some of these handheld gaming PCs. As a frame of reference, it’s only been around two and a half years since the Steam Deck was released, and competition is showing no signs of slowing down. That’s because there’s also the Zotac Zone revealed at Computex 2024 as well; another 1080p performer, this time with an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U CPU and 780M integrated graphics. 

Our hands-on revealed a decent enough feel in the hand, with a neat 7-inch AMOLED display, but we weren’t totally convinced about how it would stack up against its growing list of rivals. 

For those counting, that’s a total of eight handheld gaming PCs announced or released by these five manufacturers in two and a half years which works out to a new device every four months give or take. I think that’s grounds for over-saturation, especially as we’re seeing mid-generation revisions in such a short period. The booming scene is burning bright, but if it continues on this trajectory then things are going to burn out fast. 

When you introduce too many products to market in such a short time frame, you run the risk of confusing consumers and weakening confidence in your product. Anyone who bought an MSI Claw A1M is liable to feeling disappointed at the reveal of the AI 8+ mere months later, and the same can arguably be said about the jump from the Asus ROG Ally to the Ally X. Yes, the PC hardware scene moves fast, but these innovations are far quicker than what we see from the best graphics cards and other key components in your build. 

With all said, we can turn our attention back to companies like Ayaneo which are serving a more enthusiast-level side of the market. The Ayaneo Kun won some favor with us for its great looks, dedicated software, responsive controls, and combination of AMD Ryzen 7 7840U with 780M integrated graphics. However, at $1,329 for the spec we reviewed, it’s on a different wavelength to other handhelds I’ve mentioned above.

Arthur Zhang, CEO of Ayaneo, spoke to us about the emergence of competition in the handheld gaming space: "The biggest change undoubtedly lies in the increasing market size and attention." 

"As mobile chip performance advances rapidly and gaming scenarios and habits undergo significant transformations, this has driven rapid growth in the handheld Windows PC sector." 

Valve, Asus, MSI, Lenovo, and now Zotac and even Adata are moving in on the space it has occupied since 2020, with things only destined to heat up further.  

Ayaneo releases a wealth of products in a short duration but with vastly different form factors. This includes not only the more traditional Kun, but also the Slide, 2S, Air Plus, and Flip DS. 

"We can dig deep into the needs of gamers for handhelds from different perspectives, and thus launch different sizes and shapes of Windows handhelds to satisfy the segmentation needs of the gamer community."

What helps companies like this stand out is the customization. You can choose how much RAM you want in your machine, occasionally even picking between different CPUs at varying prices, too. As more companies muscle in on this space, more innovation may be needed to have a chance at success. 

"For these gamers, they don’t consider our product launches excessive; instead, they feel there aren’t enough products catering precisely to their preferences and needs."

That’s where we find ourselves in the summer of 2024. It’s still such an early time for an emergent scene, it’s not quite clear whether these devices are here to stay or simply part of an incredibly lucrative phase. With so many handhelds hitting the shelves, a crash could be on the horizon if companies aren’t careful. As consumers, we either want the best value for money, the highest level of performance possible, or something unique. However, I believe we’re already at the point where there’s too much on the market now, with further iterations offering less and less as time progresses.