PC Pro Magazine

Have we become too used to receiving instant gratification from tech in a world full of uncertainty? Sarah provides a nuanced response on p34 Who better to review the brand-new Microsoft Flight Simulator than a commercial pilot who grew up on sims? R

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Tim Danton: editor@pcpro.co.uk EDITORIAL FELLOW Dick Pountain ASSOCIATE EDITOR Darien Graham-Smith HEAD OF REVIEWS, EXPERT REVIEWS Jonathan Bray: jonathan_bray@dennis.co.uk FEATURES EDITOR Barry Collins FUTURES EDITOR Nicole Kobie BRI

Microsoft is attempting to kickstart the market for dual-screen devices, with the launch of the Surface Duo. The Android device, announced in October 2019 alongside the still-absent Surface Neo, will go on sale in the US at the stark price of $1,399

With tensions increasing between the West and China, there’s concern that technologies might provide an inadvertent security threat if lost overseas. In evidence to the Foreign Office committee investigating UK asset stripping, former CEO Hossein Yas

23% I don’t listen to music while working 21% Music-streaming service such as Spotify 16% Streaming radio service such as TuneIn or BBC 13% Streaming from my own NAS or similar 12% I don’t listen to music while working 10% Good old-fashioned radio 3%

Powerhouse laptop with a price to match, from £2,399 from apple.com/uk If you know you’ll take advantage of what the 16in MacBook Pro offers, you won’t regret buying it. The only question is where you draw the line, with options right up to 8TB SSDs

Last night I “attended” a superb jazz session by world-class musicians Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Brian Blade. Admittedly, it happened 16 years ago in Salzau in Germany, but I heard it almost as well as – and saw it far better th

@njkobie David from Gateshead was expecting A*AA in his A-levels, but he was downgraded to A*AB because his school had never had such a good maths student before. “The college thought it would be the best year we’ve ever had, but the algorithm says i

@bazzacollins Last November, noting that my old laptop was starting to creak, I had a decision to make. Should I go for a powerful desktop with top-notch graphics and more storage than I could ever fill? Or should I sacrifice some of that graphical o

Paul Williamson’s article (see issue 312, p118) reminded me of my introduction to computing. He and I are contemporaries, but followed different paths. As a nascent experimental scientist, I began at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) in

Rather like switching banks, you might worry that switching streaming services would be a headache. What about all those playlists you have spent years carefully curating? Can you really face manually adding thousands of songs from scratch? Good news

PRICE £1,833 (£2,200 inc VAT) from chillblast.com It’s fair to say that Chillblast is on Flight Simulator’s case. Head to chillblast.com and you’ll find 14 PCs tailor-made for flight sims, ranging from £760 to £4,900, and it’s had early access to Fli

PRICE £1,083 (£1,299 inc VAT) from cyberpowersystem.co.uk While I enjoyed using the Chillblast Captain Flight Sim PC (see p45), there isn’t a compelling reason to spend more than £2,000 if you want to enjoy Microsoft Flight Simulator. This Cyberpower

PRICE £749 (£899 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk What if. That is the question that haunts the the Acer Nitro N50-610. This gaming PC comes tantalisingly close to being a bargain, but it’s handicapped by two crucial cost-cutting measures that that it can’

PRICE £1,750 (£2,100 inc VAT) from razer.com We tested the fully loaded Quadro Studio Edition of the Razer Blade 15 earlier this year (see issue 308, p56), but the Base model goes back to relative basics. The key word there being “relative”: this is

We run our own benchmarks on every Windows and macOS system we test. These are based around image editing, video editing and multitasking (where we run the video-editing benchmark while simultaneously playing back a 4K video). At the bottom of each l

PRICE £291 (£349 inc VAT) from store.google.com Google’s cheapest smartphone is almost here – it goes on sale in October – and it’s immediately obvious that Google is aware it must work harder with the 4a than the Pixel 3a (see issue 304, p85). Not o

PRICE 128GB, £316 (£379 inc VAT) from oneplus.com OnePlus made its name by squeezing top-specification components into keenly priced products, but that philosophy went bythe wayside as it attempted to elbow its way onto the top table alongside the bi

Every Pixel 4a portrait shot emerged looking sharp with neutral colours against a creamy, simulated bokeh background; the same can’t be said for the OnePlus Nord’s portraits In more general shots, though, there isn’t a huge amount to choose between t

PRICE New licence, Home & Student, £58 (£70 inc VAT) from parallels.com Parallels Desktop has been my go to virtualisation platform for a while, mostly hosting Windows 10 installations. As you’d expect from a fully featured hypervisor, it allows you

PRICE £108 (£130 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk If you’re on a tight budget, we can cut to the quick: the Iiyama ProLite XUB2493HSU-B1 offers unmatched value without making any obvious sacrifices. Indeed, you could place this 24in monitor next to the twice

PRICE £174 (£209 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk It’s testament to NEC displays’ quality that a product released in 2012 still stands tall next to much more recent models. Although “tall” is stretching things: at 21.5in, it’s looking decidedly titchy, des

PRICE £133 (£160incVAT) from alza.co.uk If you only have limited space on your desk but still yearn for features and versatility, take a long hard look at the Philips 242B1. It even packs a twomegapixel infrared camera – which can be tucked away when

PRICE £162 (£195 incVAT) from currys.co.uk Unusually for a “basic” 24in monitor, the ViewSonic includes a USB-C video input. If you use a USB-Cpowered laptop that requires 60W or less – and many do – then your desk will look a whole lot neater. Note,

PRICE £240 (£288 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Acer produces so many monitors that it seems to have run out of model names. Search for the B277U on its website and the one with part number UM.HB7EE.011 is first to appear – an older model that includes

PRICE £234 (£281 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com If you’re looking for a 4K 27in IPS screen, and have a budget of under £300, it’s a straight shootout between this AOC and the Iiyama ProLite XU2792UHSU-B1. There are reasons to choose both of them – and

PRICE £233 (£280 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Iiyama clearly had one aim when designing the XU2792UHSU-B1: to build a good-quality 4K monitor for a great price. After all, not everyone wants a feature-laden screen, so why pay for the privilege? Admittedl

PRICE £215 (£258 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk On the face of it, it might seem odd that we’re recommending this 1440p screen when Iiyama is selling a 4K monitor for almost exactly the same price. While the XU2792UHSU-B1 has its undoubted attractions, we

PRICE £292 (£350incVAT) from scan.co.uk As the VG279QM’s full name gives away, gaming is the clear focus of this Asus monitor, but we can see few reasons to pick it over others on test. For a start, it has a Full HD resolution. That can work to your

PRICE £125 (£150incVAT) from box.co.uk The GL2780 is the sole monitor in this Labs to use a TN panel, and if nothing else it serves as a useful reminder of this technology’s limitations. That’s despite BenQ’s best efforts, because in terms of testing

PRICE £445 (£534 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk If you’re looking for a 27in monitor to set your pulse racing, we can think of many others in this Labs that will do the job far better than the Dell UltraSharp U2720Q. Perhaps most notably the MSI Optix MAG2

PRICE £387 (£464 inc VAT) from shop.benq.eu With the EW2780U, BenQ is asking one simple question: why spend more than £500 on a 4K USB-C monitor? BenQ covers all the most important basics, choosing a high-quality IPS panel that’s well tuned to people

PRICE £316 (£379 inc VAT) from shop.benq.eu Not every creative professional can afford to spend over £1,000 on a monitor, but BenQ reckons it has the answer in the PD2705Q: a hardware-calibrated display with the assurance that even screens from diffe

PRICE £773 (£923 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com While Eizo’s FlexScan screens don’t have the hardware calibration of its ColorEdge series and can “only” display 16.7 million colours, they still offer phenomenal accuracy. That’s shown in the EV2785’s re

PRICE £399 (£479 inc VAT) from store.hp.com If the HP E27d was a human, it would wear a sharp grey suit, carry a briefcase and always complete its to-do list. As befits such a creation, HP supplies it in “Neutral” colour mode. This tracks the sRGB co

PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk While gaming monitors aren’t the focus of this Labs, when MSI offered us this curved 27in 1440p monitor for review we couldn’t refuse. That curve is gentle in practice, with 1500R not obvious in this size of

PRICE £632 (£758 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com The EA271U first graced these pages in early 2019 (see issue 293, p92), earning a place on the A-List for its stunning whites and excellent all-round quality. Those traits haven’t changed a jot in the int

PRICE £429 (£515 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk On paper, the Asus has obvious competition this month: the MSI Optix MPG341CQR is also a large VA gaming monitor with an 1800R curvature and 144Hz refresh rate. Placed side by side, though, these are very dif

PRICE£292(£350 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk The Iiyama XB3288UHSU-B1 has much in common with the Philips 328E1. They both use a VA panel, both have a 4K resolution and are both aggressively priced. Their first and most obvious point of difference is that

PRICE £286 (£343 inc VAT)from scan.co.uk Take two monitors into the office? Not Iiyama. With this 34in widescreen, it really is like having two monitors pinned together to form one gigantic workspace. With a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 you aren’t get

PRICE£724 (£869 incVAT) from scan.co.uk The MSI Optix MPG341CQR is one of the most striking monitors in this Labs. It uses a 34in curved 1440p VA panel with a 110ppi pixel density, and it looks sharp from normal viewing distances. Certainly sharper t

PRICE £438 (£549 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Samsung is best known in the UK for its phones and TVs, but it also sells numerous “professional” monitors. It can’t help itself from adding consumer pizzazz, though, and here it’s evident in a glossy white

PRICE £740 (£888 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk This 4K monitor has so much going for it. The IPS panel is top quality, hitting 94.3% of the sRGB gamut out of the box and 99.5% with a little tweaking. It even covers 97.3% of the DCI-P3 gamut. Those are bot

PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Read down the listing for the Philips 328E1 on p75 and you’ll see a lot of crosses. This monitor is pared down to the minimum, with the clear aim of delivering a curved 32in 4K screen for a price no other

The colour space below is what your eyes can see. It’s far beyond what can be reproduced by a digital device. Colour spaces such as sRGB and Adobe RGB define target gamuts for capture devices (such as cameras) and output devices (such as monitors), s

PRICE £705 (£845 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk Why buy the 43in U4320Q? Dell has financial firms in one of its sights, with the option of four different computer inputs and the ability to view them side by side. A 103ppi density helps, as it’s sharp at th

PRICE £1,000 (£1,200 inc VAT) from box.co.uk It isn’t enough for manufacturers to lure creative pros with the promise of calibrated panels that have a Delta E under two anymore – that’s rapidly becoming the standard for mid-range screens. Instead, th

PRICE £1,410 (£1,692 inc VAT) from wexphotovideo.com If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you gave engineers the task of building the perfect monitor, and then told them not to worry about silly things such as price, then we present to you th

PRICE £493 (£592 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com At first sight this 1440p 27in monitor appears to be overpriced: after all, you can buy the 4K Dell UltraSharp U2720Q for almost £60 less. However, unlike the Dell, this ViewSonic isn’t designed for life

During lockdown, I rummaged through various boxes and cupboards looking for items that have been gathering dust for too long. I’ve done the same with my hard drive, so this month’s column is a selection of tales that never made it into the magazine.

IT’S HARD TO find a positive headline at the moment – unless, that is, you’re a shareholder of an US technology company. “Combined, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook earned $28 billion,” reported The New York Times on 31 July. “Amazon had warned i