Month: June 2022

Two years after the T7 was launched Samsung delivers a more resilient design but doesn’t make it any faster

Back in 2020, Samsung launched the T7 Touch, a biometrically secure external SSD, and a few months later a cheaper no-frills T7 version that proved a very popular choice.

The Samsung T7 Touch offered a 10Gbit USB connection and could read and write files at close to 1,000MB/s, making it ideal for those looking to catch a plane, train or boat with critical files from the office secured on the drive.

Now, Samsung has revamped the T7 to bring us the T7 Shield. With the original T7 still selling, what makes the Shield the T7 that potential customers might want?

Design & Build
Samsung makes the new T7 Shield in three colours, and they sent me the one with the least aesthetically pleasing colour for review. The black and the blue aren’t exciting colours, but the beige one harks back to a bygone era when all computers came in variations on a theme of brown.

It also has a slightly odd, rubberised surface finish profiled like house-siding and not the hard metallic crisp edges of its predecessor.

One side has the Samsung logo stencilled onto the rubber, and on the other, in a tiny font, is the ‘T7 Shield’ branding. The capacity of the drive and all the other standards logos are on a narrow elliptical endplate.

The opposing end has a USB-C port and a tiny LED to show power and activity.

Along with the drive, Samsung includes in the box two USB cables that cover both USB-C and Type-A connections, though they don’t provide a fabric pouch for the drive or the cables – though you likely don’t need one anyway.

If the rubberised finish hasn’t provided a sufficient clue, the subtle change from the original T7 to the T7 Shield is that the enclosure has better protection for the SSD electronics inside, allowing the owner to exercise much less restraint when throwing it to his colleague on the other side of the office.

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Acer returns with a new ChromeOS laptop that boasts a 15.6in display, lots of ports and powerful internals. We review the Acer Chromebook 515

Larger Chromebooks seem to be making a bit of a comeback recently. While most of the ChromeOS devices you can buy tend to favour small formats, usually built around a 13in display, with many people now using them as a workhorse in the home, a bigger panel can be a real benefit.

Acer has recognised this new trend and its response is the Chromebook 515, complete with a 15.6in display. But, does bigger always mean better?

Design & Build
Plastic and metal construction
358 x 241 x 24.9mm dimensions
1.7kg weight
Those used to the lightweight, compact nature of Chromebooks might be a little taken aback when they first encounter the 515.

It’s a large device in this category, with its sizable dimensions making it something of a surfboard when compared to the likes of the HP Chromebook x360 14c, but around the same as the other recent big ChromeOS machine, the Asus Chromebook Flip CX5.

The materials used in the construction do keep the weight to manageable level, with 1.7kg feeling just about comfortable to lug around. Plastic is deployed for the base section, while the majority of the lid is made from metal with a matte finish that looks smart and reminiscent of many other Chromebooks I’ve reviewed lately.

You won’t find any of the fancy 2-in-1 style hinges on the 515, as it thinks of itself as a laptop rather than hybrid, presumably due to the lack of a touchscreen. You can push the display down flat on a table though, if that’s the sort of thing you like to do although I’m not sure who does and what for.

For the most part, it’s a stable setup, but jiggling the device a little bit did see the display tilt back, so the hinges aren’t quite as tight as they could be. That being said, I didn’t experience any problems with the angle changing by itself during my time with the device.

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CyberGhost offers a very good VPN service which you can use on up to 7 devices at the same time. It’s great for unblocking video in particular.

CyberGhost is one of the original and best-known VPN services for consumers. It has changed hands and currently owned by Kape Technologies which also owns other VPN services including ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access and Zenmate as well as VPN comparison website VPNmentor.

It’s a particularly good choice for unblocking streaming services because, not only is it good at doing so, but because of its inexpensive multi-year subscription plans.

And if that’s why you really want a VPN – to unblock Netflix, Disney+ and other services – it won’t really matter about the less-great aspects of the service, such as the lack of an independent audit for its no-logs policy, which becomes basically irrelevant.

So, rather than diving in and talking about the desktop and mobile apps as we tend to do, let’s talk about streaming and performance.

When we tested in May 2022, we had no issues watching US-exclusive titles such as Ink Master from our UK location. We also tested that iPlayer was accessible from France and found that, initially, it wasn’t.

That’s because, on the day of testing, the server marked as being optimised for iPlayer wasn’t working properly and even the BBC website wouldn’t load when connected. However, trying a server optimised for ITV – another UK-based streaming service – iPlayer worked just fine, as did ITV Hub.

CyberGhost is unusual in that it doesn’t just provide a list of servers or countries but the Windows app lets you see filtered lists for streaming, gaming, torrenting and NoSpy (we’ll get to those later).

In the Streaming list, you’ll find a wide choice of services, but also servers dedicated to specific streaming devices, such as a US server optimised for US Netflix on an Amazon Fire TV, or another for Hulu on Android TV.

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The 2022 line-up of Asus ZenBook 14 laptops looks very good indeed, offering fetching design, vibrant, colour-accurate displays, good overall performance, and great battery life.

The Asus ZenBook 14 (UX3402) is the new-look version of Asus’s flagship Ultrabook series for 2022.

Refining the theory rather than reinventing the wheel, the ZenBook 14 (UX3402) is slimmer than its 2021 counterpart, but it’s available in the same trademark Asus dark blue, and once again the trackpad doubles as a numeric keypad, a feature we’ve seen on ZenBooks for quite a while now.

To see where the new ZenBook 14 goes one better than last year’s UX425 models, you need to look under the hood – they feature more up-to-date Intel processors, 12th-gen Alder Lake-P vs 11th gen Tiger Lake. The latest chips feature more cores, allowing you to run more things at once, as well as promising an overall boost in performance.

The presence of Alder Lake-P also means that the new ZenBook 14 can come with newer LPDDR5-type RAM, and a Wi-Fi 6E module. In simple terms, this means that stuff should run a bit more quickly than before, and also your Wi-Fi will be a bit faster (provided you’re connected to a fancy new router).

Asus ZenBook laptops have long been stylish and snazzy, and the 2022 model is no exception. It’s a very slim-looking device that you’ll be able to easily stow away in a messenger bag or rucksack.

It follows design cues set by previous ZenBooks, but instead of the usual concentric spun-metal jackets, Asus has etched lines from its Star Trek-esque ‘A’ logo into a flat finish. The usual curved corners are also out, with Asus now opting for a more angular look. The deck is trapezoidal, with the widest part facing up. Aesthetically, it’s still miles away from something like the Asus TUF Gaming A15 (2022), but it’s a step change.

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The Black Shark 4 Pro is a great gaming-focused smartphone despite the year-old internals.

Almost a year after the initial announcement of the Black Shark 4 Pro in China, the smartphone is set to come to UK shores.

Touting gaming-focused features like a 144Hz AMOLED display, magnetic pop-up triggers, RGB lighting and 120W HyperCharge support, the Black Shark 4 Pro sounds tempting, but can the early 2021 spec hold its own against 2022 smartphones? Well…

Design and build
Big and bulky, but not unwieldy
Clean design with minimal RGB
Built-in triggers are a game-changer
The Black Shark 4 Pro is a gaming phone, and that means that it’s not the thinnest or lightest in the market – likely down to the beefed-up internals and larger cooling components than standard flagships. If that’s not your thing, you’d be better off elsewhere.

But while the Black Shark 4 Pro is a chunk at 9.9mm thick and 220g, it’s not unwieldy thanks to the narrow 20:9 aspect ratio of the 6.67in display – although the trade-off is that it’s hard to reach the top of the display when using the phone one-handed.

Size aside, Black Shark 4 Pro is an evolution in the design of the Black Shark, keeping the same X-antenna rear as its predecessor but switching out the combination of metal and glass for an all-glass affair. The glass rear is matte to help resist fingerprints with the familiar X pattern visible beneath, with interesting light refraction effects that give it a premium, but not so ‘in-your-face-gamer’ look.

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