Laptop Batteries, Chargers and AC Adapters

Until relatively recently, Intel was the undisputed top dog when it comes to laptop processors. It was synonymous with devices from the top PC manufacturers in the world, as well as being the only CPU manufacturer used on Apple’s MacBooks.

However, that’s begun to change in recent years. Since the release of its first Ryzen processors in 2017, AMD has emerged as a major rival to Intel in the laptop space. The same year, the first ARM-based devices were released, powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset. The company has gone on to partner with Microsoft on two generations of Surface Pro X, although it looks like Microsoft has ARM plans of its own.

AMD is also expected to expand into ARM-based chips, which aim to boost responsiveness and battery life without compromising on performance. That’s what we’ve seen with Apple Silicon, which has seen the company successfully ditch Intel for its own laptop CPUs.

The ARM revolution looks set to continue, with Samsung set to announce its first ever laptop CPU imminently. Here’s everything you need to know.

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The iPad mini had a new lease of life with the release of the sixth-gen tablet, offering a substantial upgrade over what came before it. As well as a boosted 8.3in display in the same form factor as its older sibling, the iPad mini 6 sports a refined design similar to that of the iPad Air and iPad Pro, along with A15 Bionic performance and support for the second-gen Apple Pencil.

It’s a great tablet, but the next-gen iPad mini 7 is likely in the early stages of development behind closed doors at Apple Park – and early whispers suggest a moderate, but still interesting, upgrade could be in the works.

Here’s what to expect from the iPad mini 7, from release date and pricing predictions to the latest rumours and our predictions for the next-gen tablet.

When will the iPad mini 7 be released?
The big question is, when will we see the reveal of the iPad mini 7? While it’s far too early for Apple to officially confirm the existence of the next-gen tablet, we can look at previous releases to get a good idea of what to expect.

That’s the good news. The bad news? The iPad mini doesn’t get regular updates like the entry-level iPad and iPad Pro, which tend to get updated once a year. Like the iPad Air, the iPad mini’s history is a little more complicated, with varying lengths of time between each generation.

Here’s how that shapes up over the past few generations:

iPad mini 6: 24 September 2021
iPad mini 5: 18 March 2019
iPad mini 4: 9 September 2015
As you can see, the release schedule is sporadic. It’s arguably got a new lease of life with the redesign and price increase, so Apple could update it more regularly going forward, but we’d still expect a longer gap between updates than others in the company’s tablet collection.

With all that in mind, we’d say the chances of seeing a new iPad mini in 2022 are slim – but not impossible.

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AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series of graphics cards offer a tempting next-generation gaming experience – the problem for many gamers has been stock, and as a knock-on effect, price.

While the flagship RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT are still hard to come by at RRP, AMD has just revealed a new graphics card that could circumvent most of the stock issues plaguing the market right now.

It’s called the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, and the entry-level 1080p gaming-focused graphics card is due for release today following a CES 2022 announcement. Here’s all there is to know right now.

When will the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT be released?
The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is set to be released today, 19 January 2022, following a CES 2022 reveal. Timings are yet to be confirmed, but based on previous releases, we expect the graphics card to go on sale at around 1pm GMT/9am ET.

How much will the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT cost?
The price of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT will likely excite entry-level 1080p gamers that have been neglected of late, with a price tag of just $199 (UK pricing TBC).

While it’s easy to be sceptical and speculate that the Radon RX 6500 XT will skyrocket in price as supply dwindles, there is hope for the GPU. While AMD didn’t confirm VRAM on stage, sources suggest it’s limited to just 4GB of VRAM, and that isn’t very efficient for mining cryptocurrency, so it should only be gamers buying the GPU.

Coupled with the entry-level specs, it might be easier to manufacture at scale, translating to more stock at regular prices. It won’t be an 8K gaming monster, with specs focused on 1080p gaming, but it should suffice for entry-level gamers on a budget.

It’ll likely be available from popular retailers like Overclockers in the UK and Newegg in the US, and we cover where to buy the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT in the UK and US in more detail separately for those interested.

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Windows 11 is suffering from more performance issues, with AMD devices once again affected. Commonly reported problems include frequent stuttering and audio glitches, with affected users expressing their frustration.

The issues appear to be caused by the TPM 2.0 module, one of Windows 11’s key hardware requirements. Both Intel and AMD CPUs enable TPM via system firmware that’s independent from the rest of the OS. Intel’s implementation appears to be bug-free, but AMD users aren’t so lucky.

As Windows Latest reports, the issue seems to be caused by compatibility issues between AMD’s TPM (known as fTPM) and Windows, as opposed to a bug within the OS itself.

Judging by a Reddit post, the issue has been around for five months, since Windows 11 was officially released. But a recent deluge of comments suggests it’s a widespread problem right now. Forums on the Lenovo and Linus Tech Tips websites only serve to emphasise that.

What’s more, it’s the second AMD-specific performance problem to affect Windows 11 in just three months. Back in October, two separate issues caused performance to drop by as much as 15%, with an official fix not available for two weeks.

Until Microsoft or AMD releases a patch, there’s is an unofficial solution that works for many people, but it’s not without compromise.

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AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series is hugely popular, offering great performance gains compared to earlier graphics cards and allowing it to compete more directly with the Nvidia RTX 30 Series. Despite the fact that it’s still a tough task picking up an RX 6000 Series graphics card, AMD is hard at work on the next-gen Radeon RX 7000 Series behind closed doors.

We outline all there is to know about the AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series right here, including release date and pricing speculation and RDNA 3-themed leaks too.

When will the AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series be released?
While many assumed that AMD would follow its yearly release schedule for the next-gen Radeon RX 7000 Series with a reveal in late 2021, but as we now know, that wasn’t the case. In fact, sources suggest that the company has pushed back the launch by an entire year, now expected sometime in Q4 2022.

The rumour comes from Twitter leaker @Broly_X1 who has a decent track record, also correctly predicting the three main talking points at AMD’s Computex 2021 keynote in June. The leaker suggests in a now-deleted tweet that AMD is aiming for a Q4 2022 launch, and suggests that AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chipset will launch “around the same time”.

While that’ll inevitably come as a disappointment to some, it makes a lot of sense given the current issues around the worldwide semiconductor shortage affecting CPUs, GPUs and other tech of all shapes and sizes. The fact that AMD can’t produce enough of the current Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs to keep up with demand means the company doesn’t have much of an incentive to launch the next-gen kit.

The good news is that the 2022 release seems to be on track.

In a January 2022 earnings call, CEO Dr. Lisa Su provided investors with an insight into how development is going. Dr. Su says the company is looking forward to a strong year as “we ramp our current products and launch our next wave of Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs”.

The CEO is also confident that supply issues will ease this year, claiming that the company has “made significant investments in wafer capacity, as well as substrate capacity and back-end capacity” that should make it easier to buy an AMD graphics card.

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