It’s worth looking outside your phone manufacturer’s ecosystem when it comes to accessories, as you might find features the tech giants don’t match. Read...

TL;DR: Replace your Adobe Acrobat monthly fee with a lifetime subscription to PDF Agile on sale for $40. Adobe Acrobat isn’t the only PDF editor around, and it’s certainly not the cheapest. If you want a low-cost alternative that doesn’t rope you into a monthly subscription, check out PDF Agile. Normally $119, this all-in-one PDF editor is now only $39.99 for a lifetime subscription. PDF Agile is simple and easy to use. It can edit text, images, or scanned files directly, and convert between PDF and Microsoft Office formats without losing your fonts or formatting. If you work with a lot of documents, there are tools to merge files, split them up, reorder pages, crop layouts, and even reduce file size without sacrificing quality. OCR is also included, so you can extract text from images or scanned documents with just a few clicks. The app includes a full set of annotation tools like highlighting, freehand drawing, and comment bubbles, along with features to redact sensitive content or add electronic signatures. You can also use slideshow mode to present your PDFs without having to convert them into PowerPoint. PDF Agile runs on Windows, and each license works on two devices. Once activated, your access is permanent, with updates included and no recurring fees. If you don’t want to pay monthly for Adobe Acrobat, then here’s your chance. Right now, it’s only $39.99 to get PDF Agile for life. PDF Agile for Windows: Lifetime SubscriptionSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

The Saturday edition of the Mirror features a photo of a three-year-old boy currently being treated for malnutrition. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Access your data and personal digital media from anywhere Supremely easy setup OS and phone apps Cons Lacks many of the features of a mainstream NAS box Synology account required for setup Plex is great, but it’s your only choice in supported media servers Our Verdict The BeeStation Plus personal cloud (for streaming, storage, client backups, and more) is supremely easy to set up and use, and it lets you easily access your data and personal digital media from anywhere on the planet. But it lacks many of the features Synology’s–and its competitors’–more mainstream NAS boxes offer. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Synology BeeStation Plus (8TB) Retailer Price $409.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Want your own personal OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud, or Google drive without the mega corporation or advanced network savvy that’s typically required? Perhaps you’re looking to set up a personal streamer for your massive collection of digital music and movies you’ve ripped from discs over the years. If you are, you should take a look at Synology’s BeeStation Plus, a NAS box that can operate as your own personal cloud and streaming service. The BeeStation Plus not only allows you to access your data and personal media from anywhere and on any compute-capable device–laptop, mobile phone, tablet, and so on–it’s exceptionally easy to set up. You don’t even need to add storage, there’s already an 8TB hard disk drive inside. The only possible issue is that Synology’s rigorous focus on simple-to-set-up-and-use means many of the features found in the company’s other NAS boxes are missing here. NAS aficionados–the acronym stands for Network Attached Storage, by the way–will care about that; the mainstream audience Synology is targeting with this product probably won’t. Specifications and features The 8TB Synology BeeStation Plus has USB-A and -C ports and a single gigabit ethernet port on its rear I/O panel.Jon Jacobi/Foundry As you might have guessed from my introduction, the BeeStation Plus is a simplified NAS box and media server. Stripping out some of the other features that NAS boxes are known for render it much easier to set up and use than more robust products that might interest hardcore users or the SMB crowd (allow me to spell out that acronym, too: it stands for Small to Medium-sized Businesses). the BeeStation Plus is certainly easier to set up than any other NAS box I’ve tested. So much so that it probably deserves its own classification. The box itself is a well-ventilated, rounded-corner, dark gray rectangle measuring 5.8 x 2.5 x 7.7 inches (HxWxD). It weighs in at just north of two pounds, with its mechanical hard drive no doubt accounting for most of that bulk. The front and sides are barren except for logos, while on the back there’s the power button, USB-A and -C ports, a reset pinhole, a gigabit ethernet port, and a power jack. There’s no video output, as some boxes have, so your only access to the files stored on the box is through Synology’s online portal and its local client apps, at least initially. You can enable SMB access to reach the unit locally via Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS) as well as via a browser without routing through the portal after initial setup. (In this context, the acronym SMB stands for the protocol Server Message Block.) The BeeStation Plus will serve as a destination for macOS Time Machine backups (with a 4TB limit), and the local desktop client will sync folders to the BeeStation. There are also BeeFiles apps for backing up your Android and iOS devices. The BeeFiles app for iOS. Synology offers a full backup option in BeeProtect, an online storage service that costs $120 per year for up to 8TB ($60 for the 4TB BeeStation model). Those prices aren’t half bad given the amount of storage get, but there’s a 3-month free trial if you want to give it a test drive first. Synology pushes its BeeProtect online backup solution. Less obvious is the small text link below the BeeProtect ad that tells you that you can also back up to external storage, another NAS box, or Synology’s own C2 cloud storage service if you have an account. But only one is allowed; so without BeeProtect, you’ll need to improvise a third copy of your data. That makes this as good a time as any to remind you that this is single hard disk drive storage that must be backed up if there’s any irreplaceable data on it. While HDDs are far more reliable than they used to be, they’re still mechanical devices and far more prone to failure than SSDs. The BeeStation Plus supports up to eight users, and each one gets their own private storage area. At the moment, the only functionality beyond file storage and backup is media streaming via Plex media server (with a 4TB limit on media files). More on that in a bit. Note that when you attach external storage, it doesn’t show up until you utilize a function that requires it. The storage section of the interface didn’t show either of the USB SSDs I attached, though I could still use them for transfer functions and see them as USBShares in Windows Explorer and macOS Finder. The BeeStation desktop app will create a local folder that later syncs with the BeeStation’s internal storage, a la DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and other services. Basically, this is for performance: Transfers across the local network will be relatively snappy without it, not so much across the internet The BeeStation Plus is NAS for people who don’t know, care about, or care to learn about NAS. Plug in its power cord and an ethernet cable, follow the prompts, and you’re good to go. Mostly. How easy is the BeeStation Plus to set up? The BeeStation Plus setup, while not the browse-to-a-local-URL (e.g., 192.168.1.101) approach I’m accustomed to, is by far the easiest I’ve encountered. At least for the basics. And by “easier-than,” I’m including personal cloud devices from industry stalwarts such as Seagate and Western Digital. No, the “personal cloud” pitch is not new. To get underway, you first surf to the Synology BeeStation Web portal. (There’s a QR code for mobile devices, although it just takes you to Synology’s website.) Next, you create an account, and then download the desktop app. You’ll need to be physically close to the BeeStation for a couple of steps, including the one below. Just one of the steps in the lengthy but largely idiot-proof BeeStation setup. One-time setup is rather tedious, but the wizard-like approach ensures that even the least experienced user can get the BeeStation Plus up and running. That said, I did find one step to be puzzling: With all of the focus on ease of use, why would Synology force you to tediously download and install the operating system? Just pre-load it at the factory and have it check for updates, guys. Anyway, setting up the Plex media server (for streaming movies, music, and photos) isn’t quite as easy as getting online and connecting. Mostly because it’s less-than-intuitively located under the heading “Integration” in the main web page. Perhaps it would be better to label this “Apps,” Synology? Also, as Plex is currently the only app available and intimately linked to the BeeStation Plus’ usefulness, why isn’t it pre-installed? The Plex media server is used to stream media. It requires its own account if you want to stream remotely. Tip: Use the BeeStation’s “Upload media files to Plex” function, which opens the browser-based BeeFiles at the correct location. If you try to add media within the Plex server, you’ll be confronted with a rather daunting list of Linux system folders that precede the folders you actually want. Assuming of course, you would actually know what those folders were. As mentioned above, if you want to use Windows Explorer/macOS Finder to manage files instead of a web browser or Synology’s desktop app, you’ll need to enable local access and SMB in the BeeStation web portal’s advanced settings. Why it’s disabled to begin with, I can’t say. The Local Account and SMB options must be enabled if you want to browse the BeeStation files using your operating system, or access the web browser interface without going through the portal. This image is the web browser interface via the Synology portal. I’m very accustomed to local SMB folder access, so I turned that on. But to be honest, I often found the web browser interface and BeeFiles easier to use. It supports drag-0and-drop file transfers and you don’t need to guess which folder is which. How easy is the BeeStation to use? While it’s not as dead easy as the initial setup, using the BeeStation is certainly easier than your run-of-the-mill NAS box, including handy dedicated functions for transferring your media from existing online services; specifically, those used by Android and iOS devices. That will cover most folks. I must say that iCloud support was a bit of a surprise. Apple is famous for denying access to third parties. The BeeStation Plus makes it easy for you to back up your Android or iOS photos. Viewing your media files, and even PDF and Office files, can be done via the web portal, right within the browser. It’s remarkably quick given a local network connection, which the BeeStation automatically uses if available. What NAS features are missing from the BeeStation Plus? What became obvious during my hands-on time is that the BeeStation Plus is either a software work-in-progress (should sales warrant it), or laser focused on being a personal cloud and nothing else. That’s admirable and great for the target audience, but there’s a lot missing that you could have in a perhaps less friendly, more traditional NAS box such as Synology’s own single-bay DS124. These are just a few of the apps available in Synology’s mainstream NAS boxes. Just some of the missing features are: Hybrid Backup/Sync (software that backs up remote computers without the need for local clients), security camera surveillance, virtualization (Docker and the like), BitTorrent, two-way sync, the HybridMount cloud storage manager, access to other network locations, and quite a lot more. Also missing is the ability to expand internal storage. Multi-bay NAS boxes allow you to add drives, and/or mirror them for increased safety and availability. All this makes a strong case for advanced users to go old-school. What’s this portal thing you’re rattling on about? Portals are remote servers that relay data from one location/URL to another. Basically, you log in to the portal with your data source device (e.g., the BeeStation Plus), which registers its existence, your ownership, and its internet location. Then, when you log on to the portal with your other devices and the appropriate client, the portal directs traffic to/from the data-serving device. Portals generally provide web interfaces that allow you to configure them, as well as manage the files on the server. The BeeStation Plus’ portal is top notch in both regards. The BeeStation web portal main page. The major upsides to portals are ease of setup and hassle-free access from anywhere (given internet freedom, which is not universal). You also needn’t unduly expose your server (the BeeStation) to the internet, as you would if you configured your router to forward ports to it. Said configuration can also be quite trepidatious for less experienced users. On the other hand, I can name at least two portals (Cisco NAS, and PogoPlug) that disappeared, rendering the products that relied on them far less useful. Additionally, your info is passing through someone else’s servers, which could potentially lead to data breaches. Companies can promise all the security and encryption in the world, but when all is said and done, if they decide they want to access your data, they can. That comment is not aimed at Synology in the slightest, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the company. It’s simply inherent to the technology and it also applies to Microsoft, Google, Apple, and every other company in the modern connected world. How much does the BeeStation Plus cost? The 8TB BeeStation Plus retails for $409, which isn’t a ton more than Synology’s own single-bay DS124 when populated with an 8TB HDD (around $340 combined). There’s also a far more affordable 4TB BeeStation for $209 available if you think that will hold your movie, image, and music collections. As HDDs are available in up to 36TB these days, I’m a bit surprised there aren’t more capacious options. The BeeStation Plus is warrantied for three years, which includes the HDD as far as I can tell. How fast is the BeeStation Plus? The BeeStation’s gigabit ethernet and hard drive are more than fast enough for most file operations, as well as for streaming media. Indeed, the data rates required for multimedia delivery aren’t nearly as great as some might think. Even streamed 4K video is generally only several megabytes per second, depending on the codec. Blu-ray can be much higher, but that’s a different beast. Audio requires far less bandwidth, and images a relative trickle. The BeeStation Plus clocked in at around 115 megabytes per second reading, and 90- to 100MBps writing. That’s slightly below average for a gigabit box, but it’s still in the ballpark. Transfer speeds to and from a remote location will, of course, depend on your broadband connection. While not fantastic for a NAS with gigabit ethernet, these speeds are in the ballpark and more than adequate for streaming, file transfers, and client backups. AmorphousDiskMark was largely in agreement with Disk Speed test (shown above) when it came to transfers across my home 2.5Gbps network. An Apple Studio with an M4 Max and a 10Gbps ethernet port was at the other end. The Intel Celeron J4125 CPU made the web interface quite responsive. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised at how quick the BeeStation Plus navigated, downloaded apps, and changed settings. The latter especially can be laggardly on NAS boxes. I had several people simultaneously test the Plex streaming and there were no issues. Admittedly, it was all 1080p video and music, and you might get fewer streams with 4K in play. But there were no complaints. In total, the BeeStation Plus will get the job done handily, although I wouldn’t complain if it had a 2.5Gbps ethernet port. Should you buy the BeeStation Plus? If you want an easy-to-set-up-and-use personal cloud for file access, media streaming and viewing both in your home and from afar, either the BeeStation Plus or the smaller-capacity BeeStation are fantastic options. Tech-savvy users who want more server-grade features will be better off with a straight-up NAS box that offers far greater capabilities, likely for a few less bucks. There’s also less chance that such a product could end up orphaned. Read...

Microsoft is currently testing a new AI feature in Edge called “Journeys,” reports Windows Latest. The aim is to create AI-generated summaries and interactive cards of your browsing history and open pages, making it easier to resume projects or continue ongoing tasks. But there’s a catch with this feature: it’s only available if you have a Copilot Pro subscription, which costs $20 per month. The subscription also provides AI capabilities in other Microsoft apps such as Word, PowerPoint, Paint, and Notepad. (Yup, those last two actually have AI features.) When Journeys is activated, an AI model analyzes your browsing activity. Microsoft emphasizes that the data is stored locally on your device and is not used for training AI models or targeted advertising. Instead, Edge uses small language models such as Phi-4 and Phi-mini, which allow the calculations to take place directly on your computer. The Journeys feature is not yet available in the stable version of Edge, and as of this writing can only be enabled via Edge Canary. It’s currently unclear when Journeys will be made widely available. Read...

Today, I’ve found an incredible deal on one of the best higher-end gaming laptops you can get if you prioritize value. This HP Omen features a stellar configuration and a gorgeous display at a fantastic price—get it now for just $1,250 at Best Buy, a whopping $330 off its $1,580 MSRP. I’m not kidding when it comes to this laptop’s powerhouse performance for the price. It’s running on an AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX processor, a spacious 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM, and the superb RTX 5060 graphics card that just came out this year, unlocking access to Nvidia’s DLSS 4, ray tracing, and other gaming features. Throw in a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for fast boot times, quick file transfers, and tons of space for apps, games, and everything else, and it’s an absolute dream. And this HP Omen 16 doesn’t disappoint when it comes to visuals either. You’re looking at a 16-inch IPS display with a crisp 1920×1200 resolution and a speedy 144Hz refresh rate—all of this translates into a great gaming experience during boss fights and other action-packed scenes, plus it’s also great for streaming Netflix and YouTube. This thing is packing ports, too. On the left side, you get USB-C video and a high-speed USB-A and a 3.5mm headset jack. On the right side, another high-speed USB-A. Then along the back, another high-speed USB-A plus HDMI 2.1 and a LAN port, plus the laptop’s smart AC charger port. The HP Omen 16 is a bargain for $1,250, so grab it fast at Best Buy while you still can if you’re interested in a high-performance gaming laptop at a fantastic price. But if you’re on a tighter budget, check out our favorite gaming laptops under $1,000. Save $330 on this Ryzen-powered RTX 5060 gaming laptopBuy now from Best Buy Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros High-end internals at a fair price 4K display with a 200Hz refresh rate Dual 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports and quad M.2 drive bays Cons Heavy and thick Needs tweaking to perform competitively Cooling setup isn’t ideal Our Verdict The Maingear Ultima 18 is a brick of a gaming laptop. The internals are impressive, but it isn’t quite as polished an experience as some other modern gaming laptops. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Maingear Ultima 18 Retailer Price $3,699 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Fifteen years ago, I had a gaming laptop that was a big heavy brick. I loved it! That’s what gaming laptops were back then. The 18-inch Maingear Ultima 18 feels like a modern spiritual successor to big-and-heavy gaming laptops. That’s awesome, but it also shows where these designs stumble. To create the Ultima 18, Maingear packed a big Clevo laptop chassis full of high-end components. It goes overboard in some interesting ways with hard-to-find specs. But for $3,599, it’s competing with modern high-end gaming laptops that deliver a more polished experience. Those polished machines — with their software tweaks and cutting-edge cooling systems — often edge out the Ultima 18 on performance, and they’re available at a similar price. It’s a good machine. I’m just not sure whether it’s your best option around this price point, unless you’re smitten by the unique features it offers. And you might be! Maingear Ultima 18: Specs The Maingear Ultima 18 combines a blazing-fast 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor with other high-end components. Our review model had an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 processor, but you can also get this with a top-of-the-line RTX 5090 GPU. While our $3,599 review unit had 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2 TB SSD, you can get this machine with up to 192 GB of RAM. This machine has two 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports for wired networking — I haven’t seen a dual Ethernet setup like that on another modern gaming laptop. Plus, there’s room inside this monster of a laptop for four M.2 SSDs. And the Ultima 18 has an 18-inch 4K display, too — with a fast 200Hz refresh rate. Maingear isn’t playing around. Features like the two Ethernet ports and four M.2 drive bays are way above and beyond. Some people will surely hunt down this specific laptop just for those features. Model number: Maingear Ultima 18 RTX 5080 CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Memory: 32 GB DDR5 RAM Graphics/GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 NPU: Intel AI Boost (13 TOPS) Display: 18-inch 3840×2400 IPS display with 200Hz refresh rate Storage: 2 TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1080p webcam Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 5 (USB Type-C), 2x USB Type-A, 2x 2.5Gb Ethernet, 1x combo audio jack, 1x HDMI 2.1 out, 1x microSD reader, 1x Kensington lock slot, 1x DC power in Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Ethernet Biometrics: IR camera for facial recognition Battery capacity: 98 Watt-hours Dimensions: 16.14 x 12.56 x 1.42 inches Weight: 8.8 pounds MSRP: $3,599 as tested Features like the two Ethernet ports and four M.2 drive bays are way above and beyond. Some people will surely hunt down this specific laptop just for those features. Maingear Ultima 18: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman The Maingear Ultima 18 takes me back. This 18-inch laptop weighs 8.8 pounds and is 1.42 inches thick at its thickest point — it’s a brick. It’s based on a Clevo chassis. (Clevo produces laptop designs that system builders like Maingear use to create and release their own laptops.) If you’re looking for a brick of a gaming laptop, however, it’s designed well. With a metal lid and palm rest, it doesn’t feel plasticky. But it also doesn’t feel like a single piece of metal, like some other high-end gaming laptops. The hinge is easy to open with one hand. It feels solid for an 8.8 pound 18-inch gaming laptop, but this is the kind of machine you’ll need to be careful with — I wouldn’t pick it up from the corner with one hand. The design features a lot of black, broken up by the “Maingear” name below the display and the logo on the lid. With animated RGB lightbars at the rear of the machine and RGB lighting on the keyboard, that’s where the “gamer” aesthetic comes from — but, of course, it’s customizable. IDG / Chris Hoffman Somewhat unusually for a modern gaming laptop, this laptop has small LEDs on the front edge, to the right of the touchpad. In normal use, the left one will be lit when your laptop is on, the middle one will be lit when your laptop is plugged in, and the right one will blink as your laptop uses its storage. These used to be much more common, but they’re the kind of thing most manufacturers omit these days. The design is traditional in another way: The laptop blows hot air out of both sides of the laptop as well as the back. I prefer modern designs that don’t blow hot air toward my mouse hand. However, most of the hot air does come out the back, so it’s not too bad. The cooling also keeps the WASD area of the keyboard fairly cool. The fans get loud under load, though — this is closer to the traditional “jet engine” fan profile on a brick laptop, whereas many modern laptops have found ways to make them quieter. Maingear proudly proclaims that this is a “zero-bloatware Windows 11 installation,” and that’s excellent to see. You get a few utilities for your hardware — from Maingear, Nvidia, and Creative — and that’s about it. There are no nags to pay for antivirus software here. Our review model also came with Windows 11 Pro, which is nice. Maingear Ultima 18: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Maingear Ultima 18 has a full-size chiclet membrane keyboard complete with a number pad. It has per-key RGB backlighting for maximum customization. With 1.5mm of key travel, the keyboard feels good to game on. It doesn’t quite feel as premium as the rest of the machine, though: It’s no mechanical keyboard, like you’ll find on some versions of the Alienware 16 Area-51, and it doesn’t have the stronger actuation force you’ll find on machines like the Razer Blade. I prefer a clickier experience. The trackpad is large and makes good use of the available palm-rest space. It’s nice and smooth — Maingear says it has a “low friction finish.” While it’s not quite as smooth as the swankiest glass touchpads I’ve used, it gets most of the way there. The click-down action feels crisp. Maingear Ultima 18: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Maingear Ultima 18 has an 18-inch 4K IPS display (3840×2400 resolution). That’s impressive when other laptops in this class often deliver WXGA (2560×1600) displays instead. The display has a 200Hz refresh rate and support for Nvidia G-Sync, too. Brightness could be better: 400 nits is fine, but many laptop displays go brighter. At that brightness, you not getting HDR. The display is exactly what it sounds like on paper — a big 18-inch 4K display with a high refresh rate. It’s nice. But resolution isn’t everything, and gaming laptops with lower-resolution displays often deliver more brightness and extra-vivid colors with bonus features like HDR in games — especially if they have OLED displays. (And, as you might expect, this isn’t a touch screen.) This machine includes a subwoofer as well as two main speakers and two tweeters. It’s also powered by Sound Blaster Studio Pro 2. The bass is pretty good for a laptop, which is no surprise — most laptops don’t have subwoofers! I test every laptop I review with Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. There’s more than enough volume here, and there’s enough bass to make the sound feel “full” in songs like Get Lucky. You aren’t getting audiophile-grade detail here, though — the instrument separation in Aja isn’t as crisp as it would be on a high-end pair of speakers, with the sounds blurring together a bit instead of separating. The speakers provided good sound in Doom: The Dark Ages — with a chunky sound to the shotgun blast, for example. But the lack of clean separation of sounds at the high-end — plus those loud fans — would push me to use a good pair of headphones. (That’s normal for any laptop, though.) Maingear Ultima 18: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Maingear Ultima 18’s 1080p webcam looks decent. It’s a tad grainy, and I’ve seen business laptops with higher-end webcams. For a gaming laptop, this is good — but not mind-blowing. It also has a physical privacy cover, which is always great to see. This 18-inch laptop has a microphone that works and certainly picks up enough volume. This is a pretty standard gaming laptop mic, but the noise cancellation wasn’t great — it picked up the whirring of fans in the background. The microphone isn’t up to the audio quality I see on many business laptops, which are optimized for online meetings — you’ll want an external microphone to chat while gaming. This machine has presence-sensing hardware, too. If you want, you can have Windows automatically wake your PC when you sit down in front of it or put it to sleep when you step away. The Maingear Ultima 18 has an IR camera for Windows Hello sign-in support. You can log into your PC with your face, and it works well. This machine doesn’t have a fingerprint reader. Maingear Ultima 18: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Maingear Ultima 18 offers a lot of connectivity options. On the left side, this machine has a combo audio jack and two USB Type-A ports — both are 10Gbps, and one has Power Delivery. On the right side, you’ll find two Thunderbolt 5 (USB Type-C) ports as well as a microSD card slot. This being a high-end gaming laptop, it’s great to see future-proof Thunderbolt 5 — even though few peripherals are taking advantage of it yet. On the back, you’ll find the power adapter connection, a Kensington lock slot, HDMI 2.1 out, and two Ethernet jacks (both 2.5Gbps.) That two Ethernet jack setup is completely over the top — most people buying this laptop won’t take advantage of it — but it’s impressive and unusual. This machine has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support, too, so it supports the latest standards. I had no problems with the Wi-Fi. Maingear Ultima 18: Performance The Maingear Ultima 18 delivered solid gaming performance — once I configured it. Out of the box, benchmark results were on the slow side compared to other similar laptops. Once I went into the Maingear Control Center and set it to “Performance” mode — and then went into Windows 11’s Settings and set it to Best Performance while plugged in — the performance ended up where I expected to see it. The benchmarks below were performed with these settings changed. On many gaming laptops, this is now automatic: The manufacturer-provided software automatically switches your gaming laptop into higher-performance modes when you launch games. On this machine, you’ll be doing it yourself. However, this is strong hardware, and it performed well in real-world gaming. The results were impacted by a few things, though. In Metro: Exodus, for example, I only saw competitive performance once I disabled the integrated GPU in the Maingear control center.  And I do feel like machines like the Alienware 16 Area-51 have a more efficient cooling setup that seems to lead to higher top-end performance. As always, though we ran the Maingear Ultima 18 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. It’s designed to be a holistic benchmark, but the CPU is a major factor in this test. With an overall PCMark 10 score of 8,700, this machine delivered impressive performance on par with other Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX-powered machines like the Alienware 16 Area-51. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. The Maingear Ultima 18 produced a multi-threaded Cinebench R20 score of 14,502, right in line with other laptops with the same CPU. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period of time. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Ultima 18 completed the encode process in an average of 458 seconds, which is just over seven and a half minutes. That’s about what we’d expect to see with this CPU, although it lags a little behind laptops like the Alienware 16 Area-51 and HP Omen Max 16, which suggests those machines may have better cooling setups to avoid throttling due to heat. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. First, we run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. With a 3Dmark Time Spy score of 19,168, this machine comes in about 10 percent behind other similar laptops on graphics performance. (Performance on this particular benchmark went up by five percent after disabling the integrated GPU in the Maingear control center. With a score of about 19,902, it was more in line with similar laptops.) IDG / Chris Hoffman Then, we benchmark some games. We start with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, an older game — but a great way to compare performance across hardware. With an average FPS of 190 in our standard benchmark here, this machine is in line with other similar laptops with RTX 5080 and even RTX 5090 GPUs. IDG / Chris Hoffman Finally, we benchmark a demanding game. We run the Extreme benchmark in Metro Exodus. For this benchmark, the laptop was consistently coming in far behind with an average of 73 FPS. After I went into the Maingear control panel and disabled the integrated Intel GPU — setting it to the discrete Nvidia GPU only — and rebooted, performance went up. After that change was made, the Maingear Ultima 18 delivered a competitive 87 frames per second in this benchmark. While that’s competitive, it still comes in a few frames behind laptops like the Alienware 16 Area-51, likely thanks to their better cooling designs. And those machines didn’t need any extra tweaking. Overall, the performance is competitive, but it needs tweaking — and the cooling setup just isn’t as impressive as it is on many other gaming laptops. That leads to a reduction in performance. Maingear Ultima 18: Battery life The Maingear Ultima 18 has a huge 98 Watt-hour battery. That’s as big as it gets — any larger and the U.S. Transportation Security Administration wouldn’t allow it on an airplane! An 18-inch brick of a gaming laptop like this one isn’t designed for long battery life, however. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. The Maingear Ultima 18 lasted an average of 288 minutes during our benchmark — that’s just under five hours. You’ll be able to get a few hours of work out of it, if you need to, but you’ll need to plug in for maximum gaming performance, anyway. Maingear Ultima 18: Conclusion The Maingear Ultima 18 impressed me when I unboxed it. The design is somewhere between an old-school gaming laptop brick and a modern gaming laptop, and features like four drive bays, two Ethernet jacks, two Thunderbolt 5 ports, and a 4K 200Hz display feel nicely over the top. While it feels big and heavy, the hardware justifies it. But the impressive specs become a bit less than the sum of their parts. Compared to this machine, many modern gaming laptops are lighter, have a more impressive metal design, a more advanced cooling system, don’t need this much tweaking to perform well, and have other high-end touches like a mechanical keyboard and more carefully tuned speaker setup. Don’t get me wrong — this is a good laptop! I’d be happy to use it. But it’s also $3,599. And it has a lot of competition at that price range. Still, the hardware alone shines. The Alienware 18 Area-51 gaming laptop has similar hardware, but taking it to an RTX 5080 will bring you to a $3,800 retail price — and you’re not getting a 4K display. The Razer Blade 18 with an RTX 5080 and a higher-resolution display will cost you $4,100 at retail price. (It’s worth noting that both the Alienware and Razer laptops are on sale on their respective online stores for less than their retail prices at the time I wrapped up this review, but those are marked as limited-time discounts.) The specs here are good. For the price, though, I just wish it came together better. Other high-end gaming laptops may cost a little bit extra, but the software integration, lighter weight, and higher-end metal designs shine. Read...

One thing that’ll make you feel safer at home—and give you peace of mind when you’re away—is a smart video doorbell. With one of these, you can see a live video feed of your doorstep with a simple phone app, plus several other features of convenience. We really like the Ecobee Smart Video Doorbell, and even more now that it’s only $120 on Amazon (a 25% discount on its original $160). As tiny as this doorbell camera is, it captures full 1080p video both during the day and during the night. Taking things one step further, this doorbell features two-way audio, so you can talk with whoever’s outside your door, whether that’s to give instructions to a delivery person or to tell your friends to come back later. It’s wired so you won’t need to worry about battery, and it connects to your Wi-Fi network so you can check in on the feed whenever and wherever you are. If you get an Ecobee Smart Security subscription (costs extra), you’ll also get a feature called Package Detection. One of the things we loved most when we reviewed this Ecobee video doorbell was the inclusion of 24/7 professional monitoring in that Smart Security plan. You also get video recordings up to 30 days and smart notifications with snapshots whenever it detects someone or something at your door. We also loved the Ecobee’s versatility because it comes with support for pretty much all the big smart assistants out there, including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. If you want something that’s several steps up from a typical budget video doorbell, this is one to check out. Get the Ecobee Smart Video Doorbell for $120 on Amazon before this sale ends! Upgrade your home security with this $120 video doorbellBuy now at Amazon Read...

Sea-Doo`s 2026 personal watercraft range features new 10.25-inch touchscreen tech, upgraded audio, and enhanced connectivity for riders. Read...

The most exciting thing about the ROG Xbox Ally handheld, at least for me, isn’t that it’s an Xbox. Nope, it’s the fact that it isn’t an Xbox, it’s a Windows 11 PC, albeit a teeny-tiny one. And with Microsoft onboard, it’s packing a refreshed, streamlined build of Windows that’s all about gaming. Asus says that the updated interface is coming to the older ROG Ally and Ally X handhelds, too. This isn’t all that shocking — Microsoft itself confirmed that the new interface is coming to other Windows-based handheld gaming PCs, starting in 2026. But it’s nice to get confirmation from manufacturer Asus that its older designs are definitely getting these enhancements. Asus representative Whitson Gordon said so at the Gamescom conference in Germany, speaking to PCGamer: “Now we’re not leaving Ally and Ally X users out in the cold, if you already have those devices. We’ll eventually be bringing some of those Xbox experiences to those devices … They’re not going to roll out at the exact same time, but they will come to those devices soon.” Exactly which features we’re talking about here aren’t specificed. Since Asus software runs a pretty extensive interface layer on top of Windows 11 on the original Ally and Ally X, the same way that SteamOS on the Steam Deck is running on top of Linux, it seems like it’ll be a big project to get the tweaked version of Windows on the older hardware. Asus might insist on keeping some of the Armoury Crate app and similar middleware in there. If it were up to me (candy and nuts, et cetera), I’d offer customers a way to wipe off the original build, and install Windows 11 fresh once those new handheld gaming UI tweaks are available. That’s definitely part of Microsoft’s plan, since it can’t be unaware that Windows 11 is something of a yoke around the neck of gaming handhelds compared to the lightness of SteamOS on the Steam Deck. SteamOS is expanding with official offerings like the Lenovo Legion Go S, and even being offered as an alternative on the ROG Ally. The ROG Xbox Ally handheld, along with its upgrade ROG Xbox Ally X counterpart, will go on sale on October 16. The price has yet to be announced…probably because the chaotically ephemeral nature of U.S. tariffs makes it a gamble to set any price in stone even a couple of months from now. Read...