With the Galaxy Note 20 launch just a week away, all eyes will be on what upgrades Samsung brings to the table. While the chipset might remain unchanged, there might be a silver lining. While Samsung flagship like the Note series and the S series are powered by Snapdragon chipsets in the US and European markets, they come with Exynos chipset in Asian markets such as India. It often tends to lose out on the performance front against Qualcomm Snapdragon counterparts. However, a new leak suggests some good news in this regard. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 release date, price, news and leaks Upcoming smartphones in India: Specs, launch date, price (Image credit: Samsung/WinFuture) According to a tweet by Anthony, a Youtuber, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will continue to be powered by the Exynos 990 chipset, but with major improvements in terms of the performance and efficiency. These optimizations should bring it closer to the Snapdragon 865 series. He even suggested that it is almost li...
TechRadar - All the latest technology news
Huawei P20 price drop - save £200, down to £399 for this SIM-free deal
The flagships of 2018 have really pushed the boundaries of what phones can do, we've seen incredible cameras, high-end performance and batteries that don't mess about - and the Huawei P20 is no exception to this.
The P20 is one of the more affordable flagships of this year, but it has still had a pretty hefty price tag behind it that may put have put you off buying it thus far - luckily that has now changed.
As part of its Black Friday sales, Carphone Warehouse is now knocking a massive £200 off the price of the SIM-free phone taking the price down to £399. That now makes it one of the best smartphones you can get in that price range. But you'll have to hurry...this offer will only be around for a week, so you have until next Friday, November 16 to claim.
What makes the Huawei P20 stand out?Huawei has proved itself this year to be a serious competitor in the phone game and is now showing that Apple and Samsung aren't the only companies that can hold the top spots. The P20 and P20 Pro were two of the stand out phones of this year with great cameras, massive batteries with long life and overall great performance - just with a lower price tag than the flagships from the bigger brands.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel could already be in the works
The Nintendo Switch came racing out of the stables at full pelt thanks to one killer launch title – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. One of the games of the generation, it looks as if Nintendo is quickly looking to capitalise on its success with a follow up title.
Nintendo's Japanese website states that the developer is looking to staff up for a new 3D Legend of Zelda title. Two jobs listed include one looking for a 3D computer graphics designer, and another on the hunt for a level designer.
To be based at Nintendo Kyoto HQ, each candidate would be required to work on terrain design, concept art, dungeon and level layouts, enemy AI and more.
Majora's maker?The news of a new Zelda game shouldn't come as a surprise – a key franchise for Nintendo, piggybacking off the success of Breath of the Wild is a no brainer, while the company has previously stated that development of new Zelda titles begins almost immediately after the previous title is wrapped up.
But what form will this latest offering take? While some fans are clamouring for a return to the top-down Zelda style of old, it's more likely to be a title that will borrow from the superb foundation laid down by the Switch's must-have adventure. After all, a game of that scope would have taken considerable resources, and it gives Nintendo an opportunity to expand on what worked less well in its previous title.
Personally, we'd love to see something like the N64 curio Majora's Mask here – it too followed the intense and lauded release of a major 3D Zelda game (the N64's Ocarina of Time) and reused assets and systems in wildly inventive, dark new ways for the series. We'd be surprised to not see something similar happen here.
Best Nintendo Switch games: adventures to tide you over until Zelda returns
Best 4K TVs for gaming: 8 TVs to get the most out of your PS4 and Xbox One
Best TVs for Gaming Buying Guide: Welcome to TechRadar's round-up of the best 4K TVs for PS4 and Xbox you can buy for any budget in 2018.
Let's be honest: the more quality time spend on your Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, the more important it is to do it with a quality monitor. Sure, you can hook up your gaming console to any old 720p or 1080p monitor, but any gamer worth their salt will know that a 4K TV makes all the difference.
When the current generation of Xbox and PlayStation consoles first launched, the HD-ready machines had all they needed to show off your games in their best light. Fast forward to 2018, when mid-cycle hardware upgrades have given us consoles capable of outputting both 4K resolution and High Dynamic Range (HDR) for all your video and gaming needs.
While this is all brilliant news for the quality of our gaming experiences, it puts ever more pressure on your TV to match it the output from your gaming machine. A console can have all the power in the world, but it's not of much use if it’s attached to a TV that can’t harness that enhanced power.
Unlocking your console's potentialSo what exactly does a TV need to be able to do these days to unlock your full gaming potential? Let’s start with arguably the most basic requirement: 4K.
Resolution revolution: The Xbox One S outputs all of its games in 4K, achieved via surprisingly good built-in upscaling.
The PS4 Pro outputs games in 4K too, using a mix of upscaling and in-game enhancement. The Xbox One X, meanwhile, has been designed with enough power to drive more games than ever before with native, game engine-integrated 4K support. Yes, you can still get non-4K Xbox One and PS4 consoles, and the Nintendo Switch isn’t interested in 4K either. And yes, non-4K games will have to be upscaled by a 4K TV, so won’t be totally ‘pure’. However, upscaling is remarkably good on the best 4K TVs now, and can be done without adding significant delay to the time it takes a TV to render pictures.
4K resolution can be transformative, especially on big screens. And basically 4K is just the way everything is going now (both in the gaming and video worlds), so not being set up for it with your new TV just doesn’t make sense.
Change your range: Sitting right alongside 4K in today’s video world is high dynamic range (HDR) technology. This delivers pictures with a much wider light range than the standard dynamic range pictures we’ve been living with for decades in a bid to get the pictures we’re seeing on our screens looking closer to the way our eyes see the real world.
The Xbox One S supports HDR on some of its games, and via some of its streaming apps. The same situation applies for both the PS4 and PS4 Pro, and naturally the Xbox One X will deliver HDR too. Most people would say that HDR done well delivers more impact than 4K, especially on small screens.
The only problem is that HDR puts a lot of pressure on a TV, since it demands both much more brightness than SDR, and better contrast so that the extra brightness and deeper blacks can potentially share the screen simultaneously. In fact, HDR done badly can look worse than SDR done decently well; something to think about if you’re considering buying a very cheap TV.
Let there be light! One of the most important elements of a good HDR performance is brightness. Many movies and games target 1000 nits or so for their brightest elements, so if you have a TV less bright than that it won’t unlock HDR’s full potential. Especially in a video game environment, where graphics can be more stark in contrast terms than ‘real life’ tends to be.
It’s perfectly possible for TVs to deliver great HDR pictures without reaching 1000 nits and more of brightness. This is particularly true with OLED screens, for instance. But the darker a screen, the harder its processing is going to have to work to try and figure out how to resolve picture information in HDR areas above its capabilities.
Lag? Lame! If you’re a really serious gamer - especially when it comes to reaction-based online games - you need to care about input lag: The time it takes for a particular TV to render image data received at its inputs. Obviously you’re looking for low numbers if you don’t want to be shot in the face by an opponent your TV hasn’t even shown yet!
Again, manufacturers don’t tend to provide input lag figures in their provided specifications. However, we generally measure input lag on the TVs we test. Also, I’ve provided the input lag measurements for all of our recommended TVs.
Roger that – over and out: Sound design has always played an integral part in a great gaming experience. It’s getting taken to another level these days, though, with the arrival of surround sound gaming. In fact, the Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles even support Dolby Atmos: Dolby’s most advanced sound system yet, which introduces a height channel and ‘object based’ precision to the soundstage.
With impressively good timing, LG is about to roll out support for Dolby Atmos over HDMI to its 2017 OLED TVs (some of which ship with integrated sound bars) any moment now. Also, while integrated Atmos support isn’t found elsewhere yet, this year has seen a surge in TVs featuring really powerful sound systems. So unless you’re thinking of investing in an external sound system, it will certainly pay you to have sound as well as picture quality in mind when you buy your gaming TV.
Things to pay attention to are whether speakers are facing forwards (as this will almost always give you a more direct, clean sound); rated power output; whether there’s a dedicated bass speaker (often found on a TV’s rear); built-in soundbars; and the number of individual speakers used.
Our pick of the best gaming TVsOK, now that the essential buying advice done and you're an AV expert, let’s now pick out our selection of the best gaming TVs you can currently buy, taking in a combination of price and sheer quality.
This high-end 65-inch Samsung set has a number of unique gaming-friendly advantages. For starters, unique screen filters mean that pictures are almost completely unaffected by ambient light. And trust us: being able to game in daylight and enjoy pictures that look as intense, bright and contrast rich as they do in a dark room is nothing short of a revelation. The set resolves 4K resolutions majestically too, while its heavy duty build quality enables it to produce a fairly potent and distortion-free audio performance (despite its having seemingly no visible speakers). If all that wasn’t exciting enough, the QN65Q9FN blows out the competition with an exceptionally low 12ms of input lag when using its Game mode. That said, the QN65Q9FN can suffer with some gentle light clouding issues during very high contrast HDR sequences, and it’s also, alas, painfully expensive.
Read the review: Samsung Q9FN QLED TV
While the LG E8 OLED doesn’t have nearly as much HDR-friendly brightness as the Samsung Q9FN range, it’s stunning when it comes to the other end of the brightness story, delivering gorgeously rich, deep black colours completely free of the sort of clouding issues that LCD TVs suffer with. Also, while OLED can’t yet go as measurably bright as LCD, the way the darkest pixel in an OLED picture can sit right next to the brightest with no contamination between the two gives the OLED55E8’s pictures a lovely luminous quality that’s particularly effective during dark game settings.
Gamers, meanwhile, will be delighted to hear that unlike its previous two predecessors, the OLED E8 no longer dims the picture down heavily when running in its low-latency HDR Game mode. It also supports 120fps gaming at HD resolutions, full 4:4:4 PC colour, and a superbly low input lag figure of under 20ms.
Read the review: LG E8 OLED
Sony’s XE9305 range is unique in the LCD TV world for using two light guide plates. This essentially gives it twice as much control over how much light reaches different parts of the screen as you get with other edge-lit LCD TVs.
As a result, the 55-inch 55XE9305 – XBR-55X930E in the US – can put ferociously bright HDR highlights (up to 1400 nits and more) on the screen alongside deep blacks more effectively than any other edge LCD to date.
Colours also look superbly rich and vibrant thanks to Sony’s Triluminos processing, and no brands handle motion as slickly as Sony. You can sometimes see traces of light ‘blocking’ around stand-out HDR objects, but for the most part the 55XE9305’s pictures are blisteringly bright gaming nirvana.
The only niggle is the 55XE9305’s input lag figure of around 38ms. This is slightly higher than we’d ideally see, and occasionally momentarily slips to 52ms.
Read the full review: Sony XBR-X930E / KD-XE93 Series
Everyone loves a high-end TV. LG’s latest OLED, Samsung’s spectacularly bright QLED and Sony’s phenomenal LED-LCDs are applauded year round for their amazing performance, picture technologies and technical prowess.
Too bad these aren’t the TVs most people buy.
If you're looking for a mid-range TV that has all the chops to play games in 4K HDR without skimping on the visuals, check out the Samsung NU8000 Series. It may not be as bright as some of the competition on this page, but give its HDR+ mode a chance, and you'd be surprised at what this underdog can do.
Read the full review: Samsung NU8000
Panasonic’s latest LCD TV might not be as bright as most of its rivals, but it does have a rather cool trick up its sleeve: new digitally enhanced backlight technology that adjusts the angle of each pixel to reduce the usual light clouding problems associated with LCD technology. This gives you dark gaming scenes more uniformity, making it easier to remain immersed in the action.
The 50EX750 also stands out from the crowd for gaming with its outstanding 10ms of input lag when using its gaming mode. Frustratingly you actually get comfortably the best picture quality from the 50EX750 if you use its Dynamic picture preset - but you could always stick with Dynamic for most of your gaming and only switch to Game when you’re playing something where reaction times are really important.
While the OLED55B7 lacks the ultra-glamorous design and built-in soundbar of the LG OLED55E7 higher up this list, remarkably it delivers almost exactly the same high level of contrast-rich picture quality for a whole lot less.
Input lag remains equally strong at just 21ms too, and while it’s important to stress again that OLED’s 740 nits of peak brightness limits the impact of its HDR pictures in some ways, its ability to place deep black colours just a pixel away.
Read the review: LG OLED B7
One of our final recommendations for a gaming TV is another big one. This gives us the chance to raise one final issue about gaming on today’s consoles and PCs compared with previous generations: that you really have to think big if you’re going to get anything like the ultimate gaming experience.
This is partly because you need a relatively large screen to get the most from 4K resolutions, but also because the main TV brands are increasingly only building truly HDR-friendly colour, contrast and brightness performances into their relatively large - and, alas, expensive - TVs.
Even a 55-inch Sony model struggles for brightness a little in its bid to make 4K HDR pictures relatively affordable. However, it does a great job with colours within that brightness limitation thanks to Sony’s Triluminos processing engine, while its black level performance is outstanding for such an affordable and edge-lit LCD model. It also only suffers with 21ms of input lag on average - though oddly, lag occasionally slips to around 50ms for a frame or two.
The 65PUS7601 boasts arguably the single most aggressively game-friendly feature on this list, in the shape of its Ambilight system. Ambilight uses LED lights ranged along the TV's rear left, right and top edges to throw out coloured lights that can be continually matched in terms of shade, intensity and even location to the colours in the picture you're watching; the result is greatly enhanced connection with what you're watching, something that's especially useful where gaming is concerned. The Ambilight system even features a dedicated gaming mode, designed to react faster than normal to changes in your game graphics. The 65PUS7601 also provides generally strong (for its reasonably low price) 4K and HDR picture quality, and you can get input lag down to only around 30ms if you're careful how you set it up. The set even features a dedicated HDR game mode that adjusts the HDR processing to suit the relatively stark and precise look of game graphics versus 'natural' video.
If you want to learn more about shopping for gaming TVs, we've added a bit more info below. Read on to level up your AV knowledge skill!
Bits and B.O.B.s: Connected to the HDR point, you might want to think about your gaming TV’s bit depth. The best HDR experience requires a 10-bit screen able to support 1024 values of each RGB colour - otherwise you will get an inferior colour performance, including, possibly, colour striping where you should see subtle blends. Most premium HDR TVs these days are 10-bit, but it’s far from a given at the relatively affordable end of the TV market.
The Xbox One S and PS4 consoles automatically assess the bit-depth of your TV and select the optimum HDR video output accordingly. The Xbox One S even provides a description of your TV’s capabilities under 4K TV Details in its Advanced Video Settings menu. The Xbox One X will presumably do the same.
To be clear, it’s entirely possible for an 8-bit TV to deliver a good HDR colour performance if they have a strong video processing engine. But 10-bit panels certainly have an immediate advantage.
One other point to add here is that some TVs - including high-end Samsung models - actually support 12-bit colour management/processing, even though their panels are only natively 10-bit. The Xbox One S and presumably Xbox One X both provide Colour Depth boxes in their Video Fidelity settings that let you select the maximum bit performance for your particular TV.
Colour purity: Another advanced setting but important thing to consider for the ultimate gaming visuals is chroma subsampling.
This video compression term refers to a TV’s colour purity, and is usually written in such terms as 4:4:4 and 4:2:0. These numbers reveal how many pixels colour is sampled from in the top and bottom rows for every two rows of four pixels. So with 4:2:0, for instance, colour is being sampled from two pixels in the top row and no pixels in the bottom row.
From this it follows that the bigger the numbers are, the purer the colour performance will be, as there’s less ‘guesstimating’ of what colours should look like. The problem is, full 4:4:4 colour support requires a lot of extra image data, and so cannot be handled by the HDMI connections or processing of all TVs.
In truth, the differences in picture quality between 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 and even 4:2:0 aren’t usually enormous. They can be more pronounced with gaming graphics than video, though, so it’s worth trying to check what a TV you’re thinking of buying can support - even though it’s not information regularly carried in TV spec lists. The latest consoles are pretty good at detecting the optimum chroma subsampling a TV can support, automatically adjusting their outputs according.
It’s something that can cause annoying ‘handshaking’ issues with some TVs, though, so both the Xbox One S and PS4 Pro now provide subsampling ‘limiter’ options in their video output menus (‘Enable 4:2:2’ on the Xbox One S, and 2160 YUV4:2:0 on the PS4 Pro).
Frame rate handling: Now that the Xbox One X is almost here and promising native 4K resolution games running at 60 frames a second, make sure that whatever TV you buy has the latest specification HDMI sockets. If it doesn’t have at least one HDMI socket built to the v2.0a specification, it won’t be able to receive 4K resolution at anything higher than 30 frames a second.
Fortunately far more of this year’s 4K TVs do feature HDMI 2.0a sockets than in previous years, but it’s still something that’s worth double checking - especially if you’re buying a particularly cheap TV.
The new HDMI 2.1 standard will no doubt become the benchmark for high-end gaming in time, but we're yet to see it really rolled out across commercially-available sets.
Black Friday TV deals 2018: is now the best time to buy?
Best Samsung phones: finding the right Galaxy for you
There are a lot of good Samsung phones out there, but what's the best Samsung phone around? We're here to help you answer that question.
Samsung is the biggest name in Android phones, and for good reason, as the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are among the best handsets you can buy.
But, Samsung doesn’t just make the headline-grabbing flagships – it has a wide range of smartphones which may be the perfect fit, regardless of your needs and budget.
Update: We're putting the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) and four rear camera-toting Galaxy A9 (2018) through their paces at the moment - check back soon to see where they rank in our best Samsung phone roundup.
With that in mind here’s our guide to the best Samsung phones available right now. It covers new and old(er) at a range of price points, along with different screen sizes, specs and features.
The best smartphone of 2018: 15 top mobile phones tested and ranked
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 isn’t just one of the best Samsung phones you can buy today, it’s one of the best phones, period. It’s an expensive device, sure, but with more than double the starting storage of the iPhone X at around the same starting price. It actually comes out to be a better deal over Apple’s offering.
Its key selling point this time around is the unique S-Pen, which no longer requires a charge. Not only will you be able to do normal stylus-like things with the new S-Pen, you’ll also be able to use it to take selfies remotely, giving you shots you otherwise would be incapable of getting.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is also one of the best camera phones in Samsung’s lineup, with a camera that easily outshines the competition.
That’s on top of the improved cooling and battery life, which will see this jumbo device last you through most of the day without burning a hole through your pocket – even if the price does.
Read the full review: Samsung Galaxy Note 9
The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus is Samsung’s best phone, and also the top ranked handset in our overall best phones list at the time of writing.
It’s big, in fact its 6.2-inch screen would make it very big, were it not for the almost complete absence of bezel and the curved edges, which ensure it’s actually quite manageable in the hand. The screen is one of the best around too – it’s sharp and sports great colors.
The Galaxy S9 Plus also stands out through its dual 12MP cameras, one of which is a dual-aperture one, meaning it can switch between f/1.5 for dark scenes and f/2.4 for everything else.
Other highlights include impressive stereo speakers and a big 3,500mAh battery. There’s flagship power too of course, and all the bells and whistles that tend to go with that, like a stylish metal and glass build, water resistance, wireless charging and various biometric security options, including a fingerprint scanner, an iris scanner and a face scanner.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus review
The Samsung Galaxy S9 is a smaller, cheaper (but still expensive) alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus.
The 5.8-inch screen makes it potentially preferable if you have smaller hands or pockets, and as with the S9 Plus it’s more compact than you might expect, thanks to its slim bezels and curvy screen.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 has many of the same high points as the S9 Plus, including a sharp, vibrant display, a high-end build, plenty of power and various biometric security options.
It’s only got a single-lens camera, but it’s still a very good one, and the battery is smaller, so this is definitely the weaker phone overall, but it’s still one of the more impressive handsets you can buy in 2018.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S9 review
The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is Samsung’s other flagship, designed for those who want a truly massive 6.3-inch screen and a stylus (known as the S-Pen) to help make the most of it.
Other than that, it has much in common with the Galaxy S range, with a similar (and similarly stylish) glass back and metal frame, a QHD curved screen and a dual-lens rear camera.
There’s lots of power too, though it’s using a 2017 chipset rather than a 2018 one, so it’s not quite a match for the S9 range. But then it’s also now a little cheaper than the S9 Plus and still has water resistance, wireless charging and loads of storage.
Bear in mind though, the Galaxy Note 9 launches on August 9 and will like be on sale soon after, so if you're considering Samsung's biggest handset you may want to hold out to see what the Note 9 can offer.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review
The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is a big-screen alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S8, but it’s not just the 6.2-inch display that’s bigger, the 3,500mAh battery is too.
Otherwise this is a very similar phone, with many of the same pros and cons. You get a sharp display with great contrast and colors, a powerful – if now slightly dated – chipset, a 12MP single lens camera that excels in most lighting, and more biometric options than you’ll know what to do with.
It’s also cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus or Galaxy Note 8, making the Galaxy S8 Plus a slightly more affordable big-screen option – though it lacks the dual-lens cameras of those phones.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus review
The Samsung Galaxy S8 was one of the best phones of 2017 and it still ranks high now. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy S9 is only a fairly minor upgrade.
The S8 has a sharp 1440 x 2960 5.8-inch OLED screen, which of course, is curved. It’s got a great design, with a metal frame, a glass back and minimal bezel, it’s got a 12MP camera that outperforms most phones and even now it’s still very powerful.
It’s also water-resistant, supports wireless charging and has a fingerprint scanner, a face scanner and an iris scanner – though the latter two don’t work as well as on the Galaxy S9 and the former is in a more annoying position. Still, they’re small complaints about what’s otherwise a minor classic in the smartphone world.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S8 review
The Samsung Galaxy A8 finds the sweet spot between Samsung's flagship S range, and the slightly more basic J and lower numbed A devices with a mix of high-end features and more affordable compromises.
One feature that is unique to the Galaxy A8 compared to the other Samsung phones in this list is its dual front-facing selfie cameras.
There's a 16MP primary sensor, which sits alongside an 8MP snapper and allows you to access the Live Focus feature, which blurs the background of portrait shots to create a bokeh effect.
The Galaxy A8 delivers many of the core features offered by the flagships. You can get more for your money elsewhere, but if you're set on Samsung there's little to complain about here.
Read our full review: Samsung Galaxy A8
The Samsung Galaxy S7 was one of the best phones of 2016, which means it’s still very decent now, especially given that the price has dropped a lot since launch.
But it could appeal not just to those on a budget, but also those who want a fairly compact phone, as its 5.1-inch screen is small by modern standards. It’s as good as you’d expect from Samsung though, thanks to its use of Super AMOLED and its QHD resolution, though unlike most Galaxy S handsets from the last couple of years this one’s screen is flat.
The Galaxy S7 also has a water-resistant build and a highly capable 12MP camera, plus specs that were once top-end and still hold their own in the mid-range.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S7 review
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is a bigger, curvier alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S7. The larger 5.5-inch screen is the same resolution (and therefore slightly less sharp) but still super crisp and vibrant, while the curves ensure the design is more modern.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge also has a big 3,600mAh battery, making it one of the longer lasting Samsung phones you’ll find, and it has the same great camera as the standard Galaxy S7.
Its chipset is getting on a bit, but still stands up to similarly priced phones, and there’s only 32GB of built-in storage, but you do also get a microSD card slot, so even the bad that points aren’t that bad.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review
The Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) was launched as a mid-range alternative to the Galaxy S range, and it holds up well, thanks largely to its 1080p AMOLED screen capable of punchy colors.
The Galaxy A5 is also packing mid-range power and a quality metal and glass build that’s quite similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy S7.
Battery life is far better than you might expect too, with the phone comfortably lasting well over a day, but the 16MP camera is a bit of a step down in quality from the S7 range.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) review
Check out the best phones from any manufacturer
Best 4K TVs for gaming: 5 TVs ideal for gaming on PS4 and Xbox One
Best TVs for Gaming Buying Guide: Welcome to TechRadar's round-up of the best 4K TVs for PS4 and Xbox you can buy for any budget in 2018.
If you're serious about your gaming, there are few things as important as getting the right TV. This is what you'll be spending you're time staring at, after all, and the difference in rendering, detail and resolution you'll find playing AAA games on a regular HD television or a modern 4K set is massive.
With both Xbox and Playstation seeing mid-cycle upgrades to better support 4K-level resolution too, an forward-looking television is the best way to futureproof for the next generation of consoles.
The good news is that we've done the groundwork for you, so you can focus on what matters: the gaming. Read on below for our guide to the best 4K HDR TVs to play nice with your Playstation Pro or Xbox One X.
Specs for a championSo what exactly does a TV need to be able to do these days to unlock your full gaming potential? Let’s start with arguably the most basic requirement: 4K.
Resolution revolution: The Xbox One S outputs all of its games in 4K, achieved via surprisingly good built-in upscaling.
The PS4 Pro outputs games in 4K too, using a mix of upscaling and in-game enhancement. The Xbox One X, meanwhile, has been designed with enough power to drive more games than ever before with native, game engine-integrated 4K support.
Yes, you can still get non-4K Xbox One and PS4 consoles, and the Nintendo Switch isn’t interested in 4K either. And yes, non-4K games will have to be upscaled by a 4K TV, so won’t be totally ‘pure’. However, upscaling is remarkably good on the best 4K TVs now, and can be done without adding significant delay to the time it takes a TV to render pictures.
4K resolution can be transformative, especially on big screens. And basically 4K is just the way everything is going now (both in the gaming and video worlds), so not being set up for it with your new TV just doesn’t make sense.
Change your range: Sitting right alongside 4K in today’s video world is high dynamic range (HDR) technology. This delivers pictures with a much wider light range than the standard dynamic range pictures we’ve been living with for decades in a bid to get the pictures we’re seeing on our screens looking closer to the way our eyes see the real world.
The Xbox One S supports HDR on some of its games, and via some of its streaming apps. The same situation applies for both the PS4 and PS4 Pro, and naturally the Xbox One X will deliver HDR too. Most people would say that HDR done well delivers more impact than 4K, especially on small screens.
The only problem is that HDR puts a lot of pressure on a TV, since it demands both much more brightness than SDR, and better contrast so that the extra brightness and deeper blacks can potentially share the screen simultaneously. In fact, HDR done badly can look worse than SDR done decently well; something to think about if you’re considering buying a very cheap TV.
Let there be light! One of the most important elements of a good HDR performance is brightness. Many movies and games target 1000 nits or so for their brightest elements, so if you have a TV less bright than that it won’t unlock HDR’s full potential. Especially in a video game environment, where graphics can be more stark in contrast terms than ‘real life’ tends to be.
It’s perfectly possible for TVs to deliver great HDR pictures without reaching 1000 nits and more of brightness. This is particularly true with OLED screens, for instance. But the darker a screen, the harder its processing is going to have to work to try and figure out how to resolve picture information in HDR areas above its capabilities.
Change your range: Sitting right alongside 4K in today’s video world is high dynamic range (HDR) technology. This delivers pictures with a much wider light range than the standard dynamic range pictures we’ve been living with for decades in a bid to get the pictures we’re seeing on our screens looking closer to the way our eyes see the real world.
The Xbox One S supports HDR on some of its games, and via some of its streaming apps. The same situation applies for both the PS4 and PS4 Pro, and naturally the Xbox One X will deliver HDR too. Most people would say that HDR done well delivers more impact than 4K, especially on small screens.
The only problem is that HDR puts a lot of pressure on a TV, since it demands both much more brightness than SDR, and better contrast so that the extra brightness and deeper blacks can potentially share the screen simultaneously. In fact, HDR done badly can look worse than SDR done decently well; something to think about if you’re considering buying a very cheap TV.
Let there be light! One of the most important elements of a good HDR performance is brightness. Many movies and games target 1000 nits or so for their brightest elements, so if you have a TV less bright than that it won’t unlock HDR’s full potential. Especially in a video game environment, where graphics can be more stark in contrast terms than ‘real life’ tends to be.
It’s perfectly possible for TVs to deliver great HDR pictures without reaching 1000 nits and more of brightness. This is particularly true with OLED screens, for instance. But the darker a screen, the harder its processing is going to have to work to try and figure out how to resolve picture information in HDR areas above its capabilities.
The best gaming TVs out thereOK, now that the essential buying advice done and you're an AV expert, let’s now pick out our selection of the best gaming TVs you can currently buy, taking in a combination of price and sheer quality.
This high-end 65-inch Samsung set has a number of unique gaming-friendly advantages. For starters, unique screen filters mean that pictures are almost completely unaffected by ambient light. And trust us: being able to game in daylight and enjoy pictures that look as intense, bright and contrast rich as they do in a dark room is nothing short of a revelation. The set resolves 4K resolutions majestically too, while its heavy duty build quality enables it to produce a fairly potent and distortion-free audio performance (despite its having seemingly no visible speakers). If all that wasn’t exciting enough, the QN65Q9FN blows out the competition with an exceptionally low 12ms of input lag when using its Game mode. That said, the QN65Q9FN can suffer with some gentle light clouding issues during very high contrast HDR sequences, and it’s also, alas, painfully expensive.
Read the review: Samsung Q9FN QLED TV
While the LG E8 OLED doesn’t have nearly as much HDR-friendly brightness as the Samsung Q9FN range, it’s stunning when it comes to the other end of the brightness story, delivering gorgeously rich, deep black colours completely free of the sort of clouding issues that LCD TVs suffer with. Also, while OLED can’t yet go as measurably bright as LCD, the way the darkest pixel in an OLED picture can sit right next to the brightest with no contamination between the two gives the OLED55E8’s pictures a lovely luminous quality that’s particularly effective during dark game settings.
Gamers, meanwhile, will be delighted to hear that unlike its previous two predecessors, the OLED E8 no longer dims the picture down heavily when running in its low-latency HDR Game mode. It also supports 120fps gaming at HD resolutions, full 4:4:4 PC colour, and a superbly low input lag figure of under 20ms.
Read the review: LG E8 OLED
While Samsung’s Q7FN is not quite up to par with the class-leading Q9FN, it's a great compromise between price and performance offering a bright screen, three forms of HDR and incredibly accurate colors for $1,799 (£1,999, AU$3,699).
Ambient Mode adds a design aesthetic sure to please even the keenest of eyes (i.e. mom and dad) and its low-latency game mode makes it a competent companion for the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. HDR+ mode helps liven up HD/SDR content and of course 4K/HDR content has an eye-watering sheen when viewed on this set so it's still a great TV when it's time to turn the console off for the night.
Read the full review: Samsung Q7FN QLED TV
Everyone loves a high-end TV. LG’s latest OLED, Samsung’s spectacularly bright QLED and Sony’s phenomenal LED-LCDs are applauded year round for their amazing performance, picture technologies and technical prowess.
Too bad these aren’t the TVs most people buy.
If you're looking for a mid-range TV that has all the chops to play games in 4K HDR without skimping on the visuals, check out the Samsung NU8000 Series. It may not be as bright as some of the competition on this page, but give its HDR+ mode a chance, and you'd be surprised at what this underdog can do.
Read the full review: Samsung NU8000
One of second-to-last recommendation for a gaming TV is another big one. This gives us the chance to raise one final issue about gaming on today’s consoles and PCs compared with previous generations: that you really have to think big if you’re going to get anything like the ultimate gaming experience.
This is partly because you need a relatively large screen to get the most from 4K resolutions, but also because the main TV brands are increasingly only building truly HDR-friendly color, contrast and brightness performances into their relatively large - and, alas, expensive - TVs.
Even a 55-inch Sony model struggles for brightness a little in its bid to make 4K HDR pictures relatively affordable. However, it does a great job with colors within that brightness limitation thanks to Sony’s Triluminos processing engine, while its black level performance is outstanding for such an affordable and edge-lit LCD model. It also only suffers with 21ms of input lag on average - though oddly, lag occasionally slips to around 50ms for a frame or two.
Read the full review: Sony XBR-X850E
A little more buying advice for the road...If you want to learn more about shopping for gaming TVs, we've added a bit more info below. Read on to level up your AV knowledge skill!
Bits and B.O.B.s: Connected to the HDR point, you might want to think about your gaming TV’s bit depth. The best HDR experience requires a 10-bit screen able to support 1024 values of each RGB colour - otherwise you will get an inferior colour performance, including, possibly, colour striping where you should see subtle blends. Most premium HDR TVs these days are 10-bit, but it’s far from a given at the relatively affordable end of the TV market.
The Xbox One S and PS4 consoles automatically assess the bit-depth of your TV and select the optimum HDR video output accordingly. The Xbox One S even provides a description of your TV’s capabilities under 4K TV Details in its Advanced Video Settings menu. The Xbox One X will presumably do the same.
To be clear, it’s entirely possible for an 8-bit TV to deliver a good HDR colour performance if they have a strong video processing engine. But 10-bit panels certainly have an immediate advantage.
One other point to add here is that some TVs - including high-end Samsung models - actually support 12-bit colour management/processing, even though their panels are only natively 10-bit. The Xbox One S and presumably Xbox One X both provide Colour Depth boxes in their Video Fidelity settings that let you select the maximum bit performance for your particular TV.
Colour purity: Another advanced setting but important thing to consider for the ultimate gaming visuals is chroma subsampling.
This video compression term refers to a TV’s colour purity, and is usually written in such terms as 4:4:4 and 4:2:0. These numbers reveal how many pixels colour is sampled from in the top and bottom rows for every two rows of four pixels. So with 4:2:0, for instance, colour is being sampled from two pixels in the top row and no pixels in the bottom row.
From this it follows that the bigger the numbers are, the purer the color performance will be, as there’s less ‘guesstimating’ of what colors should look like. The problem is, full 4:4:4 color support requires a lot of extra image data, and so cannot be handled by the HDMI connections or processing of all TVs.
In truth, the differences in picture quality between 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 and even 4:2:0 aren’t usually enormous. They can be more pronounced with gaming graphics than video, though, so it’s worth trying to check what a TV you’re thinking of buying can support - even though it’s not information regularly carried in TV spec lists. The latest consoles are pretty good at detecting the optimum chroma subsampling a TV can support, automatically adjusting their outputs according.
It’s something that can cause annoying ‘handshaking’ issues with some TVs, though, so both the Xbox One S and PS4 Pro now provide subsampling ‘limiter’ options in their video output menus (‘Enable 4:2:2’ on the Xbox One S, and 2160 YUV4:2:0 on the PS4 Pro).
Frame rate handling: Now that the Xbox One X is almost here and promising native 4K resolution games running at 60 frames a second, make sure that whatever TV you buy has the latest specification HDMI sockets. If it doesn’t have at least one HDMI socket built to the v2.0a specification, it won’t be able to receive 4K resolution at anything higher than 30 frames a second.
Fortunately far more of this year’s 4K TVs do feature HDMI 2.0a sockets than in previous years, but it’s still something that’s worth double checking - especially if you’re buying a particularly cheap TV.
The new HDMI 2.1 standard will no doubt become the benchmark for high-end gaming in time, but we're yet to see it really rolled out across commercially-available sets.
Not all about the gaming for you? Find out our best TVs of 2018
Best camera phone 2018: the top smartphone snappers around
It's tough to work out the best camera phone on the market - there are so many smartphones to try out, so many variables to consider, and a huge amount of personal taste to take into account - so how on earth will you be able to work out which has the best snapper on the back?
The good news for you is that TechRadar tests all the best camera phones thoroughly, putting them through their photography paces in all manner of lighting conditions and scenarios to help you work out which phone will give the right pictures for you.
Before choosing, it's worth thinking about what you want from a camera phone. Do you want something that's great at taking outdoor snaps and aren't bothered if it's good in low light?
Is a great quick pic with friends more important than a really powerful sensor that takes amazing shots when you put the effort in? Or are you after a simpler point-and-shoot offering that'll consistently take great snaps?
Want to know more about dual-cameras? Check out our video below.
It's also worth thinking about battery size and screen quality - if you're going to be heading out all day and doing longer photography sessions, you'll need a battery that can keep up.
And if you're mostly going to look at your photos on the phone, then a phone with OLED screen technology can really make your snaps pop - but if it's social media, or even printing out your photos, that's your plan then you've got a wider array of options.
We've listed all that information below, along with some of our top test snaps so you can make the right decision when it comes to choosing your next camera phone.
The Google Pixel 3 is the best camera phone you can buy right now.
Even better, you get the choice of two handsets for your best camera phone experience, with both the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL boasting the same camera setup.
While most of the other handsets in our best camera phone round-up have at least two rear cameras, the Pixel devices come with just a single rear snapper.
These cameras are extremely powerful though, with an intuitive interface and AI smarts adapting fantastically to any scenario, be it beautiful vistas or low-light portraits.
What sets Google's 12.2MP rear camera apart from the competition is its consistency. We got sharper, slightly brighter photos from the Pixel 3 and 3 XL versus the iPhone XS Max (overly warm color tones), Samsung Galaxy Note 9 (not always the best HDR) and Huawei P20 Pro (frequently over-sharpened).
Behind-the-scenes, Google's dedicated Pixel Visual Core chip and machine-learning software are the magic that recognize what photos should look like and which shots you'll actually want.
If there's one thing Google knows how to do, it's processing data and perfecting algorithms.
And let's not forget, both phones also have dual front-facing cameras, giving you great portrait-mode selfies with beautifully blurred backgrounds.
Between the two, we'd opt for the Pixel 3 XL for the best camera phone experience. Its bigger, higher resolution display (vs the Pixel 3) works as a great viewfinder, while it also boasts a bigger battery which will keep you snapping for longer.
Read our full reviews: Google Pixel 3 | Google Pixel 3 XL
With three rear cameras the Huawei Mate 20 Pro offers a highly versatile camera phone experience.
The P20 Pro ushered in this era of great Huawei cameras, and the Mate 20 Pro inherits its 40MP wide-angle f/1.8 lens and 8MP, f/2.4 3x telephoto with OIS and then builds on it further.
Rounding out that trio of rear-facing cameras is the new star, an ultra-wide 16MP, f/2.2 lens. It expands the Mate 20 Pro's feature set, letting you take a wider array of photos from limited positions.
Even for casual shooting, it makes life easier when trying to fit a bunch of far-flung elements in the same photo.
The Mate 20 Pro's overall low-light performance is superior to that of most other smartphones we tested, especially with its seconds-long-exposure Night Mode.
The phone's 3x telephoto does a great job of snagging distant shots, and the hybrid 5x zoom adds a digital blend to give you a bit more reach. It’s not perfect, but in our comparative testing, it outdid some digital-only zooms like on the Google Pixel 3.
There's a host of other features in the camera app on the Mate 20 Pro too, allowing you to really fine tune and tinker with the photography experience.
Read our full review: Huawei Mate 20 Pro
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 builds on the strong camera offering of the Galaxy S9 Plus, with a number of small enhancements making it even better.
The result is a handset which is comfortable shooting in any scenario, including in low light, for some truly impressive shots.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 camera identifies and adapts to various subjects with a new scene-optimizer feature. It adjusts the white balance and color based on 20 subjects as varied as sunsets, flowers, food, birds, text and so forth.
Compared to even the six-month-old S9 Plus, the Note 9 camera captures more detail, but you'll have to squint to see the differences.
As this is a Note device, you get Samsung's S Pen stylus included with the handset, and you can use the button on this as a remote shutter key.
It means you can set the Galaxy Note 9 down on a surface and walk away from it and still snap a shot using the S Pen. It's a relatively minor perk, but one we enjoy using.
One slight mark against the Note 9 is its lack of HDR video recording, but for many this won't be an issue.
Read our full review: Samsung Galaxy Note 9
Apple's latest iPhone duo boast powerful dual rear cameras, but it's not just the specs that appeal about the firm's mobile photography experience - it's also the ease of use of their smartphone snappers.
The iPhone camera app is well known for being a simple, clutter-free interface, focused on taking great snaps every time with minimal controls, modes and settings for the user to worry about.
It means that you don't quite get the same breath of shooting options as you do on the likes of the Samsungs and Huaweis, but the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max boast Apple's best smartphone snappers to date, with improvements to their low-light capabilities.
If you want a phone to pull out and take a quick snap with minimum effort, the new iPhones are some of the best camera phones around.
Apple has popularized the blurred background Bokeh effect, and Portrait Mode is one of the best implementations of the technology we've used on a smartphone, with a range of studio lighting effects adding extra pizzazz to your compositions.
Both the iPhone XS and XS Max have exactly the same dual 12MP rear cameras, with the only differences between the two being screen size, battery size and their physical size.
The 6.5-inch display on the iPhone XS Max gives you a huge viewfinder when it comes to snapping photos, but it comes with an equally huge price tag, with the still-expensive iPhone XS producing the same results in a smaller form factor.
Read our full reviews: iPhone XS | iPhone XS Max
Earlier this year the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus was our best camera phone pick, fusing an excellent all-round smartphone experience with a highly accomplished photography offering.
As you can see, it's now be usurped by a number of new camera phone releases, but it's still a fantastic offering which has now dropped in price since launch.
Round the back you get two cameras, with the main 12MP sensor joined by a secondary 12MP sensor directly below it.
The main sensor is rather special, as it has a world's-first-on-a-phone f/1.5 aperture, meaning that it performs fantastically well in low light.
That's not all this sensor has up its sleeve though, as it also features Samsung's Dual Aperture Technology, allowing it to move from f/1.5 (for low light) to f/2.4 (reduces overexposure in bright scenes).
Meanwhile the second camera allows you to take bokeh-rich photos, with parts of the image blurred while other parts are in focus.
This is all wrapped up into an easy-to-use camera app with an automatic mode which takes care of most of the technological trickery, meaning all you have to do is point and shoot for a great snap.
Read our full review: Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus
The Huawei P20 Pro marked a significant shift for the Chinese firm, as it offers up one of best camera phone experiences on the market.
It may have been superseded by the newer Mate 20 Pro, but take nothing away from the P20 Pro, this is still a top camera phone.
Its party piece is the triple camera setup on its rear. The three cameras have a combined megapixel count of a staggering 68MP. Chuck the 24MP front facing camera into the mix as well and the phone has a total count of 92MP.
How the Huawei P20 Pro triple camera worksMegapixels only get you so far, but the good news here is that the Huawei P20 Pro backs up its MP count with a strong suit of camera features.
The main 40MP camera is backed up by a 20MP black and white sensor that helps with image processing, including decreasing noise and improving dynamic range - although as default the P20 Pro shoots at 10MP.
The third rear camera has a 3x 'zoom' lens and an 8MP sensor, letting you zoom into a scene without using digital zoom - which means there's very little decrease in image quality when used.
Read our full review: Huawei P20 Pro
You may be wondering how the Galaxy S9 is as far down as it is considering its bigger brother is above it.
The reason is that, unlike the iPhone XS/XS Max and Google Pixel 3/3 XL which have identical cameras, Samsung gave the S9 Plus more photography prowess.
The Galaxy S9 is still a top camera phone though, with its powerful 12MP rear snapper (there's just one on the back of this phone) an advancement on the excellent sensor found on its predecessor.
Samsung has improved the camera's low-light capabilities on the Galaxy S9 with an industry leading f/1.5 aperture, and it's added super slo-mo, 960fps video recording to the mix as well.
The camera is even smarter though as, like the S9 Plus, it boasts Samsung's Dual-Aperture Technology, allowing it to automatically switch between f/1.5 in low-light settings, to f/2.4 in bright scenes.
The result? An easy to use camera, with an auto mode which, nine times out of ten, delivers a great photo with very little effort.
Read our full review: Samsung Galaxy S9
The Sony Xperia XZ3 is the best camera phone from the Japanese firm to date, with its single 19MP rear snapper proving a powerful photography option.
The user interface has been streamlined for starters, so there's less swiping to get to the various modes and frequently accessed settings are always shown on-screen, so there's minimal fiddling around when prepping your shot.
In good light, detail is strong, and a nice amount of background blur can be achieved without calling on any bokeh modes.
Where the Xperia XZ3 camera excels though is video. The digital stabilization works well in good light in particular, and the 4K HDR footage you can capture is simply breath-taking.
Sony is also still the only manufacturer whose phone cameras are able to capture 960fps Full HD slow motion, with the competition capping out at 720p. It's totally unusable in medium to low light, but it's a nice feature to have when you're outdoors on a sunny day.
Read our full review: Sony Xperia XZ3
The LG G7 ThinQ isn't the only camera phone on this list to pack more than one snapper on its rear, but it uses the two sensors it does have in a different way to everyone else.
Its primary rear camera is a relatively standard 16MP affair with a f/1.6 aperture that's accomplished enough to take decent quality snaps, but it's the second 16MP camera alongside it where things get a little more interesting.
Instead of gathering extra data to improve shots on the primary camera, or to provide bokeh-like effects, this 16MP snapper boasts a wide angle lens allowing you to cram more into every shot.
This is great when it comes to shooting landscapes or skyscrapers, and you can easily switch between the two sensors with a single tap on the screen.
Overall quality isn't quite as impressive as the Samsungs, Pixels or Huaweis above, but for those looking for something a bit different, and some serious wide-angle action, the G7 ThinQ has you covered.
Read our full review: LG G7 ThinQ
The OnePlus 6T may not be the very best camera phone here, but it's cheaper than the rest of the competition and still offers up a flagship photography experience.
The camera features a wide-angle lens paired with a 16MP sensor, as well as a secondary 20MP lens and sensor combination. Both lenses feature a f/1.7 aperture.
While OnePlus has stuck with the same hardware on the T update as the OnePlus 6, the software has been improved, notably with the addition of a new Nightscape long exposure mode. It's good, but not as good as the similar modes on the Mate 20 Pro or Pixel 3.
Selfies are also nice and sharp, especially in good light, with the nicely exposed faces you want – and the selfie bokeh mode works well too.
Read our full review: OnePlus 6T
Anthem trailers, release date and news
What actually is Anthem? BioWare's new upcoming IP looks like a change of pace for the makers of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, with a focus on cooperative PvE combat popularised by the likes of Destiny.
It was a big surprise when it was first announced at last year's E3 2017, and with pressure mounting on a game that could make or break the developer's fortunes, BioWare has kept its cards close to its chest.
From the short trailer shown at EA Play keynote we got a tiny glimpse of the game world's wall: the only thing that separates the civilized world from a dangerous and savage animals. Flying exosuits (called 'Javelins') also seem to play a big part in surviving in the wilderness, and a player might jump into them as part of the game.
BioWare describes Anthem as "a new game from EA's BioWare studio, [where you] explore a landscape of primeval beauty, confront the dangers you find, and grow in power with every step".
It's the first game BioWare has unveiled since its polarizing Mass Effect Andromeda, and it looks to build on BioWare's legacy of great sci-fi games.
[Update: Anthem will feature Mass Effect's N7 armor.]
E3 2018 brought a brand new cinematic trailer for Anthem which shows the incredible exosuits in action, with some smooth flying and a look at the sort of enemies you'll be taking on with your team.
You also get a first look at the Scars, an insect-like race you'll be battling throughout the game world – though we've also heard of another opposing warlike faction called Dominion who should pose a considerable threat of their own.
For those worried about the somewhat generic 'mech suit' design in the trailer, there will reportedly be a lot of room for customization and cosmetic upgrades (no loot boxes, thankfully).
Anthem release dateWhen it was first announced at E3 2017, Anthem was slated for a Fall 2018 release... but then the game got delayed.
We now have a new, firm exact date in hand: February 22, 2019. The release date comes after a report emerged from Kotaku that the game will be delayed until early 2019, citing three sources close to the project.
There is, the report says, now a feeling in BioWare that the future of the company is tied to Anthem and its success. It's for this reason that work on the studio's other titles, Star Wars: The Old Republic and the next Dragon Age, is now reportedly being done by much smaller teams.
It's unlikely, however, the EA will allow development to delay the game any later than March 2019, as that's when the company's fiscal year ends.
News and rumorsAnthem beta
Anthem's public pre-launch demo begins on February 1. The beta is only available to those who pre-order the title, or are members of Origin or EA Access.
Commander Shepard will live on
In celebration of N7 Day (the unofficial Mass Effect holiday), Anthem and Mass Effect lead producer Michael Gamble tweeted an image of N7 armor being worn in the Fort Tarsis hub.
However, Gamble didn't release any details about when or how this skin will be made available to players
It will support 3D Audio
Through the PlayStation Platinum headset.
It's going to be a graphically-demanding game
As earlier rumors suggested (see below), Anthem was indeed shown off at this year's E3, and it was a stunning looking game that ran in 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. That's all very impressive, but what kind of machine will you need to play Anthem at that kind of graphical level?
Well, according to Mark Darrah, the game’s executive producer, the E3 demo was running on a PC with two Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. While we expect Anthem to get optimized before its release, we'd still expect you to need a powerful PC to play at 4K and 60FPS. EA hasn't confirmed if the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro will be able to match that performance.
EA Play
EA Play brought us the best look at Anthem that we've had yet. What we learned is that the game is considered by EA to be "the evolution of a Bioware game" that doesn't bolt on story content to a multiplayer game, but rather integrates those things together in a shared world. It's a little different from the standard BioWare fare since it seems it won't have any player romances available.
You play as a 'Freelancer' who can control the exosuit that we've seen, and you're tasked with protecting the people of Tarthis from a force trying to control the Anvil of Creation. The world is reshaped all the time and, because you're a pilot, you can change out your suit depending on your mission. Exosuit types include the Ranger, Colossus, Storm and Interceptor.
We learned that the game won't have loot boxes and will instead be an online world that expands with more stories as time goes on. Part of the condition of this, however, is that the game won't be playable offline. After the show Mark Darrah confirmed on Twitter that "you need to be online to play" adding that there will also be no PvP modes available at launch, if they're being considered at all, since he added that it's not guaranteed.
Darrah also responded to fan's queries online, saying that players could create multiple Freelancers for each user account, and would be free to use any of the four exosuits that had been showcased.
It'll have a big focus on story
Anthem's developer BioWare has promised a big story for Anthem after Mass Effect Andromeda fell short of fan expectations. Writing in a blog post, the studio's general manager Casey Hudson emphasised the importance of world, character and storytelling and promised that they would be a part of Anthem, "a game designed to create a whole new world of story and character that you can experience with friends in an ongoing series of adventures."
Hudson goes on to say that though it will be unlike "anything you've ever played", if it's done as planned it will still feel "very distinctly BioWare" – and that he'll continue using the blog to update fans on the development process of the game.
Our World, My Story
One of the ongoing refrains from Anthem's development is the idea of 'Our World, My Story'. For players, that means your time will be split between the outside world – a shared multiplayer environment where you team up with other Freelancers for exploration and combat – and Fort Tarsis, where you develop a single-player experience unique to you.
Fort Tarsis will act as a home hub of sorts, where you face your own decisions and actions, accept contracts and missions, form platonic relationships, and generally act out more of the role-play elements expected from BioWare's usual IPs. By the sounds of it, events in the outside world will affect the individual experiences you have back at the Fort, though how this spins out is anyone's guess.
EA meets its Destiny in Anthem
The premise we know so far is that humanity is holed up in a bastion, cut off from the outside world. Venturing out, it appears, requires a suit of armor that will help fend off the wilds of the Pandora-esque planet.
EA is describing it as "a shared-world action RPG where Freelancers challenge the wilds past the wall, exploring a vast world filled with savage beasts and ruthless marauders, but also teeming with amazing technology and forgotten treasures". If this sounds like Destiny, you're not crazy.
"Players will be able to join with their friends to unravel the world's mysteries and defeat the forces plotting to conquer humanity."
Okay, this is Destiny.
"Throughout their journeys, players can outfit their Freelancers with powerful Javelin exosuits, each of which are equipped with unique weapons and abilities. Freelancers can customize their Javelin with gear they earn and craft throughout the adventure, and leave a lasting mark on the world".
Admittedly, the word Freelancers make the game sound a bit more like a Borderlands game than Destiny, but considering that your class is determined by which Javelin you have on, we're still seeing Destiny written all over it.
When Anthem was first announced, taking on Destiny 2 seemed like a tall order, but now that Destiny 2 appears to be having some growing pains, Anthem may be able to seize on a dissatisfied playerbase.
Life after AndromedaAnthem will be BioWare's first title after the somewhat polarizing Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Anthem will, apparently, be a science fantasy game more in the vein of Star Wars and offerings from the Marvel universe, rather than hard core science fiction title like Mass Effect BioWare Edmonton general manager Aaryn Flynn has revealed.
In a recent interview with CBC Flynn said that like these franchises Anthem will be a game in which "you see a lot of amazing things happening but we don't worry too much about why they are happening or how they are happening; the science of it.“
BioWare has dipped its toes into the science fantasy genre before with titles such as the RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the online multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic. Anthem will, apparently, be along these lines and "much more about just having fun in a game world that is really lush and exotic and really sucks you in." Unlike Mass Effect, which Flynn says was a "more a real hard core science fiction IP".
Taking this into account, alongside the game's more online multiplayer leanings, and it seems like BioWare is certainly attempting to step into a space currently dominated by games such as Destiny. It'll be exciting to see what else a developer with so accomplished a background in lore-heavy single player storytelling can bring to this genre.
More interested in EA's sports offering? Here's everything we know about FIFA 19
An inside look at Kaspersky NeXT
The world of cybersecurity is constantly evolving as cybercriminals exploit new vulnerabilities and use new attack methods to target businesses, individuals and governments. Luckily though security researchers are constantly studying their tactics and devising new ways to prevent or stop these attacks before they cause catastrophic damage.
Kaspersky Labs is one of the companies working to make the internet a safer place. TechRadar Pro sat down with a spokesperson from the security firm to discuss the topics covered at this year’s Kaspersky NeXT event in Barcelona and to gain further insight on the latest cyber threats.
We've also highlighted the best antivirus
Best free iPad apps 2018: the top titles we've tried
Free apps sometimes have a bad reputation, but many are gems that are so good you won’t believe they’re free. We’ve scoured the App Store to find the very best, and sorted them into handy categories, which you can find on the following pages.
On this page you'll find the app of the week - our top new selection to try out, and check back every seven days where you'll find a new option to test. After that, it's the best entertainment apps (surely the best reason to own an iPad...) and a variety of categories on the following pages to tickle your fancy.
Free app of the week: Enlight Pixaloop
Enlight Pixaloop wants photographs to get animated – in a literal sense. Load one up and you can draw paths to denote the direction of your flowing, looping animation, and use anchors and masks to make everything else stay put. The effect is like a cinemagraph, but you only need a single still, rather than a sequence of shots or a video.
On iPad, Pixaloop benefits from the larger screen, and the accuracy an Apple Pencil affords. You can create some seriously intricate and eye-dazzling effects, even from fairly mundane source material.
If you’re short on snaps, the app enables you to grab something from Pixabay. And when you’re done, you can export your work to video (although, alas, not animated GIF). It’s smart, sleek, and even though optional IAPs lurk, offers plenty of functionality for zero outlay.
The best free entertainment apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether shopping, coloring, reading, watching TV or using Twitter.
Infuse 5 is a video player that lets you get at video from pretty much anywhere. This means if you have a massive video collection, you needn’t load it all on to your iPad. Instead, you can quickly copy across items as and when you want to play them – or just stream from local network storage.
This app isn’t unique in the field, but it’s friendly and sleek. Set-up is a breeze, and even when streaming from your local network, metadata (cover art; item information) is automatically downloaded. It’s also possible to download subtitles on the fly.
The free version has restrictions that require an annual subscription to unlock: some video/audio formats; AirPlay and Google Cast support; background playback; library sync. But as a freebie for anyone who wants to stream videos to their iPad, Infuse 5 really can’t be beaten.
Pocket is a read- and watch-later app, designed to stop you amassing a billion open tabs in a web browser. Instead, you fashion interesting content into a personalized magazine you can later peruse.
On desktop, you use a bookmark to send items to Pocket; on iPad, you use the Share sheet. When you open the app, it’ll download everything you’ve sent, and can present what you want to look at as a straightforward list or a rather more appealing grid.
Videos appear as a pop-up you can make full screen, but the text reading experience is particularly strong, stripping cruft from websites to leave only words and images. There’s a dark mode for night reading, too, and even a speech option when you want to catch up on your stories but fancy some shut-eye.
Fiery Feeds is a full-featured RSS reader. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, it enables you to subscribe to almost any website’s content. You’ll then in Fiery Feeds get a list of headlines whenever you open the app, ensuring you don’t miss articles from sources you trust.
Most free RSS readers are clunky, but Fiery Feeds bucks the trend with a sleek two-pane interface, and a slew of customization options. It feels modern, but gives you very direct control over what you read, unlike the likes of News or Flipboard.
There’s a paid tier, too – US$9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 per year – which unlocks additional features, including a ‘must read’ folder, a text view mode (which loads full articles for sites that otherwise only send you synopses), and custom actions. Whichever flavor you plump for, Fiery Feeds is well worth installing on your iPad.
VLC for Mobile is an iPad take on the popular open source media player.
On iPad, it has two main uses. The first is offline playback. You can load up VLC with videos, and – broadly speaking – be secure in the knowledge it’s actually going to be capable of playing them. During said playback, you can fiddle with the picture and audio, and use gestures to skip through boring sections – or backwards if you missed a bit.
VLC is also good for streaming. You can stream movies from a PC or Mac right to your iPad, rather than having to sit in front of a computer like it’s 2005. The interface throughout is sleek and minimal (irritating zooming to the options sidebar aside), and impressive for a video streaming app that’s entirely free.
JustWatch solves one of the biggest problems with the way we consume television and movies. With streaming services and on-demand increasingly rendering traditional schedules redundant, the key is usually finding out where and how to watch something, not when.
JustWatch asks you to confirm your location and the services that interest you. If you’re still into the big screen, there’s a tab for currently showing movies, which makes it a cinch to access local showtimes.
But this app’s mostly about TV, providing filterable feeds that list popular shows and bargains – and where to find them. Select a show, tap on an icon, and you’re whisked away to the relevant app. Whatever you want to see, JustWatch makes reaching it a whole lot easier.
Letterboxd is an iPad take on a social network for film lovers. Sign up, and you can do all the usual following friends and bellyaching, only here you’re complaining about whether Blade Runner 2049 is 2049 times worse than the original, and who’s the best James Bond. If that sounds awful but you’re a film lover, Letterboxd has another use: the ability to log everything you’ve ever watched.
You can quickly assign ratings and ‘likes’ to your personal favorites, which are subsequently displayed as a grid of artwork that can be sorted and filtered. Beyond that, you can add tags, a review, and the date when you last watched the film. On the iPad’s large display, the entire app looks great – not least when you start checking out trailers of those films you’re keen to see.
If you’ve any interest in wildlife films, Attenborough Story of Life is a must-have. It features over a thousand clips picked from Attenborough’s decades-long journey through what he refers to as the “greatest story of all…how animals and plants came to fill our Earth”.
The app is split into three sections. You’re initially urged to delve into some featured collections, but can also explore by habitat or species, unearthing everything from big-toothed sharks to tiny penguins skittering about. Clips can be saved as favorites, or grouped into custom collections to later peruse or share with friends.
Some of the footage is noticeably low-res on an iPad – there’s nothing here to concern your Blu-Rays, and that’s a pity. Still, for instant access to such a wealth of amazing programming, this one’s not to be missed.
The majority of comic-book readers on the App Store are tied to online stores, and any emphasis on quality in the actual apps isn't always placed on the reading part.
But with many more publishers embracing DRM-free downloads, having a really great reading app is essential if you're into digital comics. Chunky Comic Reader is the best available on iOS.
The interface is smart, simple and boasts plenty of settings, including the means to eradicate animation entirely when flipping pages.
Rendering is top-notch, even for relatively low-res fare. And you get the option of one- or two-up page views. For free, you can access web storage to upload comics. A single $3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99 pro upgrade adds support for shared Mac/PC/NAS drives.
eBay provides access to a colossal online marketplace. Anyone can sell, and so you’ll find huge brands mingling with individuals attempting to offload the entire contents of their basements and attics.
Something of a design playground, the iPad app is regularly reworked; but whatever eBay’s designers come up with, a large touchscreen device proves to be the best way to search. You can quickly drill down into categories, and explore individual listings, swiping between photos.
If you need to keep track of things, the app offers automated notifications, and can flag searches, making it easy to see whenever new matching listings appear. And if you want to sell yourself, you can do that in-app, with eBay providing shortcuts to get your listing started (through barcode scanning or matching your item to publicly available information about it).
The iPad and App Store combine to create an extremely strong ecosystem when it comes to art apps, but that's not terribly helpful if you don't have an artistic bone in your body.
Fortunately, there are apps like Fingerpaint Magic that enable a much wider range of people to create something visually stunning.
As you draw, feathers of color explode from your fingertip, bleeding into the background in a manner that feels like you're drawing with an alien material atop viscous liquid. You can adjust your brush and color – 'neon' from the former coming across like sketching with fire.
Artwork can be further enhanced using mirrors or background filters prior to export. The process is at once aesthetically pleasing, fun and relaxing.
A single $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49 IAP unlocks a set of premium brushes, but Fingerpaint Magic's free incarnation has more than enough to unleash your inner artist, regardless of your skill level.
Part meditative relaxation tool, part sleep aid, Melodist is all about creating melodies from imagery. All you have to do is load something from your Camera Roll, and the app does the rest.
On analyzing your photo or screen grab for changes in hues, saturation and brightness, a music loop is generated. You can adjust the playback speed, instrument and visual effect (which starts off as a lazily scrolling piano roll), along with setting a timer.
Although occasionally discordant, the app mostly creates very pleasing sounds. And while it’s perhaps missing a trick in not displaying your photo as-is underneath the notes being played (your image is instead heavily blurred as a background), you can export each tune as audio or a video that shows the picture alongside the animation.
These free exports are a pretty generous gesture by the developer; if you want to return the favor, there’s affordable IAP for extra sounds, animation and MIDI export.
After years of eyesight deterioration, John Hull became blind in 1983. Notes on Blindness VR has six chapters taken from his journal of the time. Each is set in a specific location, marrying John’s narrative, binaural audio, and real-time 3D animation, to create an immersive experience of a ‘world beyond sight’.
Although designed as a VR experience, this app remains effective when holding an iPad in front of your face, moving the screen about to scan your surroundings. The mood shifts throughout – there’s wonder in a blind John’s discovery of the beauty of rain, disconnection when he finds things ‘disappear’ from the world when sound stops, and a harrowing section on panic.
Towards the end, John mulls he’s “starting to understand what it’s like to be blind,” and you may get a sense of what it’s like, too, from the app, which ably showcases how to craft an engaging screen-based experience beyond the confines of television.
Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.
You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.
On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.
The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.
Sandbox offers an interesting take on coloring apps. Instead of virtual paper and pens (as per the excellent Pigment), Sandbox gives you a quirky combination of painting by numbers and old-school pixel art.
Select an image and it appears in grayscale. A tap zooms you in to a grid of numbers. Select a palette color and tap relevant grid squares to start coloring things in. Tap the wrong squares and your colors remain – but the numbers stick around in zoomed view, reminding you of your ‘error’.
Because you have to tap every single square, Sandbox might for some feel tedious. But there’s a meditative quality to proceedings, and there are plenty of images to color for free. A drag-to-color brush wouldn’t go amiss though.
The official Twitter client may get the social network’s new toys first, but Twitterrific is a better bet for the more discerning Twitter user. It has a beautifully designed interface that's a delight to use, helpfully merging mentions and messages into a unified timeline, saving you mucking about switching tabs.
Customization options give you the means to adjust the app's visual appearance (and the app can optionally automatically switch to a dark theme at night), and powerful mute and muffle features block users and hashtags you want no part of.
Pay $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 and the app adds notifications, Apple Watch support, and translation support, along with removing ads.
With a noodly soundtrack playing in the background, WWF Together invites you to spin a papercraft world and tap points of interest to learn more about endangered species. 16 creatures get fuller treatment - a navigable presentation of sorts that hangs on a key characteristic, such as a panda's charisma, or an elephant's intelligence.
These sections are arranged as a three-by-three grid, each screen of which gives you something different, be it statistics, gorgeous photography, or a 'facetime' movie that gives you a chance to get up close and personal.
Apps that mix charity and education can often come across as dry and worthy, but WWF Together is neither. It's informative but charming, and emotive but fun.
Rather neatly, stories can be shared by email, and this screen further rewards you with origami instructions to make your own paper animal; once constructed, it can sit on the desk next to all your technology, reminding you of the more fragile things that exist in our world.
YouTube is the best way to watch YouTube videos on your iPad. On the dynamic Home tab, you can quickly get at interesting stuff. It includes channels you subscribe to, and videos you didn’t yet finish watching; but also, it makes recommendations based on your viewing habits. The more you watch, the better they get.
On selecting something to watch, the video itself sits at the top-left of the screen, allowing you to scroll through comments other viewers have left, and peruse an up-next feed. There’s also a full-screen view for a more immersive experience.
Fittingly, for a service seemingly attempting to usurp traditional television, the YouTube app also provides access to content you’ve bought on Google Play. And with AirPlay and Chromecast support, getting what you’re watching to an actual telly is a cinch, too.
Can't figure out which iPad to buy? Watch our guide video below!
For a mix of free and paid apps, check out our amazing Best iPad apps chart. If you're more into a smaller form-factor or have your eye on the iPhone X check out our list of the best free iPhone apps.Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.Are you a professional? Then our pick of the 10 best business apps should have something for you. The best free art and design apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, graphic design and animation.
Adobe Spark Post finds Photoshop creator Adobe asking how quickly it’d be possible for someone to fashion gorgeous layouts on an iPad. The answer, as it turns out, is: very.
Adobe describes its app as ‘frictionless graphic design,’ and it’s easy to see why. You can start with a selection of your own images that are then arranged into a grid, or work from a predefined template. At any point, a few taps can drastically update what’s in front of you, with new (and tasteful) arrangements and typography.
It’s quite a lot of fun to keep tapping away, to see what Spark Post will come up with, but at some point you’ll want to actually use what you make. Even then, this app’s really smart, automatically shuffling components around to optimize your layout for social network profile shots or embedded imagery.
Unsplash is an app that gives you fast access to many thousands of images generously gifted to the Unsplash website by the photographic community. These photographs can be used entirely for free, for any purposes you wish, and can be modified as you see fit.
The app and available photographs are both rather good. You can search for something specific, browse new photos, or explore by themes. The large iPad display is the perfect lean-back way to look through dozens of images, flicking between them in full-screen mode.
It’s a pity there’s no download option, nor a means to follow specific photographers. But then this one’s all about effortlessness and immediacy, and knowing that whenever you do find something that inspires you, it can be downloaded to your iPad’s Photos app with a single tap.
Artomaton - The Motion Painter is a little like Prisma, in that it uses AI to transform photos into something that looks like it was painted or sketched. However, this isn’t a single-tap filter app; Artomaton wants to afford you at least some control over your creations.
To start with, you paint in the natural media effects to the degree you’re happy with. Do so lightly and you get the subtlest of sketches; cover every inch of the canvas and you end up with a more complete piece of art. Beyond that, there are plenty of settings to fiddle with.
The resulting images aren’t always entirely convincing in terms of realism, but they always look good. And although many materials are locked behind IAP, you get plenty for free.
On the desktop, Adobe Illustrator is more about enabling creative types to work up pin-sharp illustrative fare than freehand drawing. But on iPad, Adobe Illustrator Draw concentrates on doodling. You can experiment with five highly configurable brush tips, which feel great whether drawing with a stylus or a finger.
But dig deeper into the options and the professional sheen of this app becomes apparent. There are perspective grids, a layers system for mixing and matching artwork and imagery for tracing over, and stencils you temporarily overlay when extra precision is needed.
Completed images can be exported to Camera Roll or the clipboard, and Adobe Creative Cloud users can also send art to Photoshop or Illustrator with layers preserved.
A straightforward vector export option would be nice, although that’s perhaps too big an ask for a free app designed to suck you into a larger ecosystem.
Although Photoshop started out as a tool for retouching imagery, plenty of people use it for creating art from scratch. It’s presumably that line of thinking that led to Adobe Photoshop Sketch, an iPad app that enables you to draw with virtual takes on ink, paint, pastel and markers.
The tools themselves are broadly impressive and configurable. You can adjust brushes in all kinds of ways, and then utilize blend modes and layers for complex art, and grids/stencils when more precision is needed.
Export feels a bit needlessly restrictive – you’re mostly forced to send drawings to Adobe’s Behance network – even Photos isn’t an option.
Also, while tools work well individually, they don’t really interact, such as when dragging pen through a glob of paint. Still, for free, Adobe Photoshop Sketch gives you a lot – and even if you don’t use the app for finished art, it works (as its name suggests) as a pretty neat sketchpad.
We tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app.
Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll.
The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 to unlock the pro features.
The original Brushes app was one of the most important in the iPhone's early days. With Jorge Colombo using it to paint a New Yorker cover, it showcased the potential of the technology, and that an iPhone could be used for production, rather than merely consumption.
Brushes eventually stopped being updated, but fortunately went open source beforehand. Brushes Redux is the result.
On the iPad, you can take advantage of the much larger screen. But the main benefit of the app is its approachable nature. It's extremely easy to use, but also has plenty of power for those who need it, not least in the layering system and the superb brush designer.
The idea behind Canva is to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating great-looking layouts based on your photos. Select a layout type (presentation, blog graphic, invitation, and so on) and the app serves up templates to work with.
These are mostly very smart indeed, but the smartest thing about Canva is that these starting points can all be edited: swap out images for your own photos, adjust text boxes, and add new elements or even entire pages.
Because of its scope, Canva isn't as immediate as one-click automated apps in this space, but the interface is intuitive enough to quickly grasp. Our only niggle is the lack of multi-item selection, but with Canva being an online service, you can always fine-tune your iPad creations in a browser on the desktop.
Despite being lumbered with an awkward name, Pixel art editor - Dottable is a usable and nicely-conceived app. Choose a canvas size and then the interface is split between your drawing area, layers, and tools.
The basics are all there for creating old-school pixel art, but beyond brushes and fills, Dottable adds some fairly sophisticated shapes and transform tools.
If you want to trace an image, it can be imported, and optionally converted to pixel art form. Exports are also dealt with nicely, either exporting your image as a PNG, or converting each layer into a single frame of an animated GIF.
None of this is enough to trouble the pro-oriented Pixaki, but as a freebie for pixel artists, Dottable is mightily impressive.
Instagram might be the current online photo-sharing darling, but it's clear veteran Flickr remains up for a fight. On iPad, it's a lovely app, with a refined and minimal UI that makes browsing simple and allows photography to shine.
Another smart aspect of Flickr is its extremely generous 1 TB of free storage. You can set videos and photos to automatically upload, and they stay private unless you choose to share them.
There are compatibility issues with the most modern Apple toys as Live Photos end up as stills on Flickr. Even so, Flickr makes Apple's free 5 GB of iCloud storage look pathetic by comparison; and even if you use it only as a belt-and-braces back-up for important images, it's worth checking out.
One of the great things about the app revolution is how these bits of software can help you experience creative fare that would have previously been inaccessible, unless you were armed with tons of cash and loads of time. Folioscope is a case in point, providing the basics for crafting your own animations.
We should note you’re not going to be the next Disney with Folioscope – the tools are fairly basic, and the output veers towards ‘wobbling stickmen’.
But you do get a range of brushes (of differing size and texture), several drawing tools (pen, eraser, flood fill, and marquee), and onion-skinning, which enables you to see faint impressions of adjacent frames, in order to line everything up.
The friendly nature of the app makes it accessible to anyone, and there’s no limit on export – projects can be shared as GIFs or movies, or uploaded to the Folioscope community, should you create an account.
MediBang Paint feels like one of those apps where you’re always waiting for the catch to arrive. Create a new canvas and you end up staring at what can only be described as a simplified Photoshop on your iPad. There are loads of drawing tools, a layers system (including photo import), and configurable brushes.
Opening up menus reveals yet more features – rotation; shapes; grids – but palettes can also be hidden, so you can get on with just drawing. Judging by the in-app gallery of uploaded art, MediBang is popular with manga artists, but its tools are capable enough to support a much wider range of digital painting and drawing styles – all without costing you a penny.
You won’t trouble Hollywood with PicsArt (or PicsArt Animated Gif & Video Animator to use its unwieldy full name). However, it is a great introduction to animation and also a handy sketchpad for those already immersed in the field.
A beginner can start with a blank slate, paper texture, or photo background, on to which an animation frame is drawn. Add further frames and previous ones faintly show through, to aid you in making smooth transitions.
Delve further into the app to discover more advanced fare, including brush options and a hugely useful layers system. When done, export to GIF or video – or save projects to refine later. That this all comes for free (and free from ads) is astonishing.
Quark DesignPad scratches an itch if you need to get started on some layouts while on the go with your iPad – or just fancy doing the same away from the glowing screen of your Mac or PC.
This isn’t a full-fledged desktop publishing app, note. Instead, it’s about creating frameworks for page designs – wireframes that show the placement of headings, images, columns, and boxes. You can work pages up from scratch, or use one of the pre-defined layouts. With its grids, pop-up menus, and a little nudge ‘joystick’, the interface proves to be flexible and efficient.
Output options, however, are initially limited. You can save flat images to Photos, but if you want PDFs or to print via AirPrint, you’ll need to go pro ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99).
Although it's apparently designed for kids aged 9-11, Seedling Comic Studio comes across a lot like a free (if somewhat stripped back) take on iPad classic Comic Life. You load images from your Camera Roll (or take new ones with the camera), arrange them into comic-book frames, and can then add all manner of speech balloons, filters and stickers.
Decided that your heroic Miniature Schnauzer should have to save the world from a giant comic-book sandwich? This is your app! Naturally, there are limitations lurking. The filter system is a bit rubbish, requiring you to cycle through the dozen or so on offer, rather than pick favourites more directly, and a few of the sticker packs require IAP.
But for no outlay at all, there's plenty of scope here for comic-book creation, from multi-page documents you can output to PDF, to amusing poster-like pages you can share on social networks. And that's true whether you're 9 or 49.
Tayasui Sketches is a drawing tool, designed to be realistic, versatile, and usable. And although various IAPs lurk for the full toolset (which includes a ruler, extra layers, and pressure sensitivity), you get an awful lot for free.
You start by selecting a paper type, or use an imported photo as the basis for your masterpiece. Then it’s time to get cracking with the pens and brushes. Although it’s perhaps a stretch to call them totally realistic, they all offer pleasing results. The watercolor brush in particular is lovely, bleeding into the paper and leaving splats on the canvas when you tap the screen.
In fact, the app as a whole is very pleasant to use, offering the right balance between trying to help and getting out of your way when you’re busy painting. And as a final neat touch, if you’re stuck for inspiration there are some coloring book pages thrown in for free.
The best free education apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for learning new things – from coding to astronomy.
Night Sky puts the planets and stars inside your iPad. More importantly, it goes above and beyond in the ways you can explore them.
Like many other astronomy apps, you can drag to adjust the view or explore the heavens by holding your iPad in front of your face and physically moving around. Chill-out music burbles away in the background, and there’s visual bling in the form of illustrated constellation overlays.
But here, constellations and celestial bodies can be pulled from the main view. They can then be moved with a finger or walked around in AR. With constellations in particular, this provides a great understanding of depths and distances.
Beyond that, you get Siri support, a moon map, advice on local planetariums, and many more features – and that’s before there’s even a hint of monthly IAP to access the Grand Orrery and live sky tours.
Civilisations AR is an augmented reality app that puts over 30 historical artifacts in front of your face, ranging from an ancient Egyptian mummy to iconic modern art. It feels like a thoroughly modern way of exploring the past, enabling you to check out every nook and cranny of these famous objects.
Spin a globe to see where the items are from, then tap to select one and it will appear before you, ready to be resized and spun around. Discoverable hot-spots offer up more information by way of voiceovers.
Surprisingly, even paintings work really nicely in this app, enabling you to put your nose right up to the virtual canvas and inspect individual paint marks. An iPad display is big enough for you to truly appreciate these works of wonder.
JigSpace uses augmented reality (AR) to educate, by way of 3D models you can fiddle about with before your very eyes. Although the range isn’t exactly in Wikipedia territory, you get quite the variety of ‘jigs’ for free. There’s the anatomy of a trebuchet, a floating eye to fiddle around with, a manual car’s transmission, and many more.
JigSpace rapidly finds a flat surface onto which your object is projected. You can then pinch to resize it, or spin it with a swipe. Objects aren’t static either – many animate, and are gradually disassembled across a series of slides. For example, an alarm clock opens to show its gears and mechanisms – and because this is AR, you can check everything out from any angle.
Maybe it's just our tech-addled brains, but often we find it a lot easier to focus on an app than a book, which can make learning things the old fashioned way tricky. That's where Khan Academy comes in. This free app contains lessons and guidance on dozens of subjects, from algebra, to cosmology, to computer science and beyond.
As it's an app rather than a book it benefits from videos and even a few interactive elements, alongside words and pictures and it contains over 10,000 videos and explanations in all.
Everything is broken in to bite-sized chunks, so whether you've got a few minutes to spare or a whole afternoon there's always time to learn something new and if you make an account it will keep track of your progress and award achievements.
Py wants to teach you to communicate with computers. You provide some information about the kind of coding you fancy doing, and it recommends a course – anything from basic HTML through to delving into Python.
Lessons are very reminiscent of those in language-learning freebie Duolingo. A colorful, cartoonish interface provides questions, and you type out your answer or select from multiple choice options.
Py could be more helpful when you get something wrong, but its breezy, pacy nature gives it a real energy and game-like feel that boosts focus and longevity.
Unlike Duolingo, Py doesn’t have any interest in being free forever. A premium tier locks a chunk of content behind a monthly fee (along with access to mentors, who can help you through tough spots via an integrated chat). But for no outlay, there’s still plenty here for budding website - and app - creators to get stuck into.
SkyView Free is a stargazing app that very much wants you to get off your behind and outside, or at least hold your iPad aloft to explore the heavens.
Unlike TechRadar favourite Sky Guide, there's no means to drag a finger to manually move the sky around - you must always point your iPad's display where you want to look - but there's no price-tag either. And for free, this app does the business.
There are minimal ads, a noodly atmospheric soundtrack, an optional augmented reality view (to overlay app graphics on to the actual sky), and a handy search that'll point you in the direction of Mars, Ursa Major, or the International Space Station.
Swift Playgrounds is an app about coding, although you’d initially be forgiven for thinking it a weird game. Early lessons involve guiding oddball cartoon cyclops Byte about an isometric landscape by way of typed commands, having him trigger switches and grab gems along the way.
This is, of course, sneakily teaching you the fundamentals of logic and programming, and the lessons do then gradually become more involved. However, at no point does Swift Playgrounds become overwhelming. And the split-screen set-up – instructions and code on the left; interactive world based on your work on the right – feels friendly and intuitive.
It’s not Xcode for iPad, then, but perhaps a first step in that direction. More importantly, Swift Playgrounds can act as a first step for people who want to start coding their own apps, but for whom the very idea has, to date, simply been too daunting.
Often, third-party apps improve on bare-bones equivalents provided as the ‘official’ take on a product, but Wikipedia is an exception. This freebie app for browsing the online encyclopedia is excellent on iPad – and probably the best option on the platform.
The Explore page lists a bunch of nearby and topical articles; after a few uses, it’ll also recommend things it reckons you’d like to read. Tap an article and the screen splits in two – (collapsible) table of contents to the left and your chosen article to the right. Articles can be searched and saved, the latter option storing them for offline perusal.
It’s a pity Wikipedia doesn’t rework the Peek/Pop previews from the iPhone version (by way of a long-tap), but otherwise this is an excellent, usable encyclopedia for the modern age.
Learning a musical instrument isn't easy, which is probably why a bunch of people don't bother, instead pretending to be rock stars by way of tiny plastic instruments and their parent videogames.
Yousician bridges the divide, flipping a kind of Guitar Hero interface 90 degrees and using its visual and timing devices to get you playing chords and notes.
This proves remarkably effective, and your iPad merrily keeps track of your skills (or lack thereof) through its internal mic. The difficulty curve is slight, but the app enables you to skip ahead if you're bored, through periodic 'test' rounds. Most surprisingly, for free you get access to everything, only your daily lesson time is limited.
TED is a video app designed to feed your curiosity, by watching smart people talk about all kinds of subjects.
Although the organization’s name stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment, Design’, it’s fundamentally interested in ideas. Example talks we watched during testing included a piece about screen time for kids (and why related fears are not true), not suffering in silence from depression, and mind-blowing magnified portraits of insects. What we’re saying is: this app has range.
It also has smarts. Along with a standard search, you can have the app ‘surprise you’ with something courageous, beautiful, or fascinating, and revisit favorites by delving into your watch history and liked talks, which sync across devices.
TED’s perhaps not an app you’ll open daily, but it’s a breath of fresh air when you desire brain food rather than typical telly.
The best free health, food and exercise apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for cooking, relaxing and keeping fit.
Oak - Meditation & Breathing is an app that wants you to relax. It’s split into sections for meditation, breathing, and sleeping. A stats area provides the means to track progress, with you gaining streaks and winning badges through regular use.
Meditations can be guided or unguided, catering for all skill levels, and although you don’t get the wealth of options available in some apps, you can adjust instructor gender, session duration, and background noise. The three breathing exercises cover relaxation, focus, and invigoration. And the Sleep section offers guided breath exercises designed to help you unwind.
On iPad, the interface betrays the app’s iPhone origins and could do with optimization for the larger display. Other than that, Oak’s pleasing and effective – and won’t surprise you a few weeks in with a stressful demand for IAP.
Tasty is a cookery app that wisely reasons modern-day cookbooks need to move beyond being digital equivalents of paper-based tomes. It achieves this by way of fast, filterable searches, and judicious use of video.
Rather than opening with a photo, your selected recipe instead initially shows the dish being made by way of a tightly edited video. Below that, you get an ingredients list (which can be exported), tips and step-by-step instructions.
Tap a button below the last of those and each step’s text and video loop is isolated – a great way, when cooking, to sanity-check you’re doing the right thing, and aren’t on the road to a culinary disaster.
Many of us are caught in high-stress environments for much of our lives, and electronic gadgets often do little to help. Apple has recognized this on Apple Watch, which offers a breathing visualization tool. But Breathe+ brings similar functionality to your iPad.
You define how long breaths in and out should take, and whether you want to hold your breath at any point during the cycle. You then let Breathe+ guide your breathing for a user-defined session length.
The visualization is reminiscent of a minimalist illustrator's take on a wave rising and falling on the screen, but you can also close your eyes and have the iPad vibrate for cues. For free, there are some ads, which aren't pretty, but don't distract too much. For $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99, you can be rid of them, along with adding themes and usage history stats.
As you launch Kitchen Stories, you catch a glimpse of the app's mantra: "Anyone can cook". The problem is, most cooking apps (and indeed, traditional cookery books) make assumptions regarding people's abilities.
Faced with a list of steps on a stark white page, it's easy to get halfway through a recipe, look at the stodge in front of you, reason something must have gone terribly wrong, and order a takeaway.
Kitchen Stories offers firmer footing. You're first met with a wall of gorgeous photography. More importantly, the photographs don't stop.
Every step in a recipe is accompanied by a picture that shows how things should be at that point. Additionally, some recipes provide tutorial videos for potentially tricky skills and techniques. Fancy some Vietnamese pho, but not sure how to peel ginger, prepare a chilli or thinly slice meat? Kitchen Stories has you covered.
Beyond this, there's a shopping list, handy essentials guide, and some magazine-style articles to peruse. And while you don't get the sheer range of recipes found in some rival apps, the presentation more than makes up for that — especially on the iPad, which will likely find a new home in your own kitchen soon after Kitchen Stories is installed.
There's a tendency for relaxation aids to be noodly and dull, but TaoMix 2 bucks the trend. You get the usual sounds to aid relaxation (wind, rain, birds, water), but also an interface that nudges the app towards being a tool for creating a kind of ambient personal soundtrack.
The basics are dead simple: tap the + button, select a sound pack, and drag a sound to the canvas. You then manually position the circular cursor within the soundscape, or slowly flick so it lazily bounces around the screen, your various sounds then ebbing and flowing into the mix.
This makes TaoMix 2 more fun to play with than its many rivals. Of course, if you just want to shut the world out, that option exists too: load a soundscape you've previously created, set a timer, and use TaoMix 2 to help you nod off.
Should you want something other than what's found within the generous selection of built-in noises, packs are available for purchase (including whale sounds, 'Japanese garden' and orchestral strings); and if you fancy something entirely more custom, you can even import sounds of your own.
There are quite a few apps for creating ambient background noise, helping you to focus, relax, and even sleep. White Noise+ is perhaps the best we’ve seen – a really smartly designed mix of sound and interface design that is extremely intuitive yet thoroughly modern.
It works through you adding sounds to an on-screen grid. Those placed towards the right become more complex, and those towards the top are louder. Personalized mixes can be saved, or you can play several that are pre-loaded.
For free, you do get an ad across the bottom of the screen, only five sounds, and no access to timers and alarms. But even with such restrictions, White Noise+ is pretty great. Throw $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 at it for the extra features and noises, and it borders on exceptional.
7 Minute Workout is designed to give you a complete fitness workout in just seven minutes. It’s far from alone on the App Store, but we like this take because it’s straightforward – and also properly free (rather than being riddled with IAP).
The exercise screens are basic, but bold. It’s always obvious where you are in a routine, and if you’re unsure about the next step, you can tap a video playback button to view a demonstration.
Beyond the exercises, the app enables you to track your weight and set the gap between exercises, which are regularly switched during the routine. The only downside is not being able to block specific exercises if, for example, you don’t have access to a chair, or cannot perform them due to accessibility reasons.
Epicurious is a massive recipe book for iPad. It provides access to over 35,000 recipes, and offers a magazine-like presentation. The entry screen is awash with new recipes with vibrant photography; you can quickly flick between that and dedicated pages for themed recipes and new videos.
The app’s search is excellent. You can select by meal type, and filter available recipes by selecting specific ingredients, cuisine types, and dietary issues (such as low-fat and wheat-free). Flicking back and forth between filters and results can irk, but the app at least does so quickly and efficiently.
The actual recipe pages are a touch basic – there’s no hand-holding like the step-by-step photos you get in Kitchen Stories. Still, if confident in your abilities, it’s a great app to broaden your culinary horizons.
The best free kids apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps, learning tools, and games for toddlers and children.
Lego Creator Islands is for fans of the popular construction toy when there are no plastic bricks close at hand. It starts you off with a little island, on which you build a house. Construction is simple: tap piles of bricks and they magically combine into pieces of a finished Lego set, which you drag into place.
Rinse and repeat a few times and your kid will beam as they watch their island increasingly come alive, populated with Lego minifigs and bounding Lego animals, and dotted with buildings, trees and vehicles.
The experience is, admittedly, not that deep, and you can see most of what it has to offer in an hour or so. But it’s always fun to return to, and certainly beats treading on a Lego brick while barefoot.
Sago Mini Friends is a sweet-natured collection of adorable mini-games, ideal for young children. After selecting a character to play, you visit a neighborhood of colorful houses. Knock on a door and you’ll be invited inside for a playdate.
The activities are varied and smartly designed. There’s a birthday party, where gifts are gleefully unwrapped, and a birdhouse to fix by hammering in nails. Our favorite, though, is a cleverly conceived snack time that finds two friends sitting side-by-side. Feed one and the other looks a bit glum, which encourages the young player to learn to share.
Entirely lacking IAP and advertising, Sago Mini Friends is a no-brainer for any parent who wants a safe, free, fun, educational app for their youngster to spend a bit of quality time with.
LEGO AR-Studio is the app we first thought of when Apple started banging on about augmented reality. After all, who wouldn’t want a bunch of virtual Lego bricks to play with, which could magically integrate with the real world?
Well, it turns out Lego wouldn’t, because that’s not what this app offers. Instead, you get a small selection of AR Lego kits, which you can mess about with, take videos of, and thereby try to trick your friends into wondering why their own Lego doesn’t zoom about the place on remote control.
It’s admittedly a bit shallow, and feels a touch proof-of-concept. But here’s hoping this is just the app equivalent of a Lego baseplate on which to build, rather than a completed set.
According to the developer's blurb, Zen Studio is all about helping children to relax and focus, by providing a kind of finger-painting that can only exist in the digital realm. Frankly, we take issue with the 'children' bit, because Zen Studio has a welcoming and pleasing nature that should ensure it's a hit with every iPad user.
You start off with a grid of triangles and a column of colored paints. Tap a paint to choose your color and then tap individual triangles or drag across the grid to start drawing. Every gesture you make is accompanied by musical notes that play over an ambient background soundtrack.
Bar the atmosphere being knocked a touch by a loud squelch noise whenever a new paint tube is selected, the mix of drawing tool and musical instrument is intoxicating. When you're done, your picture can be squirted to the Photos app, ready for sharing with the world.
This is, however, a limited freebie in some ways. You get eight canvases, which can be blank or based on templates. If you want more, you can buy an IAP to unlock the premium version of the app. Still, for no outlay at all, you get a good few hours of chill-out noodly fun — more, if you're happy drawing over the same canvases again and again.
Doctor Who: Comic Creator does what you’d expect from its name. When you’re between seasons of the hit sci-fi show, you can satisfy yourself by fashioning custom adventures about everyone’s favorite regenerating time traveler, who goes everywhere and everywhen in a beaten-up old time machine.
Creating comics is akin to slapping down stickers – only you can move things around later. And you get a pleasingly diverse range of page layouts, along with a monster maker, so you can combine parts of the Doctor’s enemies into something suitably horrific.
The main downside is most foes lurk behind various IAPs – would it have killed the BBC to throw in a Cyberman for free? Sadly, there’s no way to use the app to get all timey-wimey and change people’s minds when the app was being made.
Lego Life is a social network for kids whose lives revolve around plastic bricks. Once you’re signed up, you explore feeds and follow themes, to become a better builder, or just see what’s current in the world of Lego.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a nod towards advertising of a kind, in new product videos being liberally sprinkled about. But mostly, this is an app about inspiration. You’re regularly offered building challenges and knowledge tests; during lazy days, you can slap stickers all over a virtual Lego kit, or build a mini-figure for your profile.
Given that it’ll mostly be kids using the app, it’s worth noting usernames are anonymized. You can’t type your own, and instead select from semi-random word lists. EmpressSensibleMotorbike, meet ElderSupersonicJelly!
Laugh & Learn Shapes & Colors Music Show for Baby is a two-part game designed for children as young as six months old.
In Level 1, your youngling – now armed with a worryingly expensive piece of technology – can tilt and tap the screen to make shapes appear and bounce around. But Level 2 ramps things up considerably.
“Let’s put on a show,” chirps the app as the five shapes wiggle and jig about on the screen, lurking above a colorful keyboard. And you know what’s next: maddeningly jaunty earworms, augmented by a deliriously happy baby smacking the huge piano keys.
Your slow descent into madness will be worth it for the smile on their little face.
Toca Tailor Fairy Tales is a dressing up app. You choose from a male or female customer, and then set about giving them a new and exciting outfit.
As with other Toca Boca fare, this is a tactile, immediate app. Tap a garment to adjust its type; drag and you’ll change its length. Accessories can be added from an expanding box, if you decide your appreciative on-screen ‘manakin’ needs a trendy hat.
The best bit, though, is the materials section. For each part of the garment, you can drag and drop materials onto it. This isn’t a question of merely recoloring either – you can pinch/rotate to make all kinds of crazy patterns, and even import photos or snap a texture using the iPad’s camera. Great stuff for tiny wannabe fashion designers.
The best free music and audio apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for listening to podcasts, making music or being a virtual DJ.
AudioKit Synth One Synthesizer is an iPad synth bursting at the seams with dials to twiddle, buttons to push, and all kinds of exciting noises that blast forth from your speakers.
Even if you’re not overly musically inclined, there’s fun to be had here by selecting presets - many of which use a built-in user-friendly sequencer, so you can fire off a melody by holding down a single key. There’s loads for musicians to delve into, including Audiobus and IAA support, customizable filters, and touchpad play surfaces.
It’s hugely impressive and the sort of thing you’d usually expect to set you back north of 30 bucks, so it’s all the more surprising that Synth One is entirely free from ads and IAP - and that will always be the case, given that it’s also an open-source project.
Novation Launchpad is about remixing electronic music using a grid of loops. For the beginner, it’s a friendly, intuitive introduction to music-making. You load a genre and just tap away, safe in the knowledge everything will always sound great. You can even record live mixes and share them with friends.
There’s depth to Novation Launchpad as well – effects to apply, filters to experiment with, and the option to mix and match pad sounds. If you’re prepared to dip into your wallet, you can take things much further, importing your own audio files and working with a larger range of effects.
On iPad, you can buy all of these things – and a MIDI sync feature – for a one-off $14.99/£14.99/$AU22.99 IAP. But even if you stick to the free version, Novation Launchpad proves to be suitably noisy fun.
The thinking behind Auxy Music Studio is that music-making - both in the real world and software - has become too complicated. This app therefore strives to combine the immediacy of something like Novation Launchpad's loop triggers with a basic piano roll editor.
For each instrument, you choose between drums and decidedly electronic synths. You then compose loops of between one and four bars, tapping out notes on the piano roll's grid. Subsequent playback occurs on the overview screen by tapping loops to cue them up.
For those who want to go a bit further, the app includes arrangement functionality (for composing entire songs), along with Ableton Link and MIDI export support. Auxy's therefore worth a look for relative newcomers to making music and also pros after a no-nonsense scratchpad.
The iPad is the perfect mobile device for composing music, with its fairly large display and powerful innards. This has resulted in a range of involved and impressive music-creation tools, such as Korg Gadget. Sometimes, though, you yearn for something simpler for making some noise.
This is where Figure comes in. Within seconds, you can craft thumping dance loops, comprising drum, bass and lead parts. The sounds are great, being based on developer Propellerhead Software's much-loved Reason. They can be manipulated, too, so your exported loops sound truly unique.
On an iPhone, music-making app GarageBand is mightily impressive, but on iPad, the extra space proves transformative. In being able to see more at any given time, your experience is more efficient and enjoyable, whether you’re a beginner tapping the grid view to trigger loops, a live musician tweaking a synth on stage, or a recording artist delving into audio waveforms and MIDI data.
Apple’s app also cleverly appeals to all. Newcomers can work with loops, automated drummers, and piano strips for always staying in key. Pros get seriously impressive track controls with configurable effects, multi-take recording, and Audio Unit support for bringing favorite synths directly into GarageBand.
If you don’t feel terribly creative sitting in front of a PC, GarageBand’s the perfect way to unleash your Grammy-winning songwriter in waiting.
Groovebox is a really clever app for anyone interested in making electronic music. The smartest bit is in the app being approachable for newcomers, yet offering power and features for seasoned noise makers.
The basics involve selecting a track type (drums, bass, or synth), and then a sound, whereupon Groovebox starts playing a loop. If you’re not happy with what you hear, tap the dice and Groovebox will spit out a different pattern.
Most apps of this ilk are samples-based, and so grind to a juddering halt at this point. But Groovebox goes further, offering a keyboard for live play, and a piano roll grid for tweaking a loop’s notes – or removing them all to add your own. You can also build up entire tracks using a ‘song sections’ feature.
The only major limitation of the free version is many advanced instrument controls sit behind IAP. Still, for no outlay, Groovebox offers plenty of head-nodding entertainment.
It’s fair to say that Music Memos is primarily designed for the iPhone, enabling musicians to quickly capture a song idea, which can later be expanded on. But if you’re in a studio – home or otherwise – strumming away on a guitar, and with an iPad nearby, the app can help you compose your next chart-troubler on a much more user-friendly screen size.
You kick things off by tapping a circle in the middle of the screen, whereupon Music Memos starts recording. Tap again to stop. The app then attempts – with some degree of success – to transcribe the chords played, and enables you to overlay automated bass and drums.
It’s when tapping the audio waveform in the recordings list that the iPad’s value becomes clear – you get the whole screen to see your in-progress song, which is great for playing along with or when considering further tweaks. And with iCloud sync, you can always record on iPhone and peruse later on iPad.
Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.
We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.
The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.
Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.
There are quite a few DJ apps for iPad, but they mostly tend to make the assumption you’re a master of the decks already. With its bright colors, straightforward nature, and lack of a price tag, Pacemaker feels rather more approachable to the typical wannabe deck spinner.
You can mess about with demo tracks or load tunes from your iPhone and Spotify. Then it’s a case of messing around with virtual decks, sliders and buttons to crossfade, beat-match, and add effects. If you hit on something especially great, record your live performance and share it with your friends.
It’s worth noting the app does have IAP lurking, but that’s really only for people properly bitten by the bug. Splash out and you can grab new effects or a premium subscription for precision mixing. For free, though, there’s plenty to enjoy.
There are two ways to approach Seaquence, where the first is as a really bizarre interactive album. Select a track and a bunch of little creatures swim about on the screen, which results in spatialized sound mixes. (Stick some headphones on to hear how their movements affect the placement of sounds being played.) You can manually fling the creatures about, or tap-hold to remove them.
But Seaquence also enables you to edit. Add a new creature and it’ll instantly change the track. Tap a creature and you can delve into a scale editor, sound designer, and a sequencer for adjusting the notes of the current loop.
A $6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99 IAP opens up a bunch of pro features; but for free, Seaquence is entertaining whether you’re just listening and occasionally bothering the digital sea life, or figuring out how to construct your own tunes.
Beatwave is a grid synthesizer/sound toy, loosely based on Yamaha’s Tenori-on. This means you tap notes by turning on the grid’s lights. When the endlessly looping playhead collides with one, you get an explosion of color, and a sound plays.
Notes towards the top of the grid are higher, and those at the bottom are lower. Some instruments use the bottom two rows for drum sounds. Most importantly, though, Beatwave is designed to always make output listenable.
It’s actually quite difficult to create anything horribly discordant, short of filling every square on the grid.
For those who fancy more depth, the app offers plenty of alternate sounds, automated morphing, and the ability to save patterns to the sidebar, which you switch between with a tap. So it’s fun whether writing songs or just playing with sound and color.
The best free office and writing apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for writing, email, spreadsheets, presentations and calculations.
Drafts 5 describes itself as the place where text starts. That might be a lofty claim on the iPad, given that Apple’s tablet has plenty of top-notch text editors, but Drafts has some pretty amazing tools to help you capture ideas faster and work on lengthy texts.
The main writing view gives you a live word count, and a custom keyboard row for quickly getting at useful formatting options and actions. Texts can be tagged for grouping and retrieval purposes, and the app includes a large range of actions for processing and exporting missives.
If you want to make your own custom actions you’re into subscription IAP territory, which also gives you custom workspaces, superior share extension options, URL automation, and themes. But even in its free incarnation, Drafts is extremely generous and a first-rate install.
Scanbot is a scanner with a sense of humor. No, you read that right – it starts off urging you to try a tutorial ‘challenge mode’. In AR, you chase documents around the floor, trying to scan them as quickly as possible.
All this has a point: teaching you how to best to position your iPad when scanning, and to showcase how streamlined Scanbot makes the process. Once the scan’s been done, you can adjust crop and contrast levels, append more pages, and upload the end result to a cloud service of your choice.
The app includes page size settings and integrates with iOS’s Shortcuts app. And if you upgrade to the pro version, you gain OCR text recognition, one-tap actions extraction for things like triggering phone calls, and robust document editing. But even if you stick with the free version, Scanbot’s an excellent choice.
Drafts 5 bills itself as the place where text starts on your iPad. The idea is to use the app as a means to quickly capture text – either by typing or using Siri – after which you can fling it elsewhere by way of an almost ludicrously flexible and lengthy list of actions.
However, this app isn’t a mere notebook for odd thoughts – it’s a hugely powerful text editor that’s suitable for pretty much any short-form writing. You get a live word count, multiple keyboards for efficiently manipulating text, and superb editing tools like Arrange, which you use to reorder paragraphs or individual lines by dragging them.
For free, it’s hugely generous. And in the event you want more – user-defined actions with scripting; themes; widgets; workspaces – you can subscribe for a very reasonable US$19.99/£17.49/AU$27.99 per year.
Paper by FiftyThree originally invited you to sketch in virtual journals, but then dispensed with sketchbooks for a board of cards you could rearrange. This latest take tries to merge the two approaches.
The best bit of Paper – the actual sketching tools – remains intact. You scribble with pens, splash watercolors on the canvas, and draw geometric shapes that neatly retain the character of your stroke.
Beyond that, the app stumbles. Text appears as notes stuck over your work when browsing – an ugly effect – and only one image can be imported to each sketch, which you can either trace over or use as a background.
Still, despite its flaws, this is still an app worth installing, simply because it feels really great to use.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is a popular app on the desktop for viewing, annotating and signing PDFs. On iPad… well, it’s much the same, albeit with a reliance on cloud storage, and a nicely-designed touchscreen interface.
On importing a PDF from another app, Dropbox, or iCloud Drive, you can rearrange its pages, add a signature, slather the thing in comments, and highlight bits of text. If your document arrived from Adobe Scan, you can search the text, and select/copy some to paste elsewhere. Annoyingly, copying must be done manually – there’s no ‘grab all text’ option.
In the main, though, this is a friendly, usable app, and you get the bulk of its functionality for free, including the means to share edited PDFs with other apps. (IAP is mostly for converting PDFs to other formats for editing in the likes of Microsoft Word.)
A halfway house between full-fledged writing tool and capable note-taker, Bear provides a beautiful environment for tapping out words on an iPad.
The sidebar links to notes you’ve grouped by hashtag. Next to that, a notes list enables you to scroll through (or search) everything you’ve written, or notes matching a specific tag. The main workspace – which can be made full-screen – marries sleek minimalism with additional smarts: subtle Markdown syntax next to headings; automated to-do checkboxes when using certain characters; image integration.
There’s not enough here for pro writers – they’d need on-screen word counts, customizable note column ordering, and flexibility regarding notes nesting. Also, for iCloud sync, you must buy a $1.49/£1.49/AU$1.99 monthly subscription. But as a free, minimal note-taker for a single device, Bear more than fits the bill.
Dropbox is perhaps the most famous of cloud storage providers. For free, you get 2GB of space for your documents and photos – and more if you pay to upgrade.
In the early days of iPad, Apple wanted to hide the file system away, and Dropbox – which was quickly supported by a great many apps – became a kind of surrogate. And even in these days of iCloud Drive, it’s very much worth installing.
The main Dropbox app is smart and straightforward, with speedy previews, the means to save content offline, passcode lock functionality, and optional automated backup of your iPad photos.
As of iOS 11, Dropbox can integrate directly into the Files app, too. Given Dropbox’s cross-device and cross-platform nature, this makes it worth grabbing even if you only use it rarely. Chances are, though, you’ll use it a whole lot more often.
There are other decent cloud storage apps too, such as Google Drive, but even if you already have that it’s worth grabbing Dropbox for a little extra space.
Gmail brings Google’s email service to your iPad. Of course, Apple’s own Mail app does this to some extent – and supports sending and receiving from Gmail addresses. But the Gmail app provides a fuller experience.
One of the most vital is the ability to undo a send. You have to be quick, but it’s hugely useful to stop something being sent if you realize you’ve made an error, or forgotten to add an attachment.
Elsewhere, the app’s also in tune with Google’s way of doing things, and so you get profile pictures of people you’re conversing with, integration with Google Calendar, and excellent search capabilities.
Another possible reason to install: as a means to keep business and leisure fully separate, if you use Apple’s Mail for work, and Gmail for everything else.
There are loads of iPad apps for reading and annotating PDFs, but LiquidText is different. Rather than purely aping paper, the developers have thought about the advantages of working with virtual documents.
So while you still get a typical page view, you can pinch to collapse passages you're not interested in and also compare those that aren't adjacent.
There's a 'focus' view that shows only annotated sections, and you can even select chunks of text and drag them to the sidebar. Tap one of those cut-outs at a later point and its location will instantly be displayed in the main text. Smartly, you can save any document in the app's native format, export it as a PDF with comments, or share just the notes as an RTF.
The iPad's well catered for in spreadsheet terms with Google freebie Sheets and Apple's Numbers, but the reality is the business world mostly relies on Microsoft Excel. Like Microsoft's other iOS fare, Excel is surprisingly powerful, marrying desktop-style features with touchscreen smarts.
You can get started with a blank workbook or choose from one of the bundled templates, which include budget planners, schedules, logs, and lists. Wisely, the app has an optional custom keyboard when you're editing cells, filled with symbols, numbers, and virtual cursor keys. This won't make much odds if you're armed with a Bluetooth keyboard, but it speeds things up considerably if you only have your iPad handy.
You might be wondering what the catch is, and there aren't many if you own a standard iPad or a mini. Sign in with a free Microsoft account and you're blocked from some aesthetic niceties, but can do pretty much everything else. If you're on an iPad Pro, however, Microsoft demands you have a qualifying Office 365 subscription to create and edit documents, but the app at least still functions as a viewer.
It's not like Microsoft Word really needs introduction. Unless you've been living under a rock that itself is under a pretty sizeable rock, you'll have heard of Microsoft's hugely popular word processor. What you might not realize, though, is how good it is on iPad.
Fire up the app and you're greeted with a selection of handy templates, although you can of course instead use a blank canvas. You then work with something approximating the desktop version of Word, but that's been carefully optimized for tablets. Your brain keeps arguing it shouldn't exist, but it does — although things are a bit fiddly on an iPad mini.
Wisely, saved documents can be stored locally rather than you being forced to use Microsoft's cloud, and they can be shared via email. (A PDF option exists for recipients without Office, although it's oddly hidden behind the share button in the document toolbar, under 'Send Attachment', which may as well have been called 'beware of the leopard'.)
Something else that's also missing: full iPad Pro 12.9 support in the free version. On a smaller iPad, you merely need a Microsoft account to gain access to most features. Some advanced stuff — section breaks; columns; tracking changes; insertion of WordArt — requires an Office 365 account, but that won't limit most users.
Presumably, Microsoft thinks iPad Pro owners have money to burn, though, because for free they just get a viewer. Bah.
With Numbers, Apple managed to do something with spreadsheets that had eluded Microsoft in decades of Excel development: they became pleasant (even fun) to work with.
Instead of forcing workmanlike grids of data on you, Numbers has you think in a more presentation-oriented fashion. Although you can still create tables for totting up figures, you’re also encouraged to be creative and reader-friendly regarding layout, incorporating graphs, imagery, and text. On iPad, it’s all tap - and finger - friendly, too.
With broad feature-parity with the Mac version, iCloud sync, and export to Excel format, Numbers should also fit neatly into most people’s workflow.
And although updates robbed the app of some friendliness (whoever removed the date picker needs a stern talking to), it still excels in that department, from nicely designed templates through to the handy action menu, ensuring common tasks are only ever a tap away.
For a long while, Paper was a freemium iPad take on Moleskine sketchbooks. You made little doodles and then flipped virtual pages to browse them. At some point, it went free, but now it's been transformed into something different and better.
The original tools remain present and correct, but are joined by the means to add text, checklists, and photos. One other newcomer allows geometric shapes you scribble to be tidied up, but without losing their character.
So rather than only being for digital sketches, Paper's now for all kinds of notes and graphs, too. The sketchbooks, however, are gone; in their place are paper stacks that explode into walls of virtual sticky notes. Some old-hands have grumbled, but we love the new Paper. It's smarter, simpler, easier to browse, and makes Apple's own Notes look like a cheap knock-off.
PCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation.
Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users.
The best free photo and video editing apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for editing photos, working with filters, adding text to photos and editing video.
Pic Collage is a powerful app for creating photo collages. You can start with a freeform canvas or a card template, but the pre-defined grids are better. Select some photos and a grid, and the app will automatically arrange everything.
Many apps stop there, but Pic Collage goes much further. You can tweak the frames, and perform adjustments on individual images. Movement can be added through importing up to three videos and later exporting your creation as a GIF. And if you’re feeling arty, you can scribble all over your grid-based masterpiece.
Pic Collage hits that sweet spot of unlocking creativity in an immediate, usable manner. You get results fast. The only real negative is exports have a watermark, but if that bugs you, they can be gone forever with a one-off US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.
Plotaverse is an image editor and social network very much of the opinion that photographs are a bit rubbish unless they move.
The meat of the app is Plotagraph+, which provides tools for animating your pics. The process is simple: mask parts you want to remain static, and then drag arrows to denote movement. Plotagraph+ then does its thing, resulting in an endlessly looping animation.
Naturally, there are limitations. The system tends to work well with flowing subjects (such as water or clouds) and geometric patterns. Still, you can create amazing videos with a minimum of effort.
The social networking bit is less impressive, as are cheesy effects overlays (free and paid) that are available for download. But in bringing a touch of Harry Potter to even the most mundane of snaps, Plotaverse feels like a little piece of magic on your iPad.
Prisma invites you to be an artist – albeit an incredibly lazy artist who’s not against a touch of stylistic plagiarism. There’s no actual drawing or painting here – you instead load a photo (or take one using the app) and tap an effect to apply it. This effect can be strengthened or weakened by swiping across the canvas.
Rather than aping cameras and film types, Prisma is interested in traditional art – everything from classical to manga is fair game. You’ll need an internet connection to download and apply effects, but it doesn’t take long and you can remove any duds if your library starts to become cluttered.
You’re not going to turn that shot of your lunch into a forgotten Kandinsky with Prisma, but the app is capable of gorgeous painterly results. High-res output is locked behind an $1.99/£1.79/AU$2.99 monthly subscription, but SD output is fine for posting online.
Clips is a video editor designed for people who don’t want to spend a great deal of time editing – or even shooting. Unlike Apple’s iMovie, Clips is intended for impulsive shoots, and super-fast clip arrangement – a video editor for the social media generation.
On iPad, you might question its relevance. After all, you’re not going to whip out an iPad Pro to quickly shoot someone larking about on a skateboard. But the iPad’s larger screen is superb for editing, making it easy to rearrange clips on the timeline and get a proper eye for the many included filters.
There’s more lurking here too, including automatic animated subtitles, posters with customizable text and iCloud sync. Clips won’t make you a Hollywood legend, but it might just propel you towards Instagram stardom.
It's become apparent that Adobe - creators of photography and graphic design powerhouses Photoshop and Illustrator - don't see mobile devices as suitable for full projects. However, the company's been hard at work on a range of satellite apps, of which Photoshop Fix is perhaps the most impressive.
Built on Photoshop technology, this retouching tool boasts a number of high-end features for making considered edits to photographs. The Liquify tool in particular is terrific, enabling you to mangle images like clay, or more subtly adjust facial features using bespoke tools for manipulating mouths and eyes.
Elsewhere, you can smooth, heal, color and defocus a photo to your heart's content, before sending it to Photoshop on the desktop for further work, or flattening it for export to your Camera Roll. It's particularly good when used with the Apple Pencil (still a funny name) and the iPad Pro, such is the power and speed of that device and input method.
Making apps approachable is a good thing on mobile, but sometimes photo editors go a bit far, flinging all kinds of detritus into the mix (stickers; gaudy frames; a million indistinguishable filters).
With Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you instead get a more sedate and distinctly professional offering – although one that nonetheless retains plenty of immediacy.
The basic toolset includes cropping, rotation, a bunch of measured and genuinely useful presets, and an editor for adjusting tones, vignettes, colors and lens issues. Edits aren’t burned in and so you can experiment and revert as you wish. When you’re done, you can send the result to your Camera Roll.
If you’re an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, you also get DNG support, and selective adjustments. But even as a pure freebie, Lightroom’s a must-have for any iPad owner interested in improving their photographs.
There are loads of apps for making basic edits to photos and slapping on some words, but Little Moments stands out primarily through being rather jolly (if a little twee at times) and being extremely easy to use.
Load in a pic (or use the camera to shoot a new one), and you can quickly add a filter, adjust things like saturation and contrast, overlay some text boxes, and get creative with quotes and stickers.
Weirdly, the last two of those things are pixelated when browsing through the app, but look just fine when added (and sadly many of the categories also sit behind in-app purchases).
But everything else about Little Moments is a joy, from the non-destructive adjustments (unless you select a new filter, whereupon everything resets) to the friendly, intuitive interface.
The App Store's awash with alternate cameras with editing smarts, but MuseCam warrants a place on your iPad's home screen nonetheless. As a camera, it's fine, with an on-screen grid and plenty of manual settings. But on Apple's tablet, it's in editing that MuseCam excels.
Load a photo and you can apply a film-inspired filter preset (based on insight from pro photographers), or fiddle around with tone curves, color tools, and other adjustment settings.
The interface is bold, efficient, and usable, making it accessible to relative newcomers; but there's also enough depth here to please those wanting a bit more control, including the option to save tweaks as custom presets.
IAP comes in the form of additional filters, but what you get for free is generous and of a very high quality, making MuseCam a no-brainer download.
Although Photofy includes a decent range of tools for performing typical edits on photos - including adjustments, cropping, saturation, and the like - this app is more interested in helping you get properly creative.
Within the photo editing tools are options for adding in-vogue blurs and producing collages; and in 'Text & Overlays', you'll find a wealth of options for slapping all kinds of artwork and text on top of your photographic masterpieces.
The interface works well through bold, tappable buttons and chunky sliders (although it takes a while to realise the pane containing the latter can be scrolled). And although some filters and stickers require IAP to unlock, there's loads available here entirely for free. (Also, Photofy rather pleasingly gives you alternatives for its watermark, if you don't want to pay to remove it, but aren't too keen on the default. Nice.)
Pic Collage has you create collages from photos and images. In Grids mode, select some pictures, and the app automatically places them in a layout. If you’re not keen, switch to a different layout; you can also adjust background colors and border sizes.
Select an individual image and you can move and rotate it, and perform the kind of edits and adjustments you find in a slew of photo apps. Using the + button you can further customize your creation with stickers, text and doodles.
Beyond this mode, you can craft cards and ‘freestyle’ layouts. For free, it all comes across as an astonishingly flexible, usable and feature-rich take on digital collages. The only real downside is watermarks on your exported collages, but you can be rid of them forever by paying a single $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 IAP.
Formerly known as Replay, Quik is a video editor primarily designed for people who can't be bothered doing the editing bit. You select photos and videos, pick a theme, and sit back as Quik pieces together a masterpiece that can subsequently be saved and shared.
For tinkerers, there are styles and settings to tweak. Post-Replay, the app offers its 28 varied styles for free, and you can delve into the edit itself, trimming clips, reordering media, adjusting focal points, and adding titles.
Alternatively, the really lazy can do nothing at all and still get results - every week, Quik will serve up highlights videos, enabling you to relive favorite moments. These videos are quite random in nature, but are nonetheless often a nice surprise. Still, anyone willing to put in the slightest additional effort will find Quik rewards any minutes invested many times over.
Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. You get all the basics — cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.
There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.
Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.
Between quickly trimming a video in Photos and immersing yourself in the likes of iMovie sits Splice. This is a free video editor that on the surface looks accessible - even simplistic - but that offers surprising depth for those who need it.
To get started, you import a bunch of clips. These can be reordered, and you can for each choose a transition if you don't want standard crossfades. Access an individual clip and a whole host of additional tools becomes available, including text overlays, speed adjustment, and animation effects. It's also possible to layer multiple audio files, including on-board music and narration.
For more demanding wannabe directors, Splice might still not be enough - in which case, head towards a more powerful product like Pinnacle Studio Pro or iMovie. But for everyone else, it really hits that sweet spot in being straightforward, approachable, and powerful.
Another filter app, but this one’s more about creating semi-abstract works of art than aping a bunch of photographic effects from the 1970s (although you get those too). With Trigraphy, the most interesting bits are the art filters, which can totally transform even the most mundane snap into something visually arresting.
You get four for free – more styles lurk as various IAPs – and they’re all pretty amazing. With a single tap, you can turn your photo into a landscape of isometric blocks, or overlay fragmented reflective surfaces.
With the brush tool, you can then paint out the effects layer to let parts of the original image show through, before exporting at up to 4K. It’s certainly a lot more creative than tapping a button to make a pretend Polaroid.
The best free productivity apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for being more productive with cloud storage, timers, iPad keyboards, automation and more.
Shortcuts is Apple’s revamp of automation utility Workflow. Its main goal is to save you time by performing complex tasks with simple interactions (such as a button tap), rather than going through a list of steps manually in multiple apps and websites.
There are two ways to approach Shortcuts. The first is to delve into the gallery’s dozens of premade actions. These include everything from calculating tips to saving documents as PDFs. Everything you download can be experimented with, or you can start from scratch and construct your own workflows in the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.
This proves particularly effective on the iPad’s larger display, which gives you plenty of room to work. And this latest revamp makes workflows even easier to access, because you can trigger them using Siri voice commands.
Cheatsheet Widget is a notes app for all those little things that you need to remember – but never do. Its items are designed to be quick, glanceable fare (like phone numbers, codes and combinations and a few words) and are made easier to spot by twinning them with icons.
Your list is created in the Cheatsheet Widget app, but the list can also be displayed as a Today view widget. Items within the widget can be deleted, or their content copied to the clipboard – ideal for things like open network passwords.
For free, the widget will display four items from your list, and you can opt to always place new ones at the top. As of iOS 12, there’s a dark mode; and if you splash out on the one-off IAP, you also get iCloud cross-device sync, a Cheatsheet Widget keyboard, and no ads.
Bundler is a boon to anyone who regularly finds themselves having to collect a selection of files that then need to be sent elsewhere – a common task in many kinds of workplace.
Documents are added to ‘bundles’ using the Share sheet. In any compatible app, you share selected documents (or the current one) to Bundler and choose which bundle to place them in (or make a new one). On returning to Bundler, these documents can then be previewed and renamed. (In the latter case, ensuring your files have suffixes – JPG, TXT, and so on – is a good bet, or they aren’t always included on export.)
Sharing a bundle sends it to a location or app of your choosing as a ZIP archive. The process is sleek and simple, and the dual-pane view on iPad makes things even easier when you’re juggling a large number of files and bundles.
DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is a browser designed to make the internet less creepy, preventing websites following you around the web. It blocks every hidden tracker it can find, uses the privacy-oriented DuckDuckGo for search, and rates websites you visit in terms of how much they care about your privacy.
It’s a combination of educational aid and web browser, and the latter bit isn’t half bad. It’’s a bit stripped-back compared to Safari, but you can still bookmark sites, open pages in tabs, and share content with other people. When you’re done, you can nuke your session’s search history with two taps.
Even if it doesn’t become your primary browser, DuckDuckGo is worth installing. It’s ideal for browsing sensitive data such as financial and medical records, safe in the knowledge you’re not being tracked by nefarious scripts.
In a sense Evernote is an online back-up for fleeting thoughts and ideas. You use it to save whatever comes to mind — text documents and snippets, notes, images, web clips, and even audio. These can then be accessed from a huge number of devices. (We suspect any day now, Evernote will unveil its ZX Spectrum app.)
The app itself could be friendlier, and there's a tendency towards clutter. But navigation of your stored bits and pieces is simple enough, and the sheer ubiquity and reliability of Evernote makes it worthy of investigation and a place on your Home screen.
The web’s pretty great, apart from the bits that aren’t. And those bits are the manner in which your journey online is monitored by countless trackers. They look into what you’re viewing and where you’re going, aiming to serve up targeted ads. Beyond privacy issues, these trackers can slow down web pages and even crash browsers.
Enter: Firefox Focus. The app itself is a brutally stripped-back, privacy-oriented browser. You go online, tracker-free, do whatever you want, and then stab Erase to delete your session. Which probably sounds ideal for nefarious purposes, but this is mostly great for basic efficiency, and also handy if someone wants to quickly get online using your iPad but not leave their accounts live when handing your device back.
Beyond this, Firefox Focus can also integrate with Safari, blocking trackers and web fonts from that browser and, potentially, increasing its performance.
Given the acres of space you get on an iPad display, it’s a bit odd that Apple’s own clock only provides a single timer. Fortunately, MultiTimer – as its name suggests – goes somewhat further by offering multiple options.
In fact, depending on the layout you choose, you can have twelve timers all ticking away at once. Each one of them can have its own icon, color and default time assigned, for those people who need to simultaneously exercise, boil eggs, and cook a turkey.
Smartly, the app works in portrait or landscape, and if you want a timer you can see clearly across the room, a single button press zooms it to fill almost the entire screen.
Should you want a bit more flexibility by way of multiple or custom workspaces, there’s a single IAP to unlock those features.
We're not sure whether Slack is an amazing aid to productivity or some kind of time vampire. Probably a bit of both. What we do know is that the real-time messaging system is excellent in a work environment for chatting with colleagues (publicly and privately), sharing and previewing files, and organising discussions by topic.
There's smart integration with online services, and support for both the iPad Pro and the iPad's Split View function.
Note that although Slack is clearly designed with businesses in mind, it also works perfectly well as a means of communicating with friends if you don't fancy lobbing all your worldly wisdom into Facebook's maw.
There are plenty of apps for doodling on your iPad, but Thoughts differentiates itself by going for a kind of razor-sharp minimalism that’s vanishingly rare these days.
On creating a new document, you can draw with a finger, and resize the canvas with a pinch. There’s also an eraser, a small palette to change colors, an interesting night mode (which flips black to white) and that’s pretty much it.
It sounds reductive, but in reality frees you up. You’re not thinking about line thicknesses and the like – you’re just drawing. Export is a little disappointing – it would be good if you could have a vector format rather than a fairly low-res bitmap – but otherwise Thoughts is a nicely simple sketching tool for iPad.
VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are becoming very popular, due to issues people increasingly face when browsing the web. A VPN can be used to circumvent region-blocking/censorship and security issues on public Wi-Fi. Such services can baffle people who aren't technically adept, but TunnelBear is all about the friendlier side of VPNs. With bears.
After installing the app and profile, you'll have 500 MB of data per month to play with. That said, TunnelBear’s exclusive TechRadar plan offers a far more generous 5GB, 10 times the amount you get if you sign elsewhere.
Tunnelling to a specific location is simply a case of tapping it on the map and waiting a few seconds for the bear to pop out of the ground.
Tweet about the product and you'll get an extra free GB. Alternatively, monthly and annual paid plans exist for heavier data users.
The best free travel and weather apps for iPadOur favorite free iPad apps for planning a holiday, currency conversion, weather forecasts and mapping.
Today Weather is weather forecasting aimed at iPad owners with an eye for style. Launch the app and it displays a photo to represent the current weather in your location. Below that, you’ll see a brief overview of current conditions. Scroll and you get an extended forecast and further details (including rainfall, air quality and wind speed), all rendered in almost painfully cool neon tones atop a dark background.
If the photo’s a bit much, you can get rid of it. Either way, this is a great weather app for a docked iPad, and even the sole ad can easily enough be scrolled off-screen. Neatly, there’s also something for when forecasts don’t quite gel with your own observations: if you don’t get on with Today Weather’s data source, you can switch it for Dark Sky, Accuweather.com, or YR.no.
Google Earth is about exploring our planet. Search for somewhere specific and the app swoops and dives to its target. Important landmarks are rendered in 3D that’s surprisingly effective – if you don’t zoom in too far.
This is an entertaining, tactile app that encourages investigation. You can drag and spin the screen, and flick through cards that point towards local landmarks. Fancy looking at something new? Hit the random button, or tap on the Voyager icon for stories based around anything from UNESCO World Heritage Sights to trekking about Kennedy Space Center.
The app is effortless to use, and the iPad’s large screen enables you to more fully breathe in the sights; the result is armchair tourism that’s far more effective than what you’d get even on the largest of iPhones.
Google Maps is an app that might seem an odd fit for an iPad, but we’d argue it’s an essential install. First and foremost, it’s much better than Apple’s Maps for figuring out journeys: Google Maps can more easily find points of interest, and ably deals with public transport information.
Local areas can be explored in terms of amenities (food, drink, and sometimes entertainment), and in a more direct sense, with the road-level Street View. The latter is a great way to familiarize yourself with a place before you visit.
If you always have your iPad on you, Google Maps can save maps for offline use as well, so you don’t even need an internet connection to use it. Alternatively, sign up for a Google account, and the searches you make will be synced with the app on your iPhone.
There are two things a good flight comparison apps needs to be: easy to use, and useful results. Broadly speaking, Momondo ably does the job in both cases.
Looking for flights is simple; the app allows a pleasing amount of vagueness regarding locations (including regions with multiple airports, such as ‘London’, or even entire countries, such as ‘New Zealand’), and it’ll happily enable you to search for singles, returns, or multi-city jaunts.
As search results gradually load in, the app points you to the cheapest and quickest options, along with what it considers ‘best’ when taking into account price, time and convenience. For some routes, a calendar graph lets you check nearby dates to see if you can snag a bargain.
Additional filters are available to further refine your results, and you can create an account to save favorites and receive fare alerts - plus hotel listing can be added in too, should you want a more comprehensive.
Townske seems to bill itself as an app akin to Foursquare – a place to find the best local cafes, restaurants, and sights in major cities. But really it’s more of a place where photo-bloggers can publish their unique take on amazing locations, thereby providing you with gorgeous photos and succinct chunks of writing to devour.
You can jump right into the main feed, or focus on a specific city. You then tap on a photo to open an individual story. Every one we tried was rich in superb imagery, with just enough text to add meaningful context without interrupting the flow of the visuals.
Neatly, you can tap a map icon to see where the various photos were all taken; and if you sign up for an account, favorite stories or individual images can be bookmarked for later. But even if you simply treat Townske as a regularly-updated lean-back digital take on a newspaper travel supplement, you can’t really go wrong.
With a native weather app bafflingly absent from iPad, you need to venture to the App Store to get anything beyond the basic daily overview Notification Center provides. Weather Underground is the best freebie on the platform, offering a customizable view to satisfy even the most ardent weather geeks.
Current conditions are shown at the top, outlining the temperature, precipitation likelihood, and a local map. But scroll and you can delve into detailed forecasts, dew point readings, sunrise and sunset times, videos, webcams, health data and web links. The bulk of the tiles can be disabled if there are some you don't use, and most can be reordered to suit.
Although not making the best use of iPad in landscape, the extra screen space afforded by Apple's tablet makes the Weather Underground experience a little more usable than on iPhone, enabling faster access to tiles. And for free, it's a top-notch app, although you can also fling $1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99 at it annually if you want rid of the unobtrusive ads.
XE Currency is a currency converter that’s far from the prettiest of its kind – but it is useful and has all the right features.
Initially, it lists a few currencies, with the base one at the top. Tap an item in the list to select it as the new base currency; you can also adjust the base figure – tap on the number, and then enter something new in the calculator. The list of currencies can be changed at any point, and an item’s position adjusted by tap-holding and dragging it.
Beyond that, you can analyze rates, by punching in an alternate exchange rate, view graphs that outline rates for a pair of currencies over the past decade, and sign up to free rate alerts, which notify you when specific points are hit.
Now check out the best paid iPad apps
Red Dead Online: beta access, launch date, and what to expect from online play
Red Dead Online is set to kick off in the coming weeks. But with such a massive open-world to explore in Red Dead Redemption 2's single-player story, why should you be excited about the game's online mode?
Rockstar's open-world Western game, a prequel to 2010's Red Dead Redemption, was released to wide critical acclaim and is basically all anyone in our office – or yours, probably – has been talking about for weeks.
While you might expect an online mode to be live from the game's launch, it makes sense for Rockstar to want you to focus on the main story – and boy is there a lot of it – before waltzing into a less narrative-driven multiplayer experience in Red Dead Online.
[Update: Red Dead Online beta to launch at the end of November.]
Rockstar has proved itself at converting a massive single-player game into a lively online experience, as shown in the launch of GTA Online in 2013, which has become almost as massive a phenomenon as the mainline GTA V game it spun off from.
So what can you expect from Red Dead Online, and when does the beta actually start?
Cut to the chase What is Red Dead Online? The online component of Rockstar's open-world WesternWhat can I play it on? PS4 or Xbox OneWhen can I play it? The beta launches in November, with the full release likely in 2019 Red Dead Online beta accessYes, Rockstar are easing in with a Red Dead Online beta – the company warns to expect "turbulence" at launch while optimizes the gameplay – but it's a public beta, and we're going to get our first good look at what this means very soon.
According to IGN, the Red Dead Online beta is set to launch at the end November. Anyone with a PS4 or Xbox One copy of the game will be able to access it.
This is likely to lead to a full launch shortly after. That may mean it comes in December, or we may have to wait until early 2019 to play the full online game.
So what will Red Dead Redemption 2 Online look like?
An official announcement for the online service read: "Using the gameplay of the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2 as a foundation, Red Dead Online will be ready to be explored alone or with friends, and will also feature constant updates and adjustments to grow and evolve this experience for all players."
There's not much else to go on, other than the online mode from Rockstar's other massive open-world property. If Red Dead Online is anything like GTA Online, we're going to see targeted quests and missions in an alternative game world, with freer customization and actions without the same long-term narrative consequences.
Playing with friends or matchmaking with strangers is a given, though we could see servers restricting player numbers below GTA Online's 30 for a more curated feel.
We imagine Red Dead Online will stay comparatively grounded, and not veer too much from the central game experience. We can envisage saloons where you play poker and start fights with other players, and we can see quickly descend into bottle-over-the-head chaos.
The option of challenging players to quick-fire duels, or pulling heists and train robberies with your posse – with new missions like these added with regular updates – is likely to form a big part of the appeal too.
Red Dead Online: what we want to seeCharacter customization
Red Dead Redemption 2's protagonist Arthur Morgan already allows an immense level of detail in how he dresses and styles his appearance. Opening up a character creation tool for Red Dead Online seems like a natural step, meaning you can make a cowboy avatar that truly feels like you. The option to play as a woman seems like a no-brainer, too.
All the minigames
We definitely hope the minigames will be playable online with your friends – card games, knife games, drinking games, and all that other wholesome fun you cowboys get up to.
A slow, slow pace
One of the things we love about Read Dead Redemption 2 is the thoughtful pace – so we're hoping the online mode doesn't go too octane for the rustic cowboy setting. We want to take a slow trot to the saloon before beating our friends at poker, or lying in the undergrowth while we wait to rob an incoming train – not a 6v6 deathmatch on flaming ponies.
Maybe some zombies though
Okay, as much as we love the core Read Dead experience, the last game's Undead Nightmare DLC was a fantastic adventure in its own right, raising the dead in what felt like a serious Western blended with a camp horror movie. It was too good an experiment not to resurrect this time around – we hope.
Cross-platform play
We haven't seen cross-platform play for a Rockstar game before, though the CEO Strauss Zelnick has been open about his desire to overcome traditional console distinctions for online play.
We'd love to see PS4 and Xbox One owners play together in Red Dead Online's wild west, though Sony have also proven themselves a stickler on this point in the past – even if it eventually succumbed to pressure on Fortnite cross-platform play.
Red Dead Redemption 2 release date, character list and reviewsRed Dead Redemption 2: easter egg guideRed Dead Redemption 2: weapons guide
F1 live stream: how to watch the Brazilian Grand Prix 2018 online from anywhere
Whatever you think of Lewis Hamilton, you'd have to be a real grouch to deny that winning a fifth Formula One World Drivers' Championship is a very special achievement. If Mexico was crossing the line, then this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix is the victory march. And we'll tell you how to get an F1 live stream from absolutely anywhere with our advice in this guide.
Four titles in five years confirms that Hamilton is the dominant force in this era of F1. It feels like a good few weeks ago since we were talking about the 2018 Formula 1 season being a two-horse race between him and his German foe Sebastian Vettel. The second half off the season has been all about the Brit.
So what will the Brazilian Grand Prix hold? A chance for Hamilton to celebrate in style? The opportunity for Vettel to take a consolation victory? Or maybe the time to shine for the likes of Daniel Ricciardo, Max Verstappen and Kimi Räikkönen - all of who have wins this season - or Valtteri Bottas, who hasn't.
Keep reading to see all of your F1 live stream options - it doesn't matter where in the world you live. We're not talking some dodgy feed you've found on Reddit either - we're only interested in legal feeds of the Brazilian Grand Prix here.
Images courtesy of Formula1.com
10 Android phone security tips you need to know
Most of us use our phones far more often than our laptops – but where we used to obsess about laptop security, when it comes to our our Android handsets… not so much.
This is partly because many of the security basics have been patched away and firmed up. However, there are still ways to make sure your phone isn't compromised, along with all your passwords and sensitive data.
So here are our top 10 security tips that will help you to enjoy a smooth, secure and worry-free experience on your Android phone.
Isn’t it strange that a disembodied, almost-conscious voice can control our homes, but we’re still using clunky old passwords to get into our devices? And many of us still use the same handful of simple but easy-to-remember passwords for multiple logins. This is bad.
A password manager like Lastpass is the solution. It 'hides' your passwords behind a master password, and this is the only one you actually need to remember.
Password managers can usually also generate ultra-strong passwords, so you don’t have to put the effort in yourself. And once installed, these apps will auto-fill your logins.
Some security experts say you should disable autofill on your phone and laptop, but the less we have to think about and interact with passwords the better, we say.
If you want some more variety in your choice, then apps like Dashlane, 1Password and Enpass are a good alternative.
Check out our list of the best password managers
Flexibility is one of the attractions of Android over iOS. However, this flexibility also gives you the opportunity to do some serious damage to your phone, by way of side-loading.
Android lets you install apps from their raw installer files, just as you might do on a Windows computer – this is side-loading. You can download 'apk' app files directly from your browser, or from a third-party app store like Getjar or SlideMe.
This is dead handy for distributing work-in-progress apps, or ones that, for whatever reason, would not be allowed on Google Play. However, there’s no easy way to tell if the files have been infected with malware – so stick to Google Play unless you know the origins of those app files.
There are arguments for and against using a fingerprint scanner as your main security measure. It’s not as secure as a strong password or PIN, but you can’t beat the convenience of a fast scanner.
If you do use your phone's digit scanner, however, it's important that your back-up PIN isn't one that's easy for others to guess – 1111, 0000 or 1234 are not suitable passwords, and if you use them there’s really not much point having any security on your phone at all.
The same is true of 'pattern' unlocks: if it’s simple, it’s not good enough. Balancing complexity with ease of typing and memorability is the key here – as you end up using these logins all the time, you should find they work their way into your muscle memory pretty quickly.
If you live in a city, it’s pretty hard to avoid using public Wi-Fi – these networks are everywhere, and many of them are offered by the same handful of providers. Most security experts advise treating public Wi-Fi with suspicion, if not avoiding it altogether.
Several different kinds of attack can mean that data stored on your phone, and information you type into in, falls into the hands of an opportunist hacker – and you really don’t have to be an IT genius to mount an attack.
The best policy is to only browse sites with an 'https' URL, as this means they're secured. And never input your card details or use online banking while on public Wi-Fi – all bank websites may be secured, but that security will do nothing to prevent a so-called 'man in the middle' attack, where the hacker intercepts information being sent from your phone to a banking or other website.
A VPN, or virtual private network, acts like an extra layer of protection for your browsing, as all your data is passed through an encrypted connection between your phone and the VPN provider’s servers.
It sounds rather technical, but using a VPN is quite simple. Many of the most popular VPN services have Android apps, and you simply run these, choose the location of the server you want and then you’re away – your phone can 'pretend' it’s halfway across the world if you like.
Top VPN services include Tunnelbear, NordVPN and ExpressVPN, among many others.
Want to watch your home TV abroad? Stay safer online? Or just enjoy pretending to be in Thailand? Check our TechRadar's best VPNs
The least fun kind of updates are often the most important. Brand-new features in a fresh version of Android are exciting, but it’s security updates that keep your phone safe.
Google releases these once a month, and they tackle any new threats and vulnerabilities uncovered since the previous update. You can see the last time your phone received a security update by going to Settings > Security & Lock Screen > Security Update.
If the date under this entry is from months ago, or even a year or more, your phone is not particularly safe. Unfortunately there’s no fix for this, as you can’t make your own security updates.
Frequency of security updates should be a consideration when you're buying a phone. Google Pixel phones such as the Google Pixel 3 get security updates first, and Android One phones guarantee at least three years of security updates.
It’s not only your phone’s core software that needs regular updates – apps do as well. Even simple app updates can, on occasion, patch up security problems.
To check for app updates, go to Google Play, select My Apps & Games, and then the Updates tab.
Turn on Auto updates and you can avoid ending up with an old, potentially vulnerable, version of one of your favorite apps. You’ll find the Auto update option in Settings > Auto-update Apps.
The best way to avoid your Google account being hijacked is to use two-step verification. When you enable this a code will be sent to your phone whenever you try to log in to your Google account on another device.
It may sound like an inconvenience – a pain even – but it dramatically improves your security. Even if your password is compromised, others still can’t get access to your information.
You can sign up for Google’s free two-step verification feature at Google's dedicated website. Whenever you log in you can choose to be sent an SMS verification code, be called with the code, or use the Google app to confirm the login.
It’s important to know where you stand when your phone is lost or stolen. Android actually gives you some fantastic controls if your phone goes missing.
A Find My Phone dashboard enables you to play an alert sound through the phone's speaker, remotely wipe the entire phone, or sign out of your accounts and lock the handset. This may not help you get your phone back, but it does let you rest easier about the threat of having your identity stolen.
To make sure you can access these controls, turn on Location access on your phone, found in Security & Lock Screen, and enable Find My Phone in the same menu.
10. Be careful about following links in SMS messagesWe know many people who are relatively savvy in most areas of life, but who have fallen foul of SMS scams. Classic examples include texts that purport to be from your bank, and ask you to log in to your account, and the WhatsApp scam, which asks you to pay a small sum in order to continue using the service, and then promptly nicks your card details.
The best way to deal with these scams isn't a security option on your phone or a piece of software – you simply need to use common sense, and be very suspicious of any unsolicited messages you receive.
However, certain security apps will scan your texts for ones that look like phishing scams, including Kaspersky Internet Security.
Brought to you in association with Nokia and Android One, helping you to make more of your smartphone – learn more here
The first Black Friday SIM only deals of 2018 have arrived: 7GB for £10 per month
We're now only a fortnight away from Black Friday and the deals are starting to gush in. We've been seeing deals on phones, broadband and now the first SIM only Black Friday deals. Money savers rejoice!
Not only has iD Mobile swooped on in and dropped the first SIM only deals, but it has also made one of them available EXCLUSIVELY to TechRadar readers. That means lucky you gets the inside knowledge on this offer and get straight in on the action.
The trio of SIM plans offer decent data for bills that come in at no more than a tenner. iD offers up a few more benefits with its SIM only contracts, the main being that they work on a one month rolling contract which means you never have to worry about being stuck in a lengthy contract if you change your mind.
Check out the full details of these SIM only deals...
iD's Black Friday SIM only deals in full: Compare this to all of today's best SIM only deals Who is iD Mobile?iD is a sub-section of Carphone Warehouse so you can rest assured that it is a trustworthy company. It has three main points which help it stand out in the SIM battle: i) your data rolls over each month; ii) you can set your own limits and control your monthly spend; and iii) you can use roaming in 50 destinations around the world.
See how this SIM only deal lines up with the competition with our price comparison below
The best 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray players you can buy right now
Netflix and Amazon may now be offering 4K streaming options, but if you still hanker for the best, uncompressed picture quality from your movie sessions, you should be investing in a UHD Blu-ray player.
While much of the world might settle for streaming video and dismiss physical discs as relics from a bygone age, no consumer video stream can get close to the quality of a 4K Blu-ray at the moment.
What's more, if you've invested in a top-notch television set such as the LG C8 OLED, then it deserves some 4K Blu-ray pampering.
In 2018 the "4K" tax for Blu-ray players has largely gone too. Out favourite decks may still be on the pricey side, but there are affordable picks out there if the budget is tight. Most support 4K Netflix too, which isn't always available in 4K TVs.
That means you can enjoy watching your high-resolution Blu-rays as well as streaming content from the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Google Play TV & Movies. So which 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player should you go for?
Don't miss our round-up of the Best 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray movies What else do I need to watch a UHD Blu-ray?In order to get a true 4K experience, remember that you'll need a 4K Blu-ray player, a 4K Blu-ray disc and, of course, a 4K TV in order to watch it. Don't have that last one? Check out our guide to the best 4K TV.
If you don't have a 4K TV, your 4K Blu-ray player will still work, but it will only display images in 1080p. Buy a regular Blu-ray instead of a 4K version and it will still play in 3840 × 2160 resolution, but it won't be a native 4K image and will be noticeably different to an Ultra HD Blu-ray.
Enough with the caveats. Here are the the best 4K Blu-ray players in the world:
Panasonic DMP-UB700 Oppo UDP-203 Sony UBP-X800Panasonic DMP-UB900 Samsung UBD-M9500 Sony UBP-X1000ESPanasonic DMP-UB300 Xbox One XXbox One S Samsung UBD-K8500
The Panasonic DMP-U700 is the 4K Blu-ray player we end up recommending most often. It's more affordable than an Oppo deck, and still gets you the amazing picture quality of Panasonic's top-end DMP-U900.
Streaming service support, with HDR-enabled 4K Netflix, is well worth trumpeting and the player does a swell job with 24-bit audio. It supports both FLAC and DSD files.
There's no Dolby Vision support, perhaps the main reason to upgrade to the DMP-UB900. But as it stands the UB700 offers the best balance of price, audio visual performance and features.
Read the full review: Panasonic DMP-UB700
Oppo makes the best Blu-ray players in the world. Or made, we should say. Oppo announced its intention to stop making headphones and Blu-rays players earlier this year.
The Oppo UDP-203 may be the most expensive Blu-ray player on this list, but perhaps you should grab one while you can.
It supports a full suite of both video and audio formats, including the niche SACD, and features three HDMI ports (one for video and audio, one for audio, and another to act as an HDMI passthrough).
It even supports the premium Dolby Vision HDR standard, which is still a rarity in players.
Unfortunately the Oppo doesn't include support for streaming services such as Netflix, but if you want a premium disc player (at a premium price), this is the one for you. It's of particular interest to audiophiles.
Read the full review: Oppo UDP-203
Sony might have been a little late to the Ultra HD Blu-ray party, but its first player is a great machine. It's solidly made, and its overall image quality is superb.
As an added bonus, the player also supports a wide range of audio formats, can play SACDs, and even DVD-As.
So why does the player sit the number three slot in our list? Well, unfortunately it lacks support for Dolby Vision, the high-end HDR format that discs are increasingly offering support for, and which the Oppo UDP-203 does now support thanks to a firmware update. Its also more expensive than our top pick, the Panasonic DMP-UB700.
If you want a UHD player that also doubles as a very capable music player, then the Sony UBP-X800 is a great choice, but if you're after something focussed solely on playing movies, then there are better or cheaper options out there.
Read the full review: Sony UBP-X800
The DMP-UB900 will restore you faith in physical media. In full 4K HDR guise it offers a level of performance that will have new 4K TV owners gasping. Ultra HD Blu-ray brings the experience of 4K digital cinema to the home, and rewards with brilliant colour fidelity, deep contrast and almost three-dimensional clarity.
Factor in solid file playback support, plus 4K iterations of Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, and you have a machine that'll make your new 4K HDR TV look sensational.
Read the full review: Panasonic DMP-UB900
Looking back at it now, Samsung’s first Ultra HD Blu-ray player, the Samsung UBD-K8500 (found further down the list) seems like a bit of a trial run.
Its build quality was rudimental as Samsung tried to undercut rival debut units on price. It didn’t carry any sort of built-in display. Its picture quality was OK as a starting point for a new format, but was soon overwhelmed by more heavy duty rivals. And while the deck did what it needed to, its feature count was soon exposed as pretty limited.
The new $399 (£450, about AU$500) UBD-M9500 feels like such a specific response to its predecessor’s limitations that you can almost imagine Samsung sitting down and ticking the old problems off one by one.
The result is a far more accomplished player that deserves a seat at the serious mid-range 4K Blu-ray player table - even though a couple of deliberate omissions might frustrate some quarters of the AV enthusiast market.
Read the full review: Samsung UBD-M9500
The UBP-X1000ES is Sony’s premium 4K Blu-ray offering, a posh stablemate to the unfeasibly fine UBP-X800. In terms of performance and value, the latter can be considered one of the best value UHD Blu-ray players available, so clearly this more expensive sibling needs to be rather special to warrant a premium.
To that end, the UBP-X1000ES delivers pristine UHD Blu-ray images and its audio performance is excellent, be it via HDMI or two channel analogue. The player is also artfully built, and incorporates a high-end 192kHz/ 32bit DAC and offers a gold-plated phono analogue audio output on the rear.
Ultimately, though, the X1000ES is considerably more expensive than the UBP-X800, and doesn’t quite have the feature roster of the Dolby Vision-enabled, MQA-playing Oppo UHD-203 - and if you’re looking for a UHD player with comparable audio chops (although admittedly not universal disc compatibility), then Panasonic’s DMP-UB900 provides cheaper competition.
Read the full review: Sony UBP-X1000ES
You'll make a couple of compromises if you want to take advantage of the DMP UB300's budget price-tag – there's no built-in Wi-Fi for example, and rear ports are incredibly limited – but thankfully the machine doesn't scrimp where it matters.
Picture quality is excellent, it supports a wide range of audio codecs and formats, and there's also streaming services built in if you're willing to go down the wired ethernet route.
Read the full review: Panasonic DMP-UB300
The Xbox One X is a beast of a gaming console. It offers 6 teraflops of performance, 12GB of GDDR5 RAM and an eight-core CPU clocked at 2.3GHz. By far and away, it's the most powerful device listed on this page. But despite all that power under the hood, it's not the best 4K Blu-ray player. Sure, it can play 4K UHD discs – and it even supports Dolby Atmos audio – but the images that it produces aren't likely to blow you away. That's probably because the Xbox One X doesn't have the same level of picture-upscaling that some of the other dedicated media players on this list have. While the Xbox One X might not be as good of a 4K Blu-ray player as the Oppo or the Sony, we'd like to see either one of those players handle an Xbox One X game.
Read the full review: Xbox One X
Not holding the title of a "proper Blu-ray player" doesn't stop the Xbox One S from being a great, cheap way to play 4K Blu-ray discs.
Sporting a Blu-ray disc drive and the capacity to run Netflix in 4K Ultra HD, Microsoft's latest iteration of the Xbox is a great 'jack-of-all-trades' machine that's capable of satisfying your UHD disc needs as well as playing the latest console game released for the system.
The downside of it being able to do everything is that you'll be working with an interface designed primarily for gaming. The controller that comes with the console isn't the most efficient way to control movie playback, and the machine lacks support for Dolby Vision.
Regardless, if you want a machine that can handle both your gaming and your home cinema needs, the Xbox One S is the console for the job.
Read the full review: Xbox One S
The K8500 is currently the cheapest route into 4K Blu-ray. It's also a useful hub for 4K OTT services from Netflix and Amazon, and while the design is a bit Marmite, you'll be consistently impressed by its loading speed and colourful UI.
You can get better image quality, support for more formats and better build quality by spending more money, but if you want a cheap machine that covers the basics, then the Samsung UBD-K8500 is yet to be beaten on price.
Read the full review: Samsung UBD-K8500
MacBook Air 2018 teardown shows it’s easier to repair than previous MacBooks
Apple’s devices are notoriously difficult to open up and repair, which can often lead to expensive trips to a nearby Apple store to have your broken MacBook or iPhone fixed or replaced, but it appears that the new MacBook Air 2018 is easier to repair than previous MacBooks.
Repair experts at iFixit have taken apart the new MacBook Air, and while it still has some of the quirks we’ve come to expect from Apple that prevents easy replacement of parts in its devices, such as a glued-on battery, there are some aspects, like a modular Touch ID sensor, which make the MacBook Air 2018 easier to repair.
This doesn’t mean you can easily open up the MacBook Air 2018 yourself and add or remove components, but it appears to be a step in the right direction.
Image credit: iFixit
The MacBook Air 2018 teardownFirst, iFixit took a look at the keyboard, and as expected it's pretty much the same as the one found in the new MacBook Pro. It has Apple’s Butterfly switches and a silicone membrane that keeps the key presses quiet, and should act as a method to prevent dust and dirt falling between the keys and causing problems.
The crew at iFixit then opened up the body of the MacBook Air 2018. To do this they needed a special pentalobe screwdriver to unfasten the screws, but otherwise, the process was quite straightforward.
As the website states: “This simple procedure brings a smile to our face in comparison to some of the booby-trapped lids we've found on MacBooks and MacBook Pros lately.”
With the MacBook Air open, there’s a neatly laid out (but compact) array of components on display, including a small logic board, fan, the speakers (which in our review we found to be one of the highlights of the new MacBook Air) and a “radiator-esque heat sink”.
As iFixit continued to explore the MacBook Air, the team found that the two Thunderbolt 3 ports are modular – a repair-friendly design that means the ports can be easily replaced if they become faulty. The Touch ID sensor is also modular, so it can be replaced without having to switch out the whole logic board.
There were also 10 adhesive tabs that secured the battery and speakers, and iFixit observed that “the mere presence of stretch-release adhesive generally means that someone at least thought about possible repair and disassembly situations.”
The iFixit team also found that the battery of the new MacBook Air is glued to the chassis, but as MacRumors reports, Apple will be providing Apple Authorized Service Providers with tools to replace the battery without having to replace the case. This makes it an easier, more affordable, fix that’s also better for the environment.
While these repairability improvements are welcome, it’s not all good news on that front, with iFixit awarding the MacBook Air 2018 a low 3 out of 10 repairability score.
“The Air still uses external pentalobes to keep you out, requires lots of component removal for common fixes, and both RAM and storage are soldered to the logic board,” iFixit concludes.
So, while the MacBook Air 2018 is more repairable than previous MacBooks, we’re still a long way off from DIYers being able to open up and fix their own Apple devices. We hope Apple continues to improve the repairability of its products in the future.
Best Mac 2018: the best Macs to buy this yearImage credits: iFixit
Google says it was a mistake to push app developers to make all-white interfaces
Apps with darker interfaces use less power than those that light up your phone's whole screen, and now Google has admitted that encouraging developers to make white the main color for all Android apps and interfaces might not have been the best idea.
At its annual I/O developer conference, Google showed a graph illustrating the relationship between screen brightness and power draw. As SlashGear notes, the two correlate almost perfectly.
Pixel color also affects power usage; blue pixels require considerably more energy than red and green at full brightness, but white is by far the most demanding, which means Google's style guidelines for Android apps are less than ideal for conserving power.
In 2014, the company began pushing its Material Design style guidelines, which are intended to give Android apps a modern, consistent look across devices, and make the best possible use of available space. The design language features round icons, smooth animations, and an awful lot of white.
Not too brightGoogle has been gradually introducing dark modes for its apps, giving users the opportunity to choose less power-hungry interfaces, but it's a slow process. YouTube for Android (which would seem like a prime candidate, since a dark background helps users focus on the video they're watching) only received the option in September.
Hopefully we'll start to see more apps turning to the dark side in the coming months, and enjoy a resulting boost in battery life if we decide to make the switch.
The best Android apps of 2018
Disney+ explained: the streaming platform for all things Disney
Update: Forget Disney Play: Disney's incoming streaming service will now be known as 'Disney+'. In an official tweet, Disney confirmed the finalized title for the 'direct-to-consumer' streaming service, alongside news of yet another Star Wars TV show – featuring Rogue One's Cassian Andor – that would make its way to the platform. Read on for the rest of the latest news and our insights on Disney+ below...
Soon, Netflix won't host Disney films. If you want your Moana, Star Wars or Coco fix, you'll need to subscribe to the Disney streaming service now known as 'Disney+' (formerly referred to as 'Disney Play'). Once the service goes live in 2019, it'll be the place to watch all your favorite films from all those franchises, plus everything Marvel, too.
Here you'll find new exclusive TV shows and movies - including an exclusive, live action Star Wars show called The Mandalorian that's being directed by Jon Favreau and two Marvel shows set around Scarlet Witch and Loki - plus tons of classic movies and TV shows as well from the Disney Vault.
It's billed as the company's 'biggest priority' next year, and it could upend the current king of the streaming world, Netflix, in one fell swoop.
Wondering if you'll need to add another streaming video service to your monthly haul? Here's an early look at what to expect from Disney+, and why even Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video subscribers might be tempted to jump on in 2019.
Disney+ will be an all-in-one Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars video destination, packing plenty of existing movies and TV shows along with a stack of brand-new content.
Disney has been working on the plan for some time now, acquiring a controlling stake in streaming technology provider BAMTech in 2017 following a first investment the previous year. BAMTech spun out from Major League Baseball's streaming efforts and now powers platforms like HBO Now and ESPN+, so it knows a little something about on-demand video traffic.
Obviously, Disney has a massive heap of content in its archives: loads of movies, TV series, and cartoons spread across the Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel brands. Fox's entertainment brands may well be folded into that, as well, given the pending deal.
Disney makes serious money (an estimated $300 million) putting its films and properties on Netflix and other services, but if Disney+ is attractive enough to pull in millions of paying subscribers, then it could yield potentially much more income. And it gives Disney a new, exclusive platform for developing new content, whether it's with existing brands or original properties.
The service is expected to launch in late 2019, giving Disney plenty of time to court creators and then develop and produce new shows.
So just who will be able to tune into the House of Mouse's streaming service? A report from Deadline suggests that the service will first debut in North America before expanding internationally.
Disney+ plans to have four to five exclusive TV shows and four to five original movies ready for the late 2019 launch, which means there will be a large amount of fresh content available on day one.
Surely the most exciting original announcement so far is that of a brand new live-action Star Wars TV series from Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Jungle Book) who will both write and executive produce the show. We've been waiting for details about it for what feels like years, but the title has finally been revealed as The Mandalorian.
For those not in the know, Mandalorians are a race (or is it species?) who live on the planet Mandalore and they're jetpack-toting warriors with a lot of political baggage. Now unless you've watched Star Wars Rebels, the only Mandalorian you're likely to have met before is Boba Fett.
But the new series will introduce us to a Mandalorian we've never met before and will follow his (or hers?) adventures throughout the Star Wars universe.
If that wasn't enough to get you excited, details have also been revealed that some great directors will be working alongside Favreau on the show, including Star Wars alum Dave Filoni, who’ll direct the first episode, as well as Bryce Dallas Howard, Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) and Deborad Chow (Jessica Jones).
It's not the only new Star Wars episodic content that'll be on the service early on, either. Rogue One's Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna) will also get his own prequel TV series exploring his life before the events of the 2016 film.
At San Diego Comic-Con 2018, Disney announced that a new, concluding season of animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars will also be on the service. We have to imagine that the existing episodes, currently on Netflix, will also join the fray.
We'll also get an original Marvel series, separate from the myriad shows already on Netflix and other platforms/channels, as well as a new Monsters Inc. project and a fresh take on the once-popular High School Musical franchise.
Many additional new shows and TV series have been rumored or reported on, but not officially announced as of this writing. Deadline suggests that projects based on Lady and the Tramp, Don Quixote, Sword and the Stone, and 3 Men and a Baby are in the works, along with other projects titled The Paper Magician, Stargirl, Togo, and Timmy Failure.
Deadline suggests that two films for the service were already in post-production as of February 2018: Magic Camp from director Mark Waters (starring Adam DeVine and Jeffrey Tambor), and Christmas-themed comedy Noelle from Marc Lawrence (featuring Anna Kendrick and Bill Hader).
That's not to mention the back-catalogue. Little's been said on older content, though we assume there'll be a good share of remastered classics and selected titles from Disney's extensive 95-year history. There'll also be plenty of television programming from the Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD.
All told, you can expect "thousands of hours" of Disney TV shows and films on the service, including existing content, and that new Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars films will be available to stream at some point following their theatrical releases.
How much will Disney+ cost?No official details have been released yet, but Disney is clearly positioning the service as a lower-cost alternative to Netflix.
"I can say that our plan on the Disney side is to price this substantially below where Netflix is. That is in part reflective of the fact that it will have substantially less volume," said Robert Iger, The Walt Disney Company's chairman and CEO. "It'll have a lot of high quality [content], because of the brands and the franchises that will be on it that we've talked about. But it'll simply launch with less volume, and the price will reflect that."
In short: less content for less money, but there should be plenty of compelling stuff on offer. Iger also suggested that the price could rise gradually over time as the service expands, which is hardly surprising—Netflix's prices have risen alongside its pivot towards original content.
The Disney streaming service won't have content from outside of the Disney ecosystem, as far as we know. That might seem obvious enough, but services like Netflix and Hulu have such diverse offerings because of their wide partnerships and licensing deals.
Disney has plenty of content to draw from, especially if Fox content comes onboard as well, but this will still be a very Disney-centric offering. On top of that, there won't be any R-rated or adult-oriented content on the service. That stuff will go to Hulu instead, according to a report from Deadline.
Also, the Marvel original series on Netflix will stay where they are for the foreseeable future. "As long as they keep making those shows, they continue on Netflix," said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in early 2018. "Our Marvel series that Disney produces for us – we own those shows. They run until we cancel them." He added, "We get to use them for a very long time."
It's far too early to know exactly how Disney+ will take shape, since we don't have a sense of the branding, availability of platforms, or final pricing—but the early signs are all promising.
Disney plans to tap into its estimable vault of franchises to create exclusive and potentially compelling new content, along with creating a single streaming service for watching all of the latest and greatest movies and TV shows from across the Disney creative ecosystem.
It'll have less content than Netflix, but a lower price is planned – and the Disney streaming service might be more appealing as an add-on to your current subscriptions, rather than a full-on replacement for Netflix or Hulu.
The Disney streaming service won't be as comprehensive or wide-ranging as some rivals, but Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel fans might have trouble resisting some of the original shows and movies coming down the pipeline. We're certainly excited to see what Disney has in mind for the live-action Star Wars series, above all, but other projects sound compelling as well.
DC Universe: DC's new TV and comic book streaming service explained
5 key WeChat takeaways from the Tencent annual conference
WeChat is one of the world’s largest Social networks, with over one billion monthly active users and over 900 million daily active users. For global marketers, this is a unique opportunity to expose your brand to the world’s largest single market.
More so, WeChat is not just social media software. Since it was first released in 2011, it has evolved into a web of services that are interconnected by its core social media features. Some call it a ‘Super App’. I’d like to go one step further, WeChat has developed, over the past several years, into what can only be described ‘Social OS’. I will explain what I mean by this term.
In China, WeChat is used for almost everything, every day, by almost everyone that has a mobile device. They’ve focused their service design around facilitating everyday needs of the Chinese public. Aside from social sharing, talking to friends, colleagues, customers and clients, WeChat is also used as a mobile wallet – and unlike Apple Pay – it has widespread adoption. WeChat pay is accepted everywhere in China, from your local vegetable market to street buskers.
We've also highlighted the best cloud servicesWhat does all the above mean for businesses looking to target Chinese consumers? Well, it’s great news, because China and WeChat are the only country and platform where you can service your customers through the entire user journey, in one place, from awareness to advocacy. It’s even attributable from Online to Offline (O2O) activities. Imagine the marketing and CRM possibilities!
Other features – on the consumer side – include in-platform O2O services, such as investing your mobile wallet funds, retail and restaurant integration, preorder/reservations, splitting bills, ordering taxis, smart home remote, even ordering a dog groomer while you are at work. And – on the business side – group chat and file sharing, daily time sheeting, supply chain management and sales CRM, think Salesforce, SAP and Slack.
Aside from these primary services, WeChat has also been pushing Mini-Programs. This is what makes WeChat a true Social OS. Mini-Programs are essentially apps that can be saved within WeChat, permanently. Just like apps on iPhone/iOS. So Mini-Programs opens an almost infinite number of new features to the WeChat ecosystem.
We are also seeing Western internet giants copying this model. Amazon are positioning Alexa as the core Social OS with apps or, as Amazon calls it, Skills. It’s the natural step – how does a service design tech giant make themselves indispensable in the daily lives of their users? By integrating more essential services, of course.
Now that we have some context, I’ll go through each of the key WeChat announcements from the recent Tencent annual conference.
New collaboration with Chinese public transport to enable ticket purchase with a simple QR code scan.
This integration will start with public transport in Tier 1 cities and is initially only for buses. But this is a big step towards a better public transport experience – as anyone who has been to China would know – the infrastructure is nothing short of amazing, but purchasing tickets can be a nightmare, and it’s even worse for foreign visitors. For example, the Underground in SH remains one of the last places that you can’t use WeChat pay. The more essential services in WeChat, the more customer behaviour data becomes available. And great campaigns are always based on strong insights.
Strengthening the Enterprise version of WeChat as a platform for businesses to communicate effectively with its customers.
WeChat Enterprise is the third account type launched a few years ago – helping businesses to manage internal communications – built from demand of WeChat’s organic adoption by business users, replacing emails in most cases. This update will take the Enterprise account one step further and enable customer/supplier better communications and management.
The other two WeChat account types are purely built for brands. WeChat Service account has full tech and API integrations, better presence and reach, but you can only post four times per month. Think of it as email marketing on an instant messaging platform. WeChat Subscription account has no post restrictions but has limited reach and almost no tech/API integration options, all subscription account content is arrogated into one feed for the user. A better choice for publications.
Internal collaboration tools for businesses such as in-platform office products with co-authoring, group conference calls, automated reporting and more.
Linked to point two, not only is WeChat dominating business communications in China, it clearly has the ambition to become an integrated solution, too. Enterprise and B2B WeChat features are the biggest announcements at this year’s Tencent annual conference.
Real time storage and distribution of receipts/invoices integrated with WeChat pay to help with fraud and ease the expense process for businesses.
So Fapiao in China is both an invoice and a receipt, which is where the confusion comes from for most foreign businesses. It’s also a very traditional system based on mechanical machines and paper records. It’s easy to manipulate and unreliable. Integrating the process on WeChat (on top of other business solutions) further reinforces the platform as an essential enterprise tool whilst creating a more robust and secure invoice and receipt system.
Users will be able to gather, attribute and analyse purchasing data from shops for both organic and WeChat paid media.
The third and final major category of announcements. WeChat has been pushing for both Mini-Programs and social commerce features. As well as being apps, Mini-Programs can also be shops. You can already collect data by asking users to give consent before they use a mini-program. But attribution of sales against WeChat Organic and Paid Social data has been poor. This is will be an extremely welcoming update for social sellers on the WeChat platform – and marketers alike.
In conclusion, this year’s Tencent annual conference has made some of the biggest announcements for WeChat in recent years. They are aiming at doing three things: reinforce WeChat as an indispensable platform for its users, providing more integrated solutions for business users, and finally, improving e-commerce performance for social sellers. Big announcements, big future, and even greater market dominance for Tencent’s WeChat – exciting and somewhat scary times.
Arnold Ma, Founder of QUMIN
Also check out the best free Skype alternatives
Anthem will have at least a small connection with the Mass Effect games
It doesn't look like we'll be seeing a new Mass Effect game anytime soon, but BioWare is keeping the franchise fresh in our minds in its upcoming online RPG Anthem.
In celebration of N7 Day (the unofficial Mass Effect holiday), Anthem and Mass Effect lead producer Michael Gamble tweeted an image of N7 armor being worn in the Fort Tarsis hub.
The N7 armor is the iconic body suit worn by Mass Effect's protagonist Commander Shepard.
You can check out Gamble's tweet below:
Gamble didn't release any details about when or how this skin will be made available to players, but we're pretty excited to get a piece of Mass Effect in BioWare's new IP.
In addition to this teaser tweet, BioWare tweeted a video examining the past and future of the Mass Effect franchise, and confirmed that Mass Effect Andromeda is now enhanced for Xbox One X.
You can check out BioWare's video below if you're feeling a big nostalgic:
Anthem is due to release on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on February 22, 2019.
Anthem trailers, release date and news
Shadow VR standalone headset to take on Oculus Quest
The future of VR is wireless and standalone – that much has been made clear by the launch of the Oculus Go, HTC Vive Focus and the upcoming Oculus Quest. But it's not just all about Oculus, Facebook and HTC when it comes to virtual reality – enter Shadow Creator and its Shadow VR standalone headset.
Like the Vive Focus, the Shadow VR is a Vive-Wave based 6DoF headset, which will be accompanied by as-yet-unrevealed controllers that the company has made itself.
Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, it's packing a slightly lower resolution display of 2,560 x 1,440 compared to the Quest and Focus' 2,880 x 1,600 screens. You still get a 110 degree field of view though, putting you at the center of the action without unnatural limitations on your vision.
More to come?Following the Vive Wave reference design, you've again got stereoscopic cameras on the front of the headset, allowing for inside-out tracking of movement.
There's not much else to go on for the Shadow VR at this point then, other than price and release date. It's set to cost $399 and release on November 11. That's a match for the Quest, and a relatively short time until release for a headset coming out of left field.
With a growing list of 15 companies working alongside HTC on Android-powered VR, it'll be interesting to see what the future holds for wired, desktop based VR.
Should I buy an Oculus Go?
Not at all like ordinary information taxes, M2M duties must cover an essentially bigger transmission capacity: The variances in information necessities are as it were some kilobytes or a few gigabytes, depending on the application. For this reason, there is an assortment of distinctive duty offers and charging models, particularly for M2M ventures.
ReplyDelete