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The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 is here – as the follow-up to Samsung’s first ever foldable phone, the original Galaxy Fold, it brings some tweaks and improvements to the established formula with some extra features thrown in.

We first heard about the Galaxy Z Fold 2 at the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 launch event, where it was teased by the company, but we didn’t get all the information until a separate event a few weeks later.

So what’s new in this improved Galaxy Fold phone? The form factor is largely the same, but beyond the expected iterative updates, there are some other new features that prospective Fold buyers might be interested in.

We’ll take you through both phones, putting them head-to-head, to show you what’s new.

Price

The original Samsung Galaxy Fold cost $1,980 / £1,900 / AU$2,900 when it launched, and in the first year of its life that price didn’t drop by very much.

The Galaxy Z Fold 2 costs roughly the same at $1,999 / £1,799 / AU$2,999, so depending on your region it might cost a touch more or less than the Galaxy Fold’s launch price, but only a bit.

That’s a high price for a smartphone, about twice as much as you’d normally pay for a premium handset, and more than Samsung’s other foldable, the Galaxy Z Flip, which costs $1,380 / £1,300 / AU$1,999.

Design and display

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 has a similar form factor to the original Galaxy Fold, but that doesn’t make the two phones identical.

Without even opening either Galaxy Fold phone, there’s one noticeable difference on the outsides – the original Fold had a small 4.6-inch screen on the outside that took up some space on the front, but the Z Fold 2 has a bigger 6.23-inch display that takes up the whole of the front.

The camera array on the back of the newer phone has been redesigned in keeping with the Note 20, and the hinge has seen a huge overhaul too – hopefully this one won’t break easily.

Opening the phones, the newer one is slightly bigger with a 7.6-inch screen over 7.3 inches on its predecessor. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 has also got a 120Hz refresh rate, compared to just 60Hz on the original.

The screens on both phones use Dynamic AMOLED tech. The resolutions are 1536 x 2152 pixels for the original Galaxy Fold and 1768 x 2208 pixels for the Z Fold 2 – thanks to the differing display sizes this means the pixel-per-inch counts are almost identical.

Both phones have side-mounted fingerprint sensors for unlocking them.

Camera and battery

On paper, it seems the original Samsung Galaxy Fold has a better camera array than its successor, but we’ll have to take both out for tests to see if that’s definitely the case.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold has three rear cameras, consisting of a 12MP main, 16MP ultra-wide, and 12MP telephoto 2x zoom snapper, but there’s also a 10MP and 8MP snapper on the front of the device when unfolded, for selfies, and a sixth camera on the front when it’s folded, with a 10MP resolution. 

In comparison, the Galaxy Z fold 2 has the same rear cameras, but with a 12MP resolution on the ultra-wide. There’s only one selfie camera on the front (when unfolded) which has a 10MP resolution, and there’s a similar 10MP snapper on the front when you fold the phone.

Megapixel counts don’t tell the whole story of photography potential, and nor do camera numbers, so we’ll have to test both phones before declaring one better than the other.

In terms of battery sizes, the Samsung Galaxy Fold has a 4,380mAh power back and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 has a slightly bigger one at 4,500mAh, but thanks to the screen size increase we wouldn’t expect the phone to last much longer.

The original Samsung Galaxy Fold has 15W wired and wireless charging, and while the Galaxy Z Fold 2 bumps its wired powering up to 25W, wireless charging is actually slower at 11W. Both support reverse wireless charging too, letting you use the device to power up others.

Specs and features

The newer foldable phone has a better chipset, as while the original Galaxy Fold has a Snapdragon 855 processor, Samsung stuck the improved Snapdragon 865 Plus in the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Both phones have 12GB of RAM though.

Strangely, the newer Galaxy Fold model has less internal storage – while the original comes in only a 512GB model, the newer one only comes in 256GB.

While the main selling point of both phones is the foldable display, the Galaxy Z Fold 2 borrows a few tricks from the Galaxy Z Flip which help it make the most of the form factor. The main one of these is Flex Mode, so you can use special functions when the handset is only partly unfolded. An example of this is so you can use the phone as its own camera stand, for if you want to take a selfie without holding the device.

Both phones run One UI, Samsung’s fork of Android. The Fold 2 comes with Android 10, the original comes with Android 9 out of the box but it can be upgraded to 10 easily.

Takeaway

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 fixes many of the issues people had with the original – except for the price, which is still astronomically high.

The front screen is bigger, the chipset is improved, and the 120Hz refresh rate screen will impress many. 

There are some areas where the phone is less of a step up, but seeing as the original Samsung Galaxy Fold hasn’t lost its value much, if you’re in the market for a foldable phone, you’d be better off going for the newer device.

If Samsung soon decides to give a big price cut to the original Galaxy Fold, and turn it into a ‘budget’ foldable, maybe our takeaway will change, but for now there are few reasons not to consider the newer Galaxy Z Fold 2.

7,000MB/s read and 6,850MB/s write sequential performance

Although we might have seen a glimpse of Samsung’s 980 Pro, Sabrent is not giving it any room to breathe as it has unveiled its answer, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Being a faster version of the Rocket 4, the Rocket 4 Plus uses Phison’s PS5018-E18 SSD PCIe 4.0 controller paired up with TLC NAND flash, hitting impressive sequential read and write performance of up to 7000MB/s for read and up to 6850MB/s for write.

The Rocket 4 Plus will be available in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities.

In order to deal with all the heat from such performance, Sabrent has come up with a custom heatsink, which combines an aluminum heatsink with copper heat coils. The complete heatsink also includes thermal tape, an aluminum tray, and a top heatspreader. According to Sabrent, this should prevent all thermal throttling, pushing it to maximum performance.

Unfortunately, the product page did not include 4K random read and write performance and we still do not have a price nor the availability date, but it will be interesting to see how well it does in detailed benchmarks.

According to leaked product pages from Gainward, Nvidia’s new high-end card is wild, at least when it comes to memory.

Here it is: The Nvidia RTX 3090. Or at least, one variant of the new GPU from hardware company Gainward, which appears to have accidentally posted product pages for the RTX 3090 and 3080 a little bit early. 

A day before Nvidia’s Ampere reveal event, where we expect Nvidia to officially show off the RTX 3090 and 3080 graphics cards, Gainward posted (and then removed) images and specs for its versions of each card, with specs that match up with previous leaks. The 3090 is a 24GB monster, while the 3080 comes equipped with 10GB of GDDR6X.

As spotted by Videocardz and our colleagues at Tom’s Hardware, the Gainward product pages list four configurations for the 3090 and 3080, two of which are “Golden Sample” (aka factory overclocked) variants. You can see the full specifications at the Videocardz link.

Here are the key specs for the base models:

RTX 3090 Phoenix

CUDA cores: 5248

Clock speed: 1695 MHz (Boost)

Memory: 24GB GDDR6X

Memory clock: 9750 MHz

Bandwidth: 936 GB/s

PCIe: Gen 4

Max power consumption: 350W

Output: HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a

RTX 3080 Phoenix

CUDA cores: 4352

Clock speed: 1710 MHz (boost)

Memory: 10GB GDDR6X

Memory clock: 9500 MHz

Bandwidth: 760 GB/s

PCIe: Gen 4

Max power consumption: 320W

Output: HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a

The biggest difference between the two is that huge jump in memory. For comparison, the RTX 2080 launched with 8GB of GDDR6 in 2018; the RTX 2080 Ti, released at the same time, had 11GB of GDDR6.

The amount of VRAM a graphics card has is especially important for gaming at 4K, where the larger frame buffer is especially memory hungry. Demanding games today can and will use more than 8GB. The RTX 3080 may not have much headroom at native 4K, then, while the RTX 3090 has tons; it looks like the card you’ll want for Microsoft Flight Simulator, as long as you can pair it with a high-end CPU.

This time around there’s no mention of a 3080 Ti at launch, which likely leaves the door open for a card in between the 3080 and 3090 in the future; perhaps a 3080 Ti or Super model with 16GB of memory. While we do expect Nvidia to announce a 3070, that model wasn’t leaked on Gainward’s site. Neither product page listed a price, but considering the specs, expect some big dollar signs tomorrow.

One other interesting tidbit: Gainward’s spec sheets state that both the 3090 and 3080 models require two 8-pin power connectors, meaning they seemingly won’t be using Nvidia’s new 12-pin connector.

Reached for comment on the GPU pages, Nvidia responded “We do not comment on rumors or unannounced products.”

The best B550 motherboard means picking from the latest pool of AMD motherboards rocking a second-tier chipset, and will become ever more relevant as the next generation AMD Ryzen 4000 CPUs become available towards the end of the year. But what are you missing by opting for a B550 motherboard compared to the top-end X570 AMD gaming motherboards?

Honestly, not a great deal. It’s been a long time coming, however; almost a year after the original 500-series AMD Ryzen motherboard was launched this mainstream chipset has hit the market, bringing PCIe 4.0 support into the more affordable end of the board market. Well, we say ‘more affordable’ but there have been many cases where B550 versions of a manufacturer’s board cost more than the X570 ones. 

That’s a symptom of the B550 motherboards lagging behind, with existing X570 boards in the market almost inevitably getting cheaper 12 months post launch, but also because a B550 board can deliver performance pretty much on par.

The main difference between B550 and X570 chipsets is that AMD has replaced the PCIe Gen 4 interface used on the high-end boards, which connects the CPU socket to the platform controller hub (PCH) chip at the heart of the chipset, with a PCIe Gen 3 version for these second-string boards. The Ryzen 3000 CPUs can still offer PCIe 4.0 support itself, delivering 16 high-speed lanes for a GPU and a further four for lightning-fast SSDs, but means the B550 can’t support secondary PCIe 4.0 SSDs or graphics cards.

The tighter bandwidth on offer does hit other sensitive areas, such as USB connectivity, but on the whole doesn’t actually affect gaming performance one jot. And it all means we will have a pair of 500-series chipsets once AMD’s next-gen processors arrive this year to lay siege to our best CPU for gaming list.

1. Asus ROG Strix B550-E Gaming

The best B550 motherboard

Form factor: ATX | Memory support: 4x DIMM, up to 128GB, up to DDR4-4600 | Expansion slots: 2x PCIe 4.0 x16, 1x PCIe 3.0 x4 | Storage: 2x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gbps | Networking: Intel WiFi 6, Intel 2.5Gb ethernet, Bluetooth 5.1 | Rear USB: 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 4 x USB 2.0

Extensive feature set

Build quality

Top-end networking

Sure, the Asus ROG Strix B550-E is the same price as other X570 motherboards, in fact it pretty much matches our favourite of AMD’s top-end boards, the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon. But it’s a premium motherboard, with all the trappings you’d expect from Asus’ Republic of Gamers stable, such as 14+2 power stage, M.2 heatsinks, and pre-installed backplates. You also get Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking as well as Intel 2.5Gb ethernet too. And RGB LEDs, of course.

Performance too is typically good for a high-end Asus board, matching X570 motherboards for gaming performance without issue. That said, of the B550 boards we’ve tested, it’s the far more affordable MSI board that actually comes out top in our straight performance testing. But the Asus can overclock far better, even if it does chew up more raw power from the plug on the whole.

The Asus ROG Strix B550-E Gaming is the whole package then, and right now is our all-round pick for the best B550 motherboard. Though that still feels like a tough recommendation when X570 boards are the same price…

2. MSI MAG B550M Mortar

The best B550 motherboard for pure gaming performance

Form factor: Micro-ATX | Memory support: 4x DIMM, up to 128GB, up to DDR4-4400 | Expansion slots: 1x PCIe 4.0 x16, 1x PCIe 3.0 x4 | Storage: 2x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gbps | Networking: Realtek 2.5Gb ethernet | Rear USB: 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 2.0

Great stock-clock performance and efficiency

Slick BIOS

Competitive pricing

When it comes to gaming performance above all else then MSI’s micro-ATX MAG B550M Mortar is your best bet for an affordable next-gen Ryzen machine. It comes in around the $160 mark, making it cheaper than a great many X570 and other B500 motherboards on the market right now. 

The gaming frame rates of the MSI B550 Mortar put it above the rest of the B550 crew we’ve tested so far, and indeed its straight CPU performance puts it up there with some of the best X570s. That bodes well if you’re looking for an affordable home for your AMD Zen 3 CPU of the future, this B550 has a great chance to ensure it performs to its fullest stock-clocked potential without breaking the bank.

But you will be missing out on extra PCIe 4.0 M.2 and x16 graphics slots if those extras mean a lot to you. You can also opt to ditch wireless networking too, depending on whether you pick the straight Mortar or the more expensive Mortar Wi-Fi version. The 8+2+1 power phase design is arguably a more unwelcome miss, however, as that results in a board that isn’t going to spark any overclocking joy in your heart. But, as an affordable gaming board without OC pretensions, it’s a great shout.

3. ASRock B550 Taichi

The best-looking B550 motherboard

Form factor: ATX | Expansion slots: 2x PCIe 4.0 x16, 1x PCIe 3.0 x4 | Storage: 2x M.2, 8x SATA 6Gbps | Networking: Intel WiFi 6, Intel 2.5Gb ethernet, Bluetooth 5.1 | Rear USB: 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB 2.0

Seriously robust

Great performance

Strong feature set

The geared aesthetic of ASRock’s premium Taichi motherboards makes this the best-looking of all the B550 boards we’ve checked out, though that premium nature does make it also the most expensive. Indeed it’s priced higher than the ASRock X570 Taichi, which makes this a difficult recommendation until the almost inevitable price correction which will surely happen over time.

But it’s got the same sort of specs list as the excellent Asus ROG Strix B550-E, and means you get all the networking niceties, and the gaming performance to put it around the top of the list. It’s also got some overclocking chops too, allowing us to hit 4.2GHz on the Ryzen 3 3100 budget gaming chip.

It’s also incredibly well-built, with a metal structure that makes it one of the most robust B550 motherboards around. But yeah, it’s tough to look at that price, and feel this second-tier chipset is where you want to put your Ryzen money.

Should I buy a B550 or X570 motherboard?

When it comes to straight performance there really isn’t any tangible difference between the top two AMD 500-series motherboard chipsets. The CPU itself is still offering a PCIe 4.0 connection to the main graphics slot and the primary M.2 SSD connection, ensuring all the bandwidth you could need for a standard AMD gaming PC. 

And there are B550 motherboards, such as the Asus ROG and ASRock Taichi boards above, which offer the sort of power componentry to deliver overclocking performance too. AMD has also confirmed that both B550 and X570 will support the next generation of Ryzen CPUs.

Where they really differ, however, is in the extended feature set. While those two premium B550 boards do have an impressive feature list, the B550 chipset means that bandwidth-sensitive connections on the motherboard will be behind the top range of boards, thanks to the connection between the PCH on the chipset and the CPU using PCIe Gen3 as opposed to the complete Gen 4 solution across the X570s.

In general the B550 motherboards are also rather expensive at the moment, with the ASRock B550 Taichi being the most obvious example. It’s actually around the same price as the ASRock X570 Taichi, which is arguably the better board, or at least the more fully featured.

There are cheaper B550 boards out there, such as the ASRock B550 HDV, but then you really are losing out on luxuries like decent power phase design, and potentially then overall performance. That might just be a cut too far if you’re aiming for an affordable home for your next AMD Ryzen CPU purchase.

Your best bet is to keep in mind what features really mean the most to you. Do you need wireless networking, will you be overclocking, and how many Gen 4 SSDs are you likely to drop into your new AMD PC? If the answers are no, no, and one, then a B550 will be a good shout. Just make sure the one you pick doesn’t have a similarly specced, similarly priced X570 twin lurking around.

The Raspberry Pi is, by far, the world’s most popular single-board computer and, for many people, the Raspberry Pi 4 is fast enough to serve as a PC. But what if you want the flexibility of a single-board computer that has GPIO pins for physical computing but you need the speed and compatibility of an x86 PC? Enter Seeed’s Odyssey X86J4105, which marries an Intel Celeron CPU with two sets of GPIO pins, one of which is for an onboard Arduino-compatible controller and the other of which has 40 pins and claims to work with Raspberry Pi accessories.

Clearly more expensive than the priciest Raspberry Pi, the Odyssey X86J4106 starts at $188 for the basic model with no storage or operating system and goes up to $258 for our review configuration, which comes with 64GB of eMMC and an activated copy of Windows 10. Is the added versatility of an x86 Intel CPU worth the premium?

Design of the Odyssey X86J4105

Measuring 4.3 x 4.3 x 1.3 inch (110 x 110 z 33mm) the Odyssey X86J4105 is larger than the Raspberry Pi 4 3.3 x 2.2 x 1.1 inch (85 x 56 x 28mm) but not by a gross amount. On the underside of the board is the heatsink and fan atop the Intel Celeron CPU.

Optional Case for Odyssey X86J4105

The Odyssey X86J4105 comes as a bare board and if used in this configuration it will require some M3 standoffs to raise the board from your desk. If you purchase the optional $25 re_computer case then your Odyssey X86J4105 will be raised up from your desk via a plastic riser that acts as a means to expel the waste heat from the unit.

Atop the case’s plastic rises is a blue aluminum chassis which wraps around the board and has openings for the various ports. A glass lid, held in place via magnets can be easily removed using a secret button on the underside of the case. With the lid removed there is free access to all of the GPIO pins and the user expandable storage. The re_computer case is compatible with other maker boards such as the Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone and Jetson Nano and there are standoffs in the case which can be used to secure those boards.

Key Components and Ports on Odyssey X86J4105

Each version of the Odyssey X86J4105 comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and an Intel Celeron J4105, a three year old CPU which provides enough power to run Windows 10 Enterprise which came pre-installed on our review unit. Storage is provided via 64GB eMMC, available as an optional extra.

However, you can provide your own storage and there are an impressive number of ways to do this. A full size SATA port and M.2 SATA slot provide older, slower, but cost effective storage options. Just next to the M.2 SATA is space for a 4G / 5G cellular card for additional connectivity.

On the other side of the board is an NVMe slot which can be used with 2280 and 2242 drives. We populated our NVMe slot with a spare 256GB Toshiba drive and installed Ubuntu 20.04 for our later tests.

Display options are HDMI 2.0a at upto 4096×2160 @ 60 Hz and an additional DisplayPort is available via the front mounted USB-C connection. This provides another 4096×2160 @ 60 Hz output.

Cooling the Odyssey X86J4105

Cooling is via a large heat spreader and fan on the underside of the unit. We ran a series of Cinebench tests and our best score was 491 so clearly this is not a board for 3D rendering, and the temperature at one point hit 75 Celsius, much greater than the 60 Celsius trigger that would run the fan at 80%, but our fan just idly “ticked” as if it were unable to start. Looking in the BIOS we found that the fan was set to “Normal” which has trigger points at 45-50, 50-60 and above 60 Celsius.

By setting the fan to “Positive” we saw the fan come to life past 60 Celsius, but never at any temperature below that. There is no software to control the fan speed / curve; it is all handled via the BIOS. Despite this issue, the Odyssey never slowed down or bottlenecked.

Is the Odyssey X86J4105 better than a Raspberry Pi 4?

That depends on a certain point of view. CPU and memory performance is much better with the Odyssey, as are the SATA and NVMe drives which offer much higher performance than the micro SD cards used on the Pi.

We ran a sysbench stress test on the Raspberry Pi 4 and Odyssey, via Ubuntu. 

The Intel Celeron J4105 calculated prime numbers approximately six times faster than the Raspberry Pi 4.

It is clear that the Odyssey is a much more powerful board than even the Raspberry Pi 4 but what is also clear is that this is a board to use for projects that will benefit from its strengths such as better networking and access to more storage options.

GPIO on Odyssey X86J4105

There are two sets of GPIO pins present on the Odyssey. The smaller of the two is a 28-pin breakout for the onboard Arduino an ATSAMD21 ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU which identifies as a Seeeduino Zero in the Arduino IDE. This GPIO may not follow the design cues of other Arduino boards, but we have all of the GPIO pins that we need, digital, PWM and Analog pins, along with I2C, SPI and serial.

To use the Arduino GPIO, we need the Arduino IDE, which comes pre-installed with the provided copy of Windows 10. After setting up the IDE to work with the onboard Arduino we created two scripts to test the GPIO, one to check that we could control the GPIO to flash an LED, and another test to read the voltage through a potentiometer. Both of these scripts worked without issue.

The Raspberry Pi-compatible GPIO is another story. Since the 40 pins are not accessible via Windows, we installed Ubuntu 20.04 on a spare NVMe drive. The Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO does share the same pin layout and it is electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi but that is where the compatibility ends.

Typically the GPIO is controlled via software, and a popular choice is Python using the RPi.GPIO or GPIO Zero modules. Both of these do not work with the Odyssey and that indicates that the majority of Raspberry Pi HATs and add on boards will also not work. We tested Pimoroni’s Explorer HAT Pro, a board that uses the RPi.GPIO library along with Python3’s smbus I2C module and we were unable to make the board work. Not all is lost though, if you have a simpler board, or a component which uses digital IO (on / off) then these can be connected to the Pi compatible GPIO and used directly in the terminal or via a Bash script. Reading through the Getting Started guide, we noticed that there is a Python 3 module for use with the Odyssey, so we installed and tested it, and yeah it worked, but it was not a slick experience and it proved quite troublesome to even flash an LED.

Based on our findings, if you need reliable GPIO access in a project based around the Odyssey, then the Arduino GPIO should be your go to. It is accessible via Windows and Linux, and we can communicate with the built-in Arduino using serial / UART.

Network / WiFi Speeds / Bluetooth on Odyssey X86J4105

We tested the Gigabit Ethernet NICs and WiFi (2.4 and 5GHz) using iperf in Ubuntu, connected to another machine on the same network acting as a server with a Gigabit NIC also. Ethernet speeds were 942 Mbits/sec which is about average for Gigabit connections. The Intel 9560D2W card provided both 2.4 and 5GHz connectivity via two fragile antennas; they are tricky to fit so take your time. For 2.4-GHz WiFi, we saw only 25.8 Mbits/sec and 5-GHz WiFi gave us only 50.5 Mbits/sec. Those are not the greatest speeds but, if you are planning to use the Odyssey as a server, then you will undoubtedly go for Ethernet over WiFi.

Linux Support on Odyssey X86J4105

As this is an x86 machine, support for Linux distributions is a given. We tested the Odyssey with Ubuntu 20.04 and it was a smooth install process. Installed onto a 256GB NVMe SSD, Ubuntu boots quickly and runs extremely well. There was one snag; when opening a terminal for the first time, the window would not pop open, and would require killing the process and trying again. That’s not a deal breaker but something to watch for.

Bottom Line

The Odyssey X86J4105 is a board for makers. The Arduino GPIO is exceptionally easy to work with and can be used to wake the main system to perform a task, then return to a low power mode.

The Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO is a bit of a let down, if there were a version of the RPi.GPIO Python 3 library then the Odyssey X86J4105 would have everything that a maker would need. But what the Odyssey X86J4105 does have is great networking and storage options. If you need a low power server or just love the idea of having Arduino capability on a PC, then the Odyssey X86J4105 is a great choice. However, if you’re looking for a Raspberry Pi-compatible computer that runs Windows, you’d be better off attempting to install Windows 10 on a real Raspberry Pi (though you won’t like that either).

Garmin’s latest go-anywhere, do-anything Fenix 6 Pro Solar multi-sport watch recharges from the sun, marking an important step towards the smartwatch you never need to charge.

The £739.99 Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar is one of the US firm’s top-of-the-line devices, capable of lasting weeks on a charge and tracking practically any stat you’d want, plus it’s able to guide you out of forests when you’re lost.

The watch is available with either a 42 or 47mm case, and in various colours and materials, here reviewed in slate grey with red accents and a 47mm case.

By every dimension the Fenix 6 Pro Solar means business. At 15.1mm thick and 47mm across your wrist, it dwarfs most other smartwatches. It doesn’t feel enormous when worn, still fitting under shirt cuffs and doesn’t catch on things.

It weighs 62g, which is reasonably light – the smaller Fossil Gen 5 weighs closer to 100g. With the included 23g silicone strap, the watch feels well balanced on the wrist and doesn’t slide around once done up. It is comfortable to wear with plenty of adjustment. The 22mm strap can be swapped out for either a quick-release band made by Garmin or any standard 22mm third-party strap.

The 1.3in non-touchscreen is a colour transflective LCD display that is clearly visible in direct sunlight and has a backlight for seeing it in the dark. The screen is protected by scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3 DX and is big and clear enough to see at a glance. It is more animated than Garmin’s similar displays on watches such as the Forerunner 245, but isn’t as slick or as good-looking as the OLED screens on most smartwatches.

Five physical buttons take care of controls. Most things are quick and easy to do using the up, down, select and back buttons. If you think of it operating a bit like an old-school or retro Nokia, then you get a rough idea of how it works.

Scroll up or down from the watch face for a series of customisable widgets. I have smartwatch notifications first, then a series of health stats including heart, stress and sleep, temperature, solar intensity, a series of running performance widgets and so on; there are loads to choose from.

Each of the buttons has a press-and-hold shortcut too. I have it set so holding the down button opens music controls, up for settings and holding the light button takes you to a rotating bunch of quick settings, including timers, alarms and Garmin Pay.

Specifications

Screen: 1.3in transflective MIP (260×260 pixels)

Case size: 47mm

Case thickness: 15.1mm

Band size: standard 22mm quick release

Weight: 62g body only (silicone band is 23g)

Storage: 32GB

Water resistance: 100 metres (10ATM)

Sensors: GPS/Glonass/Galileo, compass, accelerometer, thermometer, heart rate, pulse Ox

Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2, ANT+, wifi

Connections and battery life

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar is much less dependent on your phone than most smartwatches; you don’t even need to pair a phone to set it up.

Pairing with the Garmin Connect app enables alerts of calls, texts and other notifications, control of music, and activity syncing, all of which worked great with a variety of phones. The watch has wifi for syncing directly to the internet, downloading updates or music too. It can be plugged into a computer to sync and update via Garmin Express, which is a requirement if you want to update the built-in maps.

Sans-phone, the watch will continue to track your vitals and activities for weeks with a large amount of internal storage, including fairly comprehensive analysis. You could head off into the wilderness for a week without a phone and still do everything, including mapping, which can’t be said of most smartwatches.

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar lasts at least quadruple the length of most smartwatches between charges. Used just as a smartwatch with phone notifications and all the health tracking features activated it, the watch lasts nine full days and nights between charges. If you cut down on some of the health tracking, such as the pulse oximeter, wrist heart rate or other bits you can extend battery life by days (up to 14 according to Garmin). A power manager allows you to select from various pre-sets or make your own with certain features turned on or off.

Running with music is the biggest battery drain. A 25-minute run with all the tracking options (GPS, heart rate, etc) while playing music via Bluetooth headphones consumes 4-5% of the battery. That’s still over nine hours total of running with music, which is enough for most people to complete a marathon. Three runs a week reduced the smartwatch battery life to closer to seven days, which is still multiple days longer than most competitors.

However, that’s all without employing the watch’s hidden talent – the Power Glass covering the screen doubles as a solar charger. It works all the time, even indoors, but requires bright sunlight to meaningfully top up the battery. On a week where I spent two hours walking (with tracking and maps) and three 25-minute runs on bright British summer days I got an extra day’s battery from general smartwatch usage.

The beauty is that, other than the added cost to the watch which is a not-inconsiderable £140 over the version without the solar charging, there’s no downside to the Power Glass as it’s fully transparent to the eye. You just see the screen and a slim strip that looks like bezel.

Sustainability

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar is generally repairable, but Garmin typically replaces damaged devices with refurbished units for a fee. The battery is rated to last a few years of frequent charge cycles while maintaining at least 80% capacity, but is not user replaceable. The screen is covered in Corning’s scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 3 DX, similar to a smartphone.

Garmin offers trade-in schemes for some lines and complies with WEEE and other local electronics recycling law.

General Health tracking

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar has comprehensive health tracking features. An excellent optical heart rate monitor on the back works continuously through the day, alerting you to abnormally high or low beats per minute and recording your resting and active heart rates. It measures Pulse Ox (oxygenation of the blood) both during the day and while asleep, respiration rate, stress, body temperature, fall or incident detection and many more. The only thing it doesn’t have is ECG for tracking heart arrhythmia.

Garmin’s body battery system helps you make sense of it all, combining stress, sleep, heart rate variability and other data into a simple in-out system. You charge up your body with good sleep and deplete it with stress, activity and daily life. If you’re about balanced you’re doing a good job, but it’s easy to spot when you’re struggling or not doing enough exercise.

Sleep tracking is extensive, including light, deep and REM sleep stages, respiration and Pulse Ox tracking, which together can show signs of issues such as sleep apnoea. The data is presented in easy-to-read graphs on the phone or a widget on the watch.

Then there’s your standard step, calories, floors and so on, including move reminders.

Sport, training and adventuring

Comprehensive sport tracking covers a list of over 30 activities, but the main ones are running in its various indoor and outdoor forms, cycling, swimming, walking, hiking, skiing, golf and gym sessions of various activities with on-screen animations showing you how to do them.

The watch will handle triathlons, but as a runner I focused on hitting the pavement. The Fenix 6 Pro Solar’s outdoor running tracking was first class. It got a GPS lock within seconds, monitored every stat I could want, had a clearly readable display with only the info I wanted on it, gave me pace and lap alerts, performance analysis after 1.5km and handled intervals and more advanced training plans with aplomb. The watch is noticeably larger and heavier on your wrist than something like the Forerunner 245, requiring me to tighten the strap to stop it sliding around.

At the end of each run it gives you an aerobic and anaerobic training score, plus an analysis of your training load over the last seven days. The recovery, Vo2 Max and race predictor functions were more accurate than other Garmin watches I have tested too. PacePro allows you to map out a race course and get pace suggestions in real time on the watch adjusted for elevation and other factors to help you hit your desired time, once races are open again.

Walking maps were very useful too, providing maps with trails and other features that weren’t visible on Google Maps, making it more effective than a phone. Moving the map around can be a bit tedious with buttons, but is straightforward with practice.

The altimeter, barometer and compass, plus maps of the whole of Europe mean you can go hiking just about anywhere. If you need maps for other regions you can buy them and upload them through Garmin Express.

Apps

The Fenix 6 Pro Solar can run third-party apps downloaded from the Connect IQ store. There are plenty of small utilities and widgets, apps such as Uber and Strava, music services including Spotify, Deezer and Amazon Music, and buckets of watch faces.

The Spotify app works well. It can download up to 2,000 songs for offline playback via wifi or control music on your smartphone. Not many smartwatches have offline Spotify playback, so having it for runs is a big plus for subscribers.

Garmin Pay is also available for contactless payment on the go. It is not supported by many banks in the UK, but does support Curve, which allows you to bind most credit or debit cards to it. Payments are secured by pin and could be a lifesaver for use on public transport or buying a drink when running without a phone or credit card.

Observations

The watch can vibrate and has basic beeps and tones, which work well for the various alarms, timers and activities.

Price

The Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar has an RRP of £739.99 and comes in either 42 or 47mm sizes.

The watch is also available without solar charging as the Fenix 6 Pro costing £599.99, with solar charging but without music, maps and wifi, as the Fenix 6 Solar costing £649.99 or in a larger 51mm version called the Fenix 6X Pro Solar costing £849.99.

For comparison, the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music costs £299.99, the Forerunner 945 costs £519.99, Suunto 9 Baro costs £539, the Coros Vertix costs $599 (£460), the Polar Vantage V Titan costs £519, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 costs £269 and the Apple Watch Series 5 costs £399.

Verdict

The Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar is the do-anything, go-anywhere watch for those that need a smartwatch while stuck to a desk during the day, but then dump everything and go climb a mountain, do a triathlon or simply trek into the middle of nowhere at the weekends. Or aspire to do those things.

It is very much the kitchen-sink of multi-sport watches, which means most of it is total overkill if you’re just a runner, just a cyclist, just a swimmer or just looking for a long-lasting smartwatch. But if you do more than one thing, or like the idea of being able to jump out of an aeroplane in the middle of Europe and still find your way home, this is the watch for you.

It is really easy to live with and looks the part. A rugged, yet stylish sports watch that states to the outside world: “I do more than just the day job”. Those with smaller wrists will struggle with the 47mm version, but the 42mm version is smaller than many smartwatches.

Garmin’s Power Glass offers a glimpse of the solar-powered future. It’s not quite the holy grail of a smartwatch you never have to charge, but made a small but material difference to the battery life. Having to charge it less than once a week is still a killer feature for everything this watch can track and do. It is worth noting you’re paying an extra £140 for the solar-charging technology versus the same watch without it, which is a fair sum.

It is certainly not cheap, and definitely overkill for most. But if you want the ultimate outdoor adventure smartwatch, the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar is it.

Pros: tracks everything under the sun, long battery life, solar charging, phone notifications, Garmin Pay, full offline mapping, offline Spotify, Bluetooth, wifi, 100m water resistance, real buttons, accurate GPS

Cons: expensive, big, limited Garmin Pay bank support, limited smartwatch features compared to Apple Watch/Wear OS/Galaxy Watch, no touchscreen, screen fairly basic compared to the best smartwatches

Apple, Bose, Sonos, Google and Amazon all have plenty to offer in the £200-£400 bracket Bluetooth speaker market – not to mention a more stable footing in the audio game – this may explain why Huawei has called on the services of audiophile pioneers Devialet to deliver something that will stand out. Enter the Huawei Sound X – a nicely weighted and compact speaker that more than holds its own in an already crowded market.

Made from a combination of shiny black plastic and audio-transparent knit fabric, the Sound X somehow manages to look like a hyper-realistic rendered photo even in real life. Its two exposed woofers even make it look a little different from the competition.

Behind the fabric base are six 1.5in drivers, which, once combined with the two 3.5in woofers, manage a rated output of 65W and 360-degree listening. It’s enough to create plenty of oomph in any configuration, but the back-to-back woofer design uses Devialet’s Push-Push bass structure that means, aside from showing the speakers pulsating (up to 20mm), each woofer cancels out the backwave vibrations of the other. This greatly suppressing distortion, which is often the curse of small speaker cabinet construction.

The same technology is used to stunning effect on Devialet’s award-winning Phantom speaker, which, from £990, has the sort of audio quality and bass response you’d expect from a £10,000 hi-fi.

Huawei has also incorporated Devialet’s Speaker Active Matching (SAM) processing from the Phantom, that lets the speaker accurately match the sound pressure generated by the microphones during the studio recording process in real time during playback. Think of it this way: if the kick drum has ‘x’ impact on the recording mic, then the same impact supposedly comes through on the speaker.

But before we get to performance, it’s worth explaining a little more about Huawei’s collaborator on the Sound X. Founded in Paris in 2007, this niche audio brand quickly found a cult following thanks to unique driver configurations, processors and chipsets capable of generating 4,500 watts and 108 decibels of audio nirvana from a ridiculously compact speaker. Some 76 awards and 160 technology patents later Devialet has started buddying up – its first being with Sky TV – and is clearly looking to tap into a more mainstream audience.

Huawei is no stranger to collaborations, previously working with both Porsche and Leica, and seems content to stick to their strengths and bring in the experts where needed. So, has Huawei created the best streaming speaker £300 can buy? From a sound quality perspective, and despite only streaming, at best, Bluetooth 5.1 aptX (16-bit/44.1kHz), the performance is sensational.

Wherever we positioned the speaker in the room, we were met with a thunderous amount of volume – rated up to 93dB – without a hint of distortion. The Sound X is louder than anything else we’ve tried at this size or price, and even kept pace (in terms of volume) with Naim’s £749 Muso Qb 2. But we’re not 12 and this isn’t a boombox, and volume counts for very little without detail, soundstage and balance to match. In this respect Devialet can be proud of the shift it has put in, having created a speaker full of nuanced power that more than justifies its price tag.

Like the Devialet Phantom, there’s a richness to the sound quality here, and an impressive amount of control over the low frequencies. We sampled tracks across genres, from the rough and rumbling D&B classic Valley of The Shadows by Origin Unknown, through the Talking Heads back catalogue with Tina Weymouth’s edgy bass lines, and the Sound X remained accomplished, boasting a level of audio authority we genuinely weren’t expecting.

It’s not the final word in sonic subtly, and neither should it be for £300. The bassline prefers to show off at higher volume, and this is evident when played side-by-side with the Apple HomePod, which is sorely lacking the same weight of impact as the X, but still matches it comfortably on balance and detail.

But all is not perfect. Firstly, and we assume this is down to ongoing issues over privacy, despite it having a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, built-in 512MB storage, 8GB storage and Wi-Fi, outside of China the Sound X is little more than a good Bluetooth speaker. There’s no Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, and the lack of Wi-Fi limits audio-streaming quality, which is a crying shame.

If you have a Huawei phone, you can tap on the NFC logo to hand-off music to the speaker, and it also plays nice with Huawei HiLink, the company’s smart control platform, but practical uses remain scant compared to the competition.

Maybe the Devialet badge and trickle-down audio wizardry is enough to entice, but Huawei isn’t a hi-fi company, and, like Apple, it desperately wants you to invest in its tech and communications ecosystem. Without the hands-free simplicity and enhanced streaming compatibility of brands such as Sonos, Amazon and Apple, despite the Sound X’s strong audio showing it remains a few updates short of the competition.

Celeron CPUs have been part and parcel of Intel’s processor family for more than two decades. They’ve played a vital role in the company’s product mix, despite not getting the sort of press coverage as its flagship CPU family, the Core series.

That’s partly due to the fact you can’t actually buy most Celeron models today. 

A fair chunk are either sold as part of a motherboard (e.g. this Seeed motherboard) or as part of a complete system – most likely a tablet or a laptop.

Intel Celeron N4000 vs Celeron N4100

The N4000 is arguably one of the most sought after Intel processors. It was launched alongside the N4100 towards the end of 2017, nearly three years ago. Both are Gemini Lake parts and built on a 14nm manufacturing process.

That’s not where the similarities end; they have a base speed of 1.1GHz, 4MB cache, a TDP of 6W, support up to 8GB of DDR4/LPDDR4 memory in dual channel mode, run an Intel UHD graphics subsystem with a base frequency of 200MHz and can drive up to three 4K displays.

The biggest difference is in the number of cores. The N4000 has two cores and two threads, while the N4100 has four cores and four threads. The latter also has a slightly lower boost frequency (2.4GHz vs 2.6GHz) and a slightly higher graphics burst frequency (700MHz vs 650MHz).

What this means is that the Celeron N4000 ends up being significantly slower than the N4100, not so much on single thread performance but more because it has half the number of physical cores.

Passmark numbers show that it is about 40% slower than the N4100. Even worse, is it hardly even competes with older processors, such as the Celeron N3450.

What about the Celeron N4120?

Although the N4120 was launched towards the end of last year, it bears a strong resemblance to its predecessors. Based on the Gemini Lake refresh, it shares many common qualities with the N4100, except for a slightly higher boost frequency (2.6GHz vs 2.5GHz).

That should, in theory, give it a slim advantage when benchmarked. However, this hasn’t been demonstrated just yet, partly because it’s a new processor and not many systems have been tested with this CPU at the helm.

In conclusion, it’s best to avoid computers, tablets and laptops based on the N4000 and opt for those with either the N4100 or the N4120. These two are within touching distance of a 7th generation Intel Core i3 processor, which is to say they are quite nippy indeed when paired with an SSD and plenty of memory.

Building your own desktop is typically cheaper than buying a pre-built machine, but there’s definitely a reason why consoles are so popular. Some people would rather buy something that works out of the box, and sales can also turn pre-built PCs into a better value. One desktop from ABS with an RTX 2070 Super graphics card is currently on sale for $1,249.99, a $250 discount from the original MSRP. It’s also the cheapest PC on Newegg right now with that graphics card.

The desktop on sale has an Intel Core i7-9700 processor, which isn’t one of Intel’s newer 10th-gen CPUs, but it still has 8 cores and 8 threads. There’s also 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD for storage, and a B365 motherboard. It would have been nice to see a larger SSD, given that there are more than a few 1TB SSDs that only cost around $100, but at least that can be upgraded easily down the road.

The main selling point is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super graphics card, which is an excellent GPU for 1440p or 4K gaming. You can read more about it in our original review of the 2070 Super, which also includes benchmarks from some popular games.

Finally, it wouldn’t really be a gaming PC without unnecessary lights, so ABS has added four 120M RGB fans to the front of the case. The desktop also uses 4mm tempered glass side panels, so you can see everything going on inside your PC.

Don’t fret if the pricing for B550 motherboards is preventing you from upgrading. VideoCardz received information that ASRock is reportedly preparing up to five different A520 motherboards for budget seekers. According to the publication, A520 motherboards will launch later this month, which differs from DigiTimes’ report of a September launch.

A520 is the entry-level chipset for AMD’s 500-series, and being A-series, CPU overclocking is pretty much off the table. It’s reasonable to expect A520 to arrive without PCIe 4.0 support, although AMD hasn’t officially said otherwise.

VideoCardz revealed two motherboards from ASRock’s upcoming A520 army. The A520M-ITX/ac comes in a mini-ITX form factor, while the A520M Pro4 has a larger microATX footprint.

ASRock A520M-ITX/ac

The A520M-ITX/ac’s resemblance to the existing B550M-ITX/ac is uncanny. If it wasn’t for the model name on the PCB, you could swear you’re looking at the B550M-ITX/ac.

The A520M-ITX/ac appears to feature an eight-phase power delivery subsystem, a configuration that’s commonly found on cheaper B550 motherboards. As expected of the mini-ITX form factor, the motherboard only has two DDR4 memory slots, but memory overclocking should be superb given the shorter traces to the processor.

The motherboard accommodates up to five storage devices. There are four SATA III connectors and a single M.2 slot up front. The A520M-ITX/ac only has one PCIe x16 slot so graphics card selection requires extra consideration.

Connectivity-wise, the A520M-ITX/ac is an identical copy of the B550M-ITX/ac. The rear panel reveals a DisplayPort and HDMI port for displays. Of course, you’ll have to pair the motherboard with an AMD APU to use either output since the normal Ryzen chips don’t come with an iGPU. An Ethernet port and wireless networking are also available for your usage.

The rear panel holds two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, one PS/2 combo port and three 3.5mm audio jacks.

The B550M-ITX/ac retails for $129.99, so we expect the A520M-ITX/ac’s price tag to be a lot more friendly on the pockets.

ASRock A520M Pro4

The A520M Pro4 looks a little different to the B550M Pro4. For starters, the A520M Pro4 doesn’t have a fancy white heatsink over the power delivery subsystem. The images don’t uncover its design, however, the B550M Pro4 is equipped with an eight-phase configuration so we can expect the A520 variant to carry the same setup, if not less.

The A520M Pro4 puts four DDR4 memory slots at your disposal. We spot four SATA III ports in total, two less than the B550M Pro4. Nonetheless, the two M.2 slots remain untouched. Unlike the A520M-ITX/ac, the A520M Pro4 lacks wireless connectivity so you’ll be connecting to the Internet through the standard Ethernet port unless you purchase a wireless card.

In terms of expansion, the A520M Pro4 supplies two PCIe x16 slots. It’s only missing the PCIe x1 slot, which is present on the more expensive B550M Pro4.

Similar to the situation with the A520M-ITX/ac and B550M-ITX/ac, the A520M Pro4 has the exact same rear panel as the B550M Pro4. Display outputs consist of one D-sub port, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort output. The diverse mix of USB ports includes one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 ports. Lastly, the motherboard has three 3.5mm jacks for connecting audio devices.

The B550M Pro4 sells for $114.99, and the absence of a couple of the features on the A520M Pro4 should allow ASRock to price the motherboard more competitively.