Quality camera, good software and long battery life, but you should just buy the Pixel 9a insteadThe latest smartphone in the lower-cost A-series Pixel line shows what makes Google phones so good, while undercutting the competition on price. The problem is that it differs little from its predecessor, which is still on sale.Priced from £499 (€549/$499/A$849), the Pixel 10a is more like a second edition of last year’s excellent Pixel 9a. The two phones share the same Tensor G4 chip, not the newer G5 in the rest of the £799 and up Pixel 10 line; the same memory, storage and cameras; the same size 6.3in OLED screen, though the Pixel 10a reaches a higher peak brightness making it slightly easier to read outside. Continue reading...

05 Mar 2026 07:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Apple laptop sets new performance bar with more storage, new chips and plenty of options, but now has two-tier specs depending on processorApple’s Macs have been on a roll this year with the brand new budget MacBook Neo and a faster MacBook Air M5, but now it’s time for its workhorse MacBook Pro to be upgraded with the fastest, most powerful M-series chips.The latest MacBook Pro comes in two screen sizes and a large range of chip and configuration options. The 14in version starts with the M5 chip costing £1,699 (€1,899/$1,699/A$2,699) and then jumps to the more powerful M5 Pro from £2,199 (€2,499/$2,199/A$3,499) before climbing further for the 16in version or the top M5 Max chip. A pricey machine for professional workloads. Continue reading...

28 Apr 2026 06:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Quality wifi bookshelf speaker can go mobile with Bluetooth, long battery life and water resistance, in return to formThe Play is a new portable wifi and Bluetooth home speaker that packs the best of Sonos into a jack of all trades that is intended to be a reset point in the company’s recovery from its app debacle that lost it faith, favour and a chief executive.It is the first truly new music speaker since Sonos launched its new app in May 2024, which junked fan-favourite features while causing stability and usage problems for new and old customers alike. The company has spent the best part of two years fixing mistakes, bringing back core features and ensuring the system actually works. Continue reading...

20 Apr 2026 06:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Chip upgrade brings pro-level power, long battery life and plenty of storage, but the Air now faces real competitionApple’s latest MacBook Air is its most powerful yet, comes with double the starting storage and is better than ever for getting work done and as the benchmark for a consumer laptop. But this year the new lower-cost MacBook Neo has muddied the waters.The M5 MacBook Air starts at £1,099 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799) for the 13in version, which is £100 or equivalent more than last year’s excellent M4 version, but comes with at least 512GB of storage. It sits above the £599 MacBook Neo and below the £1,699 M5 MacBook Pro, making the Air Apple’s mid-range machine.Screen: 13.6in LCD (2560x1600; 224 ppi) True ToneProcessor: Apple M5 with eight or 10-core GPURAM: 16, 24 or 32GBStorage: 512GB, 1, 2 or 4TB SSDOperating system: macOS 26 TahoeCamera: 12MP centre stageConnectivity: wifi 7, Bluetooth 6, 2x Thunderbolt/USB 4, headphonesDimensions: 215 x 304.1 x 11.3mmWeight: 1.23kg Continue reading...

15 Apr 2026 06:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Snappy performance, high-quality screen, best-in-class keyboard and trackpad show cheaper can still be greatApple’s brand new entry-level laptop is powered by the chip from an iPhone and offers more than just the essential MacBook experience for a great price, putting the PC industry on notice.The MacBook Neo is the first of its kind from Apple. A 13in laptop that runs on an A18 Pro chip and brings the starting price for a brand new MacBook down to £599 (€699/$599/A$899) – £500 or the equivalent less than the MacBook Air. Continue reading...

31 Mar 2026 06:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter – with many of its original limitations – rather than a fresh new take?The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot.If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake. Continue reading...

13 May 2026 14:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Previously prohibited use of websites such as Omoggle that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed now allowed Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on. Continue reading...

10 May 2026 11:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN