Apple started mass-producing the new 15-inch MacBook Air in February and has ramped up production in March, per display analyst Ross Young. Apple is reportedly planning another ramp-up in April and the highly-anticipated larger laptop will be ready to ship once Apple has unveiled it.
Earlier reports suggested that Apple could unveil the largest-ever MacBook Air in April or May, but it seems ever more likely that the laptop will be kept for the WWDC conference in June.
The new 15.4-inch Air will join the new-look 13.6-inch MacBook Air. But it remains to be seen whether it will get...
The De’Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB is truly a wonder of convenience. While you don’t necessarily need to spend anywhere close to its price tag to make excellent coffee at home, you’re paying – quite a bit, in fact – for a level of convenience that makes having a TrueBrew machine at home worth it. As long as you live in the US, that is, or are willing to pay an ungodly amount to have it shipped to wherever you live.
De'Longhi is a global brand based in Treviso, Italy, and a leader in espresso products. The brand is present in more than 123 countries and creates products not just in the espresso categories, but also speciality cooking and home comfort.
The TrueBrew is a new offering from the brand that prides itself on its expertise and innovation of premium bean-to-cup espresso machines. Extending its range to now include speciality drip coffee makers, TrueBrew is a revolutionary machine that promises to eliminate any guess work and measuring with patented technology.
I really appreciated the De’Longhi TrueBrew’s convenience as I spent weeks using it as my main way of making coffee. It takes just a few presses to not only get a cup of coffee, but to get it to the boldness that I want (it offers three levels along with over-ice and pre-ground) and in my preferred size – there are six total. Since it has a reservoir for spent coffee, along with one for fresh water and coffee beans, prep and cleanup is required only every few days or so. The resulting coffee is super-smooth – and will certainly give the best coffee makers a run for their money.
Of course, not everything is about the De’Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB is easy, as we’ll see. De’Longhi has made cleaning and maintaining the unit as simple as possible; but it still takes some adjustment. Plus, cleanup can get a little messy. In addition, the funnel for pre-ground coffee is on the small side, so not all coffee grounds make it inside. However, those are minor issues in a drip coffee maker that will make, if you’ll excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee.
De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB review: Price and availability
List price: $499 /£408.11 / AU$750.17
Available now
Available only in the US
While you can certainly spend much, much more on a coffee machine, whether that’s for having your very own espresso machine for homemade coffee art or an even more automated caffeinated experience, you can also spend significantly less. The De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB’s price of $499 is reasonable for its one-stop bean-to-drink experience. This model is available directly from De’Longhi, Amazon, and Best Buy among others.
If you want to spend less, the De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1015B is a Target exclusive that comes in a fully matte-black finish for $399. Or, if its max brewing size of 24oz is a little underwhelming, you can head over to Williams Sonoma for its exclusive version, the stainless steel CAM51035M, which can pour up to 40oz at a time and goes for $599.
Whichever version you’re eyeing, you should keep two things in mind. The first is that all the above models are essentially the same, with only the minor differences I’ve mentioned here – so keep that in mind when reading this review. Second, at the time of writing, these models are only available in the US and Canada.
If you’re outside of the available territories, there are still plenty of great convenient drip coffee maker options, such as the Moccamaster KBGV Select, which not only costs a slightly more reasonable $359 / £229/ AU$515, but it's available in the UK and Australia (Aussies will have to order direct from the manufacturer). However, you'll have to grind the beans separately.
Multiple sizes and brewing options available at a touch of a button
Somewhat modular design for accessible maintenance
The De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB is almost the height of simplicity. You load your coffee beans on top, fill up the water reservoir on the side, and you’re ready to go. It takes just a few presses from there to make your coffee.
There are a few options on hand. This model will let you select multiple brew size – 3, 8, 12, 16, 20 or 24oz specifically. Next, you can select the strength of the brew; there’s light, gold, and bold, as well as an over-ice option and a pre-ground option. There’s a funnel behind where you pour in the beans to insert pre-ground coffee, although it's a bit smaller than I'd like.
Diving a little deeper, the LED menu on the front of the unit is pretty self-explanatory as far as choosing any of those options goes. There’s also a clock to set up, and an Auto-On function where you can create a preset time for the De’Longhi TrueBrew to make a cup of coffee – although you'll have to activate it before every brew.
For example, I set up my unit for a brew time of 7:30AM. If I want the machine to brew at that time, I have to press and hold a specific button for three seconds sometime before then – the night before, for example – to turn on the function. There’s no way to set it to automatically brew at a time more than once.
(Image credit: Future / James Holland)
As far as maintenance goes, the company specifically designed the De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB to be easy. After all, it isn't cheap. If you own a Keurig machine, for instance, you know that if something goes wrong, you can’t open it up. Your only option is to toss it in the trash and buy a new one.
With the TrueBrew machines, you can pull the front out, empty the grounds as well as waste water (which fills up surprisingly fast), and remove the infuser to clean. There’s also a button to descale, if you're in an area of hard water. De’Longhi even includes a hardness indicator to help measure the hardness of your water.
Design: 4.5 / 5
De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB review: Performance
A clean, even pour with smooth results
Funnel for pre-ground coffee may be a small, but is a welcome addition
Cleanup can get a little messy
The De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB can get a bit loud, peaking temporarily at 77dB, which is the equivalent of a washing machine. However, that’s to be expected with a one-stop-shop experience of the type the TrueBrew offers. With just a press of a couple buttons, it grinds and brews a fantastic cup of coffee, which is neither burnt nor bitter. As long as you use decent ingredients, the end result will be smooth and delicious. This applies to any of the brew options (and sizes) you choose. In addition, I've yet to find a single coffee ground in the end results.
I also want to take a second and commend De’Longhi for including the funnel for pre-ground coffee. While it could be a little wider (I'd regularly end up with coffee grounds on the funnel’s lip instead of inside the machine), it allowed me to make myself a cup of decaf without having to remove all the beans sitting in the grinder.
(Image credit: Future / James Holland)
If I were to complain about anything, it would be with cleaning the De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB. If you don’t religiously empty the used coffee grounds and waste water, instead waiting for an indicator light to pop up to do so, then when you pull out the front of the unit for cleaning, you’re going to get some spillage – since some of that waste water will also be sitting in the drip tray. And, while there is a drip tray indicator, you’ll still get spillage once you’ve noticed it’s full.
(Image credit: Future / James Holland)
Whenever I’ve cleaned out the machine, I’ve also had to clean around it, which is a bit of a pain. In De’Longhi’s defense, I have two or three people using it multiple times a day, every day, so that does add up. However, it would have been nice for the back of the drip tray to be higher when you pull it out of the drip coffee maker to empty its contents.
Performance: 4 / 5
(Image credit: Future / James Holland)
Should I buy the De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB?
Buy it if...
Don't buy it if...
De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB review: also consider
How we test
Tested every day, over a few weeks
Tested with multiple brew strengths and sizes
Cleaned out machine multiple times
To test the De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB, I used it to make my coffee for a couple weeks, consuming up to two cups a day, to get a sense of how it performed. I would try making coffee at different strengths and sizes, whether it was an espresso shot or a regular-sized cup of coffee. I also used the pre-ground setting to make a cup of decaf coffee at night. I also used the Auto-On function to make sure there was some coffee ready for when I woke up.
I cleaned out the machine several times. While this was important for testing, it occurs naturally during regular use, so I gained a good understanding of the effort needed to keep the De'Longhi TrueBrew CAM1025MB in tip-top condition.
While this is my first review of a coffee machine, I've been a coffee drinker for a long time, having used everything from a pour-over and french press to all sorts of automatic coffee machines. I have plenty of experience reviewing tech gadgets that I applied to this machine, not to mention that I'm a bit of a coffee snob (if that’s not apparent, check out the title of this review).
• Original review date: April 2023 • Launch price: MSRP at $599 / £589 / AU$1,109 • Lowest price now: $792.99 / £485.28 / AU$899
Update – April 2025: With the release of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, you'd hope that it would force the price of the RTX 4070, one of the best graphics cards of the last generation, down somewhat, but that doesn't appear to be the case in the US (UK and Australian shoppers can actually find this card for less than RRP right now).
With the lowest price I've found for the RTX 4070 is in the US, coming in at just under $800, it's a much harder card to recommend in 2025, especially with AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT cards selling for much less and much more readily available online.
Original unedited review follows...
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070: Two-minute review
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is here at long last, and for gamers who've been starved for an upgrade, go ahead and pick this one up. It can do just about everything.
It's hard to follow up the RTX 3070, one of the best graphics cards of all time, and in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 review, we praised that card for being an outstanding performer at 1080p and 1440p — which is where the overwhelming number of PC gamers game at — while also being a much more affordable option over the other two launch cards for Nvidia's Ampere lineup. We especially noted how the RTX 3070 offered comparable performance to the RTX 2080 Ti for half the price.
Everything we said about the RTX 3070 applies just as easily to the RTX 4070, only now it doesn't just dabble in 4K; it can competently game at every resolution, making it a graphics card that everybody can fall in love with without spending a fortune.
A lot has changed since the RTX 3070 launched towards the end of 2020, and unfortunately, not everything changed for the better. Things are more expensive pretty much everywhere you look, and the Nvidia RTX 4070 isn't immune. At $599 (about £510 / AU$870), the RTX 4070 is fully 20% more expensive than the RTX 3070 was at launch.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
I'm not happy about this at all, and you shouldn't be either, but all you have to do is look at the scores the RTX 4070 puts up on the board and you'll be as hard pressed as I am to dock it any points for this. It consistently puts out RTX 3080-level performance more or less across the board and even manages to bloddy the nose of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and while the RTX 3080 beats out the RTX 4070 at native 4K, turn on DLSS and the RTX 3080 simply gets blown out.
On the other side of the aisle, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is Team Red's nearest real competition, and it struggles to justify itself in the presence of the RTX 4070. While the RX 7900 XT solidly outperforms the 4070, it's also 50% more expensive, and the benefits of the RX 7900 XT get quickly drowned out by the power of DLSS, especially in titles with DLSS 3.
Moreover, the RTX 4070 makes for a pretty competent creator GPU, offering indie developers and artists who don't have the funding to get themselves an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 a handy option for getting some work done within a more limited budget. It's not going to power a major movie studio or anything, but if you're dabbling in 3D modeling or video editing, this card is great compromise between price and performance.
Finally, wrap this all into a package that feels like a downright normal graphics card from ye olden days, back before you needed to include support brackets and balast to keep your gaming PC from tipping over, and you end up with a graphics card that can easily power some of the best gaming PCs that can actually fit into your PC case and your budget.
This graphics card has its issues, which is inevitable, but given what's on offer here, it's easy enough to look past its shortcomings and enjoy some truly outstanding performance at at a reasonable enough price.
Third-party cards retail prices will match or exceed Nvidia's MSRP
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is available starting April 13, 2023, with an MSRP of $599 (about £510 / AU$870). Third-party partners will have their own versions of the RTX 4070 that will vary in price, but they will always have a matching or higher regular retail price than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition.
Notably, the RTX 4070 is getting a 20% price increase over the card it's replacing, the RTX 3070, which had a launch price of $499 in the US (about £425 / AU$725). While we'd have loved to see the price stay the same gen-over-gen, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been watching GPU price inflation recently.
Meanwhile, we haven't seen AMD's direct RTX 4070 competitor yet, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, but the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the closest AMD has this generation with an $899 / £799 (around AU$1,350) MSRP, putting it 50% more expensive than the RTX 4070.
This card is also the same price as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, for what it's worth, and considering that the RTX 4070 punches well above the 3070 Ti's performance, you do at least get a better sense of value out of this card than anything from the last generation.
Price score: 4 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Features & chipset
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
DLSS 3 with full Frame Generation
Third-gen Ray Tracing Cores and fourth-gen Tensor Cores
Lower TGP than RTX 3070
The Nvidia RTX 4070 doesn't change too much on paper over its last-gen predecessor, featuring the same number of streaming multiprocessors, therefore the same number of CUDA cores (5,888), ray-tracing cores (46), and tensor cores (184).
It does bump up its memory to the faster GDDR6X and adds an additional 50% VRAM for a total of 12GB. With a 192-bit bus and a memory clock of 1,313MHz, the RTX 4070 has an effective memory speed of 21 Gbps, equal to that of the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti, for a memory bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s.
It has a lower base and boost frequency than the 4070 Ti, clocking in at 1,920MHz base and 2,475MHz boost (compared to 2,310MHz base and 2,610MHz boost for the 4070 Ti), but this is a substantial bump up from the 1,500MHz base and 1,725MHz boost frequency of the RTX 3070.
This is owing to the 5nm TSMC process used to fab the AD104 GPU, compared to the Samsung 8nm process for the RTX 3070's GA104. Those faster clocks also power next-gen ray tracing and tensor cores, so even though there are the same number of cores in both the RTX 4070 and the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070's are both much faster and more sophisticated.
Also factor in Nvidia Lovelace's DLSS 3 with Frame Generation capacity, something that Nvidia Ampere and Turing cards don't have access to, and what looks like two very similar cards on paper turns out to be anything but in practice.
Finally, thanks to the 5nm process, Nvidia is able to squeeze more performance out of less power, so the TGP for the RTX 4070 is just 200W, making it a fantastic card for a lower-power, sub-600W build.
Features & chipset: 5 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Design
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Same size as the RTX 3070
16-pin power connector
Same design as RTX 4090 and RTX 4080
With the RTX 4070 Founders Edition, Nvidia finally delivers a next-gen graphics card that can actually fit in your case without requiring a construction winch to hold it in place.
OK, the previous cards weren't that bad, and even at the reduced form factor and weight, you'll still want to toss a GPU bracket into your case for good measure (there's no harm in protecting your investment, after all).
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But holding the RTX 4070 in my hand, this is the first card of this generation that doesn't feel like a piece of machinery. Even the more modestly-sized AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT feel substantial, while the RTX 4070 feels like an old school GeForce graphics card from a couple years back.
The RTX 4070 Founders Edition keeps the same fan design as the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 that preceeded it (a fan on the front and back), but it shrinks everything down to a dual-slot card about two-thirds the size of those monsters. The RTX 4070 also features the same outputs as previous RTX Lovelace cards (so no USB-C out), and a 16-pin power connector with an included adapter for two 8-pin leads to power the card.
With a TGP of 200W, Nvidia could theoretically have just gone with a single 8-pin connector, but Team Green seems absolutely committed to the 12VHPWR cable, it seems. I'll never stop complaining about this, but it is what it is. If you have an ATX 3.0 power supply, you won't need to worry about that, but the rest of us will have to deal with additional cable management.
Design score: 4.5 / 5
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Phenomenal gaming performance
Can easily push 60 fps in 4K gaming with DLSS
RTX 3080 performance at 60% of the power
Right out the gate, let's just say that the Nvidia RTX 4070 is the best 1440p graphics card on the market right now, and it's likely to remain at the top of that list for a good long while.
Its performance prowess isn't limited to just 1440p, mind you, and when I get into the gaming performance, you'll see that its 4K gaming potential is exciting (with caveats), but for starters, we can dig into its synthetic performance in tests like 3DMark to see how the fundamentals stack up.
General Performance
As you can see, the RTX 4070 outperforms the RTX 3070 by about 21% overall, while underperforming the RTX 3080 by about 1.37%, which is close enough to effectively tie the last-gen 4K powerhouse, and underperforms the RTX 3080 Ti by about 6%. Considering that the RTX 3080 Ti's MSRP is nearly twice that of the RTX 4070, this is an astounding result.
The RTX 4070 does lag behind the RTX 4070 Ti and the RX 7900 XT by quite a bit, averaging about 22% worse performance than the RX 7900 XT and about 13.5% worse performance than the RTX 4070 Ti. These current-gen cards also have substantially better hardware, so this isn't unexpected.
Creative Performance
When it comes to creative performance, well, we have a more limited dataset to work with since Blender Benchmark 3.5.0 decided it only wanted to test half the cards I tried to run it on (including failing to run on the RTX 4070), so we'll have to come back to that one at a later date once the benchmark is updated.
In the meantime, the tests I was able to run really showcased how well the RTX 4070 can handle creative workloads. On Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop, the RTX 4070 performed noticeably better than the RTX 3080 across both apps and fell in very close behind the RTX 4070 Ti for an overall second place finish.
In lieu of Blender's Benchmark, V-Ray 5 is a fairly good stand-in, as well as an excellent benchmark in its own right. Here, the RX 7900 XT wouldn't run, since it doesn't use CUDA or Nvidia's RTX, but we can see the RTX 4070 coming in a respectable runner up to the RTX 4070 Ti.
One of my recent favorite workloads, Lumion 12.5, renders an architectural design into either a short movie clip at 1080p or 4K at 60 fps, making it one of the best benchmarks for creatives to see how a graphics card handles production level workloads rather than synthetic tests.
It requires the same kind of hardware as many of the best PC games in order to light a scene, create realistic water effects, and reproduce foliage on trees, and it's the kind of real-world benchmark that tells more about the card than a simple number devoid of context.
Considering that it can take a five-second, 60 fps movie clip an hour to render at production quality, I switched things up a bit and rather than calculate frames per second, like I do with Handbrake's encoding test, I use frames per hour to give a sense of how long a movie clip you can produce if you leave the clip to render overnight (a common practice).
In the case of the RTX 4070, it rendered a five-second movie clip at 60 fps at draft (1-star) quality 13% faster than the RTX 3080, about 7% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti, and nearly 23% faster than the RX 7900 XT.
It lagged behind the RTX 4070 Ti, though, by about 8%, a deficit that grew wider at 1080p production (4-star) quality, where the RTX 4070 rendered the movie 25% slower than the 4070 Ti and 6.78% slower than the RX 7900 XT.
For Handbrake, the RTX 4070 manages to pull out its first clean win on the creative side, though not by a whole lot. Still, 170 frames per second encoding from 4K to 1080p is not bad at all.
Overall then, the RTX 4070 puts in a solid creative performance, besting the RTX 3080, the RX 7900 XT, the RTX 3070 Ti, and the RTX 3070, while barely losing out to the RTX 3080 Ti.
Gaming Performance
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
As good of a creative card as the RTX 4070 is, in its bones, this is a gamers' graphics card, so gaming performance is definitely where I spent most of my time testing the RTX 4070. I want to note that the included figures here are a representative sample of my testing, and that not all test results are shown.
When it comes to gaming performance, the RTX 4070 offers some of the best you're going to get at this price, though there are some stipulations to bring up right out the gate.
First, broadly speaking, this card can game at 4K on most games not called Cyberpunk 2077 or Metro: Exodus using max settings natively, so long as you keep things within reasonable limits. Or, really, one limit: keep ray tracing turned off.
Overall, the RTX 4070 gets about 58 fps on average at 4K when not ray tracing, with a floor of 45 fps at 4K, which is eminently playable. Turn ray tracing to the max and your get an average fps of 34 with a floor of 25, which is just better than a slideshow.
The RTX 3080 doesn't fare too much better on this metric, managing 40 fps on average with a floor of 29 fps at max settings with ray tacing turned on, while the RTX 3080 Ti averages about 36 fps and a floor of 19 fps. This does put the RTX 4070 just behind the 3080 Ti in terms of average fps and with a higher fps floor than the 3080 Ti.
If you're dead set on ray tracing, the RTX 4070 can certainly deliver, thanks to DLSS, which can bump those numbers back up to 79 fps on average with a floor of 55 fps. Compare that to the RTX 3080's 80 fps average with a 58 fps floor in our tests and the RTX 4070 can definitely go toe to toe with the RTX 3080 when ray tracing on max settings if DLSS is on.
In addition, the RTX 4070 gets about 10% less fps on average than the RTX 3080 Ti at 4K with ray tracing and DLSS on, (79 fps to the 3080 Ti's 88 fps), and a roughly 14% lower fps floor than the RTX 3080 Ti (55 fps to the 3080 Ti's 64 fps).
Overall, the RTX 4070 manages an average 57 fps at 4K, with a floor of 41 fps, across all the settings I tested. This is about 28% lower than the RTX 4070 Ti (79 fps average, overall), about 10% lower than the RTX 3080 (63 fps average, overall), the RX 7900 XT (64 fps average, overall), and the RTX 3080 Ti (64 fps average, overall).
These numbers skew a bit against the RTX 4070, since the RTX 4070 Ti, RX 7900 XT, RTX 3080, and RTX 3080 Ti all handle native 4K gaming much better, but so few people play at native 4K anymore that is a fairly meaningless advantage.
Meanwhile, the RTX 4070 actually beats the RX 7900 XT by about 20% when using DLSS (versus the RX 7900 XT's FSR) at 4K with max settings and ray tracing; 79 fps on average to 66 fps on average, respectively. It also manages to strike a dead heat with the RTX 3080 (80 fps average) and come just 10% short of the RTX 3080 Ti's average RT performance at 4K with ray tracing.
It's important to note as well that these don't factor in DLSS 3 Frame Generation, to make it a fair comparison.
As for the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070 manages about 39% better average 4K performance, with a 53% higher fps floor (57 fps average with a 43 fps floor for the RTX 4070 compared to the RTX 3070's 41 fps average and 28 fps floor).
When it comes to 1440p gaming, the RTX 4070 is on much more solid footing, even if some of the bigger cards definitely perform better in absolute terms. The RTX 4070 underperforms the RTX 3080 by about 8% in non-ray-traced, non-upscaled 1440p gaming, on average (105 fps to the RTX 3080's 115 fps), though they both have a very similar floor around 80-85 fps.
Meanwhile, the RTX 4070 falls about 12% short of the RTX 3080 Ti's 119 average fps at non-ray-traced, non-DLSS 1440p.
Both the RTX 4070 Ti and RX 7900 XT kinda clobber the RTX 4070 with roughly 25-29% better performance at non-ray-traced, non-upscaled 1440p gaming, and this carries over into gaming with ray tracing settings maxed out, though the RTX 4070 is still getting north of 60 fps on average (67 fps, to be precise), with a relatively decent floor of 51 fps.
The real kicker though is when we turn on DLSS, at which point the RTX 4070 beats out everything but the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti, including the RX 7900 XT, which it outperforms by about 29% on average (125 fps to 97 fps), with a much higher floor of 88 fps to the RX 7900 XT's 60 fps, a nearly 49% advantage.
The RTX 4070 also beats the RTX 3080 here too, with about 5% better performance on average and a 7.5% higher fps floor on average than the RTX 3080. Incredibly, the RTX 4070 is just 3% slower than the RTX 3080 Ti when both are using DLSS at 1440p with max ray tracing.
As for the RTX 3070, the RTX 4070 gets about 35% better performance at 1440p with ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 than the card it replaces (125 fps to 93 fps), with a nearly 53% higher fps floor on average (87 fps to the 3070's 57 fps), meaning that where the RTX 3070 is setting the 1440p standard, the RTX 4070 is blowing well past it into territory the RTX 3070 simply cannot go.
The story is pretty much the same at 1080p, with there being essentially no difference between the RTX 4070, the RTX 3080, the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RX 7900 XT, with the RTX 3070 languishing about 30% behind and the RTX 4070 Ti off on its own out ahead of everyone else.
There has been a lot of talk about the RTX 4070 ahead of its launch as benchmarks have leaked and people have looked at numbers out of context and downplayed the performance of the RTX 4070 based on one or two tests. They've even pointed to the price increase to say that this card is a disappointment.
Granted, I'm not thrilled about the 20% price increase either, but there's no getting around the fact that you're getting a graphics card here with just 200W TGP that's putting up numbers to rival the RTX 3080 Ti. And I haven't even touched on the new features packed into Lovelace that you can't get with the last-gen Nvidia graphics cards.
The numbers are what they are, and the RTX 4070's performance is simply outstanding across every resolution in all the ways that matter.
Performance score: 5 / 5
Should you buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 ?
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Buy it if...
You want next-gen performance for less than $600 The Nvidia RTX 4070 offers performance on par with the RTX 3080 and even the RTX 3080 Ti for a good deal less.
You don't want a massive GPU Graphics cards are starting to resemble transformers nowadays (both the autobot and power plant variety), so it's nice to get a graphics card that's just normal-sized.
You want next-gen features like DLSS 3 Nvidia's hardware is often on the bleeding edge of the industry, but things like DLSS 3 and Nvidia Reflex are Nvidia's not-so-secret force multiplier here.
Don't buy it if...
You can get an RTX 3080 cheap Generally, the RTX 4070 is going to outperform the 3080, but if you don't care about the advanced features and can grab the 3080 in a bargain bin, you could save some money.
You're looking for Nvidia's next budget card The RTX 4070 is a lot cheaper than the rest of the current-gen graphics card lineups from Nvidia and AMD, but at $600, it's still too expensive to truly be a "budget" GPU.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review: Also consider
If our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review has you considering other options, here are two more graphics cards to consider...
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT While its bigger sibling gets a lot more attention, don't sleep on the RX 7900 XT. It's one of the best graphics cards AMD has ever produced, and while it's a good bit more expensive than the RTX 4070, it's powerful and future-proofed enough for 8K gaming that you'll be able to get a lot of use out of this card in the long-term.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti The Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti doesn't have a Founders Edition, so it's going to be more expensive than its $799 MSRP, but the performance on offer here makes this an excellent alternative to the RTX 4070 if you've got some extra cash to spend.
When I test a graphics card, I start by making sure that all tests are performed on the same test bench setup to isolate GPU performance. I then run it through a series of synthetic benchmarking tools like 3DMark as well as in-game benchmarks in the most recent PC games I can access like Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 2022.
I run everything on the maximum settings possible without upscaling tech, and I run all tests at the resolution a reader is most likely to use a given card at. In the case of the RTX 4070, this meant testing at 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p.
I also make sure to install the latest relevant drivers and rerun tests on any competing graphics card that I might have already reviewed and tested, like the RTX 4070 Ti, RX 7900 XT, and RTX 3080 to make sure that I have the most current scores to account for any driver updates. All of these scores are recorded and compared against the card's predecessor, its most direct rival, and the card directly above and below it in the product stack, if those cards are available.
I then average these scores to come to a final overall score and divide that by the card's MSRP to see how much performance every dollar or pound spent actually gets you to find how much value the card actually brings to the table.
Finally, I actually use the card in my own personal computer for several days, playing games, using apps like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, and watching for any anomalies, crashes, glitches, or visual disruptions that may occur during my time with the card. Having extensively covered and tested many graphics cards over the years, I know what a graphics card should do and how it should perform, and can readily identify when something is not performing up to expectations and when it exceeds them.
Strava announced today a new partnership with Spotify, integrating the streaming platform within its own mobile app. You can now link up your favorite songs, playlists and podcasts to the activity platform and play music instantly without the need for switching between apps.
A music note will appear in the Record tab, pulling up suggested playlists and tracks directly from Spotify. Premium users can play their starred tracks and curated playlists, while Free users will listen to whatever the audio app usually feeds them, including intermittent ads.
The feature will be available to...
The District Court of Mannheim, Germany has ruled in favor of Nokia in a patent case against vivo. The lawsuit concerns a Nokia 4G standard-essential patent (SEP) and could see vivo forced out of the German market. Nokia previously won cases against Oppo and OnePlus over the same SEPs which resulted in a ban on the sale of Oppo and OnePlus devices in Germany.
vivo issued an official statement confirming it will pause sales and marketing of affected products via official vivo Germany channels. The company is also ready to appeal the court decision and is continuing to negotiate a new IP...
Realme introduced the Realme C55 last month with Dynamic Island-like Mini Capsule, and as promised, the company today unveiled the Realme Narzo N55, which is the second Realme smartphone to come with the Mini Capsule feature.
The Mini Capsule on the Realme Narzo N55 expectedly works the same way as it does on the C55. It can show the battery status, data usage, and step count. However, the last two functionalities won't be available out of the box (like the C55) and will arrive later through an OTA.
The Realme Narzo N55 boots Android 13-based Realme UI 4.0 and has the Helio G88 SoC...
The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 series will all support a new S Pen, which has just passed through the FCC to get certified.
The S Pen, model name EJ-PX710, supports Bluetooth Low Energy, has a built-in 2.40V capacitor for quick recharging, and will likely be attached to the tablet through a magnetic strip on the back, just like on the Galaxy Tab S8 series.
Also just like the Galaxy Tab S8 series, the Galaxy Tab S9 series will feature three members - the Galaxy Tab S9, likely the smallest, the Tab S9+, a bigger middle option, and the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. The Ultra will have a...
PacketStream started its journey in California in 2018, when it was established by the entrepreneur duo Arthur Aivazian and Ronald Bell. They imagined it as a company solving a particular need in the market - offering a network of peer-to-peer (P2P) residential proxies, which are IP addresses sourced from real devices around the world, allowing users to bypass geographic restrictions when accessing various kinds of data.
As opposed to many other residential proxy providers, which are centralized, PacketStream’s peer-to-peer nature allows acquiring and selling residential proxies to customers directly. In other words, users buy or sell residential IPs from and to one another. This system makes proxies cheaper, albeit at the cost of reliability and speed.
Another problem that this platform could face is the risk of unreliable IP addresses potentially being added to the network. This is because PacketStream, despite offering secure proxies in general, doesn’t entirely control the IPs sold through its network.
PacketStream: Plans and Pricing
Unlike many proxy providers out there with complex pricing plans, PacketStream keeps things simple, charging per bandwidth, with a flat fee of $1 per GB. This way, you get access to the entire network of residential proxies, which is a lot more straightforward and may even be a cheaper alternative to providers charging for individual IP addresses.
Indeed, $1 per GB is one of the most affordable pricing options in the industry, as most competitors charge a lot more. These includeIPRoyal with $6.5 per GB,Bright Data with $8.40 per GB, andWebshare with $2.8 per GB (depending on the specific package you selected).
That said, you’ll need to purchase at least 50 GB, which will set you back by $50. This means you can’t buy just $1 of bandwidth to take the platform for a spin before deciding - the 50 GB minimum is a must. Still, PacketStream offers rotating proxies (alongside their static counterparts), so if one IP address doesn’t work, you can switch to a different one in a jiffy.
PacketStream offers a free trial, but without a standardized process. You need to contact the sales team to request this trial, which is futile for most individual users. The free trial is only suitable for people who plan to spend significant sums on proxies. After all, why contact a sales team if you just need to test a few gigabytes worth of proxies?
PacketStream accepts payments through PayPal and major credit cards.
PacketStream: Features
PacketStream allows users not just to buy proxies, but also to acquire them and sell them on to offset costs, and sell your unused device bandwidth for profit, offering it at prices starting at $0.10 per GB. The minimum payout is $5 and is sent to your PayPal account once per week with a 3% fee applied to cashouts.
Interestingly, Microsoft Defender blocked the download and installation of PacketStream, identifying it as a program that “displays deceptive product messages.” This is typically how ‘scareware’ is described, or software that makes deceptive or fraudulent claims about your computer’s health to trick you into buying unnecessary or potentially unwanted products, which may not be inherently malicious in the same way as other malware.
However, since PacketStream doesn’t make any scary claims about your device, the flagging as potentially malicious could be due to the application’s process of using your computer to route third-party traffic when you share your bandwidth with other users. Hence, the antivirus interprets the app’s behavior as unusual or questionable. So, if you fail to install PacketStream, this could be the reason.
Residential Proxies
PacketStream offers a P2P residential proxy network spanning 190 countries. These proxies are sourced from real devices whose owners sell their bandwidth on the PacketStream network. You don’t have to worry about illegally sourced IP addresses, a major problem plaguing proxy providers. Every IP address on PacketStream was consensually added by its owner to earn money.
The company has both randomized and static IP options on offer, with randomized IPs changing with every new request to provide a high level of anonymity. Static IPs, on the other hand, remain consistent for scenarios where a single and steady IP address is required. Selection of the type of residential proxy you need is done as part of the request when buying access.
PacketStream’s proxy IP addresses were reliable during our test and offered reasonable speeds. We chose IP addresses from different countries, and they provided fast connections, although the speed varies depending on the country. PacketStream lets you choose proxies from roughly 190 countries, but you can’t select by city, which we consider a disadvantage. Many rival proxy providers let you choose proxies from specific cities to increase your chances of evading geographical restrictions.
(Image credit: PacketStream )
The platform supports HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS proxy protocols, which differ in how they handle traffic and their compatibility, each having its own strengths and downsides. Having the latter option in particular is important as it reduces network delays and provides better speeds than HTTP/HTTPS, making it ideal for high-speed, general-purpose tasks like P2P sharing or streaming. The other two, on their part, offer benefits like content caching and content filtering.
Residential proxies can be used for many things. A good example is data scraping, wherein people use proxies to bypass website geo-restrictions and scrape relevant information.
Suppose you run a website that tracks the prices of commodities and delivers this data to users. Running a price monitoring site requires extracting data frequently and quickly from many websites. The websites (primary data sources) are privy to external data scraping and block it by implementing geographical and IP restrictions. They can identify specific IPs from data scraping bots and block them from further access. They can also ban IP addresses of an entire country from accessing their information.
PacketStream gives you access to a large network of residential IP addresses to bypass restrictions and scrape commodity price data. If one IP address gets discovered and blocked, just switch to another and try your luck.) Although specific numbers may differ, this proxy provider has millions of IP addresses across 190 countries, so you’ll have no fear of running out of new proxies to bypass geographical restrictions on websites and services.
Online retail is another common use case for residential proxies. Many people use automated bots to snap up fast-selling products, placing orders before they run out of stock. However, e-commerce sites don’t like this and often blocklist bot IP addresses. PacketStream’s residential proxies let users circumvent this block and get their desired product.
As far as an e-commerce site is concerned, residential proxies belong to legitimate devices. It’s challenging for them to detect and block these proxies. Even when they do, you can switch to another proxy and visit the e-commerce site. PacketStream’s large network of residential proxies allows people to utilize automated scripts to bid for products.
One major drawback is that PacketStream offers only residential IPs. It doesn’t provide datacenter IPs, which are faster and more reliable. Datacenter IPs are sourced from dedicated servers with more speed, making them ideal for massive data scraping tasks. Large enterprises are the main users of datacenter proxies, but PacketStream doesn’t serve this cohort well. This proxy provider best suits individuals and small businesses seeking affordable residential proxies.
PacketStream doesn’t offer mobile-specific IPs. Mobile device IP addresses are present on this P2P network, but you can’t specifically choose that option. Many businesses use mobile IPs for app testing and ad verification, but performing these tasks with PacketStream is difficult.
Likewise, PacketStream doesn’t offer proxies sourced directly from Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISP proxies provide higher data throughput and reduced delay than residential proxies, but you can’t get them on PacketStream.)
Selling Bandwidth
(PacketStream lets users sell their unused bandwidth and make money. You can add your IP address to the network and earn money when people use your device as a proxy. Pricing is $0.10 per GB, which can help you offset the cost of buying bandwidth on PacketStream.
Sharing your bandwidth requires downloading the PacketStream client on your PC. This client is available on Windows and macOS, as well as on Linux, where it can be installed by running a specific command via Docker. It can run even on low-end PCs. The primary requirement is a stable internet connection.
After installing the PacketStream PC app, you can open it anytime and activate a shared connection. Your payout is automatically calculated based on the amount of data your shared connection transmits. Closing the PacketStream app immediately terminates the shared connection, giving you complete control over the process. PacketStream can’t use your connection without your consent, which you give by opening the app.
There’s no limit to the amount of bandwidth you can share. The minimum payout is $5 for 50 GB of bandwidth, which makes sense because 50 GB is the minimum amount of bandwidth that PacketStream users can buy. A 3% fee applies to every payout.
Reseller API
PacketStream offers reselling/white-label services. This feature is for people interested in starting their own proxy providers. In that case, you can sell PacketStream’s proxies under your own branding and earn money. PacketStream provides a bare-bones version of its platform, which you can customize to build a brand atop the company’s infrastructure.
(Image credit: PacketStream )
Resellers provide access to the same network of proxies available on PacketStream. Any device added to PacketStream’s network will become available on your proxy provider. This feature isn’t for individual users, but we consider it worth discussing to give a complete PacketStream review.
PacketStream: Ease of Use
PacketStream outshines many competitors in the user-friendliness criterion. It arguably has the simplest interface we’ve encountered in a proxy provider, thanks partly to its limited features (there’s not much to navigate).
(Image credit: PacketStream )
All features are neatly arranged on the left menu, and the main dashboard lies on the right side. With a white background and a few contrasting colors, PacketStream’s interface feels visually appealing and easy to navigate. The average person won’t have any issues understanding this interface: this can’t be said for some proxy providers.
There’s a drawback, though. PacketStream doesn’t offer a browser extension to manage proxies. You need the desktop interface to manage and deploy new proxies, unlike other proxies with browser extensions for seamless proxy management. An extension lets you switch proxies at the click of a single button, but PacketStream doesn’t provide this benefit.
PacketStream: Customer Support
An area where PacketStream lags behind its competitors is customer support. It offers direct support only via email, with no live chat or telephone option. You can send a support email and expect a response within 48 hours, but there’s no option to hold a real-time conversation with support staff.
Also, PacketStream doesn’t provide as many self-help support resources as most competitors. There’s a FAQ section and user guides on the website, but they aren’t as detailed as what we’ve seen in other proxy providers.
PacketStream: The Competition
PacketStream has many competitors, the most notable beingBright Data,Oxylabs, andDecodo (formerly Smartproxy).
Bright Data offers residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies. It also offers advanced web scraping APIs as pre-built datasets. In contrast, PacketStream offers none of these except residential IPs. If you need PacketStream’s proxies for automated data scraping, you’ll need an external platform for the APIs. However, at $1 per GB, PacketStream’s residential proxy service is much more affordable than Bright Data’s, which costs around $8.4 per GB.
Oxylabs provides residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies, with a massive pool of over 100 million IP addresses. It also provides a Web Unblocker and web scraping APIs for enterprises. Oxylabs is undoubtedly the more sophisticated platform. It offers more reliable and speedy proxy IPs, with complete control over its proxy network, unlike peer-to-peer PacketStream. However, Oxylabs’ residential IPs cost $8 per GB, compared to PacketStream’s $1.
Webshare offers residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies, but not web scraping APIs. Its pool of 80 million+ IP addresses across 195 countries is on par with Oxylabs and Bright Data but larger than PacketStream. With pricing as low as $2.8 per GB, Webshare is one of the most affordable proxy providers for enterprises. Yet, PacketStream’s $1 per GB beats it in pricing.
In summary, PacketStream lags slightly behind most competitors in certain advanced features and customer support. However, it outperforms them in ease of use and affordability, helped by the lower costs of running a P2P network and the opportunity to earn money through offering your bandwidth for other users.
PacketStream: Final words
PacketStream is among the most affordable residential IP providers in terms of price per GB, although the minimum purchase is worth $50. This makes it ideal for individual users or small businesses that require rotating and static proxies for mundane online activities. Having said that, enterprises will probably find it lacking for any large-scale data scraping needs. Besides, it lacks the more reliable datacenter and ISP proxies and has limited customer support.
LG introduced its new company logo which features a flatter look and a lighter shade of red dubbed LG Active Red. The signature Life’s Good brand slogan will be used more widely across branding and product packaging and features a new typeface. LG is going for a more “dynamic and youthful” look in hopes of reinventing its brand identity.
New LG logo next to its predecessor
Having a strong, consistent brand strategy enables us to better communicate our value proposition and unique identity, which harmonically blends innovation and warmth. Implementing the new brand strategy, LG...
The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max might skip the solid-state buttons, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reveals in his latest report. There are “unresolved technical issues,” meaning the premium iPhone 15 models might have to launch with regular physical buttons after all.
The rumor mill has been suggesting the volume rocker and the alert slider of the iPhone 15 Pro series will move on from the classic clickable button. They were supposed to be capacitive touch instead, like the home button on the iPhones of yesteryear.
Such a move would hurt suppliers. Most notably Cirrus Logic was...
