This review first appeared in issue 340 of PC Pro.
MSI describes the Summit MS321UP as a business and productivity monitor, as opposed to its huge range of gaming screens and a handful of creative displays. With a peak 60Hz refresh rate it’s obvious that gamers won’t be applying, but MSI still hopes to lure designers here as it includes a monitor hood in the box.
Print designers can’t expect miracles at this price. There is an Adobe RGB mode, but with this selected it covers only 79% of that color space; a huge distance behind the 95% you can expect of an Eizo ColorEdge monitor. But, and it’s a big but, even the 27in ColorEdge CG279X costs twice as much, while the 32in and 4K ColorEdge CG319X retails for almost £4,000. Two more pitfalls for print designers: its color accuracy isn’t great, with an average Delta E of 1.97, and there’s no Pantone certification.
There’s far more for digital creatives and photographers to cheer, as coverage of the DCI-P3 space is 92% if you switch to the Display P3 profile, while color accuracy improves with an average Delta E of 0.88. You may also want to take advantage of the Design Assistance tools. Alongside print-focused aids such as guides for business cards, A4 and more (these guides appear as rectangular overlays on the screen, so you just slot your artwork within the lines), there’s a bunch of rulers and grids, including a rule-of-thirds grid.
In general, though, I found myself sticking to the sRGB gamut as it locks so well to the 6500K color temperature – I measured 6501K, which is essentially perfect for whites – while again scoring 0.88 for color accuracy. And while a 4K resolution may seem overkill when working in typical business tools such as Word and Excel, you grow to enjoy the sheer crispness of the words and numbers on screen.
A monitor hood is just one of this flexible display’s many attractions(Image credit: Future)
The panel pushes up to 468cd/m2, which is retina-burning high for daily use, and, as its HDR600 certification illustrates, it can push right up to 600cd/m2 in localized areas. I preferred to keep it at around 375cd/m2 (70 in the controls), but this consumes 47W of power. If you’re trying to control your energy outgoings then you can manually drop this yourself or switch to the Eco mode, where brightness dropped to 175cd/m2 – which is still fine in a typical office – and power consumption to 33W. You can also activate auto brightness control, but I found that distracting.
As you can tell from all these options, it’s worth investigating the OSD menu. Tucked away at the bottom of the profile choices are three calibration profiles for your own use, for example, and if you select the User profile a sophisticated array of tools for controlling color temperature, saturation and hue become available. But these are probably overkill for most users, unless they want to fine-tune the color calibration themselves.
You don’t need to head into the main menu to switch between profiles, as pushing the joystick upwards flicks between them. Pushing down activates the Design Assistance tools, while heading right gives you the option of choosing the display input: there are two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort and the increasingly crucial USB-C port.
Connections include two HDMI ports, a DisplayPort and a USB-C port(Image credit: Future)
It’s disappointing that this only delivers 15W of power, so it will trickle-charge laptops at best, but that isn’t such a problem if a laptop will stay connected most of a working day. And because there’s a KVM built into the monitor, if you connect a second PC or laptop (via the monitor’s USB-B input as well as the video input) then you can share a mouse and keyboard between them. Pressing left on the joystick allows you to switch inputs, or you can keep it as automatic – or you can use the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) and Picture-by-Picture (PBP) features.
You can also share any device connected via the three USB-A ports, with one port tucked awkwardly at the rear and the other two on the left-hand side. There are mic and headphone jacks here, too – note the lack of built-in speakers – along with a full-size SD card slot.
I ended up being grateful for the proximity of those ports, as this 9.7kg hunk of a monitor isn’t easy to move. There’s 35° of swivel to the left and right, and a more than adequate 100mm of height adjustment, but with a 32in panel such as this you’d need an even heftier stand to support 90° pivots into portrait mode.
Despite this lack of physical flexibility, this monitor fully deserves to be described as versatile. The ease with which you can switch between color profiles, along with the shedload of features, mean it can fit into almost any workflow. And at £700, with a five-year warranty, it’s great value.
This review first appeared in issue 340 of PC Pro.
We are entering another exciting phase for PC processors, particularly if you’re a content creator. While the mid-range pendulum swung back to Intel in our workstations Labs, AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series promises huge potential for content creation. Here, I put it through its paces in Armari’s Magnetar M16R7-1300G3.
Armari has, of course, opted for the top Ryzen 9 7950X for its system. Unlike the Intel Core i9-12900K chips that proved so popular in the Labs, the Ryzen 9 has 16 full-speed cores rather than eight, alongside eight low-power ones. And the 7950X provides a base clock of 4.5GHz across all its cores, with an incredible maximum Boost frequency of 5.7GHz, so it should hurtle through any task with a multithreaded bias.
The Ryzen 7000 series is AMD’s first to support DDR5, with Armari providing a generous 64GB complement of 5,600MHz Corsair Vengeance Black DDR5 as two 32GB DIMMs. This runs at 4,800MHz on the system, but enables the processor’s dual-channel memory capability. It also leaves two DIMM slots free on the Asus X670E ProArt-Creator WiFi motherboard, to make an upgrade to 128GB possible – but this will drop the DIMM operating speed to 3,600MHz.
One area where AMD hasn’t had the upper hand for some years is professional graphics. Nevertheless, Armari sticks with AMD here, via a Radeon Pro W6800 graphics card that sports a hefty 3,840 Stream processors and 32GB of GDDR6 frame buffer. The latter operates at 512GB/sec, a little behind Nvidia’s latest and greatest, but there’s no shortage of connectivity, with six mini DisplayPort 1.4 connectors enabling up to two 8K displays or six 5K ones.
Armari hasn’t gone to town with storage, unlike the £16,000 Scan 3XS GWP-ME A1128T. Just a single drive is included, but it’s a potent one. The 2TB WD SN850 Gen4 M.2 SSD SN850 delivered a sustained reading throughput of 7,050MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark 8, with writing at 5,248MB/sec, making this the fastest single NVMe drive we’ve tested.
Armari’s latest workstation is a powerful beast(Image credit: Future)
If you need secondary storage for large media files, the chassis includes four 3.5in/2.5in easy swap backplanes and drive sleds, which you can switch out when the system is powered down and the side panel off. The case is one of Armari’s secrets, as the firm custom-designs its own. The Magnetar M60 Gen3 chassis has loads of cooling, including a side mount for the CPU liquid system, replete with a trio of 120mm fans.
Despite all this, the Magnetar isn’t a power hog. It consumes 90W when idle, pushing up to 370W when rendering a scene in Blender using both the CPU and GPU. If you run the CPU, GPU and memory all at maximum it consumes 530W, which still isn’t terrible considering how much processing power you’re getting in return. And since Armari has included a hefty 1,300W power supply, you can be confident the system will stay stable even under maximum load.
You may want to make full use of that maximum load, too, because this workstation has outrageous power. The Magnetar was a stunningly quick system in every CPU-related test I threw at it. The score of 773 in the PC Pro benchmarks would have beaten every system in the most recent Labs, and even surpasses the excellent Scan 3XS GWP-ME A1128T with its 64-core Threadripper processor.
Underlining the CPU’s potency is a Cinebench R23 multicore result of 37,170, which trounces a pair of 24-core Intel Xeon Gold processors and would even beat a 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX. The single-core result of 2,093 is on a par with that of the Intel Core i9-13900K in the Scan Vengeance 3XS – except the Ryzen 9 7950X has 16 cores capable of this speed, where the Intel chip only has eight. To further underline the AMD chip’s power, the Blender Gooseberry render only took 293 seconds using the CPU.
The single area of weakness is the graphics acceleration, but only relatively. With 3D modelling and animation, using SPECviewperf 2020 the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 achieved 174 in 3dsmax-07 and 456 in maya-06, which are great results, but Nvidia’s Quadro A4500 will surpass the latter. With CAD/CAM, the scores were 99 in catia-06, 133 in creo-03, 431 in snx-04 and 259 in solidworks-05. All good results, but again the A4500 holds the advantage here.
Nevertheless, the Magnetar is an unquestionably capable workstation that can slice through every kind of content creation task, be it modelling and design or rendering the results out to a file. Armari has delivered the AMD platform in its habitual efficient, solid build. The price is high, but the amount of power you get from this 16-core processor workstation is phenomenal.
Honor announced another generative AI that will be coming to its upcoming Honor 400 series. The Honor 400 and Honor 400 Pro smartphones will offer AI Image to Video feature, leveraging technology from Google Cloud.
It will let you transform static images into AI-generated short videos, bringing life to old memories. We even received a set of classic paintings, reimagined in motion through the eyes of the technology.
Image to Video
Honor 400 series aims to be "the best AI camera phone in its price segment." The feature itself should be available to all users through the Gallery...
Honor announced another generative AI that will be coming to its upcoming Honor 400 series. The Honor 400 and Honor 400 Pro smartphones will offer AI Image to Video feature, leveraging technology from Google Cloud.
It will let you transform static images into AI-generated short videos, bringing life to old memories. We even received a set of classic paintings, reimagined in motion through the eyes of the technology.
Image to Video
Honor 400 series aims to be "the best AI camera phone in its price segment." The feature itself should be available to all users through the Gallery...
vivo is getting ready to unveil a third member of its V50 family in India, which will arrive to complement the V50 and V50e. This will be the V50 Elite Edition, and the brand has now started teasing it.
The official announcement is scheduled for May 15. While the teaser is devoid of any specs, we can see a circular camera island in the video below with "co-engineered with Zeiss" branding, so clearly the cameras will be a big part of this phone's USP.
Elite. Enigmatic. Arriving soon. With sound that surrounds and portraits that captivate — this is more than just a phone....
According to a new rumor out of China, the Xiaomi 16 will be the first device to launch with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 chipset on board. This likely will only be the Chinese launch, mind you, and the exclusive is probably only going to last a few days, if that, judging by how these things have taken place in the past.
What's perhaps more notable here is that the Xiaomi 16 is allegedly going to get unveiled in September, earlier than its predecessor which was only announced in October. This implies Qualcomm will be revealing its next flagship chipset in September too.
Xiaomi 15
The...
The Sony Xperia 1 VII is here, and it looks very much like its predecessor. It comes in two new colors, so it's easier to tell apart though - Moss Green and Orchid Purple.
Sony kept the blueprint unchanged - the Xperia 1 VII has the same 6.5-inch display diagonal, the same 5,000mAh battery, and a triple camera system on the back, but it's still bringing key improvements.
The main shooter and the continuous optical zoom are the same as before - you get a 24mm f/1.9 wide angle camera with a 1/1.35-inch Exmor T sensor, OIS, and PDAF. The telephoto has an 85mm-170mm f/2.3-f3.5 lens with...
Xiaomi is currently working on a new phone that will allegedly be powered by Qualcomm's recently unveiled Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. The Redmi sub-brand has already used it in the Turbo 4 Pro, but now it's the main Xiaomi brand's turn, it seems.
The chipset will be powering the Civi 5 Pro, which will be the successor to the Civi 4 Pro that launched in March of last year. Thus, it might be arriving pretty soon. The Civi 5 Pro has now been spotted in the Geekbench database, which is how we know what SoC it rocks.
Xiaomi CIVI 5 Pro 25067PYE3C appears on Geekbench with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen...
The Galaxy S25 Edge is the phone for Samsung fans who like to complain. Does your Galaxy S25 Plus feel too thick for your tight jeans and small hands? Is the Galaxy S25 Ultra too heavy for your bag? The Galaxy S25 Edge is precisely the phone you want, nothing more and nothing less.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is the solution to a very simple formula. Take a Galaxy S25 Plus. Shave 1.5mm off the thickness by removing the zoom camera and shrinking the battery. Add a 200MP camera sensor. Wrap it in titanium. Voila: Galaxy S25 Edge!
Seriously, that’s it; that’s the whole phone. The Galaxy S25 Edge has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset inside, with the same 12GB of RAM as the Galaxy S25 Plus. There’s a bigger vapor chamber for improved cooling, but we’re talking about a minuscule space made slightly less so.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is only 5.8mm thin, the thinnest Galaxy S ever (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
Even though it’s thin, this isn’t a phone you should experience on paper. You need to get your hands on a device to see just how thin and light it feels. I spent a couple of hours with Samsung to get hands-on time with the new Galaxy S25 Edge, so I can tell you what to expect: expect a little bit.
It feels a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter than other phones I’ve used. Just a little bit. It’s not the thinnest phone ever. Even Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 is thinner when it’s open; it’s just the thinnest ever Galaxy S phone.
It’s not even close to the thinnest flat smartphone ever. The Vivo X5 Max from 2014 was more than 1mm thinner than the Galaxy S25 Edge at less than 4.75mm.
The Galaxy S25 Edge won’t spark a revolution. It won't make your current phone look fat. There will be other thin phones – Apple’s long-anticipated iPhone 17 Air is expected to launch later this year. But I don’t expect a Pixel Edge, or a OnePlus Edge.
Holding the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge immediately put me in mind of past Samsung phones. Foremost, the ancient Samsung SGH-U100 Ultra 5.9, an incredibly thin phone Samsung launched in 2007 at the sunset of feature phones. That was the last time I remember Samsung making a phone whose main feature was being thin.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is thin, but not shockingly thin (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
That phone shocked onlookers. Nobody could believe Samsung could make such a thin phone. You wondered how there was space for the buttons to move; it felt so thin.
That’s not true of the Galaxy S25 Edge. It’s very thin, but nobody is going to be shocked. I expect the reaction will be more like ‘huh, that’s pretty thin,’ and not ‘WOW, what a THIN PHONE!’
That’s ok, because the Galaxy S25 Edge is priced right for a subdued reaction. The phone is a bit more expensive than the Galaxy S25 Plus. You lose some battery and some zoom, but you gain a much better camera. Plus, you have the thinnest Galaxy S!
What’s the benefit? Samsung says the Galaxy S25 Edge is easier to hold than the Galaxy S25 Plus. I had an iPhone 16 Pro Max in my pocket to compare, and the Edge was definitely much thinner and lighter than the biggest iPhone. Easier to hold? Maybe a little, but I keep my phone in a case anyway.
All eyes now turn to Apple to see if it can deliver an even thinner iPhone 17 Air to beat the Galaxy S25 Edge. With a 5.1mm iPad Pro on the market, it seems likely that Apple will launch an even thinner phone, but if it packs cheaper cameras or lacks flagship features, it won’t match the thin new Galaxy.
The iPad Pro is only 5.1mm, will the iPhone 17 Air be just as thin? (Image credit: Future)
Which brings me to some big concerns about the Galaxy S25 Edge – everybody is going to put this phone in a case. Samsung is offering its own thin cases, but any case will add bulk. The phone is durable, but it’s not military standard rugged.
With a benefit of only a millimeter or so, you’re already paying more for less battery life and fewer cameras. If you slap a case on it, can you still feel how thin it is? Not as much.
My second concern is that this is the slimmest Galaxy S phone… today. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is thinner, so we know that even thinner phones are possible. Will tomorrow's Galaxy S26 be just as thin as today’s Galaxy S25 Edge? Is a 5.8mm phone impressively thin in the long run? If you’re going to keep this phone through years of updates, I doubt it’s going to feel as thin as it does today in two years.
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
With that in mind, the Galaxy S25 Edge doesn’t stand out. It’s thin, but it isn’t going to blow anybody away. It’s the thinnest Galaxy S today, but not the thinnest phone ever, and not even the thinnest phone Samsung makes right now.
However, it scratches an itch. If you were considering the Galaxy S25 Plus, you can spend a bit more and get a thinner, arguably cooler phone. But coolness, like being thin, doesn’t last forever.
I wish there was something unique to this phone to make it stand out from the rest of the Galaxy lineup, but I’m not sure what that should be. Even a new theme or some Edge-related widgets would have been a nice addition. It just feels like otherwise this phone launch is all about giving us the perfect compromise, with no new benefits.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge hands-on: Price and availability
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
Starts at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,849 for 256GB and 12GB of RAM
That’s $100 / £100 / AU$100 more than the Galaxy S25 Plus
The Galaxy S25 Edge is available for pre-order now, and it should be in hands by May 30, assuming the current global economic climate causes no delays. That was a question I heard Samsung folks discussing, but they don’t anticipate any problems.
The phone will come in three colors: black, blue, and silver. You can get it with 256GB or 512GB of storage, and Samsung will have a deal at launch to double the storage for free. Both models include 12GB of RAM inside.
The Galaxy S25 Edge slots in nicely between the Galaxy S25 Plus and the Galaxy S25 Ultra on Samsung’s price ladder. It also costs more than an iPhone 16 Pro, but less than an iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Storage
US Price
UK Price
AU Price
256GB
$1,099
£1,099
AU$ 1,849
512GB
$1,219
£1,199
AU$ 2,049
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge hands-on: Specifications
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
The Galaxy S25 Edge has most of the same specs as the Galaxy S25 Plus, with some Ultra inspiration thrown in. It has the important Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor that made the Galaxy S25 Ultra such a winner.
The camera is a 200MP sensor, but Samsung said it is not the exact same sensor found on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Megapixels don’t mean anything, it’s the sensor size that really matters, so I’m assuming there is a smaller sensor in this phone than its bigger Samsung brethren.
The Galaxy S25 Edge has a 3,900mAh battery, which is much smaller than the 4,900mAh cell in the Galaxy S25 Plus. Samsung says we should expect better battery life than the Galaxy S24, but not as much longevity as the Galaxy S25 provides.
For charging, the Galaxy S25 Edge tops out at 25W, slower than the 45W charging that the rest of the Galaxy S25 family can use. There is wireless charging, at least, along with reverse wireless power sharing.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
Dimensions
75.6 X 158.2 X 5.8mm
Weight
163g
OS
OneUI 7, Android 15. 7 major Android upgrades promised.
Display
6.7-inch LTPO AMOLED, 120Hz
Chipset
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy
RAM
12GB
Storage
256GB / 512GB
Battery
3,900mAh
Rear cameras
200MP main, 12MP ultra-wide with macro
Front camera
12MP
Charging
25W wired, 15W wireless
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge hands-on: Design
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
Thinnest Galaxy S ever, thinner than any iPhone
More Galaxy Ultra than Galaxy Plus
Samsung might be selling the Galaxy S25 Edge short by comparing it freely to the Galaxy S25 Plus. In fact, with its titanium frame and muted color options, it feels more like a waifish Galaxy S25 Ultra. In any case, the phone is clearly a current-generation Samsung device, while veering just a bit from the formula.
The camera bump looks, frankly, more like the leaked design of the iPhone 17 than the current Galaxy S25 family. It’s not small portholes, it’s an entire bar that seems to be attached to the back of the phone.
The look is decidedly less polished and clean than the similar round bar that holds the Google Pixel 9 cameras. Google’s phone seems to be a single block of metal, while the Galaxy S25 Edge looks like pieces stuck together.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is not symmetrical, and the pieces don't seem to fit perfectly (Image credit: Future)
The phone is not very symmetrical, and it doesn’t seem to have the same fit and finish as the Galaxy S25 Ultra. On the bottom, USB-C port is centered, but the speaker port and the SIM card slot are both haphazardly aligned. The SIM card holder doesn’t even seem to fit perfectly flush with the phone on some of the units I saw, as you can see in my photo below.
I worry about this phone. I worry that it will bend easily, even with a titanium frame. I worry that the protruding camera will make the lens glass more vulnerable in a fall. I worry the gap between the camera bump and the back of the phone will gather unsightly dust and grime.
I’ll feel better if our review unit proves solid, so check back soon once we’ve had an opportunity to run this phone through a thorough battery of tests.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge hands-on: Software
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
All of the Galaxy software you know...
Nothing special to the Edge, but plenty of Galaxy AI
Samsung’s OneUI 7 is looking good on the Galaxy S25 Edge, running on top of Android 15. All of Samsung’s software tricks are here, including the Edge panels, which now sport some AI selection tools. You can even hook this phone up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and use the Samsung DeX desktop environment.
I’m a big fan of DeX, so I was thrilled to see it wasn’t left off. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 inexplicably lacks DeX, so I was worried it would be sacrificed for thinness. Nope, DeX is here, along with all of Samsung’s software features. The endless layers of Settings menus. The massive flotilla of bloatware.
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That latter is probably just a regional choice, because not every Galaxy S25 Edge I saw had the same software preloaded, but some of the devices were jam-packed with junk. There were tons of garbage games, along with carrier software, additions from Microsoft and Google, and then the Samsung folder of apps.
There was a brief time when it seemed like Samsung was pulling back its software bloat, but those days have been washed away with the tide.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge hands-on: Cameras
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
200MP main camera, but not the same as the Ultra
12MP wide lens with macro capabilities
The camera on the Galaxy S25 Edge is just what I was hoping to see… I hope. We knew that Samsung would be reducing its camera load from the triple-lens system on pretty much every other Galaxy phone besides the Galaxy Z Flip series. I was hoping for one big main camera with a big sensor, and that could be what we got with the 200MP sensor on the Edge.
I don’t expect quality on par with the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its 200MP main camera. Samsung says the sensor is not the same, and it would not tell us what sensor it's using or the size of the sensor.
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
A tiny sensor cut into 200 million pieces will not produce high-quality images. Megapixels don’t matter, what really matters is the size of the sensor, and it’s likely the Edge sacrifices some sensor size compared to the Ultra.
The marketing might say this phone has 2X 'optical quality zoom,' but in fact Samsung is using the 200MP sensor to simulate a variety of zoom lengths, and then enhancing the results with AI.
I kind of wish more phones would use this technique, paired with a larger sensor, because I think we’d get better photos than we do from today’s 5X zoom lenses mated to teeny-tiny sensors.
We’ll see if Samsung can pull off a satisfying camera with only two lenses instead of three. It can’t be too good, of course, or else you won’t want to buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra, still the most expensive in the Galaxy S family.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge hands-on: Battery
(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
3,9000mAh battery is smaller than even the Galaxy S25
Battery life won’t be great, and charging will be slower
The Galaxy S25 Edge packs a 3,900mAh battery inside. That’s much smaller than the 4,900mAh cell in the Galaxy S25 Plus – it’s closer to the smaller Galaxy S25, which uses a 4,000mAh battery inside.
In fact, Samsung says battery life will fall somewhere between the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S25, and you'll be able to get a full day of normal use out of this phone. So, it won’t be great for a phone this big, but it will be acceptable. That’s an expected trade-off for a much thinner phone.
What I didn’t expect was slower charging. I was hoping for a charging miracle, maybe even faster charging speeds than the Galaxy S25 to make up for the smaller battery.
If I could charge this phone to full in 30 minutes, I wouldn’t mind that it can’t last all day on a single charge. But with only 25W charging, Samsung says 30 minutes will get me just over halfway, to 55% charged.
We’ll know just how long the phone can last after we’ve tested it in Future Labs and given it a full review. For now, don’t buy this phone expecting great battery life. Buy it for the style.
