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Dying Light: The Beast dials up the horror and keeps the parkouring, zombie-bashing action – and it’s a blast

7:00 pm | September 18, 2025

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Gaming | Tags: Far Cry | Comments: Off

Alright, I'm just gonna get straight to the point: did you love the first two Dying Light games? You did? Okay, I'll save you some time - you're definitely going to enjoy Techland's latest instalment in its survival zombie game series, Dying Light: The Beast.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: September 18, 2025

There's enough to set The Beast apart from its predecessors, even if it follows the same broad gameplay template and stars returning leading man Kyle Crane, protagonist of the original game and its expansion, The Following.

Things didn't go so great for Kyle the first time around; in the (now canon) ending of The Following, he ended up betrayed, infected, captured, and used as an unwilling test subject. The viral outbreak has gone worldwide, and 90% of the global population is dead or infected.

More than a full in-universe decade later, he breaks out of a mysterious laboratory, and we’re off to the races once again: time to bash some skulls with improvised melee weapons and parkour your way across the rooftops like a bloodlusted Sébastien Foucan. Dying Light: The Beast isn't overly concerned with being serious or grounded; we're here for a little bit of the ol’ ultraviolence, and boy, is it fun.

Worlds apart

Considering that Dying Light: The Beast was purportedly originally planned as extra downloadable content (DLC) to Dying Light 2, it sure as hell has a good amount of content in it. Instead of the more urban settings of the first two games, The Beast takes place in the cozy woodland resort town of Castor Woods, nestled in a valley in an alpine landscape.

Well, I say ‘cozy’ - it's not exactly a pleasant place to be by the time Kyle breaks loose. Hordes of poor infected souls roam the cobbled streets and forest underbrush, deadly mutant variants stalk the night, and a rogue paramilitary group commanded by a villainous oligarch is attempting to seize control of the region. So far, so Dying Light.

But the shift to a more rural setting proves to be exactly the injection of freshness this series needed. The map isn't particularly large, but it's big enough to make navigating on foot take a while, and the focus on urban verticality is lessened here. Yes, there are still pylons and watchtowers for Kyle to clamber up, but also more wide-open spaces, divided by trees and thick bushes that make ambushes a constant threat to the unwary explorer. The woodland environments are also beautiful, as is the primary settlement, the Old Town, crumbling in its majesty as nature begins to reclaim it.

Parkour is still alive and well in The Beast. The Old Town is a fantastically dense environment, full of telephone poles and open windows that form a perfect obstacle course when you're running for your life from an angry Volatile.

But even beyond the built-up areas, there are branches to swing on and rocky cliff faces to climb, and the grappling hook makes a welcome return too, helping you more rapidly circumnavigate your hostile surroundings. Sadly, the glider from Dying Light 2: Stay Human doesn't make an appearance, but that's understandable given the less vertical nature of this locale.

Night falls

The Old Town from Dying Light: The Beast — Keep an eye on the time: once night falls, you'll need to be extra cautious or seek shelter. (Image credit: Techland)

There's another significant factor that differentiates The Beast’s setting from the first two games, though it doesn't become apparent until after sunset. In the first two games, you were never that far from a light source, be it a trashcan fire or the headlights of an abandoned vehicle (or simply bright moonlight). Here, when it gets dark, it gets dark.

When the sun goes down, getting around without using your trusty flashlight is night-impossible - though of course, using it runs the risk of attracting powerful, dangerous zombies called Volatiles, who retain their mechanics from the previous titles. Alerting one immediately triggers a chase, at which point your best option is to sprint full-pelt back to the protective UV lights of the nearest safehouse; Volatiles are fast, aggressive, and very hard to kill without some serious weapon upgrades.

Best Bit

Screenshot from Dying Light: The Beast. — (Image credit: Techland)

The first sunset you see is truly beautiful - but any series fan will already know the terrors that nightfall heralds.

This oppressive darkness, combined with the visceral gore and bleak yet beautiful Alpine ambience, makes The Beast feel a lot more horror-adjacent than previous entries into the series. It's a welcome shift in tone - not a full swerve into horror since Kyle remains an absolute murder machine, but definitely a darker vibe that I greatly enjoyed as a lifelong lover of the genre.

Narratively, it's fine. The story is a fairly by-the-numbers adventure, with no huge twists that weren't so obvious a blind man could see them a mile off. The characters are a rogue’s gallery of familiar tropes - the no-nonsense sheriff, the bespectacled physics geek, the sage old black dude, the cartoonishly evil Baron - and the dialogue is… well, the voice acting is decent, at least.

I don't mind the predictability of it all, though; the main plot has a schlocky, B-movie feel that is actually fairly endearing. The Beast isn't interested in telling a fantastically deep and thought-provoking tale; at the end of the day, every cutscene is just a vehicle to deliver Kyle and his huge biceps to the next group of infected or soldiers he has to brutalize.

Old dog, new tricks

Speaking of vehicles, you can drive cars in this one! The lack of vehicles in the second game always seemed odd to me, considering that the first game’s DLC, The Following (which also first explored the idea of a more rural setting), dipped its toe in those waters with the drivable buggy.

In The Beast, you can find abandoned forest ranger cars strewn across the wilderness, which serve as the most effective way to get from A to B outside the more densely-packed areas of Castor Woods. There's no fast travel here - and I'll be honest, the map is a little too large for this omission to go unnoticed. Although mowing down hordes of the infected never stops being fun, trekking back and forth from the major safehouses to turn in completed quests and sell off your accumulated loot quickly becomes a chore.

The vehicles, along with the frequent climbing sections and heavier focus on gunfights with human enemies that began in Dying Light: Stay Human, give The Beast a distinct whiff of Far Cry. I'm not complaining, to be clear; I love that series, and the gunplay and stealth elements on offer here work reasonably well.

Really, the combat as a whole is a definite highlight of The Beast: from crunchy melee combat with improvised weapons like hammers and fire axes, to tense stealthy takedowns with Kyle’s trusty bow and arrows, it all feels good. The gore is spectacular - bones crack, limbs are sliced off, heads fly from shoulders in showers of blood. Stunning a group of weak Biters with Kyle’s UV flashlight before unleashing a sweeping heavy attack with a two-handed axe that knocks them all to the ground at once feels great.

There's a wide range of melee weapons on offer, both craftable and lying around the environment, and while these weapons do degrade with use, they can be repaired multiple times before breaking and will generally last you a long time. Ranged weapons don't degrade, meaning that you only ever need one grenade launcher or sniper rifle; any extras can be broken down for parts.

The crafting system remains largely as it was in previous games; nothing overly complex, just gather parts and break down unneeded gear, then put it together to make something great at killing stuff. Weapons must be crafted at workbenches in safe zones, but consumables and other single-use gear (like gas grenades or incendiary arrows) can be crafted from the inventory screen or quick-select menu at any time. I was particularly fond of the explosive throwing knives, which stick into enemies before turning them into a fine red mist a few seconds later.

Feeling beastly

Another new addition is right there in the title: Kyle’s years of being an unethical bioscience guinea pig have unlocked his weird virus powers, letting him tap into ‘Beast Mode’ (yes, it's really called that) for a short time after dealing or taking enough damage.

In Beast Mode, you regenerate health constantly, take reduced damage, and forsake your usual arsenal for some meaty infected fists that absolutely demolish all but the strongest foes in seconds. It's fun, and the game usually auto-spawns a handful of fast-moving zombies whenever you activate it, amping up the intensity of any fight where you decide to use it. Progressing the narrative and defeating certain infected boss enemies grants skill points, which can be spent to gain extra abilities in Beast Mode, like jumping further or barrelling through enemies while sprinting. There's also a regular skill tree that accumulates points as you level up, which lets you unlock stuff like new parkour-related attacks and weapon crafting blueprints.

The enemies you face in The Beast are a mostly familiar selection for anyone who has played a game with zombies in it before. You’ve got your garden variety Biters, which are slow and weak but dangerous in large numbers, then the faster but more fragile Virals, the armored zombies, zombies who jump, zombies who spit acid for ranged attacks, bloated zombies who explode - you know, typical zombie shooter fare.

There are glimpses of more inspired designs here and there (I really like the returning ‘Goon’ enemy type, a hulking brute with a chunk of concrete and rebar gruesomely fused to its arm), but for the most part, the enemy design is fairly run-of-the-mill.

If I have one significant criticism of the enemies, it’s that they’re a bit too eager with the grapple mechanic. Let an infected get too close, and they’ll grab you, dealing a bit of damage and prompting a quick-time event to shove them away.

Now, this should be relatively easy to avoid, but the devs seem to love hiding Biters behind doorframes and corners to ambush and damage you immediately with no chance of avoiding it. Even sometimes in direct combat, I encountered infected who could seemingly slip past a melee attack mid-swing to interrupt it with the grapple QTE, or grapple me immediately as soon as I escaped from a different enemy grapple. I think there’s a reasonable argument that it’s supposed to be punishing - it can be a death sentence if you’re reckless and allow yourself to be surrounded by a swarm of enemies - but more often than not, it just felt like an annoying roadblock to the otherwise enjoyable melee combat.

Guns out

Thankfully, the overall gameplay challenge feels good outside of my grapple-related woes. I switched between all three different difficulty levels during my playthrough, and found that the highest difficulty provided a stiff challenge perfect for the most masochistic player, while the lowest had me feeling almost immediately overpowered. I played most of the game on medium difficulty, where death was never too far away, but I died more times to misjudged parkour jumps than enemy attacks.

Much like the previous Dying Light games, melee is consistently reliable, while ranged weapons are something of a mixed bag. Early guns are completely feeble against infected enemies, who can shrug off multiple pistol or SMG headshots, and the bow is similarly underpowered until you unlock a skill that lets you deal bonus damage on well-timed shots. But later on, you get access to more powerful weapons like the grenade launcher and the crossbow, which can trivialise many encounters - assuming you can keep them stocked with ammo, which is scarce.

Although the game doesn’t make you fight human enemies too often, small squads of mercenaries and bandits can be found lurking around Castor Woods, and there are several large-scale gunfights that take place over the course of the main campaign.

These dips into conventional cover-shooter gameplay certainly feel a bit less engaging than facing savage zombie hordes, but thankfully they don’t outstay their welcome - the infected might eat bullets like nobody’s business, but a single headshot is enough to take down most human opponents, so most fights are over quickly provided you have the ammo to spare (which you usually will, because the game is quite generous with placing supplies before large scripted battles).

Squishing bugs

Playing through the main campaign (with a bit of time spent exploring and completing side-quests) took me just shy of 22 hours, but this was by no means an exhaustive playthrough: I could easily sink another 20 hours into The Beast to complete everything.

There’s a good amount of safehouses to unlock and secrets to uncover, and while the list of sidequests is perhaps a little sparse, they’re more fleshed out than simple fetch quests - you’ll be hunting a particularly dangerous infected in the woods, or clearing out a series of power substations across the map to help a band of survivors.

In terms of performance on PC, I was able to get a good framerate at 1440p Medium settings with my RTX 5070 desktop, and 1080p Low on an RTX 4060 gaming laptop. DLSS resolution upscaling is helpful at higher resolutions, but I found that Nvidia’s frame-generation was rather wonky, creating too much blur in busy scenes to make the improved framerate worth it.

There’s also a small amount of visual and physics jank here, which I remember being present in the other Dying Light games; think loot items occasionally falling through the floor or Kyle’s hand distorting weirdly while trying to climb the side of a building. At one point, I found it raining inside one half of an abandoned diner (pictured above). It’s nothing game-breaking and rarely actually intrusive, but I do hope that some early patches help remedy these issues, because otherwise the game runs fine for the most part.

It did occur to me about halfway through my playthrough that The Beast might be coasting on players' foreknowledge from the previous games - I personally didn't have any issues with un- or under-explained mechanics, but I would note that a completely fresh player might struggle a bit to understand certain elements of the game, since the tutorials here are pretty bare-bones and have a tendency to either over- or under-explain specific gameplay elements.

Overall, I had a blast with Dying Light: The Beast. It’s not reinventing the wheel: Techland has a solid formula that mixes traditional open-world action sandbox elements with a solid parkour-based movement system and high enemy density, so it’s understandable that The Beast wouldn’t be too much of a deviation from the norm. Still, the new setting is a breath of fresh air, and it still feels fantastic to dropkick a zombie off a roof.

Should you play Dying Light: the Beast?

Play it if...

You love melee combat
Slicing, dicing, punching, and crunching - Dying Light has always had ultra-violent and ultra-satisfying melee gameplay, and The Beast is no exception.

You like open-world exploration
No Ubisoft towers to vomit icons over your map here, no fast travel, just you and the open greenlands of Castor Woods. There are plenty of unmarked secrets for completionists to uncover, too.

You’re a fan of the series
It might sound obvious, but if you enjoyed the previous games, you're bound to have a good time with this one. What are you waiting for - go unleash the beast!

Don't play it if...

You want in-depth roleplaying
Although there's a fairly robust crafting system here, you can largely ignore all the various tiny '+3% to melee damage at night' stat boosts from buildcrafting and still get the full experience. Baldur's Gate, this ain't.

You’re afraid of the dark
The Beast leans a little further into horror than its predecessors, which is great for the game's overall atmosphere - but it also makes nightfall even more terrifying than before.

Accessibility

On the topic of accessibility, we've got the usual suite of options I've come to expect in any major game: motion sickness reduction, directional audio indicators, and colorblind presets are all present and accounted for, and the subtitles can be customized as well.

How I reviewed Dying Light: The Beast

I spent a while tinkering with the various gameplay, graphical, and accessibility settings in order to get a complete feel for the game, as well as playing through the main campaign at a reasonably fast pace. Of course, I also spent some time checking out the side-quests and just exploring the world, while also being sure to use every new piece of gear I encountered (in case any of them were extremely under- or over-powered - the grenade launcher definitely falls into the latter category).

I played the majority of the game on my gaming PC, with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Nvidia RTX 5070, using an Asus ROG Strix Scope RX II keyboard and Logitech G502 Lightspeed mouse or a Hyperx Clutch controller. Audio was a combination of the HyperX Cloud Flight S headset and the SteelSeries Arena 9 speakers.

To see how the game would perform on different hardware, I also loaded it up on my RTX 4060 gaming laptop to test out performance on a lower-spec system.

First reviewed September 2025

Rippling IT IAM solution review

5:13 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Pro | Comments: Off

You probably know Rippling for its workforce, human resource management, and payroll functions. Rippling is your single source of truth when it comes to backend employee management.

From onboarding, remuneration, and off-boarding to day-to-day management like time and attendance, scheduling, and benefits management – there’s a lot you can do with Rippling.

However, it also has a very robust IT security suite, offering features like identity and access management and comprehensive device management.

This review will focus on Rippling’s identity and access management solution, which offers features like Single Sign On (SSO), Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), password management, and role-based user provisioning and access controls.

Rippling IT IAM: Pricing

Rippling is a unified solution for your entire workforce's needs, including various suites such as global payroll, time and attendance, benefits management, scheduling, recruiting, and so on. Each of their featured suites has a different pricing model, for which you will be required to contact their support team.

We did a bit of digging and found that their identity and access management solution, which offers features like SSO, MFA, role-based access policy, and automated provisioning and deprovisioning, starts at $8/user/month. That’s it – there are no different pricing tiers. You get everything for your identity access management needs in a single plan.

Besides this, if you also want to include device management and inventory management, it will cost you an extra $8/user/month for each of these features.

Although the pricing isn’t displayed on the website directly, I still found the structure to be pretty simple and straightforward. You don’t have to juggle between various pricing tiers or add specific features one by one as you require; in a-la-carte pricing followed by other providers, such as Okta and JumpCloud.

Rippling IT IAM: Features

Rippling makes it very easy to create and manage user groups based on predefined attributes such as job title, department, location, and so on, known as Supergroups.

Instead of having to manually add or remove employees from these groups, Rippling does it automatically based on these attributes. Whenever an attribute is updated, the group is also updated without any manual intervention.

Rippling focuses a lot on role-based permissions, which automate a large chunk of the approval hierarchy, ensuring that admins can focus on more critical tasks. For example, you can set which employee gets admin access based on their attributes, such as department, team, membership, location, and so on.

You can also define the type of data they access and the subset of the organisation these permissions will apply to. Whenever a permission profile is updated, all matching users' access is adjusted automatically in real time.

Rippling also acts as a comprehensive outbound SSO provider. This means that you can log into Rippling using your Single Sign On (SSO) password and simply click on the app you want to log on the dashboard. There is no need to add additional passwords for individual apps when you use Rippling as an identity provider.

Rippling IT IAM SSO — (Image credit: Rippling)

Rippling integrates with 600+ apps for all your SSO needs. Plus, if you do not find an app in the library, you can set up a custom integration with apps that support SAML for SSO and SCIM for user provisioning.

RPass is Rippling’s native, built-in password manager that suggests and remembers strong passwords across your organisation.

What I like the most is that it goes beyond the capabilities of a traditional password manager by integrating behavioural monitoring. For example, if the manager finds a suspicious login from an unknown geographic location, it will block the login attempt, even if the password is correct.

RPass can also be used to share passwords to SuperGroups instead of individual employee-based credentials.

Rippling IT IAM: Interface and in-use

Rippling has done a good job when it comes to interface and in-use experience – the dashboard is quite modern with a minimal design and easy-to-navigate modules. The widgets are fully customizable, and you’ll find various shortcuts that help you launch common tasks quickly.

Onboarding and offboarding can be fully automated, thanks to Supergroups. The Rippling support team will also help you with a quick and smooth initial deployment and implementation. The mobile interface is also pretty slick, allowing admins to manage day-to-day operations on the go.

That said, there is a bit of a learning curve involved with the platform, especially if you’re using multiple modules apart from the IAM suite.

Rippling IT IAM: Support

Just like pricing, there is no upfront clarity on the level of support you can expect with Rippling. However, as per my discussions with the sales team, the platform offers 24/7 customer support through two channels.

Firstly, you can either raise a support ticket on your Rippling dashboard. Alternatively, you can also get support via phone call. I was pretty impressed by the response time, which is actually less than a minute.

Rippling is also one of the few providers that openly advertise their Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), which sits at around 92%.

Plus, more than 45% of the cases are resolved by the first response itself, requiring no further clarifications. And, only 21.34% of the live chat requests are asked to convert into a call, which means that around 78% of the queries are solved on the chat itself without any additional support.

Besides this, there are a lot of online resources such as blogs, webinars, and troubleshooting guides. That’s also a dedicated Help Centre where you can find answers to commonly asked questions.

Overall, I found support to be very comprehensive, with quick response times and high query resolution accuracy.

Rippling IT IAM: Security

Rippling is very conservative when it comes to security and data protection, with various certificates such as SOC1 Type 1, SOC2 Type 2, and SOC3. The certification ensures adherence to the basic trust principles of confidentiality, security, and availability.

Besides this, Rippling is also ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certified. It is also one of the few providers that holds the ISO 42001 certification.

While the first two certifications ensure that Rippling follows adequate practices to protect private and sensitive data from unauthorized access, the 42001 certification ensures that the platform has an active and robust management system in place to ensure that its AI systems are ethical and safe without any risk of bias or misuse.

Rippling also conducts regular internal and external penetration testing and has an active bug bounty program to find any security vulnerabilities in its infrastructure. Active threat monitoring includes the use of tools such as Web App Firewall (WAF) and Runtime App Self Protection (RASP) to quickly locate and eliminate any threats.

WAF monitors and filters all incoming traffic to protect the platform from threats such as SQL injection, DDoS attacks, and malicious HTTP requests.

On the other hand, RASP is built into the application itself and monitors its behaviour to protect against zero-day vulnerabilities, insider misuse, and malicious API behaviours.

Overall, I found Rippling’s security infrastructure to be pretty robust, and they have gone the extra mile to incorporate additional measures beyond what is required by law.

Rippling IT IAM: Competition

Rippling is a robust identity access solution. However, not everyone’s needs are the same. If it doesn’t align with what you’re looking for, here are a couple of options you can look at.

Okta is one of the best identity tools when it comes to setting up automatic workflows. It features 90+ templates and 140+ pre-configured triggers that lets you design workflows as per your needs. Plus, the platform integrates with 7,000+ apps for all your MFA and SSO needs. Okta also features FastPass, which facilitates password-less biometric-based authentication.

Plus, its Identity Threat Protection features continuously monitor all your live sessions and immediately flag any suspicious behaviours. It is also a bit less expensive than Rippling, with starter plans priced at $6/user/month.

If you only have limited needs and do not need the full suite of identity access management solutions, you can go with OneLogin, which features an affordable à la carte pricing model. Features like MFA, SSO, and Active Directory start at just $2/user/month each. It also has more than 6000+ third-party applications.

OneLogin employs Vigilance AI, its proprietary threat detection engine, to assign a risk score to each login attempt and decide whether additional authentication is required or not.

Rippling IT IAM: Final verdict

Rippling's IT identity access management solution offers essential features such as multi-factor authentication and single sign-on on along with comprehensive password management and access controls.

Admin can form Supergroups based on predefined attributes, such as employee location, department, and job title. Application access and security controls can then be aligned with these groups without having to individually assign them.

What I like the most is that Rippling integrates with more than 600+ third-party apps so that you can provision your SSO needs across multiple applications. And for those that you do not find on the integration list, you can set up a custom Integration with the help of SAML and SCIM.

Rippling’s support is one of the best I have seen across the industry, with a response time of less than one minute and a customer satisfaction score of 92%.

Although the pricing is not fully transparent, you can expect the plans to start from $8/user/month, which is more expensive than the likes of Okta and JumpCloud. Even at this higher price point, you do not get as many features as Okta.

That said, Rippling is just not an IAM solution but offers a wide range of services such as payroll, recruitment, and comprehensive human resource management.

So if you already use Rippling for those purposes, it makes sense to go with the IAM solution too, since it syncs seamlessly with existing HR profiles.

Don’t sleep on Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree; it’s an inventive and lively roguelite worth trying

5:00 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Consoles & PC Gadgets Gaming Nintendo | Comments: Off

On the surface, Bandai Namco’s roguelite game Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree may look like a mystical take on the classic roguelite formula emerging in the wake of Hades’ huge success. And, with Hades 2’s arrival looming, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree could easily go unnoticed, but it absolutely shouldn’t; there’s a lot to like in this dual-character adventure.

Review info

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC
Release date: September 19, 2025

You play as Towa, the child of a god and the eternal guardian of Shinju village in a far-off mystical land. The forces of evil Magatsu are on the rise, and thus eight allies from Towa’s village and beyond joined forces to help her defeat the evil and purify the land.

From its lucious, sprawling levels to its dynamic characters and enemies, it ticks a lot of boxes at first glance, but what stands out among an increasingly crowded genre is its teamfighting mechanic. Two guardians from your party at a time will take on the roles of Tsuguri, the main damage dealer, and Kagura, the spell caster, with a great variety of combinations and playstyles to tinker with.

Just as enjoyable as playing these combinations is learning about the relationships between those characters, and seeing how they progress during short rests along the way. Throughout the game, tender moments and the passage of time tinge the vibrant world with an air of wistfulness; it’s very welcome, though there are often moments of extensive dialogue that can interrupt the pace of grinding through runs.

It’s awkward in places, yes, and sometimes the control system for the Kagura feels like an afterthought, but I’ve found it hard to put down – and a welcome excuse to play on my Nintendo Switch 2 in handheld mode.

Stark beginnings

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree — (Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Your journey begins with a short tutorial level, in which you play with Rekka as Tsuguri with Towa as Kaguri to learn the ropes. You primarily control the Tsuguri, switching between two swords with different movesets as their durability decreases and amping up the combinations by dashing, slashing, and landing Fatal Blows when your mana maxes out.

The Kagura trails behind and can trigger two spells to support your main damage dealer. Each character has two elemental attributes (water, fire, fighting, earth, lightning), and you can unlock different spells ranging from AoE to automatic projectiles. You can also control this character, but with a console controller that involves using the right trigger along with the left while also trying to land hits, so it’s only really something you’ll want to do in a pinch or for specific combos.

Worth noting is that there is an optional co-op mode where a second player can control the Kagura; however, the tether still applies, and it’s really quite a limited play experience. It would have been cool if they could have somehow transferred the weapon switching ability or Fatal Blow to the Kagura, so there’s a bit more to do.

With the tutorial out of the way, you learn that Towa’s godly gifts allow her to mess with the flow of time to revive companions, but at a terrible cost. When Magatsu pushes back against Towa, her allies are whisked off into some sort of purgatory where they must endlessly fight against Magatsu’s forces. Meanwhile, Shinju village continues to evolve and grow, and Towa, severed from her companions, must instruct their movements from across dimensions while continuing to protect the townsfolk.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree screenshot — (Image credit: Future)

Certainly, in the early levels, there’s a learning curve to lugging around your Kagura and learning which guardians pair best with each other’s movesets. For example, I quickly learned that some guardians like Koro and Akazu didn’t really gel with me as Tsuguris, but both made excellent Kaguras to my favorite frontliners like Nishiki, the buff koi man, and Bampuku, the giant furball puppy.

Once you’ve started to get the hang of the controls, it’s great fun, although it took me a while to get past the annoyance of the tethered Kagura constantly taking huge hits from powerful enemies. Weapon switching on top of all of the other attacks in the game is perhaps one thing too many for my brain to handle when I’m not totally locked in, and I often found myself letting my weapons durability drain completely and just button-mashing through weaker enemies – however it feels great when you make the effort and execute a killer combo.

That’s only the start of the fun; there’s a lot of configurability and some really fun pairups, and as the game progresses these only amplify in ridiculousness, landing combos in the hundreds as you mash through waves of enemies. You can switch out your weapons, customize buffs, increase skill stats and choose different spells for each of your eight guardians, but the game keeps this relatively high level of customization balanced by sharing unlocked content across all characters.

Those who we protect

While most of the action in the early game takes place with the banished guardians in another dimension, the village serves as the main hub between runs. As Towa, you use this area to level up your party and loadout, but also to check in with the townspeople and keep their spirits high.

There are various shopfronts and tradespeople around the village; you can exchange ores and resources from your travels at the emporium with the grumpy stooge Kafuu, or head to the Eureka Tower to purchase and equip inscriptions for the Kagura staff to boost your champion’s base stats. At the Dojo, you unlock skill points to tweak each champion’s abilities, while the shrine offers boons that effect the odds and effects during each run. As the game progresses, the village grows with more tradespeople, and you can upgrade buildings for more perks

There’s even a fun blacksmithing minigame, in which you select a sword design, build materials and buffs and can bolster these further by scoring highly in each stage of smithing. It’s very Cooking Mama-esque, but instead the feedback comes from a burly blacksmith who barks encouragement at you.

Best bit

Relatively early in the game, you encounter one of my favorite minibosses: a giant octopus with whopping great big tentacles that’ll slam on you as you dash around the deck. Oh, and there are live explosives, for some reason, and the octopus head will gnash down onto you if you’re too slow. Beautiful chaos, wonderfully rendered.

This, and a slightly rootless fishing game that earns you points redeemable with the bird-like Kei shopkeeper, are the main interactive features that give the hub an almost cozy game-esque softness, but it’s the cast of lively NPCs and shopkeepers who breathe life and love into the village.

Through their loving (and sometimes love-hate) relationships with Towa, the guardian that has protected them for generations, you gain a sense of the stakes for the main characters; there’s a lot to lose and a lot to protect in their hometown, and they’ll go to any and all ends to do it.

Any and all ends, in this case, might just involve self-sacrifice, as the guardians learn that each time they defeat a powerful Magatsu-hi, the bosses at the end of each run, the Kagura in that pair must sacrifice themselves to restore Towa’s mana and protect the village. None of them know what that might mean, or whether they will escape purgatory through their sacrifice, but each commits to the cause.

Each time a Towa absorbs the mana generated back in the village following a successful run, time moves forward, and the village can develop once more. New faces appear, and familiar friends fade; the passage of time is treated with an air of melancholy that undercuts the otherwise vivacious aesthetics of the game, and it makes for an excellent hook.

The rocky road to Magatsu

Practically speaking, the party sacrifice mechanic has a big impact; once their mana is absorbed, the Kagura won’t appear in camp, so you have to think long and hard about which pairings you want to save and which are good enough to run with but not too good to lose. Later in the game, this is further augmented; the fun is in adapting to this yourself, so look elsewhere if you want spoilers.

The core mechanics of each run are pretty similar to the likes of Hades: fight a room full of enemies, grab your reward, and then choose between different gates that hint at the next room’s rewards. Each run is split into different terrains with their unique enemies, traps, and layouts, and generally, each terrain will contain seven rooms, including mini-boss fights to offer a little more challenge along the way.

The waves of enemies are great fun throughout the game, with some inventive designs and a lot of variety across the board. I particularly liked the flamethrowing giant eyeballs and the kamikaze snails; there’s plenty here to keep you on your toes. Combat is rewarding and varied enough, and though farming can be somewhat of a slog, the scaling is decent, and there’s always a good amount to do.

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Most often, you’ll be choosing between Graces as your reward for a battle well fought - collecting and upgrading these will boost stats and unlock abilities for the course of the run. These are cards from different elemental decks offering different effects that can make or break your matchup, so learning how to optimize these helps blast through the baddies.

Otherwise, some gates at the end of levels lead on to resources, or else timed battles and other challenging mini-bosses with decent payouts. However, you’ll also encounter friendly faces of the shopkeeper and food stall, too, where you can spend the in-level magamutsu currency for ores and Graces or to receive buffs for the next few levels. Hot springs can also be found along the way for health regeneration, and there are usually two campsites along the way where your heroes can take a slightly longer rest.

In these quiet moments, each pairing has different conversations and relationships that unfold over a series of short rests. Tender moments of openness, the resurfacing of long-buried hatchets, and even philosophical debate weave a wonderful picture of the main cast, and I found myself becoming attached to each party member through listening to their interactions – even those I initially couldn’t relate to, like the impetuous Shigin and carefree Origami.

Plus, the more you play a pairing, the further you’ll see their conversations develop. I particularly enjoyed the brother-sister duo of Bampuku and Mutsumi, whose misunderstanding of each other’s love language causes some unrest that gradually eases through conversations over the campfire, but even more obscure pairings like the Academic Akazu and devout Nishiki bear unexpectedly heartwarming fruit.

A home worth fighting for

These moments of reflection, however, do feel at odds with the game, and that’s a running thread throughout my whole experience with Towa. Roguelite as a genre doesn’t just imply fast pace; it demands it, and I don’t always want my focus to be pulled out of high-octane combat to listen to idle chitchat.

You’re rewarded for listening, not just with resources, but with depth and worldbuilding, much the same as the progressive interactions that crop up in the village as your journey continues. Of course, you can choose to avoid these or just fast-track through the dialogue, but I find it hard to skip through because it’s so charming – and that’s not a problem I often have with games! It’s obvious a lot of care went into the richness of the narrative, so I find myself at an impasse when it comes to maintaining the energy to play sometimes.

The game does compensate for this with progressive feature unlocks and twists, but ultimately, I did find myself needing to break from the game a little more than usual because I kept losing my flow. However, I couldn’t put it down for long.

Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree envelops you in its rich world, abloom with color and light as well as the gorgeous OST from Hitoshi Sakimoto of FFXII and Final Fantasy Tactics fame, and its grip is as strong as the poisonous tendrils of Magutsu’s miasma. You have to work around its quirks and give it a little room to breathe, but patience is rewarded for those who play with their heart.

Should I play Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree?

Play it if…

You want to try something that breaks the mold

With its unique dual-character matchups, Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree is an inventive take on the genre that makes for a challenging but fun balancing act.

You enjoy story-led roguelites

The narrative takes precedence in a way that might be slightly jarring to those who like the fast-paced action of rogue games, but it's delightful if you do enjoy a good story.

Don’t play it if…

You struggle with button blindness

There are a lot of mechanics to consider and a lot of different controls, and that's not for everyone. I found independently controlling the Kagura challenging, personally, and weapon switching often slipped my mind.

Accessibility

Within the settings, you can change the difficulty to story-led mode, which weakens the enemies and allows you to focus more on the storyline. All dialogue has voiceovers with lively acting as well as subtitles, and there are nine supported languages - English, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean.

How I reviewed Towa and the Guardians of the Scared Tree

I played Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree for 30+ hours, making my way through most of the main storyline. I tried both story-led and regular difficulty levels to measure accessibility for players at different skill levels, and played in both handheld and docked modes on my Nintendo Switch 2.

I love roguelikes and roguelites, so I compared my experience to popular titles like Hades, The Binding of Isaac, and Dead Cells. I considered factors like the art direction, pacing, and complexity within the pairings.

First reviewed September 2025

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is one of the best racing games in years

4:00 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Gaming | Comments: Off

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a racing game that has finally given Nintendo’s Mario Kart franchise a run for its money. While I certainly enjoyed Mario Kart World on Nintendo Switch 2, the rather empty open world and questionable approach to track design left me wanting more.

Review information

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PC
Release date: September 25, 2025 (Early Access on September 22)

Sonic Team’s Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds feels like a direct shot across the bow, squarely aimed at the good ship Nintendo. Full cross-platform play is supported, and a dizzying amount of modes and content at launch have kept me busy long after clearing every Grand Prix event.

What impresses me the most about CrossWorlds is that it isn’t content to simply be a great kart racer; it innovates, too. The titular CrossWorlds mechanic is brilliant, lending unpredictability to every race by transporting players to a completely different track for the second lap. Meanwhile, the superb gadget system offers countless ways to tweak how your vehicle behaves.

In today’s day and age, the game offers an incredible day one package stuffed to the gills with things to do; not to mention a boatload of items to unlock from vehicle parts and music tracks to higher speed classes and even the odd alternate character skin. CrossWorlds does, of course, have a comprehensive downloadable content (DLC) roadmap, but what’s here from the get-go is already very impressive.

Speed of sound

There’s no dedicated story mode in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, which is probably for the best given the interminably dull one that was featured in 2019’s Team Sonic Racing. Instead, developer Sonic Team has focused its efforts on more worthwhile aspects. The game boasts 24 race courses and a further 15 accessible via Travel Rings, for a grand total of 39 tracks.

It also has an impressively large character roster that has most of what you’d probably want from a kart racer. The usual suspects are all here, but I’m also happy to see less-represented characters like Blaze, Silver, Jet, Wave, and Storm all make the cut, too. Some deeper cuts would’ve been nice to see, like those from the beloved IDW Comics series, but what’s at launch in terms of roster is incredibly solid.

Grand Prix is your main single-player mode, featuring eight cups (with even more to come via future DLC) of four races each. The final race here is a bit of a cop-out, simply being a lap of each of the cup’s main three courses. But track variety remains impressive. You’ll find plenty of circuits inspired by beloved Sonic locales - such as Sonic Adventure 2’s Metal Harbor and Radical Highway, Sonic Unleashed’s Apotos, and Sonic Frontiers’ Kronos Island.

Courses unique to Travel Rings also impress, and these are a bit more gimmick-focused. Magma Planet is largely flight-based, having you gliding through perilous sections filled with giant lava worms. Holoska is an icy world where your vehicle will transform into a boat to speed through waterlogged caves. Meanwhile, Steampunk City offers plenty of routes through its winding industrial highrises.

Oh yes, I should also mention that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed‘s signature gameplay mechanic returns here. Tracks in CrossWorlds are cleverly designed around land, water, and air travel. Most tracks will also change up significantly on the final lap, opening up new routes for your transforming vehicle to take advantage of, while also sprinkling in new hazards and a few extra boost pads for good measure.

Grab those golden rings, those things’ll make your engine sing

Track design - not to mention the amount on offer - is a big win in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. But that’d all fall apart if the racing itself wasn’t any good.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has some of the most fun, polished, and fast-feeling racing I’ve ever played in a racer of its kind. Drifting is especially fantastic and has a bit of a Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled feel to it, in that max-level drifts give you significantly more speed. And snaking - the act of chaining together smaller drifts in a straight line for consistently high speed - is absolutely something you can do here. So you can be sure there’ll be a pretty lofty skill ceiling when you hop online.

Vehicles are governed by five stats: speed, acceleration, handling, power, and boost. Your choice of character has an effect on overall stats, while also having a primary specialty in one of those five categories.

I’ve found that pretty much any approach is viable here; having an acceleration-based character like Tails on a boost-focused Extreme Gear board can help you stay swift and recover quickly when hit by items. Meanwhile, a heavy like Zavok or Eggman brings power to throw their weight around and hit hard with items, but slotting them in a handling-oriented machine can offset some of their unwieldiness.

Best bit

Finding a singular best part of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a challenge, because the overall package feels so complete. But of course, the meat of the game is its racing, which is impressively fast. Drifting is exceptionally satisfying, and the gadget system provides tons of ways to tweak your playstyle - from giving you stat boosts and items at race start, to fundamentally changing how your vehicle behaves.

During races and time trials, collecting rings scattered around the course will increase your top speed, but you’ll lose some if you collide with walls, other racers, and stage hazards, or when you get hit by items.

Speaking of, items are another area where CrossWorlds has vastly improved over other Sonic Racing titles. There’s a good amount of them, too, from boxing gloves that home in on racers ahead of you, all the way to the hilarious monster truck. Others include defensive items like a tornado that breaks incoming projectiles, sawblades that temporarily cut an opponent’s car in half, and a large magnet that latches onto vehicles, influencing their direction of travel.

To put it simply, races in CrossWorlds can be hilariously chaotic. But very rarely were there instances where I lost a race because of these items. Items are balanced so that catching up to the pack is a breeze. And sure, there’s occasionally an element of Mario Kart-esque luck involved, the odd spot of final stretch shenanigans, but there’s nothing as outwardly powerful as the race-ruining Blue Shell here.

Under the hood

Another element that really brings races alive in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the gadget system, perhaps the game’s biggest innovation. Gadgets offer you a way to tweak your playstyle beyond your vehicle’s stats, and there’s a metric ton of them. You start with a gadget plate with a single slot, but you’ll get a total of six slots unlocked gradually by completing race events.

Gadgets offer a wide range of stat boosts and modifiers during gameplay. There are simple ones, like giving you marginal stat increases, allowing you to carry more rings, or letting you start a race with a specific item.

However, many more interesting gadgets are available. One speeds up the time it takes to perform an air trick, for example, letting you chain more together for a bigger speed boost upon landing. Another causes your car to spin whilst drifting for a more aggressive playstyle, while another still adds a fourth level to your drift gauge.

You can have multiple gadget loadouts, but you’re only able to equip one per race. Furthermore, certain gadgets can’t be used during time trial events, such as one where you start with a boost item.

It’s a rich, deep gameplay system that offers tons in the way of player expression. As well as online, AI opponents appear to also have their own gadget loadouts during races, making things that much more unpredictable during single-player content.

A mountain of unlocks

Sonic tricks in the air while racing a blue vehicle across a dock — (Image credit: Sega)

Something that I found extremely impressive with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is just the sheer number of things to unlock. Not only that, but unlockables are spread throughout the various modes of the game, giving you great incentive to check everything out.

In Grand Prix, you can unlock higher speed classes and even a mirror track mode, as well as additional gadgets. Over in Race Park (a collection of race modes and custom race options for single and multiplayer), you can race against special teams and unlock their vehicles upon beating them three times.

In Time Trial, getting an ‘A’ rank on three different tracks (including Travel Ring CrossWorld tracks) unlocks a selection of music from throughout the Sonic series. Expect to unlock songs from Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Mania, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, Sonic Lost World, and more here, for use in the game’s Jukebox mode (more on that soon, actually).

Ancillary unlockables include alternate skins for certain characters, decals for use in machine customization, and titles for your online profile by clearing specific challenges. There really is a dizzying amount of things to unlock that should keep players coming back for hours on end.

Once you’ve got some decals and machine parts under your belt, then you’ll probably want to try your hand at making your very own custom vehicle. And the options available here are certainly plentiful.

Making your own vehicle or Extreme Gear board is a moreish endeavor. You can mix and match the front and rear appearance of the vehicle, apply color schemes, and decals for a more personalized touch. Vehicle paint also comes in a variety of types, including metallic, pearlescent, and candy variants.

A few rough patches

I really don’t have much to complain about with the overall package here. The game’s price point is on the steeper side for those used to Sonic games often coming in at less than full retail price. And that’s a bit of a downer, and may make the game a bit of a hard sell in and of itself. You certainly get what you pay for here with a mountain of content, but waiting for a sale isn’t a bad idea, either.

Otherwise, a couple of side modes are pretty underwhelming. You’ll eventually unlock a ‘friendship’ system that lets you spend tokens earned from races on character-specific titles and decals. But there’s no unique dialogue here, and it just feels like a last-minute addition to dump tokens into things to get some fairly inconsequential unlocks.

However, the Jukebox mode is the biggest letdown for me. I do love having loads of Sonic music to unlock and listen to, and these tracks can be assigned to races, which is nice. Unfortunately, you’re unable to set music on a per-track basis. Instead, you’ll assign a playlist to the three laps you’ll race on.

On top of that, the selection is entirely random. So you’ll more often than not end up with something unfitting like Infinite’s theme from Sonic Forces playing over a relatively innocent track like Colorful Mall or Chao Park.

I sincerely hope Sonic Team patches in a way to choose songs for individual courses in the future. CrossWorlds’ own soundtrack is really good, though some songs can be a little overbearing with harsh synths and obnoxious final lap chanting spoiling things a bit. So having a way to swap out songs on a per-track basis would be extremely welcome.

Should I play Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds?

Play it if...

You’ve had your fill of Mario Kart World
If you’ve grown tired of Mario Kart World’s weary open world, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a stunningly fast alternative with plenty of modes, unlockables, and cross-platform online play.

You want a racing game that'll last you a long time
Post-launch content seems plentiful, but there’s already so much to do at launch that it might make your head spin. Loads of Grand Prix, time trials, and custom Race Park events offer hours upon hours of things to do without even needing to jump online with others.

You like deep customization
Machine customization and gadgets are both incredibly deep and allow you to show off your personality and play style in-game. The simple act of jumping into customization to spin up a whole new ride is extremely enjoyable.View Deal

Don't play it if...

You’re wary of the price tag
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a relatively expensive title for the wider Sonic series, being at full price for the base game and even more for its deluxe edition. I think it’s definitely worth the plunge, but I wouldn’t blame folks for wanting to wait a bit longer for a sale.

Accessibility

There aren’t a ton of accessibility options in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but what’s here is welcome. The main gameplay options come in the form of a steering assist that prevents you from veering off-course, as well as an auto-accelerate setting and trick assist for if you don’t want to be flicking the stick constantly in midair. An ‘original’ camera setting also exists that reduces the motion offered by the ‘dynamic’ camera mode.

How I reviewed Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

I played Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for around 15 hours for this review. I played the game on PlayStation 5 with a DualSense Wireless Controller, on an LG CX OLED TV.

I completed every Grand Prix cup on Sonic Speed, and some on the higher Super Sonic Speed class, as well as the unlockable mirror mode that inverts circuits. I also spent plenty of time customizing vehicles, unlocking stuff like car parts, music, and decals, too.

First reviewed September 2025

I tested a top Nintendo Switch 2 screen protector – now my console feels bulletproof

1:00 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets Gaming Gaming Accessories | Tags: Nintendo Switch | Comments: Off

DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2: review

Picture this. You’re going ham on your foes in Donkey Kong Bananza, smashing your way through every last one of them until BAM – oh no… you’ve dropped your precious Nintendo Switch 2. Now, this could be a huge problem for your console’s display – that is, unless you’ve got a trusty screen protector like the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2.

Yep, this hardy screen protector is sure to keep your Switch 2 safe, thanks to its tempered glass construction, scratchproof surface, and precise fit.

I batch tested this model alongside a range of competitors, and it was one of the best performers, without a doubt. You fit the screen protector using a well-sized, fully recyclable drop-in-place frame that’s easy to use and comes with simple, yet detailed instructions. Just place the frame on, pull the release tab, press down on the protector, and you’re good to go.

DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 with box and cleaning products — (Image credit: Future)

Of course, there were quite a few air bubbles after application, but a squeegee was included in the box to banish every last one of them to the shadow realm.

After a bit of squeegeeing action, the final look of the screen protector was excellent from all angles. When playing Mario Kart World, there was no sign of distorting, warping, blurring, dust… You name it.

Pushing air bubbles out of the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 — (Image credit: Future)

I even tried covering the screen with fingerprints, and was delighted to see that the Prism 2.0 barely picked them up. They were slightly visible in bright light, but nowhere near as prominent as they appeared on the Genki Aegis Shield, for instance.

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Fingerprints on the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 — How fingerprints appear on the Prism 2.0... (Image credit: Future)

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Fingerprints on the Genki Aegis Shield — (Image credit: Future)

On top of that, this is a highly durable model. I tried using keys to scrape the surface, and it didn’t matter if I pressed pretty hard – there wasn’t even a spec of damage to be seen. DBrand itself has used a sharp knife against the protector, and claims that it ranks at 7 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.

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Pushing key against the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 — Before... (Image credit: Future)

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DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 on console against pink background — ...and after (Image credit: Future)

But that’s not all. In addition to all of this, you get a second screen protector, screen wipes, and a microfiber cloth (to clean your screen before applying the Prism 2.0). That’s a pretty comprehensive package, right?

Having said that, this model does come at quite a cost. Via DBrand’s website, you can purchase it for $34.95 (about £26 / AU$53). That’s a fair bit more than rivals we tested, like the $19.99 / £17 / AU$35 Genki Aegis Shield and Belkin’s even cheaper TemperedGlass Screen Protector for Nintendo Switch 2.

Still, if you want the easiest application, phenomenal durability, and a discreet in-use appearance, the DBrand Prism 2.0 is a fantastic option. Yes, it’s a touch pricey, but I found it more seamless to fit than some rivals, and the finished result looked great. With that in mind, it’s very easy to recommend.

DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2: price & specs

Price	$34.95 (about £26 / AU$53)
Number of screen protectors	2
Material	Tempered glass
Application type	Drop-in-place frame
Additional items	Microfiber cloth, screen wipes, squeegee

Corner of DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 — (Image credit: Future)

Should I buy the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2?

Attributes	Notes	Rating
Ease of application	The application frame is very easy to use, well-sized, and comes with clear instructions.	5/5
Design	Frame isn’t overly large, the protector resistant to fingerprints and cleaning tools work very well.	4.5/5
Toughness	Dealt with key scratching without a hitch, rated 7 on Mohs scale.	5/5
Value	Quite expensive compared to rivals, but plenty of quality on display.	4/5

Buy it if...

You want something that’s super easy to apply
This screen protector was the easiest to apply out of all the models I batch tested. The application frame isn’t oversized or complex to use, air bubbles were super easy to remove, and the edges looked clean, too.

You want top-tier protection and display quality
During durability testing, the DBrand Prism 2.0 performed very well, with not a shred of damage to be seen. On top of that, the screen protector doesn’t taint the Switch 2’s display whatsoever. I didn’t notice any distortion, blurring, or rainbow effects when playing Mario Kart World.

Don't buy it if...

You’re on a budget
At $34.95 (about £26 / AU$53), the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 is hardly the cheapest model out there. The aforementioned Genki Aegis Shield, for example, costs $19.99 / £17 / AU$35, and you still get two protectors, cleaning tools, and an application frame. Yes, I found DBrand’s alternative to be higher quality overall, but if you’re on a budget, the Aegis Shield should definitely suffice.

You want to protect your Joy-Con 2 controllers
If you want protection for your Switch 2 console as well as your Joy-Con 2 controllers, DBrand has a different proposition that might suit you a little better. Yes, the Killswitch case will keep your console and Joy-Cons protected, and you can even get it with two screen protectors if you’d prefer.

DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2: also consider

Belkin TemperedGlass Screen Protector for Nintendo Switch 2
When we batch tested a range of models, we were particularly impressed with the Belkin TemperedGlass screen protector. It doesn’t have a fancy drop-in place contraption – just a basic frame. But with easy-to-follow instructions and a seamless application process, the end result looks great regardless. It's cheaper than this DBrand model, so it's an easy recommendation for those on a budget. Read our full Belkin TemperedGlass Screen Protector for Nintendo Switch 2.

How I tested the DBrand Prism 2.0 for Nintendo Switch 2

Applied the screen protector using the written instructions
Tested its effect on display, fingerprint resistance, and how easy it is to damage
Tested by a lifelong gamer

I followed our standardized process for testing Nintendo Switch 2 screen protectors here at TechRadar. Firstly, we apply the screen protector using the included instructions, then we test impact on the console's display by assessing aspects like brightness and viewing angles.

After this, we test how the surface copes against fingerprints, before scratching the model with a set of keys and attempting to peel at the edges. All of this helps us to judge ease of application, durability, and general build quality.

When it comes to experience, I've tested more than a hundred products at TechRadar, including everything from flagship headphones, like the Sony WH-1000XM6, through to gaming accessories, such as the Hori Piranha Plant Camera for Nintendo Switch 2. In addition, I'm a lifelong gamer, with a massive love for Nintendo. I own a Switch 2 personally, and have reviewed games for the platform, such as Drag x Drive and Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army.

First reviewed: September 2025
Read more about how we test

One handy feature means these AKG headphones just became my go-to for gaming and movies, not just music

11:30 pm | September 17, 2025

Author: admin | Category: Audio Computers Earbuds & Airpods Gadgets Headphones | Tags: AKG, IP | Comments: Off

AKG N9: Two minute review

As someone who tests headphones for an income, I've got a roster of "X headphones" for specific tasks. I've got my best headphones for music, my running headphones, a gaming headset, a pair of the best earbuds when it's too hot for headphones, and a set-up for movies and TV shows too.

The new AKG N9 from Samsung's sub-brand's sub-brand, AKG, didn't slot into this line-up as much as they replaced half of them, and it's largely down to one handy feature which we also saw in their contemporary earbuds equivalent, the AKG N5.

I'm not going to do that clickbait headline thing of alluding to a feature and then dancing around the topic, only specifying it 20 paragraphs in: this feature is a dongle which comes build into the AKG N9, and if you plug it into any USB-C slot, it overrides that device's audio output into the N9.

Borrowing a partner's laptop for a quick video call? Dongle it. Don't want to play games out loud for fear of annoying a flatmate? Dongle it. Really can't be bothered to set up Bluetooth on every device you own? Dongle it. That's not to mention that this dongle has a higher quality connection than Bluetooth, affording higher-quality music and entertainment.

Within days of me realising the potential of this dongle, I'd begun using the N9 for a range of tasks that I usually afford to bespoke speakers or headphones; I was watching movies from my iPad, playing video games on my PC and taking calls on my girlfriend's tablet. And now you can take a break from reading the word 'dongle' for a bit.

A handy way to instantly and temporarily connect to any device is a killer feature, but it's not the only one the AKG N9 offer. The AKG Headphones app is full of extras like dynamic EQ, spatial audio, L-R panning and a hearing test to create you a bespoke audio profile.

There's also a battery life that stretches up to a staggering 100 hours if you listen on Bluetooth with noise cancellation off, but lasts for over a day even if you turn on all its power-hungry features.

Of course, I wouldn't be commending headphones like these if they sounded bad; they don't, with AKG's staple neutral audio mix delivering detailed music and an expansive sound stage.

I'm not used to writing so many positives in an introduction, so it feels weird to keep going, but one more thing: the AKG N9 are some of the best-designed headphones I've ever tested. Not only do they look premium but lots of the features are smartly incorporated into the design, with the dongle nestled in a little nook in one cup and volume being controlled by easily twisting one side of the cans. AKG clearly treats design as an important part of the headphone-making process, instead of an afterthought to hold a few drivers and buttons together, and it's appreciated.

Unless you're Sir Mix-a-Lot, you probably don't like big "but..."s, and unfortunately the AKG N9 have a major one: the price. There's no two ways about it: these are premium headphones and many buyers' budgets won't come close to reaching them. That said, they're expensive, but they're not four-figure-cost expensive like many of the true best headphones are, so perhaps sales will bring them within reach if you're interested.

Since I have to list three 'cons': I also feel like the Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) could have been a little bit more robust, as it doesn't compare with top dogs on the market right now. Plus, you can't fold up the headphones for increased portability, which made transporting them in my bag a risky proposition.AK

AKG N9 review: Specifications

Component	Value
Water resistant	NA
Battery life (quoted)	100 hours (ANC off) 55 hours (ANC on)
Bluetooth type	Bluetooth 5.3
Weight	281g
Driver	40mm

AKG N9 review: Price and availability

The AKG N9 on a wooden floor. — (Image credit: Future)

Announced in October 2024
Priced at $399 / £299 / AU$499
Expensive... but competitive to rivals

After making their debut in October 2024, the AKG N9 went on sale that same month. They’ve been on sale for roughly a year, by the time of this review.

The AKG N9 don’t come cheap. They’ll set you back $399 / £299 / AU$499, which firmly cements them as premium cans that you need to consider carefully before you buy.

They cost more than some of our favorite rivals including the iconic Sony WH-1000XM4 and Cambridge Audio Melomania P100, but then again, they undercut (to a decent extent) the B&W Px8, Dali IO-8, the Sony WH-1000XM6 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra.

I should point out that a year on shelves seemingly hasn’t affected the headphones’ usual price (outside of sales)... except in Australia, where they were easy to find for as little as AU$309 which is an absolute steal.

AKG N9 review: Design

Premium-looking sleek cans
Features incorporated into design
Doesn't fold down and no IP rating

On the surface, the AKG N9 might look like any old pair of headphones, but there are a few refinements and polishes that go a long way in making these look both premium and feel ultra-functional.

I’m talking about the soft fabric of the headband (either leather or a close imitator), the comfortable earpads, the sparkling sheen of the speaker covers, svelte fashion of the headband connectors. It all comes together to make it obvious to onlookers just how much you paid for these cans. They come in either white or black.

The headphones weigh 281g so despite some option extras that we’ll get to, they’re on the lighter side of things, and I found them comfortable to wear for long music bouts and entire movies. There’s no IP rating, as far as I can tell, but they felt sturdy enough that I wasn’t worried wearing them out and about.

I also had no qualms in wearing them for long periods of time, as they're comfortable and lightweight.

The headband connectors are extendable by about two inches each, letting you change your headphones’ size. One thing to note is that the headband can’t be folded, so you can’t reduce the size of the N9 to fit in a bag. Instead they can be transported in a rather large carry case that comes included in the price.

As with all the best headphones, each cup provides some useful controls. On the right side we’ve got a slider which lets you turn on the headphones as well as put them into Bluetooth pairing mode, as well as a pause/play button and USB-C charging port – and, in one of my favorite implementations of a volume rocker, the entire headphone cover can be rotated clockwise or anticlockwise to change the volume. This was incredibly easy to use, to save me fiddling with small buttons on the headphone.

The left cup has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a toggle for Ambient Aware noise cancellation, and I thought that was it at the beginning of my testing… until I realized that you can partially slide the headphone cover off to reveal a USB-C dongle underneath. Some may be annoyed that they’re carrying the extra weight of this dongle on the head but it’s only a few grams, and these are still nice and lightweight headphones.

Design score: 4.5/5

AKG N9 review: Features

The AKG N9 on a man's head. — (Image credit: Future)

Hugely long battery life
App brings loads of features
Useful dongle connector

The dongle is one of my favorite features of the AKG N9; you can plug it into any device with a USB-C port to instantly (and, vitally, temporarily) connect to said device without having to go through the laborious pairing method.

I used this to connect to my iPad, my laptop and my PC at various times in order to quickly watch a video, take a call or do some work, and it’s incredibly convenient – in fact, for a while during testing the N9 became my go-to gaming headset. One thing to note is that once during testing the connected device still played music out of its speakers instead of using the N9, and I never really worked out why – like the N5, it worked 90% of the time, but there were a few teething problems.

Another thing I absolutely love is the battery life of the AKG N9, which if you play your cards right lasts for an entire 100 hours. ‘Playing your cards right’ involves listening via Bluetooth with ANC turned off and if you want ANC on, that figure drops by 45 hours; likewise using the dongle cuts about 15% of your listening time over Bluetooth.

However AKG’s lowest battery expectation, specifically talk time over the dongle, is still 30 hours, which beats quite a few competitors. So the battery life is great whatever you do, and it’s fantastic that people who need a lot of listening time on one charge have the option of dialling down the features to get that fantastic figure.

Let’s touch on that active noise cancellation, which so dramatically affects the battery life. AKG has given the N9 a range of ANC modes: Ambient Aware which cuts out ambient background sound but allows in important nearby ones, TalkThru which does the same but just for voices, and a standard ANC mode which has extra modes for Adaptive ANC which changes the noise cancellation strength depending on your surroundings and Auto Compensation which does the same based on how you’re wearing the N9.

It’s a pretty overwhelming array of options for non-audiophiles but it does let you get into the nitty-gritty of what you can and can’t hear. However even at its strongest tier the ANC is only good, never great, and quite a few rivals are better for removing background sound.

Those aren’t the only overwhelming options in the feature set, because the AKG Headphones App has an absolutely huge roster of perks, including the ability to balance your sound to the left or right, change how voices sound on calls and play with a 10-band equalizer.

As in the AKG N5, the app lets you choose between listening to high-res audio, or enabling a few other features including spatial audio, dynamic EQ for low volumes and Personi-Fi. This latter is a hearing test that provides you with a custom audio mix.

Features score: 5/5

AKG N9 review: Sound performance

40mm drivers
Balanced sound profile
Textured audio in high-res mode

The AKG N9 pack 40mm dynamic drivers with what the company calls “liquid crystal polymer diaphragms” which are designed to improve the detail and clarity across the board.

It works because the N9 have a beautifully balanced sound profile, which doesn’t dominate your mix with too much treble or overblown bass (though it also gives you a nice springboard to use the equalizer to change this if you like a wonky sound mix).

Instead you’re getting a detailed glimpse across the bow of an entire orchestra or band, full of texture and detail. You can hear the scoop of a bass guitar string, the strike of fingers on piano keys – I almost felt like I could tell which guitar strings were being strummed during chords.

There’s an audible sound spread too, and I noticed mids in several songs holding a distinct space that many rival cans lose. It’s an effect that makes these just as great for movies and gaming as for music, and I went so far as to use these headphones instead of my gaming headset during the testing period.

At times I did feel like songs lacked a an extra ounce of energy, with the bass in particular missing a touch of momentum, but these aren’t huge issues – I’m only nit-picking here to justify the score below not being a full 5 out of 5.

Sound performance score: 4/5

AKG N9: Value

If you’ve read the price section already, you’ll know that the AKG N9 have an uphill battle in proving themselves in the value department (and if you didn’t read that section, they cost $399 / £299 / AU$499).

Basically no headphones costing that much present a real value proposition, not when you can get great alternatives for a third of the price, but for what it’s worth the AKG N9s come closer than most.

The inclusion of the dongle, the useful cup controls, the range of features and high-quality audio all come together to make it clear that AKG is giving you some value for money… just not as much as if you’d paid a lot less money.

I will say, though, that these are primed for deals in Black Friday and Amazon Prime Days. So if you don't think you can afford them, it could be waiting to see how low the price goes.

Value score: 4/5

AKG N9 review: scorecard

Category	Comment	Score
Value	AKG goes some way in justifing the price of the N9, but they're easily beaten in this department.	4/5
Design	Not only do the cans look great, but the design neatly incorporates many of the headphone's features.	4.5/5
Features	From the Bluetooth dongle to the range of app features to the long-lasting battery, everything's working here.	5/5
Sound	The N9 has a nice balanced sound profile that will please most listeners, if not owners of the real top dogs.	4/5

AKG N9: Should I buy?

Buy them if...

You own mulitple smart devices

The AKG N9 are primed for people who want to connect their headphones to multiple devices like laptops, phones, computers (even games consoles or PCs).

You don't get to charge frequently

The 100-hour battery life is really impressive. Even though most users will turn on ANC or use the dongle and not see that figure, it's great to know that it's an option for travellers or forgetful chargers.

You need a carry case

Certainly not all headphones come with a carry case, but the AKG N9 does, which is great for transporting it. Not only that but the case has sections for various cables and an extra adaptor to connect the N9 to airline entertainment systems.

Don't buy them if...

You can't justify the price

There's no shame in admitting that these headphones are too expensive for everyone to consider buying. Even if you can reach for them, if you don't need the feature set, cheaper models are tempting rivals.

You want foldable or waterproof cans

No IP rating and no way of folding the AKG N9 down does hamper their portability and protection somewhat.

Also consider

Component	AKG N9	Cambridge Audio Melomania P100	Sony WH-1000XM6
Water resistant	NA	NA	NA
Battery life	100 hours (ANC off) 55 hours (ANC on)	100 hours (ANC off) 60 hours (ANC on)	40 hours (ANC off) 30 hours (ANC on)
Bluetooth type	Bluetooth 5.3	Bluetooth 5.3	Bluetooth 5.3
Weight	281g	330g	254g
Driver	40mm	40mm	30mm dynamic

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100

We gave the P100 five stars in our review due to just how amazing they sound and how premium they feel. They also have an N9-matching battery life and Matt Berry voice controls. What's more, they undercut the N9 in price.

Read our full Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review

Sony WH-1000XM4

Sure, they're a little older in the tooth now, but if you like the iconic looks and slightly retro style of the AKGs, you'll love the look (and the audio chops) of the XM4 too. Add to this the fact that they're often available for quite a bit less than the AKG and as long as you're prepared to omit a few features (and Bluetooth 5.0, so no scope for Auracast), these might have you covered.

Read our full Sony WH-1000XM4 reviewView Deal

How I tested

I tested the AKG N9 for two weeks, doing so alongside their contemporary siblings the AKG N5 (which are earbuds).

As you'll know from reading this review I tested them on loads of devices: Bluetooth from my smartphone, 3.5mm on an iPod Classic and 2.4Ghz dongle on a Windows PC, Windows laptop, iPad and Android tablet.

This was done for a range of functions; mainly listening to music and streaming audio but also gaming, movies and video calls. I tested at home, in the office and around my neighborhood, including on a several-hour-long trip.

Casabrews CM5418: one-minute review

For many folks attempting to recreate the cafe experience at home, the absolute best of the best espresso machines just aren’t a practical choice.

Not only do luxury options come with a pretty crushing price tag, they also tend to be larger and offer fewer beginner-friendly modifications. Although, you could argue that this is by design; those who approach espresso as a deeply-involved hobby won’t mind trading off some extra counter space and time in exchange for perfectly dialled-in shots. Meanwhile, if your goal is a consistently pretty tasty output with very few bells and whistles, something like the Casabrews CM5418 really hits the mark.

At just $139.99 / £149.99, the CM5418 is a seriously budget-friendly espresso machine, even when compared to the rest of Casabrews’ already low-cost lineup. There are a few areas where cut corners feel like an obvious downgrade: mainly in the feel of the portafilter and the accessories the machine comes with. However, it performs consistently with the aid of its double-walled baskets, continually producing well-extracted espresso with noticeable crema that the majority of coffee enjoyers would be pleased with.

It may be worth investing in a couple of upgrades if you want to be able to pull espresso that wows, but in the meantime, you can enjoy perfectly pleasant americanos, lattes, and more from the CM5418 as is.

Casabrews CM5418: price and availability

List price: $139.99 / £149.99 (price varies depending on color variants)
Available in the US and UK
Discounts available on Casabrews' website

When it comes to espresso machines that are kind to your wallet, the price of the Casabrews CM5418 is close to as good as it gets.

In the US, you can purchase the Casabrews CM5418 for $139.99 at the Casabrews site and on Amazon. Though it’s worth noting that the MSRP for colored versions is a little higher, at $169.99. The Casabrews site has regular coupon codes and sales, so you may be able to score this machine for even cheaper.

Casabrews ships to the UK as well, but all the prices are listed in US dollars. Alternatively, you can pick up the CM5418 from Amazon UK. Unfortunately, the full color range isn’t available on Amazon UK, but this won’t be an issue if you had your heart set on a silver or black version.

Value score: 5/5

Casabrews CM5418: specifications

Type	Semi-automatic espresso machine
Drink options	2 (single and double espresso)
Pump pressure	20 bar
Water tank capacity	34oz / 1 liter
Steam wand	Yes, manual
Side (H x W x D)	12.28 x 5.47 x 11.97 inches / 31.19 x 13.89 x 30.14cm
Weight	8.6lb / 3.9kg

Casabrews CM5418: design

Small-scale, charming design
Available in seven colors
Cheap-feeling portafilter and disappointing accessories

The Casabrews CM5418 is a compact little espresso machine that’d be right at home in small kitchens, office spaces, or even on the road in a campervan. With it coming in at under six inches wide, you really shouldn’t have any difficulty finding a home for it, even in living areas that are tight on space. What’s more, it’s exceptionally light too. So even if you do decide to store in the cupboard between uses, you’ll only have to shift 8.6lbs in and out each time.

I’d prefer to keep my machine out of the counter though, and not just for convenience’s sake; the CM5418 actually looks rather cute. The pressure gauge on the front face is not only a very practical clue of how well your espresso is extracting but also adds some visual interest to a machine lacking a LCD screen. Though this is actually inline with my own preferences, to be honest: I found the four simple, tactile buttons on the CM5418 to be far more satisfying to use than the digital displays or touchscreens found on some expensive espresso machines.

If you fancy jazzing up your coffee station a bit, there’s a decently wide range of color options to choose from: silver, black, beige, sapphire blue, baby blue, pastel green, and pink. This is a win for anyone who’s a sucker for color coordination, but you will end up paying a $30 premium for any color other than silver. Such is the cost of beauty, I guess.

True to its lower price point, the CM5418’s build doesn’t feel composed of particular high-end materials. But, in my time testing it, I never found the slight compromise on component quality to be much of an issue. That is, with the exception of the machine’s 51mm portafilter.

Not only is the portafilter handle made from a hard plastic that really doesn’t feel especially pleasant in the hand, but the mechanism for securing the basket into it is a little unwieldy too. The standard method involves having a spring clip to maintain tension when the basket is pushed into the portafilter, but the CM5418 baskets have a notch that has to be threaded into a gap in the portafilter’s lip instead. As a result, the basket wobbles and clacks around noisily when the portafilter is moved, and it’s not difficult to disturb your puck preparation with this instability. I didn’t have any problems with the basket outright falling out of the portafilter during my tests, but it’s not hard to imagine that the looseness of the threads could occasionally lead to you accidentally sending your basket flying into your knock box.

The CM5418 comes with a one shot basket and a two shot basket, both of which are pressurized. Casabrews’ decision to not include a non-pressurized basket says a lot about how beginner-friendly this machine is supposed to be. Instead of relying on the resistance of water traveling through your coffee puck, the extra wall in a pressurized basket does the heavy lifting when it comes to regulating extraction pressure and creating the appearance of crema. As a result, less precision is needed for a consistent output and you can even get away with using preground coffee. However, the trade off is that you just won’t achieve the same peak in flavor.

If you do find that you’d prefer to use a non-pressurized basket with your CM5418, you’re in a bit of a pickle. Not only does the machine have a relatively uncommon grouphead size of 51mm but as mentioned before, the portafilter doesn’t use a spring clip. Not even on the Casabrews website is there an option to buy single-walled baskets that are compatible with the CM5418’s stock portafilter. So, if you want to make this change, you’ll have to purchase a whole new portafilter.

Even if you don’t opt for a single-walled upgrade, there are some accessories you’ll want to pick up that aren’t covered by what you get in-box. For example, the CM5418 doesn’t come with a stainless steel jug to steam your milk in. So, if you’re going to try your hand at lattes, that’s worth chucking in your basket. A plastic tamp-scoop is included that’s extremely lightweight, and the scoop end makes it difficult to position your hand for proper tamping. It’s fine in a pinch, but definitely not ideal. For the price, these are less ‘deal breakers’ and more annoying yet understandable cut corners.

Design score: 3.5/5

Casabrews CM5418: performance

Quick heat-up time and simple operation
Consistent espresso output
Impressive steam wand

As with most entry/mid level espresso machines, the CM5418’s water is heated using a thermoblock rather than a traditional boiler. The main benefit of a thermoblock heating system (other than cutting down cost) is just how speedy it makes the preheating process. As a matter of fact, the CM5418 is ready to go in about 40 seconds. While this isn’t quite as fast as the 5-second heat up time promised from the CM5418 Pro, it’s still far from anything that would disrupt your morning routine. After all, 40 seconds isn’t the kind of wait that would get in the way of your coffee-making flow; it's like the perfect amount of time to grab your favorite mug and weigh out your beans.

Thanks to the double-walled baskets, pulling a tasty shot of espresso with the CM5418 is a lot more foolproof than it would otherwise be. Of course, the beans you choose still matter – as does your grind size, extraction time, and dosage – but pressurized baskets help to crank the difficulty meter down a bit. You’re still aiming for that bullseye although the area of the bullseye is just that bit bigger. So, while I still dealt with some fussing adjusting my grind for the best extraction, it didn’t take too much effort to get to something tasty.

For the majority of my test shots, I used Mask of the Mire from Dark Arts Coffee. These beans yielded espresso which was nutty and sweet, if lacking in complexity just a bit. Though it’s not hard to imagine that my shots could fare better with some slight upgrades to the machine, what I had was consistently great for the basis of an americano or a milk drink …despite being a tad boring on its own.

Even right out of the box, the steam wand had a fluid range of motion that made it easy to position it at the right point in my milk jug. It’s operated by a knob on the side of the machine and responds quickly to activation, meaning you can get straight into aerating your milk without much fuss. Some other budget espresso machines like the (non Arte) DeLonghi Dedica have what’s called a panarello wand, which is best suited to making fluffy, dry cappuccino foam, but majorly falls down when it comes to creating microfoam. Meanwhile, the CM5418 has no trouble delivering velvety milk well suited to a flat white.

As mentioned before, the water (and subsequently, the steam) is heated with a thermoblock and while this makes the process faster, it does mean that pulling espresso and steaming milk can’t be done at the same time. Switching between modes takes mere seconds. So, this is really only a problem if you anticipate making multiple milk-based drinks in a row.

4.5/5

Should you buy the Casabrews CM5418?

Casabrews CM5418 score card
Attribute	Notes	Score
Value	Espresso machines don't get much more affordable than this.	5/5
Design	Small, charming design in a choice of colors, but accessories feel cheap.	3.5/5
Performance	Quick to heat up, easy to use, and more consistent than many of the budget espresso machines we;ve tested.	4.5/5

Buy it if

You’re looking for an espresso machine under $150

Putting together a coffee setup can get pricey really quick, and if you’re trying to keep costs low, it’s worth splurging most of your budget on a good grinder.

You tend to follow the same espresso recipe daily

The CM5418’s single-walled baskets and lack of temperature controls make it a little more difficult to finetune your recipe to get the very most out of a new bag of beans. If you’re a creature of habit who doesn’t experiment too much with their coffee, this shouldn’t be a problem.

You’re a fan of milk-based drinks

The CM5418 has a steam wand that does a superb job at whipping up steamed milk, foam, or microfoam. If you’re not the type to drink your espresso straight, this machine is a winner.

Don't buy it if

Your budget for an espresso machine is $250+

If you can afford to drop hundreds of dollars on an espresso machine, it’s worth considering more high-end options than the CM5418. It’s an impressive performer at its price range, but it would definitely get blown out of the water by luxury models.

You want a bean-to-cup machine

After you pick up a CM5418 (or any espresso machine for that matter), a great grinder should be the next thing on your shopping list. Though if you’d prefer to save yourself the hassle, you can always opt for a bean-to-cup machine instead.

Casabrews CM5418: also consider

If you’re unsure of whether the Casabrews CM5418 is the right espresso machine for you, it’s worth checking out these alternatives:

Breville / Sage Bambino

The Breville Bambino (or Sage Bambino, as it’s known in the UK) is a definite jump-up in price from the CM5418, but it’s still good value. This machine heats up lightning fast and is a good fit for those beginning their journey with coffee as a full-blown hobby.

Read our full Breville / Sage Bambino review

De'Longhi Dedica Style EC685

Our reigning champion in the arena of the best budget espresso machines, the DeLonghi Dedica Style EC685 is another fun-sized espresso machine that’s well-suited for beginners. It’s just a tad more expensive than the Casabrews CM5418 and less suited for producing microfoam, but it comes from a much more established brand (making upgrades and repairs an easier process).

Read our full De'Longhi Dedica Style EC685 review

How I tested the Casabrews CM5418

I tested the Casabrews CM5418 over a period of four weeks, using it regularly to make black and milk-based espresso drinks.

During my tests, I alternated between using light, dark, and omni-roasted fresh espresso beans bought from specialty coffee roasters. All beans were ground using the Baratza Encore ESP, with the grind size adjusted a number of times to achieve the optimal result.

The steam wand was tested with fresh, full-fat dairy milk, semi-skimmed milk, and oat milk. After each steam, I made sure to purge and clean the wand to keep it operational. For more details, see how we test, review, and rate products at TechRadar.

First reviewed September 2025

The Casabrews CM5418 is a small but mighty espresso machine for the casual coffee lover

6:00 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Coffee Machines Computers Gadgets Home Small Appliances | Tags: UK, US | Comments: Off

Casabrews CM5418: one-minute review

For many folks attempting to recreate the cafe experience at home, the absolute best of the best espresso machines just aren’t a practical choice.

Casabrews CM5418: price and availability

List price: $139.99 / £149.99 (price varies depending on color variants)
Available in the US and UK
Discounts available on Casabrews' website

Value score: 5/5

Casabrews CM5418: specifications

Type	Semi-automatic espresso machine
Drink options	2 (single and double espresso)
Pump pressure	20 bar
Water tank capacity	34oz / 1 liter
Steam wand	Yes, manual
Side (H x W x D)	12.28 x 5.47 x 11.97 inches / 31.19 x 13.89 x 30.14cm
Weight	8.6lb / 3.9kg

Casabrews CM5418: design

Small-scale, charming design
Available in seven colors
Cheap-feeling portafilter and disappointing accessories

Design score: 3.5/5

Casabrews CM5418: performance

Quick heat-up time and simple operation
Consistent espresso output
Impressive steam wand

4.5/5

Should you buy the Casabrews CM5418?

Casabrews CM5418 score card
Attribute	Notes	Score
Value	Espresso machines don't get much more affordable than this.	5/5
Design	Small, charming design in a choice of colors, but accessories feel cheap.	3.5/5
Performance	Quick to heat up, easy to use, and more consistent than many of the budget espresso machines we;ve tested.	4.5/5

Buy it if

You’re looking for an espresso machine under $150

Putting together a coffee setup can get pricey really quick, and if you’re trying to keep costs low, it’s worth splurging most of your budget on a good grinder.

You tend to follow the same espresso recipe daily

You’re a fan of milk-based drinks

The CM5418 has a steam wand that does a superb job at whipping up steamed milk, foam, or microfoam. If you’re not the type to drink your espresso straight, this machine is a winner.

Don't buy it if

Your budget for an espresso machine is $250+

You want a bean-to-cup machine

Casabrews CM5418: also consider

If you’re unsure of whether the Casabrews CM5418 is the right espresso machine for you, it’s worth checking out these alternatives:

Breville / Sage Bambino

Read our full Breville / Sage Bambino review

De'Longhi Dedica Style EC685

Read our full De'Longhi Dedica Style EC685 review

How I tested the Casabrews CM5418

I tested the Casabrews CM5418 over a period of four weeks, using it regularly to make black and milk-based espresso drinks.

First reviewed September 2025

The Apple iPhone Air is the sexiest iPhone I’ve ever tested – it’s really a new kind of Pro

3:00 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets iPhone Phones | Comments: Off

Apple iPhone Air: Two-Minute Review

The iPhone Air is, to a degree, exactly what we were expecting: Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever, measuring just 5.64mm. It feels light, balanced, and durable thanks to a grade 5 titanium frame and Ceramic Shield glass. In the hand it’s sleek and refined – I’ve been using my Sky Blue unit for a week now and it’s still turning heads.

The 6.5-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display is excellent: it’s an always-on display that supports ProMotion, HDR, and brightness up to 3,000 nits. It’s slightly bigger than the iPhone 17’s screen, which gives apps, text, and videos more room to breathe, and it looks great whether I’m scrolling TikTok, watching HDR movies, or just browsing outside on a sunny day.

iOS 26 feels tailor made for the Air, with its new Liquid Glass design that looks striking and complements the physical build. Messages now support custom backgrounds, typing indicators, and polls, while the Phone app and Visual Intelligence get useful upgrades. And while Siri’s full AI overhaul isn’t here yet, Apple Intelligence features are starting to appear.

The biggest trade-off comes with the camera setup: there’s just a single 48-megapixel lens on the rear of the phone. It produces sharp, natural-looking photos and impressive portraits, but you’ll miss the flexibility of a telephoto or ultrawide if you’re used to them. The selfie camera is excellent, though, with Apple’s Center Stage smarts for automatic wide and ultrawide framing, and Dual Capture is genuinely fun.

Performance from the A19 Pro is snappy and smooth, and it capably handled everything I threw at it, though the phone does get warm during fast charging or heavy gaming. Battery life is decent but not class-leading: enough for a workday, usually six to eight hours of use, with my best stretch hitting around 10 hours away from the charger. Power users may want to invest in the $99 / £99.00 / AU$159 MagSafe Battery Pack, which matches the phone’s slim profile and adds about 65% more life, but it’s an added cost.

The iPhone Air isn’t the best iPhone for photography or endurance, but as a design statement, it’s a gem. It feels like the most exciting iPhone Apple has released in years, and while it costs more than the iPhone 17 with fewer cameras and shorter battery life, it delivers value in other key areas.

Apple iPhone Air: Price and Availability

Apple unveiled the iPhone Air at its September 9, 2025, ‘Awe Dropping’ event alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, AirPods Pro 3, and three new Apple Watches. The Air, though, stands out with its entirely new design, and is a whole new category of iPhone.

It starts at $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 for 256GB of storage, or you can bump that up to 512GB for $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,199, or 1TB for $1,399 / £1,399 / AU$2,599. The iPhone Air is an eSIM-only device worldwide and comes in four colors: Sky Blue, Light Gold, Cloud White, and Space Black. I’ve been testing a 1TB iPhone Air in Sky Blue.

Apple will officially launch the iPhone Air on September 19, 2025, but it’s up for pre-order now from the company’s online store, authorized retailers, and carriers.

Apple iPhone Air: Specs

	iPhone Air	iPhone 17	iPhone 17 Pro	iPhone 17 Pro Max
Weight:	165g	177g	206g	233g
Display:	6.5-inch OLED	6.3-inch OLED	6.3-inch OLED	6.9-inch OLED
Resolution:	2736 x 1260	2622 x 1206	2622 x 1206	2868 x 1320
Refresh rate:	120Hz	120Hz	120Hz	120Hz
Peak brightness:	3,000 nits	3,000 nits	3,000 nits	3,000 nits
Chipset:	A19 Pro	A19	A19 Pro	A19 Pro
Rear cameras:	48MP wide (26mm, ƒ/1.6)	48MP wide (26mm, ƒ/1.6), 48MP ultra-wide (13 mm, ƒ/2.2)	48MP wide (24mm, ƒ/1.78), 48MP ultra-wide (13 mm, ƒ/2.2), 48MP telephoto (8x optical zoom)	48MP wide (24mm, ƒ/1.78), 48MP ultra-wide (13 mm, ƒ/2.2), 48MP telephoto (8x optical zoom)
Front camera:	18MP (ƒ/1.9)	18MP (ƒ/1.9)	18MP (ƒ/1.9)	18MP (ƒ/1.9)
Storage:	256GB, 512GB, 1TB	256GB, 512GB	256GB, 512GB, 1TB	256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
Colors:	Space Black, Cloud White, Light Gold, Sky Blue	Black, White, Mist Blue, Sage, Lavender	Silver, Cosmic Orange, Deep Blue	Silver, Cosmic Orange, Deep Blue

Apple iPhone Air: Design

Apple iPhone Air Review — (Image credit: Jacob Krol/Future)

The freshest look that Apple has delivered in years
Unbelievably thin and light
Feels great in the hand with proper ergonomics

If you were following the Apple rumor cycle, we were all expecting an ultra-thin iPhone to be released – one that would potentially go thinner than the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, be more stunning than the iPhone X, and offer a truly refreshed look and feel for the iPhone. The launch event’s ‘Awe Dropping’ tagline set the bar high – and the iPhone Air cleared it with room to spare.

It’s not the first ultra-thin phone – the Galaxy S25 Edge measures in at 5.8 millimeters – but it still feels as stunning, sleek, and sexy in my hand right now after living with it for a week as it did during my brief hands-on session following the launch event. It feels as exciting as the iPhone X, in that it might give us the playbook for the modern iPhone going forward – or at least show us one half of the purportedly incoming foldable iPhone.

The photos released by Apple, and even those shot by me for this review, only do it partial justice. The iPhone Air is the best representation yet of Apple’s vision for an iPhone that’s just glass. It weighs in at just 5.82 ounces, or 165 grams, fully justifying the ‘Air’ moniker. Much like the iPhone 17 or even a Pro Max, it feels balanced – not too top-heavy, not too bottom-heavy. It’s Goldilocks ergonomics.

I don’t know if I’d quite call it awe-dropping, but the thinness is the part that gets people excited. At its thinnest, the iPhone Air is 5.64 millimeters, or 0.22 inches, and the ‘plateau’ (Apple’s new term for the camera bump) only juts out a bit more. I was instantly wowed, and over the course of a week (well, eight days now), I’ve really become accustomed to this look and feel for an iPhone.

While conducting some testing over the week, I showed it to my brother and sister-in-law, who were both visibly impressed when holding it. They asked about durability and were a little stunned at the overall feel. Then came the questions about battery life and the camera – both of which I’ll address below – and whether the USB-C port was thinner.

On that last point – it’s still a regular USB-C port, but to fit it in this frame and get it this small, Apple’s design team started by 3D-printing a custom one. And given how thin this phone had to be, Apple went back to grade five titanium for the shell and sides of the device. To further enhance the looks, it has a polished finish. My Sky Blue review handset is different from the MacBook Air and iPad Air colors of the same name – it’s a bit lighter and pastel-like. I really like it, and the Air also comes in Light Gold, Space Black, and Cloud White.

While the innermost layer of the iPhone Air sandwich is made of that strong titanium, which can bend slightly under pressure but is designed to spring back, it’s topped and bottomed with glass and glass ceramic; specifically Ceramic Shield 2 on the front and Ceramic Shield on the back. The rear, like the iPhone 17, is mostly frosted matte glass, while the top bump gets the glossy finish.

Apple says the Air is three times more scratch-resistant on the front – though I’ve still been careful sliding this in and out of my front or rear jeans pockets – and the back is four times more crack-resistant.

I actually did drop it on concrete paving stones, and the iPhone Air came out completely unscathed. My dog Rosie pulled me suddenly, I dropped the Air, and it hit the ground on the top-left corner and then landed screen-down, single camera-up. Not even a scratch. Rosie was off the hook.

That incident, along with our Editor at Large Lance Ulanoff’s bend test and his fumble with the iPhone Air, gives some credence to Apple’s durability promises. Apple says the iPhone Air is more durable than any model before this and on par with the rest of the 17 lineup. In a test behind closed doors at Apple Park, I saw an iPhone Air put through the wringer, receiving a simulated force of 130 pounds, and bending and then springing back with no visible stress marks left.

It also has the same IP68 rating for resistance to dust and water as the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max – it survived a light drizzle shortly after I unboxed it at Apple Park. The weather’s been wet in my home state of Jersey, and the Air has shown no issues when being used in rain or surviving a dunk test.

Even given the extreme thinness here, you still get the usual buttons you’d expect on an iPhone. Camera Control (still not a button) has been redesigned to live on the right-hand side, and it’s slightly thinner but about the same length as on other iPhones. The power/sleep button sits slightly higher on this side, with the Action Button, volume up, and volume down on the left. The main mono speaker lives at the top with some microphones, and there are two other microphones either side of the USB-C port on the bottom.

This design does, as mentioned, only leave room for a single camera, and likely a smaller battery inside, but Apple has also dropped the SIM card slot worldwide and opted for eSIM to save some space.

The iPhone Air is stunning, attracts a lot of admiring glances, and feels like the biggest refresh in iPhone design we’ve seen in a while. Yes, it’s the same key parts, just compressed; but in use it feels like the perfect showcase for iOS 26. If you’re after Apple’s best design this year, I think it’s clearly the iPhone Air – but there's a lot more to this iPhone than just looks.

Design score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone Air: Display

At 6.5 inches the front is virtually all screen
It’s on a par with the displays on the Pro and Pro Max

For $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 it would be a little mean of Apple not to include ProMotion or always-on functionality here, and the iPhone Air supports both. As a whole, the screen here is basically in line with those of the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, or 17 Pro Max.

The front of the iPhone Air is nearly all glass, except for a thin black bezel that turns into the sloped polished side. It’s a 6.5-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display with a resolution of 2376 x 1260, which works out to 460 pixels per inch. It tops out at 3,000 nits of brightness when needed, supports the Wide Color P3 gamut and HDR, and features an anti-reflective coating. It also has the same Dynamic Island as the rest of the iPhone 17 line.

In daily use, the display is really the main appeal here – on paper, it’s 0.2 inches bigger diagonally than the iPhone 17 or 17 Pro, but it feels a bit more expansive. It offers more lines of text, or a slightly expanded view when viewing a webpage. Games or movies feel a little more like an event, and it offers a broad canvas for iOS 26. Lay two of these phones side by side and I think you’d have some idea of what Apple is planning to bring us with its long-rumored folding iPhone – and it would look mightily impressive, but we’re not quite there yet. And it’s still smaller than the Pro Max.

Colors looked punchy and vibrant, text was inky black and crisp, and it was a great display for daily use. I found that it got bright enough to battle the bright sunshine of California, the late summer sunshine of New Jersey and New York, as well as bright artificial lighting. I liked scrolling TikTok and Instagram Reels, or watching a video on it, mainly thanks to the super-smooth ProMotion display.

And iOS 26, with its Liquid Glass makeover, looks fantastic here.

Display score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone Air: Software and Apple Intelligence

Liquid Glass runs well here and feels purpose-built for the design
iOS 26 brings with it some really smart features

I have a feeling that the design team at Apple knew the Air was on the roadmap when designing Liquid Glass.

iOS 26 is running on the iPhone Air out of the box, and as on any iPhone, announces itself with a ‘Hello’ on the first boot. You’ll get a sense of the new translucent, glass-like nature of the software pretty quickly. It’s mostly visible in how notifications refract over your wallpaper or up top, with whatever is behind the element. I especially like the way the bottom menu bars look with this, although legibility can be an issue at times, depending on what’s behind the element. You’ll also notice a difference if you use light mode or dark mode.

The redesign is only a portion of iOS 26, as Apple’s latest OS introduces a number of new features. I’m keen to put many of the new parts of Messages to the test with my friends and various group chats. With the latter, you’ll now get typing indicators, and you can set a custom background for any Message group or individual. This will, I have a feeling, be an especially tough test for legibility with the Liquid Glass components. You also have the option to add polls in group messages, which is a fun way to decide on activities or maybe pick a restaurant.

The Phone app is entirely new, though you can switch back, placing your favorites up top and below that is a combined list of outgoing and incoming calls, missed calls, and even voicemails. It can be a lot to process at first, but after months on the beta I’m more or less used to it, although I have switched back to the original setup occasionally, as the new one makes voicemails a little harder to track down. You can also use Live Translation during calls, which can be helpful for international travel, and I especially like the wait-on-hold feature.

Visual Intelligence, which is engaged with a long press of Camera Control, is a bit smarter here, and can now identify events to add to your calendar and integrate with apps that add support with the API. However, we’re still waiting on the full AI-powered Siri, and many of the new Apple Intelligence features aren’t front and center here.

You can check out our full guide to iOS 26 here, as there’s a lot more to dig into.

Software score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone Air: Camera

Single-lens 48MP Fusion camera on the rear
You can get some impressive shots, especially portraits
Front-facing camera is 18MP with Center Stage

This is where the compromises necessitated by the iPhone Air’s unfeasibly thin design begin: the iPhone Air only features a single, 48-megapixel Fusion camera on the back. It can shoot at 1x, a sensor crop in 2x, or a maximum digital 10x, but the quality falls off noticeably with the latter.

I’ll cut to the chase here – if you’re after the iPhone with the best cameras, or even just some variety for shooting, this is probably not it.

I was impressed with some of the shots I took, particularly the one taken from 36,000 feet out an airplane window in the gallery below – the Air captured a surprising amount of detail around the engine, wing, and even the clouds, and what appears to be a mountain in the distance. The night mode worked very well when capturing my Bernedoodle, the aforementioned Rosie, and I’m especially impressed with the Portrait mode here, and the work going on behind the scenes to deliver the right bokeh effect in the right spot.

Still, as someone who used a 16 Pro Max before this, I miss the telephoto camera, even if that wasn’t a Super Res Zoom like on a Galaxy or a Pixel; 2x isn’t a lot. The iPhone Air also doesn’t have an ultra-wide or a macro camera. If anything, it’s made me think about the types of shots I’d want to capture with a phone, and if an ultra-wide or zoom is a deal breaker for you, you’ll want to look at the 17 or the 17 Pro duo.

The 48MP Fusion camera here can capture photos at a full 48 megapixels or, by default, a 24-megapixel photo that saves space by combining a 12-megapixel shot and a 48-megapixel shot. It normally does a pretty good job of preserving colors and details, and is something that Apple’s been doing for several generations of iPhone.

The main lens here does an admirable job, and I’m quite happy with some of the images I got – particularly in portrait mode, with the camera keeping colors within a realistic range and not skewing warmer or cooler, as well as capturing plenty of the finer details.

In some cases, photos looked a bit washed out – for instance, landscapes on particularly sunny days, as when I took test shots at a botanical garden (although I was able to capture a sunflower quite nicely, other fauna, and even orange fish below a less-than-crystal-clear pond). Mostly, though, the camera can capture those more vibrant moments, such as a shot of Yankee Stadium or the sunset from a plane window.

Without a true telephoto or an ultrawide, you’re able to take more creative control to capture unique shots. You can see a full gallery of test images – standard photos at 1x or 2x, and some digital zoom ones, as well as Portraits at 1x or 2x – below.

A new feature that takes advantage of the 18-megapixel Center Stage camera on the front and the rear camera is Dual Capture. It’s not a brand-new idea, and essentially this lets you record with the front camera and rear camera at the same time, with stabilization applied. I think it’s a lot of fun, especially for sports events, where you could capture both the on-field action and the reaction of you and your friends, and I imagine it would be a blast at concerts – I could record myself belting out Born to Run along with the Boss – but also for parents with young children.

The 18-megapixel selfie camera uses a larger image sensor than on previous iPhones, and it’s actually super helpful. Essentially, it can automatically adjust a wide or ultra-wide view so you can easily fit everyone into your selfie or video, and with the tap of a button you can rotate between vertical and horizontal without needing to physically rotate your phone. It also delivers a serious, high-quality selfie.

I’ll include some video samples below – the 48MP camera isn’t a slouch here, and performs on a par with the standard iPhone 17. The end result is either up to 1080p HD at up to 60 frames per second, or 4K at up to 60fps.

Camera score: 4 / 5

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Apple iPhone Air Camera Samples — (Image credit: Jacob Krol/Future)

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Apple iPhone Air: Performance

The iPhone Air feels responsive and fast, even with more intense workflows
A19 Pro chip should keep it running smoothly for years
Can get warm on the camera bump with gaming and other more intensive tasks

Powering the iPhone Air is Apple’s A19 Pro chip, which is a step up from the iPhone 17’s A19, and a slightly less powerful version of the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, without the extra cooling technology. The A19 Pro here is a 6-core CPU with two performance and four efficiency cores, a 5-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine.

It’s a good lick faster than the A18 Pro or A18 found in the iPhone 16 Pro Max or 16, especially with various elements of iOS 26 – including spatializing a wallpaper – and in everyday use. Compared to the standard iPhone 17, I’d say performance is about neck and neck. The A19 Pro is arguably being used here to help regulate performance temperature.

I did notice the iPhone Air heating up during the first few days while it was still indexing and charging – especially from 0% to about 50% – before cooling as it slowed near 80%. It also warms up when multitasking with demanding apps at times.

For example, if I’m on a call and launch a game like Asphalt 9, the area around the camera housing on the rear can get noticeably warm, though it cools quickly as performance regulates. The heat doesn’t spread below the Apple logo, and a case, like Apple’s Bumper or Clear option, helps keep it from your fingertips.

Keep in mind that basically all the components do live in the plateau – including the silicon – so it makes sense that the area does heat up. When it comes to non-gaming tasks, though, the iPhone Air handles everything well, and delivers strong performance while keeping cool. That was the case with my daily workflow consisting of calls – audio and FaceTime – as well as Mail, Gmail, Slack, Safari, Chrome, Edits, Capcut, the Camera, and other apps. Even with creating a Genmoji or using Image Playground or another facet of Apple intelligence, the iPhone Air didn’t get especially warm.

In terms of quantitative testing, the iPhone Air scored slightly higher than the iPhone 17 on GeekBench 6.5, at 3,723 on single-core and 9,665 on multi-core. That’s in line with smartphones at this price range, though, as we noted in our Galaxy S25 Edge review, that phone has a thermal solution for keeping things cool.

Performance score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone Air: Battery

It can deliver all-day battery for some, but more likely will last a full workday
You’ll likely need to recharge it during the day
While costly, the MagSafe Battery is a sound investment

We can only guess at the iPhone Air’s battery size for now, as Apple doesn’t officially release those numbers. It’s clear, though, that the company has squeezed as large a cell as possible inside this ultra-slim smartphone.

Instead of capacity, Apple provides viewing estimates: up to 27 hours of downloaded video playback and 22 hours of streaming. With the $99 MagSafe Battery attached, those numbers rise to 40 and 35 hours, respectively – about a 65% boost.

In my experience, the iPhone Air generally lasts through a workday – six to eight hours depending on use. That’s behind the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max, but it still meets Apple’s “all-day” standard. On one test, I took it off a charger at 7:30am and it lasted until 5:50pm, or 10 hours and 20 minutes. At best, I recorded six hours and 35 minutes of active screen time; on average, I got around four hours and 45 minutes.

During my first few fast charges, the top of the camera plateau and the area beneath it did get warm, mostly between 0% and 50%, before cooling down. This isn’t unusual for fast charging and reflects the component layout.

Power users will likely need to recharge by the time they get home. Apple’s slim MagSafe Battery nearly matches the Air’s profile, adding only a bit more thickness than the camera bump. It recharges intelligently throughout the day, manages heat well, and uses pocket detection to optimize charging times. Optional, yes – but it complements the iPhone Air experience nicely.

Battery score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone Air: Should You Buy?

iPhone Air Score card
Attributes	Notes	Rating
Design	The iPhone Air is Apple’s most exciting refresh in years.	5 / 5
Display	The iPhone Air’s 6.5-inch Super Retina XDR OLED is punchy, sharp, and smooth with ProMotion and Always-On functionality.	5 / 5
Software	iOS 26 feels tailor-made for the iPhone Air.	4 / 5
Camera	The iPhone Air relies on a single 48MP lens that delivers sharp, natural photos and impressive portraits, but lacks the versatility found on other models.	4 / 5
Performance	The iPhone Air feels fast and smooth in daily use, though it can warm up under sustained heavy gaming.	4 / 5
Battery	The iPhone Air should last a workday, but heavy users will need to recharge.	4 / 5
Value	At $999, the iPhone Air feels like a new kind of Pro – trading camera and battery versatility for design.	4 / 5

Buy it if...

If you want the thinnest, lightest iPhone ever

At just 5.64 milimeters thick and 165 grams light, it’s the thinnest and lightest iPhone ever, and feels great in the hand.

If you want a gorgeous, large display

If you don’t want to pay the tax of a Pro Max or a screen that big, the iPhone Air’s 6.5-inch screen is great, and it feels like an all-screen device

If you’re ready for an iPhone that feels unlike the rest

Looks are subjective, but if you want the boldest-looking iPhone in years, this might be the one to get

Don’t buy it if...

You want the longest battery life

Depending on usage, the iPhone Air can struggle to make it through a full day, so those looking for a lasting performance will want to look elsewhere

You want the best cameras in an iPhone

With just a single lens, those who want a versatile set of lenses will need to look at the Pro or Pro Max

You want maximum performance

With an extra core and more thermals, the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max offer unmatched performance for extreme workflows

Apple iPhone Air: How I Tested

I’ve been covering smartphones for years — including iPhones since the iPhone 8 lineup — and my first personal iPhone was the 3GS. For this review, I set up the iPhone Air in Sky Blue, moving my number over from an iPhone 16 Pro Max via eSIM and starting fresh.

Over more than a week of testing, I put the Air through everyday use: calls, streaming music, gaming, watching TV and movies, capturing photos, and running my usual suite of work apps. I measured performance using both real-world applications and benchmarks, such as GeekBench 6.5, paying close attention to how it handled multitasking and more demanding workloads. For battery life, I tracked how quickly it drained during different tasks and also ran a standardized assessment.

On the camera side, I pushed the single 48MP rear lens through its paces — testing 1x, 2x crop, Portrait, and Night modes, plus video recording up to 4K at 60fps. I also spent time with the new 18MP selfie camera, trying both portraits and group shots, and had fun with Dual Capture for video.

To get a clearer sense of how it stacks up, I compared the results directly with the iPhone 17, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, Google Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro, and Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra.

First reviewed September 2025.

After a week with the iPhone 17, I’m convinced it’s the best-value iPhone ever

3:00 pm |

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets iPhone Phones | Tags: Dual Capture | Comments: Off

Apple iPhone 17: Two-Minute Review

In my hands-on preview of the iPhone 17, I said it could be the best standard iPhone in years, and after a week of using Apple’s latest base model for photos, calls, work, and everything else, I can confidently confirm: this is the best standard iPhone in many years.

At $799 / £799 / AU$1,399, with double the starting storage and a laundry list of upgrades, Apple’s never made a better-value iPhone – especially compared to the 16e.

The 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR display is the star of the show. It’s punchy, sharp, and now buttery smooth thanks to ProMotion, plus you get Always-On functionality that’s actually useful day to day. Pair that with Apple’s new A19 chip, and the iPhone 17 feels plenty fast enough for most everyday tasks – whether you’re gaming, scrolling TikTok, or multitasking with video running in the corner.

The design doesn’t rewrite the rulebook, but it doesn’t need to. It’s still instantly recognizable as an iPhone, with a slightly bigger build, fresh colors like Sage Green, and with Camera Control and the Action Button on the sides. The phone feels comfortable in the hand and balanced, just like you’d expect. I can, however, see some folks missing the Ultra Marine or Pink Colors from the iPhone 16 lineup.

The base iPhone’s cameras have been given a serious improvement, too: both the main and ultra-wide are now 48MP, which means sharper, more color-accurate shots with less edge distortion. I really liked the new front-facing Center Stage camera as well, since it means no more selfie Tetris when you’re trying to fit in a group. And Dual Capture, which lets you record with the front and rear cameras at the same time, is one of those features that’s actually fun at a concert or ballgame.

Battery life? Solid. I consistently made it through a full day with the iPhone 17, even with the Always-On display turned on and some heavier workflows. And when it’s time to plug in, the new 40W fast charging gets you back up quickly – about 50% in 20 minutes and 80% in under an hour.

Put it all together, and the iPhone 17 feels like the iPhone most people should buy. It’s fast, fun, reliable, and continues to beat the all-important drum of delivering some Pro-level features without the Pro-level price.

If you have an iPhone 16 or iPhone 15, you probably don’t need to upgrade to the iPhone 17 unless you want a better rear camera (which only applies to iPhone 15 owners or those with a 16 who swear by the ultra-wide lens) or desperately need a Pro-level display. But if you have an iPhone 14 or older, this is the year to make the jump.

Apple iPhone 17: Price and availability

$799 / £799 / AU$1,399 starting price
256GB starting storage

Apple’s iPhone 17 was announced during the company’s ‘Awe Dropping’ event on September 9, 2025, alongside the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. It’s up for preorder right now and officially launches on September 19, 2025 – that’s also the date when the earliest online orders will arrive.

The iPhone 17 starts with double the starting storage of its predecessor – 256GB – , thankfully, keeps the same starting price of $799 / £799 / AU$1,399. It jumps to $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 for 512GB of storage. Apple’s offering the iPhone 17 in Sage Green, Mist Blue, Lavender, Black, or White.

Apple iPhone 17: Specs

Here are the key specs of the iPhone 17, as well as how they compare to the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup (including the iPhone 17 Air):

	iPhone 17	iPhone Air	iPhone 17 Pro	iPhone 17 Pro Max
Weight:	177g	165g	206g	233g
Display:	6.3-inch OLED	6.5-inch OLED	6.3-inch OLED	6.9-inch OLED
Resolution:	2622 x 1206	2736 x 1260	2622 x 1206	2868 x 1320
Refresh rate:	120Hz	120Hz	120Hz	120Hz
Peak brightness:	3,000 nits	3,000 nits	3,000 nits	3,000 nits
Chipset:	A19	A19 Pro	A19 Pro	A19 Pro
Rear cameras:	48MP wide (26mm, ƒ/1.6), 48MP ultra-wide (13 mm, ƒ/2.2)	48MP wide (26mm, ƒ/1.6)	48MP wide (24mm, ƒ/1.78), 48MP ultra-wide (13 mm, ƒ/2.2), 48MP telephoto (8x optical zoom)	48MP wide (24mm, ƒ/1.78), 48MP ultra-wide (13 mm, ƒ/2.2), 48MP telephoto (8x optical zoom)
Front camera:	18MP (ƒ/1.9)	18MP (ƒ/1.9)	18MP (ƒ/1.9)	18MP (ƒ/1.9)
Storage:	256GB, 512GB	256GB, 512GB, 1TB	256GB, 512GB, 1TB	256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
Colors:	Black, White, Mist Blue, Sage, Lavender	Space Black, Cloud White, Light Gold, Sky Blue	Silver, Cosmic Orange, Deep Blue	Silver, Cosmic Orange, Deep Blue

Apple iPhone 17: Design

Apple iPhone 17 Review — (Image credit: Jacob Krol/Future)

No true redesign; it’s similar to the iPhone 17
Color range is fun
More durable year over year

Yeah, the iPhone Air is strikingly thin, and the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max look pretty different, but Apple’s staying the course with the iPhone 17 – and it makes a lot of sense.

As the entry-level model in the 2025 lineup, it feels instantly recognizable as an iPhone and looks right at home when compared to the previous iPhone 16 (or the 15 or 14 before that).

The iPhone 17 keeps largely the same dimensions, with only slight growth compared to the iPhone 16 – it’s 149.6 x 71.5 x 7.95mm versus 146.7 x 71.6 x 7.8mm. So, it’s ever so slightly thicker and seven grams heavier year over year, but I doubt you’ll notice this in daily use.

Over the past week, I’ve been using the iPhone 17 – alongside the Air, which is a story for another day – and it feels every bit like a modern iPhone. While I thought the colors were a little lacking in pop during my hands-on, the Sage Green model I’ve been testing has certainly grown on me. It lacks the vibrancy of last year’s Ultra Marine iPhone 16, but I especially like how it shifts from a lighter to a darker hue as the light hits it. The 17 also comes in Mist Blue, Lavender, White, or Black, should this Sage hue not be to your taste.

It’s also got the same color finish as the previous generation – it’s mostly a frosted back that gives a pastel-like effect, while the sides of the 17 are a matte, lighter version of the shade. It all comes together quite nicely, and the camera bump on the back – which houses the 48MP main and 48MP ultra-wide cameras – is slightly raised with a glossy, darker shade of Sage.

The left side is still home to the Action Button, which is infinitely customizable, as well as the volume up and volume down buttons. The right is where you’ll find the power/sleep button, as well as the “don’t call it a button” Camera Control cut-out. The USB-C port is on the bottom and offers one way to recharge the iPhone 17, while there’s also a MagSafe ring on the back for wireless charging.

The iPhone 17 still feels every bit like the modern iPhone we’ve come to expect and is very comfortable to use in the hand, with Apple appropriately balancing the device internally. It’s not a radical makeover, but one of the biggest changes is staring you in the face – at least when the phone’s screen is on.

Design score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone 17: Display

Finally, a 120Hz display
It’s an Always-On screen
Excellent visuals and more scratch-resistant

I think the Steve Jobs Theater gave out its loudest applause in some time when it was announced that ProMotion and Always-On functionality were arriving on the iPhone 17, and it’s probably the standout feature from my time with the device so far.

Not just as someone coming from the iPhone 16 Pro Max with an Always-On display, but also as someone who’s looking at the price – $799 / £799 / AU$1,399 – and the sea of other 120Hz-capable phones available. Either way, Apple’s provided a solution to one of the biggest qualms with the previous entry-level iPhones.

Yes, the iPhone 17’s 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display now supports ProMotion, meaning it delivers a buttery-smooth experience for scrolling, swiping, gaming, streaming, and even general navigation, as it will adjust on the fly from 1Hz all the way up to 120Hz depending on what you’re doing. The iPhone 16, 15, and 14 before it were all locked at 60Hz, which wasn’t a big deal if you weren’t coming from a 120Hz device, but this is a really nice upgrade.

There’s also a slight display size upgrade. iPhone 17’s screen is 0.2 inches bigger than the iPhone 16’s, which is the same increase awarded to the iPhone 16 Pro versus the iPhone 15 Pro. This means the iPhone 17’s display stretches much closer to the edges.

Paired with the A19 processor and the excellent vibrancy and richness of the Super Retina XDR screen, it all feels more responsive and instantaneous – whether that’s navigating the Liquid Glass world of iOS 26, playing a AAA game, or swiping through photos. I even enjoyed watching films and TV episodes on the iPhone 17; everything looked great with excellent color reproduction and smooth visuals.

The Dynamic Island is still at the top, and I especially enjoyed seeing apps like Flighty and United take it over with important travel details, the Yankees score via the Sports app, and deliveries for coffee from Uber Eats or DoorDash while writing this review. More and more apps are supporting this functionality, and I hope it’s a trend that continues. I’ll dive into the selfie camera improvements below, but they’re pretty massive and, more importantly, pure fun.

Last but not least, the other trickle-down feature – Always-On functionality. This might be more useful day in, day out than ProMotion. Just like the Pro iPhones and even the Apple Watches, the iPhone 17’s display will still show the time, your widgets (if you have them set), and notifications even when the display is not in use. This comes in seriously handy for a quick glance to see the weather, the time, or the notifications piling up.

The iPhone 17’s display story is really about the sum of its parts. ProMotion, Always-On, and a slightly larger screen make for a great experience, and there’s a serious amount of value to be found through this display alone. Oh, and it’s also coated in Ceramic Shield 2, which makes it three times as scratch-resistant as the screen on the iPhone 16 – that’s a win, especially if you're prone to dropping your iPhone.

Display score: 5 / 5

Apple iPhone 17: Software and Apple Intelligence

iOS 26 is a feature-filled upgrade

iOS 26 is officially out for the masses, and it should come as no surprise that it’s installed and running on the iPhone 17 right out of the box. It’s one of my favorite software refreshes from Apple in quite some time, with Liquid Glass at the center of it.

You’ll notice it immediately from the moment you power up the iPhone 17, with a translucent “Hello” appearing in various languages – a nice taste of the experience to come. Liquid Glass is all about clear, see-through interpretations of menus and components that stack on top of each other. This design language freshens things up and pairs nicely with the actual build of the iPhone 17. My favorite part, though, is how it handles menus: they layer instead of blocking the OS behind them.

There’s also an abundance of customization, especially with the tinting or color picking of app icons and the Lock Screen. You can choose the typeface and clock size, as well as spatialize photos to have them tilt as you move your iPhone.

Design aside, some core apps have been significantly updated. Phone is completely redone, with a main screen that now houses favorites up top, followed by calls made, received, missed, and even voicemails in a list below. It’s simpler once you get the hang of it, but the bigger win here is Call Screening and Translation during phone calls.

The former has been a major time-saver, screening unknown callers and presenting a typed-out transcript before you decide to pick up. As someone who’s had to call an airline or wait on hold with Amazon, the “hold for you” functionality is also quite nice.

While you can use Camera Control to take a photo, I prefer the long hold to scan something – to visually search it, add a date to my calendar, or identify an item. That’s part of the Visual Intelligence upgrade, and we should see more apps start to integrate with this feature. Think snapping a photo of a jacket and then using it to find the same one online.

There are plenty of other features in iOS 26, and you should check out our guide for the full list. Other software standouts on the iPhone 17 include typing indicators in group messages and the auto-transition functionality in Music. Hey, I even figured out a way to transition from a Bruce Springsteen classic to Olivia Rodrigo – talk about a skill.

Software score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone 17: Camera

Two excellent cameras
The upgraded ultra-wide lens is a major improvement
Dual Capture is a fun new mode

While at a glance the two-camera setup on the iPhone 17 looks pretty similar to that of the iPhone 16, the former has been given a significant upgrade. It’s still a 48MP main camera, but that’s now paired with a 48MP ultra-wide camera, both of which are “Fusion” in Apple’s mind. The latter is upgraded from a 12MP camera on the iPhone 16, and the results deliver less warp in the corners, along with shots that are more color-accurate and richer in detail.

You can take an image or start recording video with the Camera Control or the touch interface, which is redesigned as part of iOS 26. As a whole, the iPhone 17 is a sharp shooter, and I’ve been really liking the overall image quality from both cameras. You can technically shoot at 0.5x, 1x, and 2x with digital zoom up to 10x. Results will vary with that last option, though.

With the 1x lens, you can shoot at either the full 48MP or let Apple’s “Photonic Engine” work some Fusion magic to shoot at a 24MP default size that bins every four pixels into one. The goal here is to preserve storage space – though starting storage is up to 256GB from 128GB – and still deliver excellent-looking images rich with detail and accurate colors. I think it largely succeeds here, and since the ultra-wide lens is now 48MP as well, you’ll have the same binning option, which really shines.

Not only do ultra-wide shots pack in more detail with less warping at the edges, but I find them to be more accurate in terms of what you’re capturing and the associated colors. As in years past, Apple tends to skew more toward reality with less over-saturation and a slightly cooler image. You can adjust this with Photographic Styles, Apple’s version of filters, which actually impact how the camera captures a shot.

You can see samples shot from the rear cameras below – including ultra-wide shots, main shots at 1x, digital crops at 2x, and Macro mode. The latter really lets you capture a unique angle or view of an object – especially flowers. It’s also something I missed on the iPhone Air.

As I noted in the iPhone 16 review, the iPhone 17’s main camera does a nice job of applying a bokeh effect to almost any shot with either the 24MP or 48MP output. It can enhance the overall impact of a shot, but this year I also noticed that it extends to Night mode shots, which might indicate an update to the overall processing.

My favorite camera upgrade with the iPhone 17 is on the front: the new Center Stage camera, which jumps from 12 to 18MP with a larger square sensor. That’s paired with software and algorithms to let it stretch and even rotate from a vertical to horizontal shot, depending on how many people you want to get in the photo.

This change eliminates the game of Tetris for group selfies, and it’s quick at recognizing what needs to be done. The quality is also much improved over the previous generation, and this update comes across every new iPhone – the Air, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max included. It’s more fun, useful, and less of a gimmick than the slofie (slow-motion selfie).

The other new feature of the iPhone 17’s camera is Dual Capture, which allows you to record video with the front and rear cameras – anywhere from 0.5x to 10x digital zoom – and end up with a single file. This isn’t an entirely new idea, but Apple is baking the function directly into the Camera app. It was a lot of fun to use at a baseball game – the Savannah Bananas at Yankee Stadium, if you’re interested – but I can also see the feature being a blast at concerts, when you’re belting out a song (“Born to Run,” anyone?). And it will likely be fun for families, especially with little ones.

So, while we still don’t have a Google Pixel super-zoom equivalent or a true telephoto here, the iPhone 17’s cameras can shoot among the best. You’re left with high-quality photos that don’t skew out of reality, and even though there’s no “Add Me” or “Camera Coach,” you have several capture modes to pick from and the right tools to get a great shot.

Camera score: 4.5 / 5

Camera samples

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Apple iPhone 17: Performance

A19 chip is plenty, plenty fast
Not a major boost over the iPhone 16, but a big improvement over older iPhones

The iPhone 17 is the debut product for a new chip from Apple, the A19. This, of course, succeeds the A18 found in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. It’s not a Pro chip in name according to Apple, though it does power some previously Pro-only features and really makes the iPhone 17 responsive even with a battering of tasks thrown at it.

Apple’s A19 chip is made up of a six-core CPU – split between two performance cores and four efficiency cores – a five-core GPU with accelerators, and a 16-core Neural Engine. It’s also a 3nm chip paired with a new display engine, which makes ProMotion and Always-On a reality here.

The iPhone 17 offers great performance and screams value when you also consider that, for the same starting price as the iPhone 16, the internal storage is doubled to 256GB. That's not something you'll get from similarly priced rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Google Pixel 10.

You’ll have plenty of room to store photos with this beefier capacity – even 48MP captures – as well as apps, music, files, and other odds and ends. But the real appeal here is that the iPhone 17 feels fast, fluid, and responsive with pretty much any task. It also doesn’t heat up nearly as much as previous generations when using Apple Intelligence features like Visual Intelligence or Image Playground.

When taking a quick flight in Real Flight Simulator, I found the phoneresponsive even at maximum graphics and with a picture-in-picture video running. Other games, including Mini Metro, Asphalt 9, Disney Speedstorm, and Disney Dreamlight Valley, also ran well on the iPhone 17.

My core applications for personal use and work – like Slack, Gmail, Calendar, Google Meet, Instagram, TikTok, Music, Spotify, Google Drive, and many others – all ran without a hitch, and I didn’t find myself needing to close out of apps in the app drawer, even after extended use. In comparison to the A19 Pro found in the iPhone Air, these two devices were mostly on par in terms of performance. Exports could finish a little faster on Apple’s new super-slim model, likely thanks to the extra GPU core, but I didn’t find myself missing any beats on the iPhone 17.

My qualitative daily experience with the iPhone 17 also matched up with benchmarking done by the Future PLC team. The iPhone 17 scored 3,701 single-core and 9,460 multi-core on GeekBench 6.5, compared to the iPhone 16’s 3,301 single-core and 8,033 multi-core. It’s a solid improvement generation over generation, then, and present-day performance or the future is not a concern on the iPhone 17.

Performance score: 4.5 / 5

Apple iPhone 17: Battery

Like the iPhone 16, the 17 can last all day
It now supports up to 40W fast charging when wired

Apple still isn’t sharing the battery size inside the iPhone 17 – it rarely does so for most of its products – so we’ll need to wait for a proper teardown to see the exact lithium-ion cell inside. Apple instead promises all-day battery life and a downloaded video playback time of up to 30 hours – a six-hour improvement over the iPhone 16. For streamed video, the iPhone 17 can supposedly last for up to 27 hours – a nine-hour improvement. So, maybe the extra thickness inside the phone is for a larger battery, or the A19 is just much more efficient.

Either way, it can be a little hard to translate those playback estimates into everyday use, but after a week of testing, it’s fair to say that the iPhone 17 lasted all day on a consistent basis, even with the Always-On display turned on. I managed to last from early morning to evening, even with several FaceTimes and two video exports, without needing to plug it in. That’s not quite iPhone 16 Plus battery level, though it seems as though the 17 Pro Max is succeeding that device as the battery champ.

When it is time to plug in the iPhone 17, Apple’s upped the spec; the phone now supports up to 40W fast charging. With a 40W fast charger, you can hit around 50% from zero in about 20 minutes – based on a few tests – and 80% in less than an hour.

If you’re planning to be on the road constantly shooting images, playing some games, or draining the battery with heavy workflows, you might find that you need to recharge after eight or nine hours. I did encounter that, but the faster recharge times helped mitigate this. There is, however, no official MagSafe Battery Pack for this iPhone model.

And hey, you do still get the USB-C to USB-C cable in the box. I did find that with fast charging, the iPhone 17 does get hot – not to the point of burning your fingers, but it does become warm during the initial ramp-up, then cools down as it approaches 80%.

Battery score: 4 / 5

Apple iPhone 17: Should you Buy?

iPhone 17 score card
Attributes	Notes	Rating
Design	A similar design to the 16, with new colors and a more durable build.	4 / 5
Display	Finally, a 120Hz Always-On screen.	5 / 5
Camera	New capture modes, plus the addition of a 48MP ultra-wide lens next to the 48MP main, make the iPhone 17’s camera setup plenty versatile.	4.5 / 5
Software	iOS 26 brings a lot of new features, and the iPhone 17 lets you use them all.	4 / 5
Performance	The A19 chip is plenty fast for now and should last well into the future.	4.5 / 5
Battery	It can still last all day, but no major improvement.	4 / 5
Value	Same price as the 16 but with double the storage and more features.	5 / 5

Buy it if...

You have an older iPhone
If you’re rocking an iPhone 14 or older, you’ll likely see the most benefits from upgrading to an iPhone 17 – including better cameras on the front and back, a much-improved display, longer battery life, and better day-in, day-out performance.View Deal

You want Pro features without the tax
The iPhone 17 is the first entry-level iPhone to get both a ProMotion and an Always-On display. Let’s hope Apple keeps trickling down these features.View Deal

Don’t buy it if...

You want the best iPhone possible
If you want the best screen, the best cameras, or the longest-lasting iPhone, you’ll want to look at the iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 17 Pro Max.View Deal

You want the best-looking iPhone
This is subjective, but while the iPhone 17 looks good, the iPhone Air is stunning, sexy, and sleek.View Deal

You want the most cutting-edge AI features
Apple Intelligence is still rounding itself out, but if you’re after a phone with an AI option for most things, consider the Google Pixel 10 or Pixel 10 Pro.View Deal

Apple iPhone 17: How I Tested

I’ve been reviewing phones for years, including iPhones since the iPhone 8 lineup. To complete this review, I used the iPhone 17 in Sage Green for over a week.

During that time, I tested every part of the phone – making calls, streaming music, playing games, watching shows and movies, snapping photos, and working across my usual apps. For performance, I ran both qualitative and quantitative tests, including GeekBench 6.5, and noted how the phone handled heavier tasks like gaming or multitasking. For battery life, I tracked percentage drop across a full day of use and ran a standardized test.

For the cameras, I shot extensively with the 48MP main and new 48MP ultra-wide lenses, testing 0.5x, 1x, and 2x crop, as well as Portrait, Night mode, and Macro shots. I also tried the upgraded 18MP selfie camera and Dual Capture video. To put results in context, I compared them with shots from the iPhone Air, the entire iPhone 16 lineup, Google Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

First reviewed September 2025.

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