Best known for its excellent security appliances and endpoint protection services, Sophos makes its first foray into Wi-Fi 6E territory with the AP6 420E access point. It teams up the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and Wi-Fi 6E 6GHz bands, supports 5GHz and 6GHz high-speed 160MHz channels and can be standalone or cloud managed.

The AP6 420E presents six spatial streams – two each for 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz, with claimed top speeds for each radio of 600Mbits/sec, 2,400Mbits/sec and 2,400Mbits/sec respectively. For a tri-band AP it’s pleasingly compact and yet manages to squeeze in two omnidirectional aerials for each radio and a 2.5GbE multi-gig network port that requires a PoE+ power source.

Small businesses that only want one AP will find it easy to deploy as it defaults to standalone operations. Security is tight: its browser interface insists you change the admin password and gets you started with a preconfigured SSID that presents all three radios and applies a unique key using the AP’s serial number.

There’s a lot to play with here: you can create up to eight SSIDs for each radio and select WPA2 or the mandatory WPA3 encryption for Wi-Fi 6E networks. All radios support opportunistic wireless encryption (OWE), which allows you to present a safe open public network that encrypts all endpoint traffic but doesn’t require authentication.

Other features include client isolation, walled gardens and captive portals with custom landing pages, URL redirects and authentication using AP-generated daily, weekly or monthly passwords, vouchers, and Facebook and Google logins. Traffic shaping is extensive as different upload and download limits can be applied to each radio, selected SSIDs or their associated clients. The AP also supports SNMP v1/2/3 monitoring and can run packet capture sessions and save their output as Pcap files.

Sophos delivered good results in our real-world performance tests where we used a Dell Windows 11 Pro workstation with a TP-Link Archer TXE75E Wi-Fi 6/6E PCI-E adapter. With the 160MHz channels enabled on the 6GHz radio, large file copies between the workstation and a Windows server on our 10GbE LAN averaged 210MB/sec at close range, dropping to 183MB/sec with the AP moved ten meters away and into an adjoining room.

The cloud management option will appeal to businesses invested in Sophos as all APs and wireless networks are managed from the same Sophos Central web portal. Onboarding isn’t as smart as other wireless vendors that provide mobile apps and QR code scanning, as you enter the AP’s serial number or bulk-provision up to 30 at a time using a CSV file.

The Sophos Central portal has been refreshed, with all the main menu options moved to the top for easier access. Selecting the wireless page presents a dashboard with status charts for all APs, alerts and the number of connected devices. The usage insights chart shows traffic categories for all clients, but this isn’t currently supported for any AP6 model – and neither are rogue AP detection and roaming assist for sticky clients.

All other features present in standalone mode are available from the portal, however, so you can create the same number of SSIDs on all radios each with their own security settings. For easier fleet management, the portal also allows you to create different sites with associated maps and floor plans, with each assigned a set of APs.

The AP6 420E is comparatively expensive and a number of features for AP6 devices are yet to be implemented in the Sophos Central portal. That said, it delivers good overall performance and is a natural choice for businesses that already rely on Sophos for their network security.

We rate the best Wireless Access Points (WAPs).

Workstation technology is the pinnacle of desktop PC power, and this month we’re testing a computer that showcases some of the latest high-performance components. Not only is the Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada our first look at AMD’s latest Ryzen Threadripper, back after a hiatus, but also Nvidia’s Ada generation graphics, and it boasts a bevy of PCI-E 5 NVMe storage as well.

First, that processor. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X is top of the resurgent range, offering 64 cores running at a base 3.2GHz but with a boost up to 5.1GHz. Scan has chosen Corsair H150i Elite Capellix RGB liquid cooling to eke the most out of this processor. The 360mm version has been installed on the front of the chassis, with three 120mm fans providing plenty of heat dissipation.

With the Ryzen Threadripper supporting quad-channel memory, Scan naturally populates all four DIMM sockets of the Asus Pro WS TRX50 Sage WiFi motherboard. These are 32GB 4,800MHz Samsung ECC Registered DDR5 modules, for a total of 128GB. You would need to replace all of them if you wanted more memory up to the motherboard’s 1TB maximum, but 128GB should be enough for the lifetime of this system.

No expense spared

Another top-level component is the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada graphics, which uses Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, a 4nm design that takes professional GPU performance to the next level and is used in the incredibly potent GeForce RTX 4090 consumer graphics card. The RTX 6000 Ada packs 18,176 CUDA cores, a considerable upgrade on the 10,752 cores of the A6000 it replaces. Both cards have 48GB of GDDR6 memory, but the Ada’s memory is faster (2,500MHz versus 2,000MHz) so bandwidth has increased from 768GB/sec to 960GB/sec. The GPU clock is also up to 2,505MHz on boost, compared to 1,800MHz, so this is a seriously fast 3D graphics accelerator.

Scan has spared no expense when it comes to storage, either. The boot drive is a single 2TB Corsair MP700 NVMe M.2 device. This takes advantage of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series’ support for PCI-E 5. Running CrystalDiskMark 8, it delivered 11,492MB/sec reading and 11,773MB/sec writing, which are phenomenal levels of throughput. As if this wasn’t enough, there’s an 8TB array consisting of four more of the same drive in a RAID0 configuration, installed in a Hyper M.2 X16 expansion card that sits in one of the motherboard’s x16 PCI-E 5 slots. This array delivered mind-blowing 34,186MB/sec reading and 42,176MB/sec writing. That’s not a misprint – you’re getting 30 to 40GB/sec throughput. This will make editing even 8K video relatively painless, for example.

Touch of style

This plethora of potent components has been housed in a sizeable Fractal Design North chassis. The slats down the front make this look more like a stylish freestanding radiator than a PC, and it’s packed with features. There are two mounts for 2.5in drives, and two more for 3.5in or 2.5in units. None are used as all of Scan’s storage is NVMe-based. The power supply is a 1,000W Corsair RM1000X 80 Plus Gold unit, which should be well within its comfort zone despite the power-hungry core components. Even under full load, this isn’t a noisy computer.

The Asus motherboard offers both 10GbE and 2.5GbE LAN on the backplane, plus a built-in Wi-Fi 7 2x2 radio that can operate at up to 2.8Gbits/sec. There are three PCI-E 5 slots, but the two x16 ones are taken by the graphics and RAID storage array adapter, while the third operates in x8 mode. There’s also an x16 PCI-E 4 slot with a second that operates in x4 mode. The board contains three M.2 storage slots, with two operating at PCI-E 5 x4 speed (one taken by the boot drive), plus a third with PCI-E 4 x4 performance. The motherboard also has hardware and software support for Asus IPMI remote management expansion cards. However, there are only two 20Gbits/sec USB-C ports – one on the backplane and one on the top of the chassis at the front. The rest are Type-A ports of lesser speeds.

Blasted with speed

We were expecting top performance from the new Threadripper, but we weren’t quite ready for just how fast this system is. An overall score in the PC Pro benchmarks of 954 is way ahead of anything we’ve tested before. Most of this is provided by the incredible 1,224 in the multitasking test, which is no surprise with 64 cores available. But the video result of 892 is phenomenal as well. Only the image editing score of 267 has been beaten before. This is a mostly single-threaded test, and there are CPUs with faster boost core frequencies.

If you want a true demonstration of how incredible this system is, however, look no further than the Maxon Cinebench R23 multithreaded result of 107,189. Putting this in perspective, the fastest 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995WX workstation we’ve tested – the Armari Magnetar MC64TP – only managed 76,330. The single-threaded result of 1,728 shows the improvement, too, as the Magnetar managed 1,492, although CPUs with lower cores and higher frequencies such as the Ryzen 7000 series or recent Intel Core chips do better in this test.

Further underlining these abilities, the Blender Gooseberry render took only 94.6 seconds using the CPU, the first time we’ve seen a processor complete this frame processing task in less than two minutes. On GPU (using CUDA) it took 69.2 seconds, much less time than any other professional card we’ve tested. The LuxMark 3.1 score of 26,426 is similarly high, showing just how much GPU compute power the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada has on offer.

Tour de force

This GPU power translates into incredible 3D modelling capabilities. The standout result in SPECviewperf 2020 is an astonishing 1,235 with the snx-04 viewport, almost twice the fastest scores we’ve seen before. The catia-06 result of 208 is also impressive, as is 604 in solidworks-07, showing that CAD and product design capabilities are unparalleled, although the creo-03 score of 76 is surprisingly mediocre. For 3D animation, 295 in 3dsmax-07 and 807 in maya-06 tell their own story.

The Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada is a tour de force. Its 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper blows everything that went before out of the water with multithreaded tasks, and it’s no slouch with single threads, either. The Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada graphics also dominate for viewport acceleration or GPU rendering, and storage throughput is unparalleled. Of course, this workstation is expensive, but you certainly get what you pay for: the best possible workstation performance on the market.

For a few years, it seemed like the regular AMD Ryzen Threadripper was history. After the Pro version arrived, there was no non-Pro 5000 series. But now the vanilla Threadripper is back with the 7000 generation. It’s based on the same Zen 4 core as the Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 series CPUs, manufactured using variants of TSMC’s 5nm fabrication process, but sits between the two in features and price.

Where the Ryzen 7000 series tops out at 16 cores, the Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series offers 24-, 32- and 64-core iterations. The Pro goes from 12 to 96 cores. Further differentiation comes with memory configuration. All three 7000 series ranges support DDR5 memory at up to 5,200MHz, but where the basic Ryzen has a dual-channel controller, the Threadripper’s controller is quad-channel and the Pro’s is eight-channel.

All three ranges now offer PCI Express 5, but the number of lanes available is another point of difference. The basic Ryzen has 28 PCI-E 5 lanes, but the Threadripper has 48, plus 24 PCI-E 4 lanes, and the Pro has 128 PCI-E 5 lanes. The greater number of lanes will mean that faster storage devices such as NVMe M.2 drives can be attached, faster networking devices can be used, and more graphics cards can be installed.

Since we last had non-Pro Threadrippers, AMD’s Zen core technology has moved on apace. Both the previous 3000 series and new 7000 series top out at 64 cores, but the 3000 version (3990X) had a base clock of 2.9GHz with 4.3GHz boost, whereas the 7980X as found in this month’s Scan system has a base clock of 3.2GHz with 5.1GHz boost. This will offer significantly better performance with software that favors fewer, faster cores and with applications that can use as many cores as possible. With AMD’s Precision Boost 2, you’ll get as many cores as your cooling and motherboard power delivery can handle to run at maximum frequency, although some will be flagged as the most capable after manufacturer testing. Putting this further in perspective, the 32-core AMD Threadripper 2990WX only had a base clock of 3GHz and a boost of 4.2GHz, so the 7980X is a huge leap forward.

As such, this Zen 4-based Threadripper represents another significant update for AMD. Intel has been posing a challenge to the Ryzen 7000 series with its 13th generation Raptor Lake chips, but its Sapphire Rapids Xeon workstation processors have only arrived recently and max out at 56 cores and a 4.8GHz boost frequency. The Threadripper undercuts it in price while the Threadripper Pro now goes up to 96 cores.

With the return of the non-Pro Ryzen Threadripper, there’s a more affordable route once again if you want more than 16 cores in your workstation for the best possible multithreaded performance.

We've also ranked the best large SSDs and hard drives.

Workstation technology is the pinnacle of desktop PC power, and this month we’re testing a computer that showcases some of the latest high-performance components. Not only is the Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada our first look at AMD’s latest Ryzen Threadripper, back after a hiatus, but also Nvidia’s Ada generation graphics, and it boasts a bevy of PCI-E 5 NVMe storage as well.

First, that processor. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X is top of the resurgent range, offering 64 cores running at a base 3.2GHz but with a boost up to 5.1GHz. Scan has chosen Corsair H150i Elite Capellix RGB liquid cooling to eke the most out of this processor. The 360mm version has been installed on the front of the chassis, with three 120mm fans providing plenty of heat dissipation.

With the Ryzen Threadripper supporting quad-channel memory, Scan naturally populates all four DIMM sockets of the Asus Pro WS TRX50 Sage WiFi motherboard. These are 32GB 4,800MHz Samsung ECC Registered DDR5 modules, for a total of 128GB. You would need to replace all of them if you wanted more memory up to the motherboard’s 1TB maximum, but 128GB should be enough for the lifetime of this system.

No expense spared

Another top-level component is the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada graphics, which uses Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, a 4nm design that takes professional GPU performance to the next level and is used in the incredibly potent GeForce RTX 4090 consumer graphics card. The RTX 6000 Ada packs 18,176 CUDA cores, a considerable upgrade on the 10,752 cores of the A6000 it replaces. Both cards have 48GB of GDDR6 memory, but the Ada’s memory is faster (2,500MHz versus 2,000MHz) so bandwidth has increased from 768GB/sec to 960GB/sec. The GPU clock is also up to 2,505MHz on boost, compared to 1,800MHz, so this is a seriously fast 3D graphics accelerator.

Scan has spared no expense when it comes to storage, either. The boot drive is a single 2TB Corsair MP700 NVMe M.2 device. This takes advantage of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series’ support for PCI-E 5. Running CrystalDiskMark 8, it delivered 11,492MB/sec reading and 11,773MB/sec writing, which are phenomenal levels of throughput. As if this wasn’t enough, there’s an 8TB array consisting of four more of the same drive in a RAID0 configuration, installed in a Hyper M.2 X16 expansion card that sits in one of the motherboard’s x16 PCI-E 5 slots. This array delivered mind-blowing 34,186MB/sec reading and 42,176MB/sec writing. That’s not a misprint – you’re getting 30 to 40GB/sec throughput. This will make editing even 8K video relatively painless, for example.

Touch of style

This plethora of potent components has been housed in a sizeable Fractal Design North chassis. The slats down the front make this look more like a stylish freestanding radiator than a PC, and it’s packed with features. There are two mounts for 2.5in drives, and two more for 3.5in or 2.5in units. None are used as all of Scan’s storage is NVMe-based. The power supply is a 1,000W Corsair RM1000X 80 Plus Gold unit, which should be well within its comfort zone despite the power-hungry core components. Even under full load, this isn’t a noisy computer.

The Asus motherboard offers both 10GbE and 2.5GbE LAN on the backplane, plus a built-in Wi-Fi 7 2x2 radio that can operate at up to 2.8Gbits/sec. There are three PCI-E 5 slots, but the two x16 ones are taken by the graphics and RAID storage array adapter, while the third operates in x8 mode. There’s also an x16 PCI-E 4 slot with a second that operates in x4 mode. The board contains three M.2 storage slots, with two operating at PCI-E 5 x4 speed (one taken by the boot drive), plus a third with PCI-E 4 x4 performance. The motherboard also has hardware and software support for Asus IPMI remote management expansion cards. However, there are only two 20Gbits/sec USB-C ports – one on the backplane and one on the top of the chassis at the front. The rest are Type-A ports of lesser speeds.

Blasted with speed

We were expecting top performance from the new Threadripper, but we weren’t quite ready for just how fast this system is. An overall score in the PC Pro benchmarks of 954 is way ahead of anything we’ve tested before. Most of this is provided by the incredible 1,224 in the multitasking test, which is no surprise with 64 cores available. But the video result of 892 is phenomenal as well. Only the image editing score of 267 has been beaten before. This is a mostly single-threaded test, and there are CPUs with faster boost core frequencies.

If you want a true demonstration of how incredible this system is, however, look no further than the Maxon Cinebench R23 multithreaded result of 107,189. Putting this in perspective, the fastest 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995WX workstation we’ve tested – the Armari Magnetar MC64TP – only managed 76,330. The single-threaded result of 1,728 shows the improvement, too, as the Magnetar managed 1,492, although CPUs with lower cores and higher frequencies such as the Ryzen 7000 series or recent Intel Core chips do better in this test.

Further underlining these abilities, the Blender Gooseberry render took only 94.6 seconds using the CPU, the first time we’ve seen a processor complete this frame processing task in less than two minutes. On GPU (using CUDA) it took 69.2 seconds, much less time than any other professional card we’ve tested. The LuxMark 3.1 score of 26,426 is similarly high, showing just how much GPU compute power the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada has on offer.

Tour de force

This GPU power translates into incredible 3D modelling capabilities. The standout result in SPECviewperf 2020 is an astonishing 1,235 with the snx-04 viewport, almost twice the fastest scores we’ve seen before. The catia-06 result of 208 is also impressive, as is 604 in solidworks-07, showing that CAD and product design capabilities are unparalleled, although the creo-03 score of 76 is surprisingly mediocre. For 3D animation, 295 in 3dsmax-07 and 807 in maya-06 tell their own story.

The Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada is a tour de force. Its 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper blows everything that went before out of the water with multithreaded tasks, and it’s no slouch with single threads, either. The Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada graphics also dominate for viewport acceleration or GPU rendering, and storage throughput is unparalleled. Of course, this workstation is expensive, but you certainly get what you pay for: the best possible workstation performance on the market.

For a few years, it seemed like the regular AMD Ryzen Threadripper was history. After the Pro version arrived, there was no non-Pro 5000 series. But now the vanilla Threadripper is back with the 7000 generation. It’s based on the same Zen 4 core as the Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 series CPUs, manufactured using variants of TSMC’s 5nm fabrication process, but sits between the two in features and price.

Where the Ryzen 7000 series tops out at 16 cores, the Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series offers 24-, 32- and 64-core iterations. The Pro goes from 12 to 96 cores. Further differentiation comes with memory configuration. All three 7000 series ranges support DDR5 memory at up to 5,200MHz, but where the basic Ryzen has a dual-channel controller, the Threadripper’s controller is quad-channel and the Pro’s is eight-channel.

All three ranges now offer PCI Express 5, but the number of lanes available is another point of difference. The basic Ryzen has 28 PCI-E 5 lanes, but the Threadripper has 48, plus 24 PCI-E 4 lanes, and the Pro has 128 PCI-E 5 lanes. The greater number of lanes will mean that faster storage devices such as NVMe M.2 drives can be attached, faster networking devices can be used, and more graphics cards can be installed.

Since we last had non-Pro Threadrippers, AMD’s Zen core technology has moved on apace. Both the previous 3000 series and new 7000 series top out at 64 cores, but the 3000 version (3990X) had a base clock of 2.9GHz with 4.3GHz boost, whereas the 7980X as found in this month’s Scan system has a base clock of 3.2GHz with 5.1GHz boost. This will offer significantly better performance with software that favors fewer, faster cores and with applications that can use as many cores as possible. With AMD’s Precision Boost 2, you’ll get as many cores as your cooling and motherboard power delivery can handle to run at maximum frequency, although some will be flagged as the most capable after manufacturer testing. Putting this further in perspective, the 32-core AMD Threadripper 2990WX only had a base clock of 3GHz and a boost of 4.2GHz, so the 7980X is a huge leap forward.

As such, this Zen 4-based Threadripper represents another significant update for AMD. Intel has been posing a challenge to the Ryzen 7000 series with its 13th generation Raptor Lake chips, but its Sapphire Rapids Xeon workstation processors have only arrived recently and max out at 56 cores and a 4.8GHz boost frequency. The Threadripper undercuts it in price while the Threadripper Pro now goes up to 96 cores.

With the return of the non-Pro Ryzen Threadripper, there’s a more affordable route once again if you want more than 16 cores in your workstation for the best possible multithreaded performance.

We've also ranked the best large SSDs and hard drives.

As the latest member of the HP Poly Studio family, the X52 video bar delivers an advanced all-in-one solution for medium-sized meeting rooms. Taking over from the Studio X50, it features an uprated 20MP 4K UHD camera, a more powerful Qualcomm 865 CPU, improved dynamic framing algorithms, advanced microphones and Wi-Fi 6 support.

Apart from the larger camera there’s little to tell the two models apart but at 95°, the X52 has a narrower FoV (field of view) than the X50. This is because the X52 is designed to deliver a higher resolution when zooming in to participants at the far end of the meeting table.

Its mic array claims a six-meter pick-up range, while sound output is handled by two 20W ported speakers. You have two HDMI-out ports for dual monitor support, HDMI-in and USB-C for host connections, a gigabit network port and a port for Poly’s optional extension mic. All are easily accessible at the rear.

The X52 runs Poly’s Android-based VideoOS software, which supports BYOD (bring your own device) mode and includes built-in video apps. The guest list is impressive, and includes Microsoft Teams, Zoom Rooms, Google Meet, GoToRoom, RingCentral Rooms and BlueJeans Rooms.

Deployment is simple: you connect power and network, wait a minute while it boots up and point a browser at its IP address. The web interface presents a system status dashboard with the active video app and you move to the Provider section to choose another app from the drop-down list.

You can swap between them as required and, although a reboot is necessary, it only takes two minutes to regain access. BYOD mode is always available with the X52 automatically swapping to it when it senses a USB connection and, once you’ve finished, you can exit back to the app.

We had no problems cloud-managing the X52 by registering it with our Lens portal account. You can remotely manage all your Poly devices, assign them to sites and rooms, run remote firmware updates and upgrade to the premium Lens service for detailed meeting analytics.

We tested with Microsoft Teams and used the registration code presented on the screen to assign it to our Microsoft 365 account, where the X52 appeared as a new Teams Rooms on Android device. We also paired the X52 with Poly’s TC10 PoE-powered controller tablet and used the same registration process.

Our Teams console showed both devices as online and paired, after which the tablet moved all meeting controls to its own display. We had no problems creating and joining Teams meetings using the tablet’s 10in touchscreen, and in BYOD mode we could use its menu to manually control the camera and create up to ten presets for specific camera positions.

Video quality is excellent, and we noted the camera’s focus is markedly sharper than the Poly P15 we use in the lab. The mics worked well, as remote participants could hear us clearly when we were 4.5 meters away, while the dual speakers delivered a clean sound quality that easily filled our 24m² meeting room at a 60% volume level.

The X52 gets the benefit of Poly’s NoiseBlockAI and Acoustic Fence technologies, which remove annoying background noises, while the DirectorAI feature handles group and speaker tracking. Also accessed from its web console, the DirectorAI Perimeter option allows you to define a custom tracking zone.

Although still in a preview testing phase, the X52 offers people framing, which shows all participants using up to six split screens. Whichever mode you choose, you’ll be impressed with its speed as the camera snaps to active speakers in no more than two seconds.

Poly’s Studio X52 is perfect for businesses that want a professional video conferencing solution for their medium-sized meeting room. Video quality is excellent, speaker tracking is impressively fast and the big choice of built-in VC apps makes it incredibly versatile.

We've also rated the best small business routers.

As the latest member of the HP Poly Studio family, the X52 video bar delivers an advanced all-in-one solution for medium-sized meeting rooms. Taking over from the Studio X50, it features an uprated 20MP 4K UHD camera, a more powerful Qualcomm 865 CPU, improved dynamic framing algorithms, advanced microphones and Wi-Fi 6 support.

Apart from the larger camera there’s little to tell the two models apart but at 95°, the X52 has a narrower FoV (field of view) than the X50. This is because the X52 is designed to deliver a higher resolution when zooming in to participants at the far end of the meeting table.

Its mic array claims a six-meter pick-up range, while sound output is handled by two 20W ported speakers. You have two HDMI-out ports for dual monitor support, HDMI-in and USB-C for host connections, a gigabit network port and a port for Poly’s optional extension mic. All are easily accessible at the rear.

The X52 runs Poly’s Android-based VideoOS software, which supports BYOD (bring your own device) mode and includes built-in video apps. The guest list is impressive, and includes Microsoft Teams, Zoom Rooms, Google Meet, GoToRoom, RingCentral Rooms and BlueJeans Rooms.

Deployment is simple: you connect power and network, wait a minute while it boots up and point a browser at its IP address. The web interface presents a system status dashboard with the active video app and you move to the Provider section to choose another app from the drop-down list.

You can swap between them as required and, although a reboot is necessary, it only takes two minutes to regain access. BYOD mode is always available with the X52 automatically swapping to it when it senses a USB connection and, once you’ve finished, you can exit back to the app.

We had no problems cloud-managing the X52 by registering it with our Lens portal account. You can remotely manage all your Poly devices, assign them to sites and rooms, run remote firmware updates and upgrade to the premium Lens service for detailed meeting analytics.

We tested with Microsoft Teams and used the registration code presented on the screen to assign it to our Microsoft 365 account, where the X52 appeared as a new Teams Rooms on Android device. We also paired the X52 with Poly’s TC10 PoE-powered controller tablet and used the same registration process.

Our Teams console showed both devices as online and paired, after which the tablet moved all meeting controls to its own display. We had no problems creating and joining Teams meetings using the tablet’s 10in touchscreen, and in BYOD mode we could use its menu to manually control the camera and create up to ten presets for specific camera positions.

Video quality is excellent, and we noted the camera’s focus is markedly sharper than the Poly P15 we use in the lab. The mics worked well, as remote participants could hear us clearly when we were 4.5 meters away, while the dual speakers delivered a clean sound quality that easily filled our 24m² meeting room at a 60% volume level.

The X52 gets the benefit of Poly’s NoiseBlockAI and Acoustic Fence technologies, which remove annoying background noises, while the DirectorAI feature handles group and speaker tracking. Also accessed from its web console, the DirectorAI Perimeter option allows you to define a custom tracking zone.

Although still in a preview testing phase, the X52 offers people framing, which shows all participants using up to six split screens. Whichever mode you choose, you’ll be impressed with its speed as the camera snaps to active speakers in no more than two seconds.

Poly’s Studio X52 is perfect for businesses that want a professional video conferencing solution for their medium-sized meeting room. Video quality is excellent, speaker tracking is impressively fast and the big choice of built-in VC apps makes it incredibly versatile.

We've also rated the best small business routers.

Kyocera’s EcoSys P2235dn is a compact mono laser printer, designed for moderate use in small groups or businesses. It’s well specified for the price, with a 250-sheet cassette and 100-sheet multipurpose feed, plus duplex printing as standard. It’s also equipped with a gigabit Ethernet port, but there’s no Wi-Fi support; you’ll need the P2235dw for that.

Most laser manufacturers regard photoconductor drums as a consumable, typically good for 10,000 to 40,000 pages, but Kyocera fits a ceramic drum designed to last the life of the printer; in this case, 100,000 pages. The drum is guaranteed to reach that, or to last for three years, but in the UK the printer itself gets a stingy one-year RTB warranty.

The P2235dn has a basic control panel comprising a few lights and buttons, so it’s odd to see it also has a USB host port, which is typically paired with a text or touchscreen so you can browse and select which contents to print. We searched Kyocera’s website and documentation, experimented with different files and button combinations, checked in the driver and combed through the web admin page, but simply couldn’t find out how to make direct prints.

Using our trusty PC, we subjected the P2235dn to our usual battery of print jobs. It’s a fast device, turning out a first page of text in 17 seconds, and continuing at 28.8ppm over our 25-page job. It extended this to 29.4ppm on a 50-page document, and even reached 12.5ipm when duplex printing ten sides of graphics onto five pages. We were particularly impressed by its 27.7ppm on our challenging 24-page graphics test.

Sadly, the P2235dn seems in too much of a hurry to print particularly well. It’s rare that we criticize text quality from a laser, but up close, character outlines weren’t as crisp as we’d expect. More significantly, mono graphics suffered from fine banding, something we’d usually only expect on the cheapest laser devices.

When considered with its 1.8p per page running costs, this lackluster print quality takes the shine off the P2235dn. It’s a good choice if speed is all important, but there’s little else to recommend it.

We've also rated the best video conferencing software.

HP’s OfficeJet Pro 9012e is almost indistinguishable from the 9010e we crowned inkjet Labs winner this time last year. It’s a chunky-looking, businessy MFP aimed squarely at home and small offices. While it’s clearly not an enterprise-class device, it’s built to take moderately high use, with a one-time maximum monthly duty cycle of up to 25,000 pages.

In reality this MFP is unlikely to print anywhere near that volume, but it’s well set up for its recommended 1,500 pages a month. In its base you’ll find a 250-sheet paper cassette, while on top there’s a 35-sheet ADF. It can print, scan, copy and fax, with direct control coming via a 6.9cm color touchscreen running a user-friendly menu. It’s hidden slightly on the left side, but you also get a USB host port for direct prints and scans.

The “e” on some HP printers denotes that you must sign up to HP+ to activate the device, and thereafter leave it connected to the internet for it to function. Happily, that’s not the case here, with users allowed to choose whether to activate HP+, the Instant Ink subscription service, or neither. We asked HP to clarify whether it had changed its “dual SKU strategy” which obliged users to choose HP+ or not at the time of purchase, but didn’t hear back before we went to press.

Regardless, the 9012e offers the best of all worlds. Choose to sign up to HP+ and you’ll get an additional year’s warranty and six months of Instant Ink for free. Opt out and you can still get two years’ cover with online registration, and choose to sign up to Instant Ink if you want. We discuss the economics of this in View from the Labs, but without it – at 1p per page in black or 4.2p in color – the 9012e is cheap to run for a cartridge-based inkjet.

HP claims the 9012e has self-healing Wi-Fi, but we had issues connecting it to our regular Labs router – an unremarkable dual-band TP-Link. It couldn’t detect the 2.4GHz network until we rebooted it, after which the printer failed to connect and lost sight of it again. We tried the 5GHz network with similar results, eventually giving up and using our main router. Although this worked without any problems, it’s further away from the test area, which may have slowed the 9012e down.

If it did, we can’t say we especially noticed. The OfficeJet Pro 9012e took quite a while to spool and start printing multi-page jobs, but once started it was the fastest inkjet in this group. It hit 21.1 pages per minute (ppm) on our 25-page text test, and reached an equally impressive 6.9ppm over 24 pages of color graphics. Encouraged by these results we tried our 50-page Alice in Wonderland test, but with a very long spool time this proved slower at just 11.6ppm. The 9012e was also underwhelming when duplexing, reaching only 3.4ipm when printing ten sides of color graphics.

For an inkjet, this is a fast copier, managing single black pages in nine seconds, and needing only ten seconds in color. It rattled off ten mono copies in 71 seconds, and again needed little longer in color, taking 79 seconds. A 10-page, 20-side duplex color photocopy took nearly five minutes, however.

When it came to scanning, this was again the fastest inkjet here, dispatching low-resolution A4 scans in only ten seconds. We were even more impressed at higher resolutions, the 9012e needing only 12 seconds to capture a 10 x 15cm photo at 600dpi.

The 9012e isn’t a great photo printer, with its pigment inks drying to a dull, semi-matte finish. We were also disappointed in its slightly dark and dingy photocopies. Otherwise, it’s hard to fault the quality of its prints and scans, particularly on typical office jobs such as text and color graphics. It’s certainly good enough for printing formal correspondence, and it would be great for archiving documents – if only it came with software that could save scans as searchable PDFs.

Overall, this remains a great MFP for a typical home office. It’s fast, robust, produces good results, and is almost as cheap to run as cartridge-based inkjets get. However, its purchase price has crept up somewhat compared to the 9010e, so it loses out on value for money.

We've also ranked the best apps for working from home.

HP’s LaserJet Pro MFP 4302fdw looks like the perfect color laser MFP for a small office. It’s a four-in-one with fax, topped off by a 50-sheet ADF. Both this and the printer are duplex-capable, so you can start a multi-page double-sided copy and go off to put the kettle on.

This MFP has virtually no packing to remove – you can just load up paper, join it to a network and install the drivers. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as smoothly as it should have. The touchscreen didn’t confirm whether the 4302fdw had joined our Labs network, and it didn’t respond when we repeatedly tried to print a network report. Shortly afterwards the printer sprang into life, delivering several unwanted copies.

We still don’t love HP’s TWAIN scan software, which in this case doesn’t offer 150dpi, but its MFPs’ lipless scan platens make it so much easier to retrieve your originals. This is quite a fast scanner, managing a 10 x 15cm photo at 600dpi in just 17 seconds, but it repeatedly dropped out midway through our 1,200dpi test.

If it’s been idle for a while, the 4302fdw needs only about three seconds extra to warm up before delivering a first black or color page. From standby it managed this in 17 seconds, and went on to deliver our 25-page test in exactly a minute. It was slower on our challenging color test, but its 14.4ppm still compares well at this price.

At 1.5p in black or 8p per color page this isn’t the cheapest laser to run, but you can sign it up to HP’s Instant Ink toner delivery, which brings the cost down as low as 1.3p. Unfortunately, you can’t do much about the 4302fdw’s indifferent print and scan quality. Black text was perfect, but graphics and photographs had a blue bias, apart from skin tones, which tended to look flushed. Office scans were perfectly good, but with photos we noticed a loss of detail from the darkest areas.

It’s a shame. The LaserJet Pro MFP 4302fdw should be the perfect small office device, but its results are just a little too weak.

We also ranked the best small business accounting software.