PC World

Baseus has announced the launch of its S2 solar-powered security camera, which features solar tracking technology, advanced motion detection, and a wire-free design. The S2 ($149) builds on the foundation laid by the Baseus S1 Pro, which introduced features like a rotating solar panel and advanced AI motion detection. ...

A day after launching the most hotly anticipated product in the PC world, the Nvidia GeForce 50-series family of graphics cards, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang appeared on stage at CES to answer reporters’ questions. ...

Do gamers need SSDs? Inside their PCs, certainly, that’s one of the easiest recommendations for a speedier computer. What about portable storage? Corsair thinks they do, and it’s showing off a new line of USB4-powered portable SSDs at CES. ...

In a recent blog post, Microsoft declared 2025 to be the “year of the Windows 11 PC refresh.” That’s because when October rolls around, official support for Windows 10 is going to end and most users will likely need to switch over to Windows 11 when that happens. However, if you’re planning on waiting until the last minute to make that switch, you might want to think again. ...

At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Excellent image quality, plus color night vision 180-degree panoramic view Flexible wireless setup with dual-band Wi-Fi 6 Cons Industrial design won’t be appealing to all users Ethernet connection required for initial setup Larger size renders unsuitable for discreet installations Our Verdict The Reolink Duo 3 WiFi is an excellent choice for users who ...

CES is kind of huge this year. We’ve got big new announcements from almost every major PC company, including new GPUs from both Nvidia and (to an admittedly lesser extent) AMD. And their OEM partners are showing off their stuff on the floor, too. MSI has Nvidia cards, Gigabyte has both of them, and Adam Patrick Murray got to check them all out. ...

It’s price-hike-o’clock for Discovery+ subscribers, with the streaming service poised to raise the rates for both its ad-free and ad-supported plans.  Starting now, the price for the ad-free version of Discovery+ will go up to $9.99 a month, up a buck from the previous $8.99/month rate. ...

Road warriors don’t believe in a laptop that’s too light. Such principles are why we have designs like the ThinkPad X1 Nano, the LG Gram, and, of course, Apple’s Macbook Air series. Asus’ Zenbook designs has done sleek and light for a long time, but the new Zenbook A14 is stepping things up with an incredible mix of longevity and light weight. ...

It’s a new year! And that means it’s finally time to upgrade that monitor of yours, especially if you can’t even remember when you got it. It just so happens that this gorgeous 32-inch Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 is currently $597 off on Amazon, with Samsung slashing its price down from $1,300 all the way to just $703. ...

AOSU has announced the HomeCortex, a new smart home security hub set to debut at CES 2025. The system promises to simplify home security with centralized management, using advanced AI to coordinate devices and analyze events. ...

Over the last few years, it feels like gaming laptops have grown up a bit. They’ve become a bit broader in their appeal, a little less “futuristic jukebox” and a little more “boardroom bling.” But MSI just said nuts to all that and plastered their newest gaming laptop in dragons, presumably while blasting a Def Leppard album. ...

There are a few things in life that everyone need, like three-day weekends, good cheese, and more storage space. For that last one, you can take advantage of this Crucial X9 portable SSD that’s down to $65 on Amazon, or 29 percent off its original $92 price. This is the best price we’ve ever seen for this portable SSD, which is a pretty darn good reason to jump on this while you can. ...

When Qualcomm cancelled its Snapdragon Dev Kit, it seemingly dashed the hopes of a small-form-factor desktop powered by a Snapdragon X Elite CPU. But don’t worry! Lenovo has stepped in with its IdeaCentre Mini x — a tiny, cool, Snapdragon X-equipped desktop. At CES 2025, Lenovo showed off the SFF desktop, priced at $659.99 and expected to ship in April. ...

These days, a mini PC can deliver fantastic performance at a fraction of the cost of a full-blown desktop PC or laptop. The Beelink SER5 Pro mini PC is a great example, now on sale for $271 on Amazon, which is a cool 25 percent off its original $359 price tag. ...

The Steam Deck is a great device, but it ain’t exactly a powerhouse. And with new graphics cards coming into the market from every angle, plus new AAA games that almost demand them, the Steam Deck’s aging integrated setup isn’t looking any hotter. Enter GeForce Now, Nvidia’s PC game streaming service, which is slated to hit the Steam Deck and enable the remote playing of games. ...

At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Handsome hardware Integrated LED indicators An incredible number of devices supported, although not as many as the Flic Button Cons Requires one of the Flic Hubs Configuration can be exceptionally daunting Missing some critical native support (such as Nest thermostats) Our Verdict If you can get past its complex setup process, the Flic Twist can open ...

Why didn’t AMD talk about their upcoming GPUs in their CES 2025 keynote? Or their new Z-series processors for handheld PCs? What is the Ryzen AI Max? And when can I actually buy a Ryzen 9000X3D chip? AMD executives only had 45 minutes for their CES 2025 keynote. ...

Artificial intelligence continues to prove its worth as Razer just demonstrated at CES 2025 this week, announcing a Razer AI gaming coach called Project AVA. Yes, it seems that apart from morphing badly drawn stick figures into portraits worthy of Picasso and giving you someone kind to chat to when your cat runs away, AI bots can also make you a better gamer, or even an esports superstar – ...

When I think of Razer, I think of two things: RGB lighting, and expensive. But surprisingly only one of those applies to the Handheld Dock Chroma, a USB-C dock designed for the Steam Deck and similar PC-based handheld gaming gadgets. The 6-in-1 dock-slash-stand should work with any of them, and do so for $79.99 USD. ...

If there’s one component in PCs that hasn’t really changed much over the past couple of decades, it’s memory. While newer memory generations have offered faster speeds and greater capacity support, there have been few new features or evolutions of the standard that make a difference all by themselves. ...

The long-standing advice for PC storage for gamers, workers, and everyone in between has always been, “Just use an SSD.” It didn’t matter too much if you were using a PCIe 3 SSD, a PCIe 4 SSD, or even an older SATA SSD. The on-paper performance advances in the top drives just didn’t deliver the kind of real-world advantages that would make it worth recommending them every time. ...

If you’re working with high-resolution video like 4K or 8K, then there is one guarantee to your work: You’re going to produce a monstrous quantity of data. That in turn often means working with many inadequate memory cards. They’re not big enough to store all your data, and certainly not fast enough to get it off the card in a timely manner. ...

For years, it’s been more important to have enough memory, than fast enough memory, but that’s all starting to change. While you still need to make sure you have plenty of RAM for the games you want to play and the apps you want to run, faster DDR5 memory kits will absolutely improve your system’s performance, whatever you’re doing. ...

Two displays? Three displays? When you need a true laptop workstation, you go with five displays — and Plugable’s UD-7400PD, powered by the DisplayLink DL-7400 chipset, does just that. As the name indicates, this isn’t a Thunderbolt dock. Instead, Plugable’s new dock uses the DisplayLink protocol, essentially compressing and splitting the signal across several ports. ...

The smart home mavens at SwitchBot are showing several new products at CES 2025, including an innovative video doorbell that comes bundled with a dedicated 4.3-inch display. They’ve also taken the wraps off a versatile retrofit smart lock that will work on just about any type of entry lock. It’s that display that really sets the SwitchBot Video Doorbell apart from the competition. ...

An emerging mini-trend at CES this year is robot pool cleaners that generate cleaning patterns based on the size and shape of your pool, and a new high-end cleaner from Beatbot is the latest example. ...

Rufus is an open-source program that creates bootable USB sticks for Windows installation and more. Compared to Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool, Rufus offers many more options for configuration setup. If you’re interested in such a program, we’ll show you how to use it. ...