Apple’s cheapest desktop computer has had a price cut and a power upgrade – making it one of the smallest, cheapest and most adaptable Macs yet.
The Mac mini starts at £649 ($599/A$999) – £50 less than the 2020 model – and has Apple’s latest M2 or M2 Pro chips as used in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro to great effect.
The tiny aluminium box is about the size of a hardback book, measuring just under 20cm each side and less than 4cm thick. It is easy to fit just about anywhere: on a desk, mounted under one, in a TV cabinet, on the back of the monitor, stuck to a wall – wherever you can reach with a power cable.
The power button is on the back. It has a small speaker for basic sounds, but no microphones or cameras. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Like a normal desktop PC you simply plug the Mac mini into a screen, keyboard and mouse, all of which can be bought with it at great expense – or you can use your existing gear. I connected an Asus 4K monitor and Logitech Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to the mini to set it up, using them during the length of the review without issue.
Connectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 2x USB-A, 2 or 4x USB 4/Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, Ethernet, headphones
Dimensions: 197mm x 197mm x 35.8mm
Weight: 1.18kg to 1.28kg
M2 power and efficiency
A plastic foot sticks out of the base to slightly lift the mini’s aluminium frame. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The new M2 and M2 Pro chips offer decent performance gains on the previous M1 and M1 Pro chips, with a 10% to 20% improvement in CPU speed and up to 25% faster graphics. That puts them at the top of the pile alongside some of Intel and AMD’s latest top chips, but at much lower power consumption, and a giant leap over previous Intel-powered Macs.
With that level of performance, the Mac mini has become not just a small Apple computer but one of its more powerful and adaptable options. The M2 version will be more than enough for most general computing tasks, with the more expensive M2 Pro option and up to 32GB of RAM available for those who need more power. It sits below the Mac Studio, which is a beefed up version of the mini for those who need a lot more graphics or computing power.
(Pocket-lint) – The Logitech G502 Lightspeed is a bit of a legend in the gaming mouse arena. A tried-and-trusted classic with a great design, plenty of flexibility and a winning feature format that others have tried to emulate.
Now Logitech has taken that icon and improved upon it with three mice – the wired G502 X, the wireless G502 X Lightspeed and the G502 X Plus. The latter of these three is the top of the range and one that the company claims to include a range of “breakthrough innovations” to give you the best gaming experience possible.
How does the Logitech G502 X Plus hold up in a world of superlight and gamer-pleasing mice from the competition though? We’ve been playing with it to find out.
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Pocket-lint
Our quick take
The G502 X Plus is a welcome upgrade to a tried-and-trusted legend. It’s the little things that really make this mouse great, including the addition of hybrid optical switches, eye-catching RGB, the swappable side button and more. It’s great looking, feels good in the hand and is, most importantly, a great gaming gadget. Once again, Logitech has nailed it with its gaming mouse design.
Logitech G502 X Plus
4.5 stars – Pocket-lint recommended
For
Crisp clicks
Comfortable ergonomics
Superior hybrid switches
PowerPlay compatibile
Against
Feels a bit less premium than the original
squirrel_widget_12855099
A legend reinvented
Lightforce hybrid optical-mechanical switches
Hero 25K sensor, 40G2 max acceleration, 400IPS max speed
13 programmable buttons
5 on-board memory profiles
The Logitech G502 X Plus is available in either white or black and looks utterly stylish thanks to its Lightsync RGB lighting zones. But it’s immediately recognisable as being a G502.
That classic and iconic ergonomic shape is still there with the sloped side grip, the pointy and angry-looking frame and multiple side buttons. Some things are the same and some have changed. There are no swappable weights included with the G502 X Plus, so it’s not weight-adjustable like the original model. Instead, Logitech has cut the weight down to 106 grams and made some under-the-hood enhancements.
We immediately noticed this when we first picked the mouse up and started playing with it, as it feels quite a bit lighter and perhaps a bit cheaper in the hand because of it. That doesn’t mean it’s not a high-quality mouse though, as the G502 X Plus certainly has a lot going for it.
The free-spinning mouse wheel design is still there for a start. It’s been tweaked to make it lighter and more stable, with precise ratchet modes that provide quite a lot of audible and tactile feedback when you scroll. Then you can click the button behind the wheel to put it into the smooth hyper-fast scroll mode where it’ll just spin and spin.
I like cheap laptops. More accurately, I like good cheap laptops… but those can be hard to find. For every hundred bucks that gets trimmed off a laptop’s price, its features, design and performance all typically take a hit. But when I find one that rises above Black Friday doorbuster level, it’s something to cheer about.
If you need a budget laptop that looks decent, has a passable keyboard, is small enough to go anywhere and is flexible enough to double as a video-streaming tablet, then check out the Lenovo Duet Chromebook. It’s not especially fast, and the touchpad isn’t great, but it’s still one of the best computers you can buy for under $400. Just note that it makes a better secondary or travel laptop than a primary device — which is something I’d say about almost any 11-inch laptop.
Like
Includes a keyboard cover
Works as a laptop or tablet
Excellent overall value
Don’t Like
Touchpad isn’t great
Slower performance
No headphone jack
Currently selling for $379, this is an 11-inch ChromeOS tablet with a keyboard cover and kickstand. That means it can work as a standalone touchscreen tablet, or as a clamshell-like notebook. In that way, it’s kind of like a cheaper Microsoft Surface 2-in-1. The version tested here has 64GB of eMMC storage, but the model in stores right now has 128GB, which is a plus.
Microsoft already makes a budget Surface, the most-recent version of which is called the Surface Go 3. It’s $400 and runs Windows instead of ChromeOS, and has an Intel processor instead of the Snapdragon 7c here. But the biggest practical difference to me is that the Lenovo Duet includes its pretty darn good keyboard cover in the box, while Microsoft forces you to buy its keyboard cover for an extra $100 to $129, depending on the color. When shopping at this end of the budget pool, a 25% premium to get the keyboard (which is a must-have) makes a big difference.
Dan Ackerman/CNET
As a Chromebook, the Duet is less capable than a Windows device in some respects, but as modern Chromebooks can run almost any Android app, the use cases where this would make a real difference to you continue to narrow. And head-to-head, a sub-$500 computer running ChromeOS is usually going to feel speedier and more responsive than a similarly priced Windows PC, because of the lighter OS.
Read more: How to Buy a Budget Laptop in 2022
Keyboard and kickstand
I’ve always said the keyboard cover design and build quality are the best things about the Surface line, and that’s true for the Lenovo Duet as well. The Lenovo keyboard is similarly solid, not flimsy like some other clip-on keyboards, and its smallish keys have excellent depth and a satisfying clacky feel. The tiny touchpad, in contrast, is the single most annoying thing about this system — it’s usable, but doesn’t feel as accurate or responsive as I’d like.
Bryton is not a name that springs to mind when you think of the best cycling computers (opens in new tab), so much so that this particular model was boxed up with a casquette, bidon, a pair of cycling socks and a waterproof case for your phone presumably with the purpose of increasing brand awareness.
Plugging in into the USB-C charger it switched on quickly and then you’re prompted to download the Bryton Active app. This is where it went wrong…
Bryton Rider S800: set-up
(Image credit: Tom Epton)
The Bryton Active app feels unfinished, the user interface is unattractive compared to those of the market leaders and it’s difficult to navigate.
Pairing the head unit to the app was a difficult process in itself, taking a long time for the two to find each other. Navigating around the app was tricky, with a lot of ‘non-obvious’ menu names not making things easier.
For example, when trying to change the data fields seen on the head unit for my interval session the menu title for this within the app was “Grid Setting”. Once my ride was done, it took an age to sync – and this is something that has not improved with subsequent rides such that now I just plug it into my laptop to get the data.
Mapping and navigation
(Image credit: Bryton)
The mapping function was fine, though again somewhat ruined by the difficulties with the app. Getting routes from the app to the head unit is a lot of faff – any data sharing between the two seems to take multiple attempts and be very slow. Due to the huge screen, the maps functionality on the head unit is quite good – it’s clear what kind of roads are which and the turn by turn navigation is great. It includes features like auto-rerouting and route retracing too.
Screen
(Image credit: Bryton)
The main redeeming factor of the Bryton S800 is the touchscreen – it’s huge. It’s 8.6cm along the diagonal which did make it look a bit silly between my 36cm bars but these are admittedly on the narrow side.
Once you’ve figured out how to change data fields, these are numerous. The colours are bright and clear – swiping between screen options is quick and easy.
The screen makes use of, according to Bryton, Memory In Pixel technology (MIP). This is a battery saving bit of tech – the idea being that only pixels which need to be refreshed are updated each time the screen changes such that no power is diverted to refreshing pixels that remain the same.
Battery life and charging
Bryton claims a 36-hour battery life for the Rider S800 which is impressive for a device with a bright screen and while I’ve not been on a 36-hour ride, it does seem to never lose power. This battery life is due to the MIP screen technology.
The prevailing wisdom is that pre-built systems are still the best way of getting an up-to-date graphics card. As prices for graphics cards normalise this may not be the case in the not too distant future, but right now, it’s still our recommendation for the most sought-after cards. Cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 you’ll find inside this new Wired2Fire Reaper gaming PC.
Wired2Fire has sought to piece together a machine that offers decent value for money, balancing the spec in order to hit its £1,649 price point. So while it employs one of the latest Intel Alder Lake CPUs, it isn’t the top model, but the more affordable Core i5 12600KF.
Don’t let that put you off though, this is a phenomenal chip and indeed is our top recommendation for gaming CPUs right now. Sure, there are faster chips out there, but this hits that value for money sweet spot better than any other when it comes to gaming in 2022.
With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that the Reaper ships with DDR4 memory as opposed to the newer DDR5. While it would have been great to have DDR5 in here—simply because it’s the latest standard and fully supported by this CPU—this decision means that the machine comes with 32GB of DDR4 for less than it would have cost to ship this with 16GB of DDR5. That’s a trade-off I can definitely get behind.
Reaper specs
(Image credit: Future)
CPU: Intel Core i7 12600KF GPU: Nvidia RTX 3070 8GB RAM: 32GB DDR4-3600 Motherboard: MSI Z690-A Pro WIFI DDR4 CPU Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240 Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD PSU: MSI MAG A650BN 650W 80 Plus Bronze Connectivity: 6x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB Type-C, RJ45, 6x Audio, Wi-Fi 6, PS/2 keboard/mouse, HDMI, DisplayPort, front audio OS: Windows 11 Home Warranty: 5 year Price:£1,649
Along with a quality graphics card in the shape of the RTX 3070, an awesome CPU, and a whopping 32GB of DDR4 memory, you also get a quality motherboard in the shape of the MSI Z690-A DDR4 WIFI, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and a quality CPU cooler. All of this is built neatly into a Lian Li Lancool II Mesh case.
As the name suggests this is a mesh fronted case affording plenty of airflow, and thanks to the three RGB fans behind that mesh, it makes for quite the light show as well. It’s annoying that the front panel USB Type-C port has been blanked out though, especially as there is a connector on the motherboard. At least there is a USB Type-C port on the rear IO.
The only real mark against the Reaper is that the installed SSD is a PCIe 3.0 model. When you’re dropping as much money as this on a system, you want more than just competent, you want something special, and the Lexar 1TB SSD you’ll find inside this machine comes up short on
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