Mobile reviews

Pros Good screen Respectable performance Surprisingly competent speakers Cons Weak cameras More power elsewhere No microSD slot Key Features Review Price: £399 11in IPS screen A tablet’s main feature is its screen, and this one does well in terms of both brightness and colour. Well built The aluminium chassis is stiff and feels solid, though there's no IP rating against dust or moisture. Dimensity 8350 chipset It’s the processor out of a phone, but that doesn’t mean it can’t drive a larger device. Performance won't be an issue for most. Introduction We use tablets in a different way from phones or even laptops. We don’t buy them to do one particular thing, and they’re more of a general-purpose digital companion that focuses on the larger screen rather than making calls or sending texts. They’re website displayers, video streamers, gaming platforms, perhaps sketchbooks or notepads if you combine them with a stylus and the ri...

Pros Very lightweight design Good volume for open ear earbuds Offers a quick charging mode Cons Better sounding alternatives at this price Touch controls a bit fiddly The odd pairing issue Key Features Ear-hook design Wraps around your ear and fires audio at it IP54 rating Resistance against sweat and dust Battery life 25 hours including the charging case Introduction The AceFast Acefit Air are yet another pair of open-ear earbuds vying for your cash in a growing field of options. These earhook-style earbuds use air conduction to fire sound to your ears and give you scope to tinker with that sound via a companion smartphone app. With a sub-£100 price, they’re aiming to be an affordable alternative to the likes of the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds and the Shokz OpenFit Air . Do they do a good enough job to be mentioned in the same sentence as those great-sounding buds? Here’s my take. Advertisement Price The Acefast AceFit Air were ...

Pros Class-leading sound Good comfort Excellent wireless performance Solid battery life Clear call quality Cons ANC not much, if any, improvement over older model Transparency mode could be clearer Key Features aptX Lossless Bluetooth High quaity streaming over Bluetooth (with Android devices) New drive units Re-engineered drive units with dedicated amplifier 8 microphone array for ANC/calls Looks to improve noise-cancellation and call quality Introduction You would have thought that hi-fi brands could replicate the success they had with speakers in the realm of headphones, but it hasn’t always been that easy. Bowers & Wilkins has made many attempts, some great, others okay, but it has had large success with its current batch of headphones, mixing style with excellent sound with its Px series of wireless headphones. I gave the PX7 S2e five stars when I reviewed them, and the Px7 S3 promise improvements to sound, noise cancellati...

Pros Sonic clarity and rhythmic positivity Impressive battery life and specification Good selection of accessories Cons Overconfident and provokable treble response Active noise-cancellation is nothing special Minimal control app, no touch controls Key Features Sound 40mm dynamic and 14.5mm planar magnetic drivers Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.3 with SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD and LDAC codec support Noise-cancellation Hybrid ANC to block external sounds Introduction Noble Audio has been around for very nearly a dozen years now – but the FoKus Apollo is its very first pair of over-ear headphones. They’re priced to compete with the very best the mainstream has to offer, and they’re specified to make that asking price seem fair enough – so on paper, these headphones are more than ready to compete. But as we all know, on paper is hardly the be-all and end-all… Advertisement Design Nicely made from premium materials Comfortable even over lon...

Pros Nice design Great display Useful kickstand Cons A bit heavy Display aspect ratio isn't the best for work Android tablets aren't ready for every workflow Squirrel Widget Key Features Review Price: £669.99 Flexible design The Yoga Tab Plus comes with a magnetic kickstand meaning it can be used almost anywhere. AI baked-in This is one of Lenovo’s first tablets to put AI front and centre in the user experience. Built for work The Plus is meant to function as a machine to fit all your needs, in the office and without. Introduction Design in tablets, as elsewhere, is a fascinating interplay between the visions of engineers and the realities of public perception. It’s the job of a designer, working from scratch, to anticipate the needs of the audience at the end of a production pipeline, maybe a year or more in advance. What will they value? What will they need most? It’s all ultimately a big guess. Sometimes, things work, and ...