Still, when it comes to ultimate sound quality, many point to wired headsets as delivering the goods better than their wireless counterparts. That means any wired gaming headset is going to have one main purpose—delivering great audio while you're sitting in front of your PC. And if you're asking $330/€300 for one, like the Beyerdynamic MMX 330 Pro I'm wearing right now, it'd better be something special. I wouldn't normally frontload a review with an overall opinion, but in this case I'll make an exception: This one is special.

So what do you get for your moolah? Well, this particular version of the MMX 330 Pro is described as an open-backed headset, meaning there are vents in the ear cups that expose the rear of the drivers to the open air. Proper open-backs expose the rear of the drivers almost entirely and are the sort of cans that will cause audio nerds to writhe in ecstasy at their mere mention, thanks to a perceived "airier" soundstage and superior audio positioning.

However, that design will leak a significant amount of audio into the space around you, and have less than ideal passive noise isolation—whereas closed-backs provide both, but usually have a more limited, narrower soundstage.

Semi-open-back headphones are something of a compromise, and I'd say the Beyerdynamics definitely fit better into this category. The small earcup vents widen the soundstage significantly, but they're not so open as to leak out huge amounts of audio or provide zero passive noise isolation. It's a bit of a halfway house solution, and this headset is all the better for it.

The drivers at play here are Beyerdynamic's 45 mm Stellar.45 units, the very same you'll find in the DT900 Pro X and DT700 Pro X studio headphones. Pay attention to that first one—it's currently the set of headphones sitting at the top of our best audiophile headphones for gaming guide.

Yep, the very same drivers are here, in this much more gaming-focussed headset. And they're fabulous. I've used a fair few studio headphone sets over the years, and while they can be stunningly accurate, they can also become quite fatiguing over long listening periods. There are no such worries here. Everything is pinpoint accurate and beautifully well positioned in the soundstage, but the overall effect is still warm, pleasant, and comforting.

Bullets whip past your ears in Grey Zone Warfare with a spine-tingling sizzle, while the grinds and crunches of my nightmare Satisfactory build have a level of depth to them that I hadn't noticed before. It's often said that the most important thing in a gaming headset is a brilliant set of drivers, even if they're not gaming-specific, and that's brought into sharp relief here.

Musically, those drivers really get to work. What's most impressive here is the beautiful, golden quality of the staging and the reproduction. That minimal earcup venting really does widen out the soundstage, and narrows up a little if you cover them with a bit of electrical tape (yes I did put cheap tape on a $330 set of headphones, out of sheer curiosity). This headset is simply a gorgeous canvas to paint your tunes across, with a shiny, self-assured quality from low end bass to high end treble.

Speaking of low end, the MMX 300 Pro is bassier than I was expecting for an open-back set. Not in a horribly overblown, Beats-like way (I could write several articles on my hatred for the Beats, but this is not the venue), but more that, should your choice in music have some significant sub-bass, like Fritz Kalkbrenner's "Facing the Sun", this set can stage it exactly where it needs to be.

Lesser drivers would either ignore that ultra-low end entirely, muddy it, or boost it to high heaven. Nope, here it sits exactly where you want it in the mix, low, dark, jaw-tingling and smooth, while the guitar part shimmers above it. Darned impressive that, and on first listen caused me to exclaim out loud to my partner:

"Man these things are good."

And then there's comfort. Put simply, I think this might be the most plush, cushy feeling headset I've ever worn. The velour earpads cosset your ears in the same way your posterior gets cosseted by your favourite couch, while the memory foam headband is supportive yet comfortable in all the best ways.

There's even a little cutout in the middle of the interior of the band to prevent fontanelle pressure, making this set an absolute pleasure to wear all day. It's a subtle thing to behold too, so you'd have no problem wearing it in a professional environment, unlike some other, zanily-coloured headsets I could name. As an all-day office warrior, I can think of few better headsets to attach to your bonce.

That being said, as a semi-open-back set (Beyerdynamic might not agree, but I'm sticking to it), you may slightly annoy your colleagues. Again, the sound leakage is here, but it's nowhere near as bad as a fully open-backed set. A good compromise, but it's worth bearing in mind that those in the near vicinity will still be able to hear what you're listening to at high volumes.

Unlike the DT900 Pro X, the MMX 300 Pro has a proper, flip down gaming microphone. This is a cardioid condenser mic, and bad news, it's not detachable. The good news is, it sounds excellent, capturing a rich, warm tone with plenty of crispy detail. There's no noise reduction software included here, so you will get a tiny amount of background hiss, and if you put it too close to your mouth it does get a little plosive. That being said, keeping it at a reasonable distance results in truly excellent headset vocal capture.

Beyerdynamic describes it as "broadcast quality", and I have a tendency to agree. I'd still put it through some very light noise reduction before using it on anything professionally recorded, so it's a shame there isn't any available as part of the package here. But the audio quality is excellent regardless, and any background hiss is minimal for a raw mic signal. It's certainly a lot better than almost all other gaming headsets when it comes to recording rich, properly weighted vocals, so it's another win for the Beyerdynamics overall.

You do have a bit of a bulky cable to contend with though. There's an included adapter to merge the mic and headphone jacks into one 3.5 mm output, and while it's excellently made and reassuringly thick, it does feel a bit overdone.

I'd also prefer something braided to prevent tangling. Still, there's a handy inline mute switch and volume dial, and it's decently long, so running it around the back of a floor-dwelling PC shouldn't be an issue.

So then, this is a supremely comfortable gaming headset, with proper studio-grade drivers, a stunning sound profile, an excellent microphone, and build quality that feels like it'll last. The only thing that gives me slight pause is the price, as one of our favourite audiophile gaming headsets, the wireless, planar magnetic, and also truly brilliant Audeze Maxwell can be had for roughly the same money.

Would I go for the Maxwell over the MMX 300 Pro? Yes. Just. That's mainly for the freedom of choice that wireless headset provides, and those staggeringly good planar magnetic drivers. The Beyerdynamic set is a truly worthy competitor though, and if I cared not a jot for taking my cans on the move, I think it'd be a matter of flipping a coin to choose between the two.

Given the audio bliss on offer here, and the sheer quality of the headset overall, I actually think that $330 price tag is just about reasonable—even for a wired set. It's a luxury, highly-engineered, and boutique piece of gear, and it demonstrates that in every single aspect it provides. It's not often I come across a headset that really makes my jaw drop with its sound quality, comfort, and overall design, but the Beyerdynamic MX 330 Pro is just that. It's nice to have nice things, ey?

In their place, you have the same use of chiplets/tiles that was first introduced with Meteor Lake. TSMC manufactures all of them, too, bar the base tile to which they're all attached. And quite remarkably, we now also have an Intel processor that uses less power than any equivalent AMD chip does in gaming.

We've already covered the architectural changes in detail, along with breaking down the new Core Ultra 200S range. For the moment, that comprises the Ultra 9 285K, the Ultra 7 265K and 265KF (no iGPU version), and the Ultra 5 245K and 245KF.

While halo products rarely sell in numbers anything like their mainstream counterparts, the 285K is going to appear in a lot of gaming and workstation pre-built PCs over the coming months.

It's also the measure of what Arrow Lake's full performance is like and I have no doubt that many people will use it to judge whether it's worth doing a full system upgrade, as Arrow Lake chips do, after all, use a new LGA1851 socket.

Gaming performance

For testing the gaming performance of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, I used a ROG Maximus Z890 Hero motherboard, provided by Asus. The rest of the setup comprised 32 GB of Lexar DDR5-6000 CL32 RAM, an Asus Ryujin III 360 Extreme cooler, a Corsair MP700 Gen5 SSD, and a GeForce RTX 4070.

One important thing to note here is that all motherboard vendors have been working hard behind the scenes with BIOS releases, to improve performance, memory compatibility, and stability. I used two such updates from Asus but notably, there was no difference in how well everything ran.

While the above figures aren't terrible by any means, if one compares the average frame rates of the Core Ultra 9 285K to the Core i9 14900K, it's 12% slower in Cyberpunk 2007, 9% slower in Baldur's Gate 3, % slower in Homeworld 3, 3% slower in Metro Exodus, and 15% slower in Warhammer 3. It's also 23% slower in the Factorio test.

It's the same pattern when one compares it to the Core i7 14700K, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, and 9900X. Other than the odd case where a 1% low value favours the Arrow Lake chip, Intel's new processor is notably slower than Raptor Lake and Zen 5 in gaming. And Zen 4, for that matter.

The Core Ultra 9 285K was tested using Intel's recommended Performance power profile of 250 W for PL1 and PL2, and an Icc max value of 347 A. This is actually the default setting that all Arrow Lake motherboards use, although one can override this, of course. I examined what impact using the Extreme profile (PL1 = 250 W, PL2 = 295 W, Icc max = 400 A) had on the game tests and it practically made no difference.

And that's because Arrow Lake merely sips at power during gaming, as you can see in the last chart in the above collection of results. With an average package power consumption of just 83 W in Baldur's Gate 3, the 24-core Ultra 9 285K uses less energy than a six-core Ryzen 5 9600X.

The world of desktop CPUs is more than just gaming, of course, so all of this could be forgiven if the Core Ultra 9 285K ruled the roost in content creation, rendering, and office productivity.

Content creation performance

Historically, when it comes to content creation workloads, such as image rendering, 3D modelling, and video editing, the processor of choice has nearly always been Intel. That was until AMD released its Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9 9950X—its multithreaded performance makes it an ideal choice for anyone who requires as much of this as possible—so it's natural to expect that Intel would hope to move ahead with Arrow Lake.

Starting with Cinebench 2024, the Core Ultra 9 285K showcases just how much progress Intel has made in improving its cores, especially the E-cores. The fact that the new chip outperforms the 9950X and 14900K when it has fewer threads is quite remarkable. In the nT multithreaded test, the 285K is 4% faster than the 9950X and an incredible 29% better than the 14900K.

During this test, the 285K uses 16% less power than the 14900K, although it does use 7% more than the 9950X. In terms of power efficiency, that does mean AMD's flagship chip is still the best for this kind of workload but the 285K leaves the 14900K far behind.

However, while the good news continues across the rest of our content creation tests when comparing Arrow Lake to Raptor Lake, the Core Ultra 9 285K is notably behind the Ryzen 9 9950X in Blender, 7zip compression and decompression, Handbrake video encoding, and UL Procyon photo editing.

Increasing the power limit does help and it's possible to get the 285K on par with the 9950X, but only by using a PL1 value of 300 W or higher. In other words, by turning it into a Raptor Lake chip.

I also tested the 285K with a range of RAM kits, going all the way up to DDR5-8200, but the faster memory only improved matters by 10% in the very best case in gaming and hardly at all in content creation.

However, there is one exception: 7zip decompression. Using DDR5-8200 CL40, the 285K performed 17% better than with DDR5-6000 CL32 in that particular test, though this is to be expected as the benchmark involves a lot of writes to memory.

Faster RAM also helped iron out the microstutters I experienced benchmarking Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3, with the DDR5-6000 kit.

Performance analysis

The first thing to ponder is why Arrow Lake handles games worse than its predecessor and competition. There are multiple factors behind it all and it's not a case of one of them being the exclusive reason.

Compared to the Core i9 14900K, the 285K has a much lower maximum P-core clock speed (5.7 vs 6.0 GHz); the ring bus that connects the cores to the shared L3 RAM and rest of the chip is also slower (3.8 GHz vs up to 5.0 GHz).

That's significantly lower and goes some way to explain the relatively low performance in the Factorio test. However, it's also an important factor behind Arrow Lake's reduced energy consumption.

The P-cores no longer have any ability to handle two threads simultaneously, as the much-improved E-cores essentially take over threads that would be otherwise directed to the old P-core HyperThreading.

Not that this impacts gaming very much. I ran through all of the benchmarks with the E-cores all disabled, and apart from in cases where multithreading is everything (Cinebench, Blender, 7zip, and Handbrake), the eight single-threaded P-cores managed the game tests perfectly well by themselves.

Arrow Lake's memory controller is on a separate tile from the compute tile, unlike in Raptor Lake where it's all monolithic, and the connection between the tiles runs at 2.1 GHz.

It's similar to how AMD's CCD and IOD chiplet structure works, where the Infinity Fabric that connects them together runs at 2 GHz. It's possible that a higher clock speed could improve matters but like the ring clock, it may be limited for power reasons.

There are countless other changes underneath the hood of Arrow Lake and figuring out just what exactly is the cause for the performance disparity will no doubt take a lot of investigation, and is likely what's going on at Intel right now as it switches over to work on Nova Lake, its next desktop architecture.

But what really matters right now is whether the Core Ultra 9 285K is worth buying.

Conclusion

For all of Arrow Lake's strengths, if you already have an Intel 13th or 14th Gen PC, or AMD AM5 setup, there's nothing here to make it worth jumping platform. Or at the very least, not yet. It's always possible that more performance can be leveraged out of the architecture via CPU microcode and motherboard BIOS updates. But there is no way to tell when, or even if, that will happen.

However, if you have a much older PC, the performance is good enough to warrant considering a Core Ultra 200S upgrade over a Raptor Lake one. Yes, the latter is a better gaming processor but it achieves this in part through a hefty energy demand, which in turn results in a very toasty processor.

The Ultra 9 285K uses very little power and it's very easy to cool, for gaming at least.

Most of Arrow Lake's sales will be to the OEM and system builder market, of course, and I have no doubt that such vendors have already spent significant sums of money buying chips, motherboards, and RAM ready for the retail launch.

Beyond this market, the largest number of sales will be from the PC enthusiast segment, and this is where Intel has a potential problem.

Is anyone going to spend $586, plus several hundred more on a new Z890 motherboard and DDR5 RAM kit, just for lower power consumption? The simple truth is that if energy demand was a major concern, then an AMD Zen 5 Ryzen setup would be the obvious choice, as these chips are generally better in this respect.

Overall, the Core Ultra 9 285K isn't really a bad CPU. Its performance is relatively near the competition and Intel, with TSMC's help, has crafted sheer magic to reach that low power consumption in games. But paying a top-tier price for second-tier performance doesn't make sense when there are plenty of other options to choose from.

That's not the only change on show here and we've covered the important changes in detail elsewhere. It's suffice to say that the new Core Ultra 200S series of CPUs is a new world for Intel as they are so different to previous desktop designs.

The Core Ultra 5 245K (and the GPU-less 245KF) is currently the baby of the Arrow Lake line-up and it's basically a Core Ultra 9 285K with two P-cores and eight E-cores disabled. The clocks are a little lower too and there's less L3 cache, all of which reduces the maximum power limit to 159 W.

While it's an obvious successor to the Core i5 14600K, the 245K's $309 MSRP puts it closer to the Ryzen 7 9700X than the Ryzen 5 9600X (currently $249 and $327 on Amazon, respectively). Architecturally, though, it's very different to both as AMD's chips are six/eight-core processors, with support for 16 threads, whereas the Arrow Lake chip has 14 cores, 14 threads.

One further processor that the Core Ultra 5 245K is close to price-wise is the Core i7 14700K. That 20-core chip can be picked for around $50 more than the new Arrow Lake, just 14% more expensive but with twice as many threads on offer.

Gaming performance

Whether any of these processors are worth buying naturally depends almost entirely on how well they perform in a variety of scenarios, so let's begin with an examination of the Core Ultra 5 245's gaming chops, tested at 1080p with a GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card.

If you've already seen the gaming results for the Core Ultra 9 285K, then the above figures shouldn't come as any surprise. While the 245K is on par with the 14600K in Homeworld 3 and Metro Exodus, it is noticeably worse in all the other game tests—15% slower in Cyberpunk 2077 and Warhammer 3, and 12% slower in Baldur's Gate 3.

The Factorio test, which is an excellent judge of L3 cache performance, runs 22% slower on the 245K than the 14700K. And it's even worse when compared to the Ryzen 7 9700X, where the 245K takes 40% longer to process the updates than the Zen 5 chip.

In fact, the CPU with the closest matching performance is the Ryzen 5 7600X, a processor that has fewer cores and threads, lower clocks, and launched over two years ago.

Where the Core Ultra 5 245K does beat the competition is power consumption—using just 83 W in Baldur's Gate 3, it uses 46% less energy than the 14600K and 24% less than the 9700X. Even though the gaming performance is worse, it's not 46% worse, and it's a near-miraculous achievement by Intel.

In previous architectures, like Raptor Lake and Alder Lake, great gaming performance came at a cost of very high power consumption, and this was an aspect that AMD easily had the measure of Intel in. Arrow Lake doesn't completely counter the power advantages that Zen 4 and 5 have, but it's a big step in the right direction.

And there is something else that the little Arrow Lake is good at.

Content creation performance

If you use your PC for nothing but gaming, then it's very obvious what the final conclusion in this review of the Core Ultra 5 245K is going to be. On the other hand, if you do 3D rendering, design work, video editing, and so on then you're in for a pleasant surprise.

The baby Arrow chip is generally better than the 14600K in the majority of our content creation tests and even beats the 24-thread 14700K, despite only having 14 threads available. Compared to AMD's processors, the 245K is substantially better, being 39% and 29% faster in Blender and Handbrake video encoding respectively.

Where it's not so good is in 7zip decompression—better than Zen 5 but worse than Raptor Lake. That's probably because the ring bus that transfers all the data between the L3 cache and memory controllers runs much slower in Arrow Lake than it does in the previous architecture, and the data has to be transferred to another tile before it can be sent to DRAM.

Speaking of memory, Core Ultra 200S processors support up to DDR5-6400 natively but you gain very little performance over DDR5-6000. Only when you step up to the likes of DDR5-7800 do you see any notable gains, though not in any of the content creation tests, other than 7zip compression (which involves a lot of memory writes).

While Arrow Lake has a significant power consumption advantage in gaming, the multi-tile chip demands a lot more energy when processing heavily multithreaded tasks. That said, where the 14600K and 14700K will bounce off their maximum power limits in such scenarios, the Core Ultra 5 245K never does, staying 20 W under the 159 W cap at all times.

This makes the 245K very easy to cool and a potential choice for those looking to build an SFF (small form factor) PC that's entirely air-cooled. However, while one saves a bit of money by not getting an AIO liquid cooler, there aren't many cheap Arrow Lake motherboards at the moment.

Conclusion

Summarising the relative merits of the Core Ultra 5 245K, compared to the 14600K, is a straightforward affair. Gaming is poor, content creation is good, and power consumption is great. But Intel isn't the only company making desktop CPUs and the summary also applies when comparing the 245K to the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X.

The Core Ultra 5 245K isn't as disappointing as the Core Ultra 9 285K, but unless one specifically needs an affordable processor purely for content creation tasks or a low-power chip for an SFF build, there's little to attract one to the Arrow Lake chip.

And while Intel is adamant that Raptor Lake's voltage problem has been fixed, they're somewhat hard to recommend too, even though they're much better in gaming than the 245K.

That's simply because the Ryzen 5 9600X is cheaper and performs really well in games. If content creation is important, then the Ryzen 7 9700X is on par with the 245K and only a few dollars more expensive.

Intel's Core Ultra 200S series aren't bad processors, and the Ultra 5 245K is perhaps the best of the lot right now, but there are much better gaming CPUs on the market for the same money—from AMD and Intel.

Factorio’s original premise saw players constructing a sprawling manufacturing plant, producing millions of products to fulfil their goal of building a space rocket to escape the alien planet they were stranded on. Doing this was a tremendous feat of planning and engineering, and one of the most challenging, engrossing, and fulfilling experiences I’ve had in a video game.

Factorio: Space Age makes those achievements seem not merely insignificant, but diminutive by comparison. In this massive, galaxy-brained expansion, you’ll be popping off rockets like it’s the fifth of November, your crowning glory reduced to a supporting role in an adventure of mind-boggling interplanetary logistics. Not only does Space Age quadruple the number of visitable worlds in the game, each is so divergent in its geology, challenges, and hazards that you’ll need to completely relearn how to build a functioning factory on each of them.

Indeed, it’s tempting to describe Space Age as a sequel in all but name. Yet while there’s certainly a sequel’s worth of material in Space Age, this description does an injustice to how thoroughly and ingeniously it interweaves with the base game.

Space Age technically begins where Factorio ends, namely once you build a rocket. But developer Wube Software has reworked the process of unlocking rocket technology to streamline your path to the stars. Instead of having to produce five types of ‘science’ to research the relevant tech, you now only need three. Getting to this point still requires a substantial amount of work, and when you finally plant your first rocket silo into the ground, you’ll definitely feel like you’ve earned it. But instead of using your rocket to depart your planetary prison for good, you now use it to launch a space platform into orbit.

What is a space platform? Well, it’s several things, but initially it acts as a celestial extension of your factory on the ground. The space platform is where you manufacture space science, a new research product required to access the broader expansion. As with every other science, it’s produced out of a variety of other resources. In other words, you need to build a factory in space.

But the space platform functions differently from your factory on the ground. For starters, you don’t construct the platform directly. Instead, you transport the parts you need to create the factory via rocket (including the all-important ‘space platform foundation’ used to expand the platform’s floor area). You then switch to a "remote view" of the platform, using Factorio’s "ghost-builder function" to construct the factory remotely.

This is somewhat idiosyncratic, and I don’t think Space Age does the best job of explaining it. Nonetheless, once you figure it out, the whole production system is incredibly cool. Individual rockets can only carry a small amount of equipment, which means you need the processes in place to build and launch a lot of them. Moreover, once the rocket’s delivery capsule arrives at the platform, it assembles any pre-planned layouts automatically, the platform’s scrapheap-like foundation shifting and writhing as it places conveyor belts and inserters and furnaces into position.

As with constructing the platform, researching space science is done slightly differently from other sciences. You don’t acquire the resources you need by mining, instead, they’re sourced from asteroids using perhaps my favourite new gadget in the expansion—the asteroid collector. These devices attach to the ends of your space platform, and when a small asteroid floats nearby, a big, wavy mechanical arm reaches out and grabs it in pincer-like claws. The animation on these collectors is wonderful—particularly when they shift to catch multiple asteroids without retracting, reacting in the same way you’d snatch at a ball that bounces off your fingertips when you try to catch it. Retrieved asteroids are then crushed by some gnarly-looking rock threshers, producing resources like ice and carbon you transfer to your assembling machines.

All of this results in a unique factory building challenge. While you can in theory make the space platform as big as you want, you’re still inevitably working in a more limited space than on a whole-ass planet. There are some fun advantages too. Unwanted resources can just be chucked off the edge of the platform with an inserter, for example. This makes initial sorting of asteroids nice and easy, although as with all resources in Factorio, you will eventually want to process as many as you possibly can.

Produced space science is sent back down to the planet via drop-pods (which land inside your cargo landing pad if you remember to build one, otherwise they drop haphazardly onto your factory—not that I would ever do something so stupid, ahem) and used to “discover” four whole new planets, as well as the thrusters you’ll need to get to them. This is where the second function of your space platform comes in. Attach those thrusters to its rear, cook up some propellant, hook everything up, and you’ve got yourself a spaceship, baby.

Travelling between planets is the only time you’ll need to visit your platform personally. Considering Factorio’s top-down perspective and unassuming aesthetic, launching into space (and vice-versa) is impressively evocative—and also completely seamless. But it’s nothing compared to travelling on the space platform itself, which is hair raising. As your mobile factory careens through the void, it’s pelted constantly by much larger asteroids than those collected by your platform’s mechanical arms. Damaged structures are replaced automatically if you have the relevant spares, but you’ll nonetheless need robust turret defences to stop your assembly line from getting wrecked.

As for which planet you visit, it’s up to you. There’s no defined order in which to tackle them. But whichever one you choose, you’re in for a challenge. If you’ve played Factorio before, chances are you’ll anticipate potential teething problems, and pack your platform with equipment you think you’ll need on the other side: drills, burners, refineries, pumpjacks, maybe the ingredients for a silo and a couple of rockets to get you out of dodge. Thing is, Wube Software has anticipated your anticipation, because when you arrive at a new planet, you’ll soon discover your established factory-building strategies are next to useless.

Take Fulgora, probably my favourite planet of the four. This forsaken sphere is a technological wasteland with oceans of congealed oil and junk piles so old they’ve turned into strata. It’s a world with no “natural” resources, so instead of mining iron and copper ores, you instead drill into seams of rubbish, transporting them to recycling units which spit out semi-random assortments of advanced products.

Shovelling these resources into other recyclers will break them down into their component parts. Hence, building a factory on Fulgora essentially requires you to plan it in reverse, sorting out all the advanced resources and recycling the parts you don’t need to acquire the more basic resources you do. Oh, and the whole planet is wracked by intense lightning storms, which you can harness using lightning rods and battery-like accumulators to power your alien recycling centre.

In this manner, each planet has its own unique challenges and rewards, and while Fulgora is probably the most conceptually unusual, even the more familiar sci-fi worlds feel enjoyably strange. Visiting the volcanic world of Vulcanus, for example, unlocks whole new technologies for smelting metal out of lava, while forcing you to contend with giant worms, appropriately called Destroyers, that can bulldoze your factory. On Gleba, meanwhile, you harvest the planet’s verdant biology to build a factory that’s more of a farm, sowing alien seeds and reaping strange fruits and berries that act as character power-ups.

The scale and diversity on show is remarkable. And, of course, everything interrelates and can be fully automated. Not only can you build multiple space platforms, you can program them to run like cargo trains, visiting one planet to collect resources and drop them off at another. It’s utterly captivating stuff, and at the risk of sounding like a stereotype, I genuinely found myself blinking out of a trance to realise it was 3am while reviewing.

Are there problems? Honestly, in a game this complex and flexible (Factorio lets you customise elements like difficulty and map generation to an extensive degree),it can be hard to tell whether something’s a hard issue with the game, or an issue with my own approach to playing it. It was annoying to light the thrusters on the space platform I’d spent ten hours building for it to be immediately obliterated by asteroids, for example. But the problem was I hadn’t built sufficient defences for it.

Regardless, I do think Space Age could be better at showing you some of these walls before you run headlong into them. You don’t have to worry about asteroids until you light the torch, so I simply didn’t know what I was running into. I also don’t think the menu for establishing space platform routes is particularly intuitive. It’s great having a dozen conditions to tell the platform when to stay in orbit around a planet and when to travel along its predefined route, but it would also be handy to have some big coloured 'GO' and 'STOP' buttons for those times I do want a bit of manual control.

There are a couple of other, not issues as such, but points of caution worth mentioning. Although you can choose to visit the planets in any order, some of them make better starting points than others. Specifically, I’d advise against visiting Gleba first. While it’s the most enticing planet because of its lush biomes and delightfully strange pentapod creatures, its bizarre ecology and resource spoilage mechanic (where organic material decays after a certain amount of time) make it particularly challenging to build on.

In general, it’s important to stress that Factorio: Space Age is a lot. The base game was a formidable experience, and while Space Age streamlines a few things (giving all inserters the ability to filter resources is a godsend) it ultimately adds far more complexity than it removes. If you found Factorio too overwhelming or finicky in its vanilla form, don’t expect Space Age to address that. And if you haven’t played Factorio before, don’t buy the expansion before trying the base version.

All that said, Space Age is an astounding creation, every bit as unique and absorbing as the game it so cleverly extends and embellishes. The factory building genre is hotly competitive right now, with excellent challengers in the likes of Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program. But if Factorio was ever at risk of being supplanted at the top of the production chain, Space Age launches it into the great beyond.

The idea of a gaming handheld is greater freedom to play PC games anywhere and everywhere. Your Steam library at your fingertips and accessible from—well, my bed, mostly. Turns out what I wanted most in a gaming PC was the ability to play games on it while lying flat. Handheld PCs are wonderful for that—and travel, of course—though they're not without limitations. Battery life is the big one, as is having the graphical grunt to chug through the latest games. Though in my day-to-day use, the real frustration is navigating the desktop with a pair of analogue sticks.

A few handhelds deal with the desktop and navigating tiny menus better than others. The Steam Deck is arguably one of the best for Big Picture Mode and trackpads for navigating the Linux desktop, but generally, it's a bit of a hassle on the Windows-powered handhelds that followed it. Some, like the Lenovo Legion Go, offer pre-baked touchscreen functionality to help ease the pain a little, but it's only part-way towards making the OS more amenable to tiny screens. Windows 11 wasn't really built for this.

So, why might that be an important point to make in a review of the Ayaneo Flip DS?

Simply put, it's a dream to dash around the desktop with. The Flip DS comes with not one, not two, not three, but four ways to wield a mouse cursor. There's the upper screen, the lower screen, the analogue sticks, and the touch-responsive nubbin.

Let's start with the upper screen. It is a 7-inch IPS display that sits on a hinge above the bulk of the handheld chassis. It's rated to 120 Hz, too, which is a bit lost on the Radeon 780M GPU inside this handheld but does make for smooth and consistent scrolling. The hinge is the more important bit, however, as this has allowed Ayaneo to stuff a larger screen on this handheld than other devices of a comparable size.

Take the Ayaneo Air 1S, for example. This lovely little device comes with a 5.5-inch screen within a 22.5 x 9 x 3 cm chassis. The Ayaneo Flip DS offers a 7-inch touchscreen and a 3.5-inch touchscreen within an 18 x 10.2 x 3.6 cm chassis. A little thicker and taller than the Ayaneo Air 1S, but much shorter.

This hinged design has another benefit, too. It neatly folds to protect the two screens and integrated controls on the Flip DS, which means you can stuff it in your bag and not have to worry too much about getting the important bits scratched or scuffed up.

For navigating, the 7-inch upper screen is suitable for quickly signing away the rights to your life in a terms and conditions window or agreeing to one of the many administrator permissions windows you'll likely run into during setup. Though for everything else, you'll want to look to smarter solutions also included on the Flip DS.

One such solution being the lower screen. Taking a leaf out of Nintendo's book, there's a 3.5-inch touchscreen nestled between the controls on the Flip DS. This lower screen acts as you'd expect any secondary monitor to through Windows—you can drag applications over to it or use it as your primary monitor, if you so wish. Though it is at its most useful when the Ayaneo Space system application is open.

The Ayaneo Space software is sort of your one-stop-shop for configuring the handheld and accessing your library of games across various storefronts. It's a little like Steam's Big Picture Mode, though with less shine and a couple of quirks (such as telling me I have audio drivers to install and then not letting me install them). I've generally relied on it less, too. When you can navigate around the desktop easily as you would a desktop PC, there's less need for a bespoke controller-friendly design. Though it's there when you need it: just hit the button with the Ayaneo logo across it on the bottom right of the Flip DS and it pops up.

Though even when the Ayaneo Space application is minimised on the upper screen it remains on the lower screen. There it acts as a quick way to access system settings, performance analytics, and application shortcuts with just a tap of your finger. Most handy of all are the built-in keyboard and trackpad, and this is when the Flip DS starts to really come into its own.

With the trackpad enabled the Ayaneo Flip DS effectively turns into a tiny gaming laptop. I was whizzing around with ease, installing applications and navigating the desktop like I would a much larger device. It's tough to overstate how handy a tiny trackpad is when trying to do literally anything involving lots of mouse movements on a gaming handheld.

Though, arguably, the tiny keyboard is even better.

I keep the lower screen set to the on-screen keyboard most of the time. For quickly entering a password or browsing the web, it's a Godsend. It's your straightforward touch-responsive keyboard, loosely reminiscent of what you'd find on an Android phone, and includes copy-and-paste shortcuts to make life even easier. You can even get rid of the on-screen keyboard provided by Windows entirely with this one around. That's worth the price of admission alone.

I do have a few minor complaints with both the trackpad and keyboard. The layout of the keyboard is fine but as soon as you switch between symbols or numbers, it's a bit of a mess. It'd be better off mimicking the simplicity of Gboard on Android, where the keys largely remain in the same place whether they're displaying letters or numbers. Also, the scroll function on the trackpad weirdly uses a pinching motion, which I'd stored in my brain as the zoom in/out shortcut. That's tough to get used to and I find myself reaching for the analogue sticks instead.

The analogue sticks on the Flip DS are sunken into the chassis to make way for the folding screen. It's not actually as awful as it sounds, however, as they move pretty freely under thumb within their little wells. Both use Hall effect sensors to accurately measure your movements and should remain reliable constant and without drift thanks to this technology—I wouldn't buy a controller without Hall effect sticks these days.

Usually a bit of a faff to navigate the desktop with, Ayaneo has cleverly devised a system of speeding up the mouse cursor movement depending on whether you're holding either of the triggers on the device—left for fast, right for slow. The slow option is just slow enough to actually hover over tiny buttons on the 7-inch screen and makes a world of difference to the experience of using this handheld gaming PC as an actual PC.

Lastly, there's the nubbin. That's not the official name but it best describes it. When I first pulled the Flip DS out of the box for review, I didn't realise what this was, thinking it to be an extra programmable shortcut button. It sits right next to the fingerprint scanner/power button, too. But it's actually a touch-responsive touch pad, or what I believe Ayaneo describes as an "optical finger mouse". I'm not sure that actually makes it clear what it is, though.

It's just a nubbin. You rub it and the mouse moves accordingly. Press it for the primary mouse button. Nubbin is good. Nubbin is life.

For the limitations with any one of these methods of navigating around the Ayaneo Flip DS, when combined they are extremely powerful. I found it became second nature to tap on one screen, scroll on one analogue stick, and rub the nubbin to get around the desktop. The analogue sticks are the best solution when it comes to actually playing games, but for everything else, there's the nubbin.

In terms of performance, the Ayaneo Flip DS is a known quantity. That's true even though we've never actually tested the Ryzen 7 8840U inside it. The reason is we've seen what the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor can do inside the Ayaneo Air 1S and OneXPlayer OneXFly, and what the Ryzen Z1 Extreme can do inside the ROG Ally X or Lenovo Legion Go. The Ryzen 7 8840U is basically the same; a 7840U rebrand.

That's paired with 16 GB of LPDDR5X inside the machine I have here for testing. That's less overall memory than the Ayaneo Air 1S I reviewed in the past, which had 32 GB. That makes for only around 8 GB to split between CPU and GPU, but this hasn't been a major detriment paired with the quality settings I've used throughout testing of medium or medium-equivalent. I'd even suggest maybe bumping down to low if you're chasing performance, as you don't notice the dip in quality quite as much on a smaller screen. Importantly, though, medium and low settings generally make lower demands of VRAM.

As such, there are no surprises when it comes to the gaming performance in my testing. The 8840U performs as expected in Cyberpunk 2077, F1 24, Horizon Zero Dawn, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, and Black Myth Wukong's benchmark tool. It's best with upscaling enabled for that little extra kick, and I opted for FSR Quality where upscaling is specified.

The chip may be pretty familiar, but at least I can confirm it's not being overly constrained by thermal or power limitations. I say overly because every handheld is pretty severely limited by thermal and power constraints… the Flip DS isn't any more so than most, however. I ran the handheld at its 'Extreme' profile, which lets the processor run at the full 28 watts, and it never got loud or too hot to handle. That said, it does get a little toasty on the rear.

What's most impressive about the Ayaneo is the battery life. A steady 116 minutes of gaming up time in PCMark's gaming battery test. That's with the Wi-Fi disabled and both screens set to 50% brightness. That's still shy of the best handheld gaming PC right now, the ROG Ally X, but it's nevertheless a really impressive showing for a 45 Whr battery.

That said, if Ayaneo could stuff a bigger battery in here somehow, I'd certainly take it.

I've talked around this handheld a lot by now, and I'm yet to mention some other highlights such as the vibrant screen, good balance, extra programmable shoulder buttons, and lovely construction. I guess I just did, but I really must wrap up this review sooner or later.

At $749 for the model I'm reviewing here (512 GB SSD/16 GB RAM), you're not expected to pay a hefty sum for the novelty of the clamshell design and second screen. That's $50 less than an ROG Ally X. That said, if you're comparing these spec-for-spec, you'll find a good few reasons to spend more on the Asus model: more memory, more storage, and a bigger battery. It's difficult to ignore the ROG Ally X, and I think for most people it's still the better choice.

I have to commend Ayaneo, though. It's put together a handheld with user experience at its core. The Flip DS is different, and not just for the sake of it. From the many mouse options and on-screen keyboard to the clever clamshell design, the Flip DS is better to use for being just a little odd.

Now, at this point my review of the Asus TUF A14 gaming laptop could go either way. I could throw up some Tory boi Clarkson-esque, gravel-voiced switchback, with a "...but that's not what we get here" style zinger, or I could be setting up a glowing rundown of all the reasons why I think this is one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops I've ever tested.

But you've seen the score up there 👆 so you know it's the latter.

The new TUF A14 follows Asus' recent line of gaming laptops in the Zephyrus G-series, taking many of the design notes into this, its more affordable range of notebooks. And it really works. Previously TUF laptops have been well-priced, relatively chonky, kinda ugly slabs that still performed well for the money.

They were effective, affordable, but ultimately not particularly desirable. That's all changed with this wee beauty. The new TUF A14 look is far more pared back than other TUF machines I've tested, keeping the clean lines of the Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16 laptops we've loved so well. And it's impressively svelte in terms of the diminutive 14-inch chassis, too.

Proportionally, it's very well designed, with a slim bezel around the 1600p display and a keyboard that delivers far more space around each individual key than I would normally expect. I'm typing this review on it at the moment, and while the key response doesn't massively excite me, it's still an effective unit and I'm not suffering from any miss-strikes. It's unicolour, too, with white being the only key illumination on offer. And, honestly, I'm fine with that—I'd only make it pink otherwise.

And there's a Copilot button. Y'know, for AI-ing. For… all… those… things… we… gamers… use… AI… for.... Yeah, I'll admit, I don't know, either. Just know there are some TOPs here, whether you're going direct from the AMD NPU or the Nvidia GPU.

The trackpad's pretty great as well; a really nice-feeling glass option, which takes up more than a third of the space below the keyboard. It's responsive, slippy, and obviously a greasy fingerprint magnet. Such is life. I will also say the physical response of pressing either corner of the trackpad to engage the left or right-click function feels slightly gritty. It's the only place where it feels anything other than perfectly machined, as out of the box it feels like it's rubbing against the frame around it.

On the whole, though, it feels far more premium than its $1,500 price tag might otherwise suggest. I would also note that, while this feels a lot for an RTX 4060 gaming laptop at the tail-end of 2024, the 14-inch form factor generally garners a higher price that its larger compatriots, and the Asus TUF range is also one that's prone to a healthy discount, too. We regularly see TUF laptops on sale around the big retailers, so I would expect the TUF A14 to drop in price pretty quickly.

Now, somehow I've gotten this far through the review without actually mentioning what's powering this thing. And that's another place where the TUF A14 feels premium. As the 'A' designation signifies, this is an AMD-powered Asus machine, sporting the latest AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. That gives you both an excellent Zen 5 processor—with four full Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c cores—and the most powerful iGPU you can buy today.

That means you've got an impressive amount of raw processing/productivity power in this little laptop, as well as some genuinely good 1080p gaming performance from just the Radeon 890M silicon alone. That will get you the pleasing mix of both good frame rates and decent battery life when you're away from a plug socket.

For when you're not, however, you also have a 100 W TGP RTX 4060 available. That's able to deliver over and above what you'll get out of the iGPU, enabling you to bump up to 1440p or the native 1600p resolution and still get a playable frame rate out of your system.

And, unlike a lot of gaming laptops I've tested, it doesn't get too annoyingly loud when you are making that Nvidia GPU do its work. Sure, when you stick Armoury Crate onto Turbo settings with Ultimate GPU mode enabled, you're going to hear those fans spin up, but such is the tuned pitch that it doesn't feel oppressive, and isn't going to bleed into your consciousness through a gaming headset, either.

Alongside those two primary PC gamer concerns—the GPU and CPU—-you're getting up to 32 GB LPDDR5 and up to a 2 TB SSD in the package. Impressively, you also get a spare M.2 slot for you to drop in a secondary SSD down the line. And it's not a freaking trial trying to get the back off the TUF A14, either; Asus makes it mercifully simple to pull the rear off and access the insides.

Though that is purely for SSD management as its RAM is soldered, which also means you need to be confident the amount of memory you start with will be enough for your needs for the foreseeable future, cos it ain't going to change.

I'm into the overall port selection, too. There's a full width venting system on the back of the device to help achieve the machine's cooling, which leaves either side free for the port connections. That means USB Type-C and Type-A ports on both sides, though there's only a 40 Gbps Type-C connection with PD on the left hand side. That's where the diminutive power socket, HDMI, and 3.5 mm audio jacks are, too, while on the right hand side you also get an SD card slot alongside the two 10 Gbps USB Type-A and Type-C ports.

For me, there really aren't a ton of gaming laptops that feel this well put together. That feel like they can fit into your whole life and not just that part of you which loves to slap down bugs in Helldivers 2, commune with Illithids in Baldur's Gate 3, or manage the vagaries of fate and young millionaires in Football Manager. And, honestly, right now it's almost exclusively Asus laptops that are doing that. The Zephyrus G14 is the one which springs to mind, but the new TUF A14 is just as capable of fulfilling a dual role as gaming companion and office/school machine with equal aplomb.

I do still have a soft spot for the HP Transcend 14, but that machine's Meteor Lake core lets it down in comparison with the mighty Ryzen AI 9 APU, and the build quality isn't up to the same standard as this Asus lappy, either.

It's sturdy, surprisingly thin and light, impressively well-specced, and as performant as you could wish from a 14-inch RTX 4060 gaming laptop. It's the sort of machine I can throw into a bag and know it will adapt to whatever situation I'm using it in.

So, yeah, you can colour me impressed with the latest Asus TUF A14, it's been one of my favourite things to like this year.

If it was a bad chair, I wouldn't find this so annoying, because then I could just write off the chair as a no-go from the off. But there's a hell of a lot to love about the TC500 Luxe, from its understated design to its ergonomic adjustability. But there's one thing to hate, and that's its armrest placement.

Yes, I said armrest placement, not just "armrests". The rests themselves feel nice and are incredibly adjustable in almost every way. Every way, that is, except arguably the most important: their distance from the chair.

Now listen, I'm not exaggerating here. I'm a big lad and even I feel a little reluctant to traverse my arms across the gaping cavern either side of the seat and drape them over the otherwise lovely armrests. If I was a slimmer person, I might not bother at all. It's not as if Corsair didn't consider adjustable armrest widths, either. You can adjust them by loosening the screws underneath, but the closest placement just isn't close enough.

As I said, the most annoying thing about this is that it would be a simple thing to fix. All it would require is drilling the adjustable slots a little wider on the underside of the arms so you can scoot them closer to the chair base. Nothing's preventing this other than a bizarre design choice. 

After scouring the internet to see if anyone else was as bothered by this as I was, I discovered that yes, they are. For instance, one Reddit user even said they drilled new holes in the armrests to move them closer. And hey, if you're a DIY-er, maybe this is the solution for you—but it shouldn't be required for a product that costs $500.

In my case, I've ended up angling the armrests inwards by a few degrees so that at least the fronts of them are closer to the seat base.

Despite this annoying quirk, in every other way, this gaming chair justifies its premium price tag. Especially if you're like me and prefer understated office designs to garish "Look mom, I'm a gamer!" ones. The TC500 Luxe really would fit the bill for any above-board, no-shenanigans office setup. It still has that bucket racing seat style, of course—it's just more subtle.

I noticed how premium this thing looks and feels from the moment I unboxed it to put it together. Which was a pretty smooth process, I should add. The seat had the armrests already attached, and there was only a little screwing-in needed throughout the whole process. Having someone to help definitely made fitting the seat onto the base and the back onto the seat easier, but I reckon it wouldn't be too difficult for one person to do. Just bear in mind that it's quite heavy—again, this is a noticeably premium chair.

Apart from its weight, its surprising lack of creaks and groans, and its subtle aesthetic, the other dead giveaway that this is a premium product is its fabric. Because yes, the TC500 Luxe is an all-fabric chair, and the material is frankly one of the best I've seen used on a chair, barring the ultra-breathable fabrics and meshes on top-tier office chairs. The fabric the TC500 Luxe uses is pretty breathable and very comfy.

I came to use this chair after spending the last couple of years sitting atop the Steelcase Leap V2, a simply wonderful premium ergonomic office chair. Naturally, my standards for comfort were quite high, as were my suspicions towards racing seat style chairs. It's therefore no small endorsement that I can say I find the Corsair TC500 Luxe to be incredibly comfortable to sit on.

Not at first, mind, but after a couple of weeks of breaking it in, the TC500 Luxe felt great and still does. To start with, the seat's ridges dug into my legs a little, which might only be a problem for other wide bois who manspread like there's no tomorrow. After a few days—I guess after the corners softened up a little, or after my body naturally adjusted—this wasn't an issue at all. After this and after adjusting things to my liking, it was perfect. 

I was a little surprised by how hard the seat is, at first, but actually it hovers in a pretty ideal spot on the plumpness scale. After the initial break-in period, I haven't had a single ache or pain, even after extended periods of sitting in it. It's got a super wide (59 cm) seat base, too, so at least some of you should be able to sit cross-legged on it, if that's your thing.

Adjustments, by the way, should include everything you might want. It does almost everything my ergonomically minded Leap V2 does with surprising adeptness. We're talking lumbar support that can be adjusted inwards, outwards, upwards, and downwards, as well as adjustable seat height, tilt tension, tilt lock, recline adjustment, and armrest adjustments which include a complete 180-degree rotation. 

On this last point, Corsair says, "If the armrests are rotated 180 degrees, they angle upwards which makes it more comfortable to hold a phone, Steam Deck, or other mobile gaming device in the correct spot." I don't buy it, myself—I find the armrests are too far back when rotated—but the more possible adjustments the merrier I suppose.

One adjustment in particular that I was surprised to find useful is the tilt lock ability. I usually keep my seat upright for ergonomic reasons, and if I want a recline I'm fine just leaning back. But I found the option to have it locked into a slight recline was great for chilling out gaming with a controller.

Another thing I was surprised to love is the neck pillow. I'd never bothered with one before because I figured they were ergonomically unnecessary. Now, however, I don't really care whether it's unnecessary. Once it's in the right spot, it feels comfy, and that's that. The TC500 Luxe's one in particular is great, too, because it's magnetic, so it's super easy to move around.

The only bad thing about the neck pillow is that it comes in black, which is great if you ordered the black chair, but not so great if you ordered the white one like I have. Sorry, I should say "frost", the other two options being "shadow" or "sherwood". 

The frost colour is actually a little off-white, so keep that in mind if you're going for something to match your other furniture. All colours look great, judging by the reference pictures, and I'm very happy with how my own TC500's frost-coloured fabric looks in person. It certainly doesn't detract from the subtle, premium aesthetic the chair's going for in general.

A word of warning, though: If you opt for the frost one like me, be prepared to clean it regularly, possibly even with a lint roller. Dust and wool and whatever other debris can stick to it over time, and this can become quite visible on the light-coloured fabric.

In all, and as you might be able to tell, I rate the TC500 Luxe very highly. It looks premium, feels premium, is incredibly adjustable, and hella comfy to sit on, even for extended periods. I expected to be more uncomfortable on it compared to my time on the Leap V2, but I found the transition surprisingly seamless, and even learnt to love some things the TC500 Luxe has that the Leap doesn't, such as its neck pillow.

But this just makes the armrest problem that much more annoying. Why, oh why, couldn't Corsair just have drilled the armrest adjustment holes an inch closer to the seat base? That one issue prevents the TC500 Luxe from achieving the greatness it almost reaches. 

How important that issue is to you, only you can judge. If you're not a very wide person, you need to ask yourself: Is having easily useable armrests that don't require splaying your wings like a chicken important to you? If so, I'd look elsewhere. But if you can deal with tilting the armrests in and splaying your arms a little, or just not using the rests at all, the TC500 Luxe is well worth its premium price tag.

This new Lemokey L4 continues in the same vein as its half-brothers of sorts in offering a seriously brilliant overall experience, although for a higher price tag than you might expect.

In looking at the L4, it might look quite familiar to the Q3 Max I reviewed earlier this year, just without the crazy side-printed keycaps. It's a seriously hefty TKL layout keyboard that provides the benefit of a functional, space-saving layout and one of the heaviest machined aluminium frames I've handled. For reference, the L4 tips the scales at 1.8 kg, which is heavier than some laptops. With that mass in mind, I wouldn't call it 'portable'.

Usually I describe a keyboard's build quality with their viability as a physical weapon, and the Lemokey L4 is one of the strongest contenders yet, especially with no deck flex and a general feeling of strength. That goes not only for the anodized aluminum frame, but also for its excellent doubleshot PBT keycaps which reiterate the L4's premium feel and suitability for enthusiasts. It looks mean with its black, grey and accented red colourway too, although is also available in blue and white in pre-built form.

Where the L4 differs from the Q3 Max at least in a physical sense is the lack of much in the way of additional extras, such as the customary rotary volume knob I've come to expect from their products. The lack of something to fiddle and twiddle with is a bit of a shame, but you can turn volume up and down with a combination of the Fn key and either F11 or F12 on the function row. There is the customary USB-C port on the back for charging and wired connectivity, as well as a selector switch for either Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz connectivity.

Speaking of connectivity, the L4 worked a charm over either wireless method, connecting with ease to either my MacBook over Bluetooth or my main Windows gaming PC over its USB-A receiver. With both, it was virtually effortless. Pairing over Bluetooth is as easy as holding the function key down with either 1, 2 or 3 on the number row depending on which Bluetooth channel you wish to use until the small blue light underneath the key flashes quickly. The keyboard should then show up in the pairing settings on the device you want to connect to—press 'connect' and you should be off to the races in a matter of moments.

In addition, its battery life is solid too, with up to 240 hours of runtime with no RGB turned on. If you turn the lighting on at its lowest level, this figure drops to 100 hours, although is still respectable for a wireless keyboard. In my time with the L4, I only charged it once at the beginning, and had no need to otherwise.

They say what counts is what's inside rather than out, and the Lemokey L4 is suitably impressive here, too. It features Keychron's 'Super' switches, with either Red, Brown or Banana on offer. My sample shipped with the lightweight and linear Red switches, which were a joy to type on, be it for articles like this or for playing games on after I'd finished working. Being pre-lubricated means they are seriously smooth, while also having a noticeable effect on the L4's acoustics.

Combined with the heaps of sound dampening and foam inside the keyboard's metal chassis, the lubricated switches mean the L4 sounds divine once you get up to speed with a velvety acoustic profile. It is quite loud and high-pitched though, arguably owing to the L4's metal case.

If the switches inside the L4 aren't your jam though, then you can easily swap them out with a range of 3 or 5 pin choices, as this keyboard is hot-swappable. As with Keychron keyboards, the L4 bundles in a switch and keycap puller to make swapping them out a breeze. I had some spare Cherry MX Purple switches left over from my own custom Keychron Q1 Pro which I slotted into the L4, and swapping them in was a doddle, as it usually is with these keyboards.

As is customary with every mechanical keyboard in the known universe from the last however many years, there is that sweet, sweet RGB lighting if you want it. By default, it cycles through a spectrum of colour as an underglow beneath the L4's solid colour keycaps. It may subdue the effect somewhat, although for more of a traditional effect, you can always swap the keycaps out for ones with shine-through legends. You can control the speed, intensity and effect on the keyboard itself, although for the best level of customisation, that's where Lemokey's web-based Launcher suite comes in.

Lemokey Launcher is where you can fiddle with the L4's lighting effects until your heart's content, although you only get presets to choose from, as opposed to being able to do it on a per-key basis. In Launcher, you can also program macros and remap key functions on several different layers. It's a bit like using QMK or VIA, although all contained within a web browser, which is mighty convenient.

The big thing hanging over the Lemokey L4 though is its price tag. Given Lemokey is usually Keychron's more affordable arm, you might be forgiven for thinking it comes in where the likes of the Q1 Pro does, at around $150-$180. However, in the pre-built form I have here, the Lemokey L4 clocks in at $214. That certainly seems quite dear for a keyboard of its kind.

With this in mind, the lovely Keychron Q3 Max is the literal same price as the L4. That makes it as expensive as Keychron's own Pro and Max models, which is a little surprising. Some enthusiast-grade boards in the same configuration can cost a fair bit more, though, and even other pre-built options such as the GMMK 3 cost more than this in a similar form factor.

With this in mind, if you've got the money and you want a brilliant all-round wireless mechanical keyboard with everything from a gorgeous sound profile and smooth switches to a serious bit of heft, the Lemokey L4 is a marvellous option. Don't mind me, I'm just off to test its actual viability on an unsuspecting house plant.

At first glance, the PowerA OPS3 looks like your typical Xbox controller. But when you pick it up, the rubberized grips and textured shoulder and trigger buttons immediately stand out. Sweaty gamers will love this one. Weighing in at just 270 grams (30 grams lighter than the Wolverine V3 Pro), it's very well-balanced and comfortable to hold for hours of gaming. While it certainly doesn't feel as premium as the Elite Series 2, for $100, it doesn't have to. Durability might be a concern down the line, but nothing stands out as particularly flimsy or weak—it just feels more toylike than higher-priced controllers.

A standout aesthetic feature is the Lumectra RGB lighting, which features four customizable zones, including a strip that runs all around the controller's face. The lighting looks rather bling and can be adjusted via an app or on the controller itself. It's definitely on the flashy side—many might turn it off to save on battery life—but for those who love RGB, it's a fun addition.

Despite the budget price, PowerA hasn't skimped on features. The OPS3 comes equipped with Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers, meaning no drift issues, ever. And while the thumbsticks aren't swappable, they have a neat twist mechanism to adjust their height—a smart touch that eliminates the need to swap physical sticks between games. So if you decide to swap characters in the game from say a shotgun-wielding bruiser to a deadly sniper, a quick twist will set your thumbstick for the best precision.

The tactile mechanical ABXY buttons, D-pad, and LB/RB buttons are satisfying to use, though they don't quite match the crispness of Razer's buttons, feeling slightly mushy in comparison. Still, they're responsive enough for most players. The four remappable back buttons and two extra shoulder buttons are great for customization, although I found the rear buttons a bit awkward to use. I ended up sticking to the lower two back buttons, combined with the shoulder buttons, for the most comfortable grip.

On the connectivity front, the OPS v3 supports 2.4 GHz low-latency wireless, Bluetooth, and USB, making it versatile for PC, consoles, and mobile devices. It's great for cloud gaming too, easily connecting over Bluetooth to a smart TV. That said, while connection in general was solid, I did encounter some glitches — occasionally, the controller would briefly disconnect from the dongle, which was frustrating in the middle of sessions. Another few times, the controller would simply hang, and become unresponsive to any inputs necessitating a hard reset. However, these issues didn't happen enough for me to see a pattern to worry about.

When it comes to actual gameplay, the OPS v3 performs like a champ. I tested it across a variety of games, from fast-paced shooters like Destiny 2 and Call of Duty MWIII to slower-paced titles like Diablo IV and Lies of P. In every case, the controller's responsiveness and accuracy impressed me. It's snappy enough for competitive gaming, with inputs registering instantly, which is critical in fast-paced environments. I'm no pro gamer, as my KD will inevitably show, but having the option of multiple buttons to map to my preference certainly improved my enjoyment.

I now swear by on-the-fly button remapping, which saves me from tabbing out into an app mid-game. The ability to quickly change mappings while reloading between deaths in Crucible really helped me hone in on my preference. Of course, nothing is stopping you from using the PC app which also lets you create several custom profiles for easier access.

The 30-hour battery life is another strong point, though your mileage will vary depending on how much you use the RGB lighting. I think PowerA has struck a good balance here—Razer sacrificed RGB for battery life on the Wolverine V3 Pro, but PowerA gives you that choice to make yourself. Wireless charging isn't available, but the OPS v3 does come with a magnetic charging dock which can also act as an extender for the dongle. This makes it easy to plop the controller down without even looking, though it would still have been nice to have a carry case.

In the end, the PowerA OPS v3 Pro Wireless Controller offers everything you could want in a pro wireless controller: solid build quality, Hall effect sticks, easy customization, and a bunch of programmable buttons. No, it's not as premium-feeling as Razer or Microsoft's offerings, but for $100, you're getting an excellent deal. It's a fantastic controller for the price and an easy recommendation for anyone who values performance over aesthetics and premium materials.

Starting out with the look of the G Pro 2 Lightspeed, you can get this little rodent in Black, White, or Pink. My review model was the black one and it's a surprisingly understated look, with a simple "G" for Logitech G in the base and a handful of buttons on either side. 

An ambidextrous design, it doesn't cushion your palm like the Pro X Superlight 2 Dex but this allows for a greater range of hand shapes. I occasionally place my hand slightly to the side or directly on top for certain types of games and the shape handles this well. 

The right and left click buttons have a slight groove to the middle of them that curves under your finger, which is a nice touch, and those buttons at the side have a pretty unique customization feature—any of them can be taken off and replaced at any moment. This means you can technically have two buttons on either side or none. Not only is this easy to do but you can then customize those buttons in the Logitech G Hub with multiple functions. A similar design can be spotted in the Corsair M75, which handles ambidextrous features equally well.   

This is a bit of a hard mouse to sum up, partially because the Hero 2 sensor present isn't in its final form just yet. It's capable of a max DPI of 32K, max acceleration of 40 G and a max speed of 500 IPS, but those numbers will move all the way up to 44K, 88 G, and 888 IPS respectively as the sensor update makes it to market. 

This means prospective buyers aren't just buying the mouse in front of them, but what they expect that mouse to be in the future. I have reviewed what has been in my mind and won't be making too many assumptions based on future figures could mean 

Luckily, the G Pro 2 Lightspeed performs excellently in its current form. In Counter-Strike 2, it feels snappy, and most importantly, super smooth. It's a little heavier than the Pro X Superlight yet still feels very light, thanks to the way its very simple design balances the weight.

I feel like I can crack quick headshots and fling my character around with ease, and that's exactly what's needed in the high-tension moments of a twitch shooter.  

The Lightforce switches are a hybrid of optical and mechanical units, and they're noticeably quick and clicky. The level of clickiness could annoy some but, for me, they feel satisfying and engaging to use. They are also very easy to press thanks to those grooves for your fingers on both click buttons. 

Such Art, which is a lovely little art sim game that responds well to slight movements and twitches, feels like a good testing ground for both the sensor and switches. Though I still suck at art, it never feels like it's the mouse's fault, allowing me to get the best out of the game, at least with my current abilities.

However, this perhaps isn't the best mouse for a super involved MMO, where the likes of the Razer Naga X thrive, but can handle pretty much any other game you can throw at it.  All of this is helped by pretty solid battery and charging times. 

Getting around 95 hours with no RGB and 60 with RGB, and being able to go from 50% to 95% in thirty minutes, I've not yet been caught out by the mouse's battery. This battery places it around the middle of the best gaming mice, being around the same as the Razer Cobra Pro and Razer DeathAdder V2 HyperSpeed, but a bit less than the Razer Naga Pro and Turtle Beach Burst II Air. 

Unfortunately, perhaps the worst part of using this mouse is being forced to download and run the Logitech G Hub. Initially, this worked fine for me, letting me change RGB dynamically, customize buttons, and set DPI. This is nearly necessary as the DPI button is on the bottom of the mouse, which can make it hard to access.

To workaround this, you can set it so certain games have certain DPI settings but, within a week, three different versions of Logitech G Hub on three different rigs all ran into a bootup loading problem. 

After restarting the PC, shutting down the app, and resetting the mouse, the only solution I could find was reinstalling the entire app. The loading animation for the Logitech G Hub is quite well made, which is nice because you will spend a lot of time watching it.

Logitech has recently put out a whole host of improved gear that feels like more of an improvement on paper than in the hand. It's all worthwhile, of course, as the goal is to replace the old hardware at the same basic price point but, if you're looking to be wowed, you won't get it here.

It's a decent alternative to our favourite wireless mouse right now, the Razer DeathAdder V2 Hyperspeed but, with a worse battery life and a bigger price, it's only really worth recommending over it if you like Logitech specifically or think you

The Logitech G Pro 2 Lightspeed has an improved sensor and better battery life but it's identical to the old Pro in pretty much every meaningful way. In fact, the two mice are so similar that I think someone fairly comfortable with the former might not even recognise the differences in the latter.

However, as a new standard mouse for Logitech, the G Pro 2 Lightspeed is a solid, if a little uninventive, addition.