Author: Duncan Pike

Just as we were starting to think we’d seen the last premium-tier smartphone this year, an invite to the local launch for the Xiaomi 14T appeared in our inbox. It seems that Xiaomi decided it was as good a time as any to bring one of our favourite smartphone series back to SA. The last time we got our hands on a Xiaomi T-series device was the 11T back in 2021. It impressed us with its balance of affordability and performance, costing R14,000 at the time while sporting flagship-level specs like its Snapdragon 888 chipset, 120W charging, and respectable camera…

When Asus launched the ROG Ally, its first Windows-based handheld gaming console, last year, we liked the direction it was going. The new ROG Ally X  is not a proper sequel but more of a mid-cycle refresh, the likes of which we’ve seen with the Steam Deck OLED, Nintendo Switch OLED, and more recently the PS5 Pro. The ROG Ally X comes with a higher price tag, sure, but offers a decent slate of upgrades over the original that makes the decision of which handheld gaming console to get tricky – not to mention the arrival of the MSI Claw…

Comic Con Africa 2024 is officially underway from today, 26 September until Sunday, 29 September. While individual tickets for Saturday are already sold out, you can still grab a four-day pass for R700 which includes admission for Saturday, or stand-alone tickets for any of the other days at R200 a pop. But that’s just the price of entry, you’ll still need to fork out extra if you get hungry or if you want to buy any of the thousands of goodies on offer. That isn’t to say you can’t still make it worth your while. There are plenty of opportunities…

While the new iPhones were undoubtedly the highlight for many at Apple’s ‘Glowtime’ event earlier this week, the Fruit Company also announced two new entry-level AirPods models, joined by new colours and more than a few updates to the existing AirPods Max and AirPods Pro 2 respectively. New models, colours, and updates are cool but are they worth the asking price if you’ve already got a pair of the old ones? As far as the AirPods Max goes, you’ll probably want to stick with your current pair unless you need to get rid of excess money for tax reasons or…

It might shock you to learn that artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t actually all that new. Before ChatGPT made its splash, OpenAI Five played Dota 2 — and was pretty good at it. Before that there was IBM Watson, a system developed to answer questions from natural language prompts back in 2011, and Deep Blue, IBM’s Chess-playing supercomputer that beat grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. With credentials like that, who wouldn’t want a chance to expand their AI knowledge without paying a cent? IBM AI knowledge for free It isn’t exactly a completely new thing but in case you didn’t know,…

DOOM, the 1993 first-person shooter that can run on pretty much anything from a lawnmower to a Windows terminal, has reached the logical next step in its evolution — generated by AI. Thanks to Google’s AI GameNGen, it is now possible to play the game in real-time as it’s being generated by AI. What a time to be alive. And you thought AI was DOOMed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3616ZFGpqw&list=PL3ZfMho22LwDvJSEKVBiwxNsVEqUTUmhJ GameNGen is the first video game engine “powered entirely by a neural model that enables real-time interaction with a complex environment over long trajectories at high quality,” according to the abstract on its GitHub…

At Apple’s September ‘It’s Glowtime’ event, the Cupertino-based company announced updates to its entire AirPods range including two new models of its entry-level AirPods, unsurprisingly called ‘AirPods 4’ and ‘AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation’, a slightly refreshed AirPods Max model, and a few new features for the AirPods Pro 2. AirPods 4 enters the chat Apple was very proud of the fact that it mapped over 50 million ears to fine-tune the fit of its new ‘buds. If you’re already within the Walled Garden then you probably won’t mind because the AirPods 4 keep the open-air design and are…

After some light teasing, Honor officially rolled out three new devices to the global market during a keynote event at IFA Berlin 2024 – the incredibly thin and light Magic V3 foldable smartphone along with the MagicPad 2 and MagicBook Art 14. Of the three, the Magic V3 was the star of the show. Honor CEO George Zhao took every chance he could to point out how much better (on paper, at least) the Magic V3 is compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and iPhone 15 Pro Max. This wasn’t the first cheeky jab Honor has sent Samsung’s way…

If you care as much about what your audio gear looks like as you do about how it sounds, then Bang & Olufsen’s new Beoplay H100 headphones are probably for you… provided you have a big bag of money to spend on headphones. The B&O Beoplay H100 headphones are the latest cans from the luxury Danish audio company and are set to improve on the company’s previous high-end models, the Beoplay H95. Made of gold? The Beoplay H100 aren’t quite made of gold but they aren’t too far away from it either. Though the lambskin leather earpads are undoubtedly soft,…

The Asus Vivobook S 15 is the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite-powered Copilot+ laptop to launch in South Africa. Although first-generation products almost always suffer from teething issues (this one is no exception), the Vivobook S 15 managed to impress us in ways we were hoping for and in a few we didn’t expect – highlights include decent performance, great battery life, and a surprisingly good webcam. Still, it isn’t perfect and Windows on Arm has a ways to go before it achieves the same level of adoption as its much older, industry-standard x86 brother. But that might not take…