Author: Trent Meikle

When Suzuki debuted the 2024 Swift series – sporting a fresh design, a new engine and a CVT option – at the Festival of Motoring back in August, it left out one very important detail: the price. Suzuki has, after much deliberation, finally landed on a starting price of R220,000 for the entry-level Swift 1.2 GL, with a further four models to choose from, topping out at R285,000 for the new 1.2 GLX CVT Swift. Whether you’re opting for the cheapest Swift possible, or taking a chance on that new CVT gearbox, you’ll be putting the same engine through its…

It’s that time of the month, and once again, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has blessed our Monday morning with news that South Africa’s official petrol and diesel prices are set to go down (again) on Wednesday, 2 October. This isn’t some minor decrease, either. The Department has continued the trend we’ve become rather used to in the back-end of 2024, with yet another R1+ price drop in store for both petrol and diesel drivers in South Africa. Unfortunately, those buyers of LPGAS will have to contend with a minor R0.23 increase. You’ll want to see this The…

It’s finally that time of the year, boys and girls. You’re in luck if you’ve been holding off on the S24 line-up until something comparable with fewer zeroes on the end turns up. Samsung, to nobody’s surprise, has unveiled the Galaxy S24 FE (Fan Edition) alongside the “new” Galaxy Watch FE (LTE), which will do just that. While the world eagerly awaits the debut of Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16 range, Samsung’s already stressing about bringing the tech to its sequel devices – something it’s now done in the S24 FE. It’ll include “full Galaxy AI capabilities” when the $650 (R11,150)…

We’re less than a week away from the first Wednesday of October, and things couldn’t be looking better for South Africans. Load shedding has taken an indefinite sabbatical, Comic Con Africa kicks off today, and the country’s petrol and diesel prices are set to go down a whole R1 (and more, in some cases) next week. That’s if the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF) latest predictions (captured Tuesday, 24 September) prove accurate, that is. Fortunately, in the many years we’ve kept an eye on the country’s ever-changing fuel prices, the CEF has proven itself to be a reliable resource. In other…

Fancy yourself as a weeb? Like, a true weeb? If the only words you know are Kon’nichiwa and Nani (?!), you’ve got some serious work to do. Fortunately, this year’s Comic Con Africa will let you put in that work and teach you some real Japanese. It’ll even teach you a bunch of other stuff – if you know where to look. You can immerse yourself in lessons that’ll teach you to draw, roll your own blu-, uh, rice balls and learn to play some of the hottest board and card games around. Get lost in Otaku Town Let’s…

You might consider the metaverse dead and buried, but Meta hasn’t given up hope just yet. In fact, it’s making it a whole lot easier for newcomers to jump right into the metaverse (or, more likely, Batman: Arkham Shadow) with the newly-announced Meta Quest 3S – a cheaper version of the regular Quest 3. So, what’s the catch? You’d be forgiven for thinking Meta would gut the original Quest 3, stick in a less-capable chipset and call it a day because, well, this is Meta we’re talking about. But it hasn’t done anything of the sort. The Quest 3S features “the…

Picking up a half-decent sub-R10,000 smartphone wasn’t always quite so simple. South Africans were once regularly strapped for choice, but the times, they are a-changin’. It seems like every other day we hear about some new budget device vying for our attention. This is one of those days. Realme has officially launched a fresh budget-beater, the C61, hoping to detract from the likes of Apple and Samsung with a R6,000 price tag. “C61 is a smartphone that will be your companion for many years, offering plenty of storage for your media, an unprecedented battery guarantee, and the performance you need…

You best believe we weren’t sticking around ’til midnight to sit through PlayStation’s State of Play just to get a look at Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, but we’re starting to wish we had. Ghost of Yōtei, the long-awaited sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, surprised nearly everybody and steamrollered the rest of the event, most of which didn’t capture our attention long enough to read past their title. To be or bot to be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCl5zKHy7ak Some other reveals, however, did manage to elicit a rush of blood to certain parts of the body. Specifically, we’re talking about Astro Bot’s first (and free) DLC, bringing ten new bots…

Jetour, a Chinese SUV brand that’s been hiding under Chery’s wing for quite some time, has finally emerged in South Africa – and it’s brought with it two (or rather, four) new SUVs for us to gawk at. That is exactly what we did at the company’s launch event on Friday, 20 September, in Sandton. Jetour’s ideology with this launch is to introduce an affordable, yet still-luxurious SUV brand within the country, and it’s certainly trying. We’d have loved to see the company’s Ice Cream EV turn up locally, but in a country still plagued by load shedding reduction, we…

Thirty seconds (and two years) to Mars Humans are going to Mars… in four years. And that’s if, and only if, Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to send five uncrewed Starship missions to the Red Planet don’t result in utter catastrophe. We harbour no disbelief that SpaceX can pull off the insane feat – having just sent up a regular citizen on the first commercial spacewalk. Our issue lies in Musk’s continual ambition to assign timelines that simply cannot be met. We’re still on for the Roadster in 2019, right? In a post on X, Musk said “If those all land…