Author: Trent Meikle

Tablet remorse is real, folks. Without the portability of a smartphone and the sheer power of a laptop, tablets often become trapped in this weird limbo, fighting for your attention in the one area they’re (mostly) competent in. If you’ve ever owned a tablet, you know what we mean: the odd round of Fallout Shelter and Netflix. Lots and lots of Netflix. Devouring books is a great option, too, if you don’t mind missing out on a proper e-ink display. Comic books, then, which benefit from exactly the sort of screen that Packard Bell is punting here. Beyond that, however, a…

South Africa is becoming more Chinese by the day. If it isn’t some new EV taking to the streets, then it’s a new appliance company coming to undercut the rest of the market. TCL is one of those, primarily focusing on television sets and budget phones — a couple of which have already passed through Stuff’s door. The company is obviously doing well for itself, having announced the launch of its first-ever physical store in the country. Tender Carin’ Love for South Africa The store will be located at the Cedar Square shopping centre, according to a fresh Instagram account. Other…

Packard Bell certainly has a reputation around Stuff. The term that comes to mind is ‘easy’. The company’s products are certainly a straightforward choice for budget buyers. The Carrera F5 laptop that came Stuff’s way breaks the mould. It’s not exactly expensive, but at R9,500, it’s not quite the easy choice we hoped for, either. A big reason for that is Packard Bell’s inclusion of an AMD chip, rather than something bearing the Celeron name. That alone means you can rely on it to get you through the basics, all without putting up a huff. Is that enough? For some folks, yes.…

Nearly nine months on from the reveal of the Steam Machine, Valve has finally revealed when the hybrid PC-console will launch and, more importantly, what it’ll cost. Now, before we get your blood boiling, keep in mind that South Africa won’t get a shot at placing an order anyway, seeing as Valve’s hardware isn’t supported here. Rage against the Steam Machine The absolute cheapest you’ll pay for the Steam Machine is $1,050, translating to R17,300 on home soil. That’s bad enough on its own, but it does get worse. Valve’s base model ships with only 512GB of storage — without a…

We’ve gotta hand it to Amazon — Prime Day has come to South Africa, and it’s actually decent. We’ve only tinkered around for a couple of minutes, and our browser is already suffering under the weight of all the ‘maybe’ tabs. And that’s just what caught our eye. If you’ve used Amazon’s local site since its launch in 2024, the Bezos machine will already have something to work with, selecting deals worthy of your retinas. The sale officially kicked off at midnight, but worry not, for the sale runs well past payday, closing its doors on Monday, 29 June. We’ve gone…

After what has been an especially tough year for fuel prices in South Africa, famed economist Dawie Roodt says we’re not out of the woods. Despite a major de-escalation between Iran and the US — the conflict that initially spiked global oil prices — Roodt reckons it could be some time before fuel prices see a substantial drop. Rough times ahead https://youtu.be/zEmnP-9yzTs Roodt said as much in an interview with NSN over the weekend, shortly after oil prices had dropped below the $80/barrel mark. While those prices are certainly closer to the figures we saw at the beginning of the…

The GWM Ora, once crowned South Africa’s cheapest EV (at R783,500), tends to be forgotten in the face of far cheaper, more competent electric vehicles released in the last three years. Great Wall Motors (GWM) hopes to rejoin the conversation with the launch of the Ora 5 — a ‘new’ compact SUV EV headed for South Africa this July. It’s not just an EV, though. Or at least, not strictly. According to GWM’s local site, the Ora 5 can be customised to suit you. Want to burn through petrol? You can, with a 105 kW engine that’ll produce 210Nm of torque. Want…

Apple’s got Intelligence? Apple Intelligence this, Apple Intelligence that — where’s the hardware, Apple? The Fruit Company has spent a lot of time and resources to remind the world that it is, in fact, a player in the AI space. So much so that it may have forgotten about the products that got it here in the first place. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has a rather ambitious roadmap across 2026 and 2027 that’ll put actual tech back on the menu. Some of those we already know about. Apple wouldn’t miss an iPhone launch for anything, which will likely deliver us the…

Would you rather buy a decent OLED TV, a brand-new games console, and a couple of games — or a few extra terabytes of storage? If you even have to ask, you’re probably not the target market for SanDisk’s new 8TB SSD for the PS5, which had our jaw on the floor once we caught sight of the egregious $3,000 (∼R50,000) price tag. We’re past April Fool’s, SanDisk The SanDisk Optimus GX Pro 850P NVMe SSD, as it’s known, is a rebrand of the WD_Black name that’s passed through Stuff’s doors in the past. That little accessory, built with the PS5 in…

We never expected that we’d make it all the way to June without Samsung’s budget Galaxy A27 launching. Last year’s Galaxy A26 hit shelves in March, leaving everyone to ponder what the hold-up could be. Several leaks already gave us a rough idea of what to expect from the device when it eventually launches, but now Samsung has gone ahead and confirmed them. Accidentally, of course, seeing how the device’s product page was quickly disappeared. A new Galaxy in the wings It was the Czech Republic’s Samsung that had the honour of dishing the dirt this time (via SamMobile). The…