The C7L also serves as the entry to TCL’s new SQD-MiniLED technology – essentially the same as the QD-Mini LED tech it’s used before, except now it’s got ‘super’ in front of it. That’s not just for show; the ‘super’ does actually mean something, but we’ll get to that.

Although TCL offers the C7L in six sizes elsewhere in the world, South Africans only get three choices – 75in, 85in, and 98in. We had the 85in model in for review, and at R30,000, there’s a lot to appreciate from this mid-range TV. It’s not going to be the TV we recommend for absolutely everyone, but it’s a solid option for most casual TV watchers.

Looks like a TV

There are only so many ways to design a TV. This one doesn’t break any boundaries on that front. As is the case for most TVs, we appreciated the solid centre-mounted stand over separate legs on either side. A single stand is often easier to attach, and separate legs might translate to more stability in some cases. But that depends on how you’re setting it up. Wall-mounting means no wobble at all… unless your walls wobble. But then you have bigger problems.

Around the back, you’ll find two speaker ports, with a claim that Bang & Olufsen had a hand in the audio. Frankly, the passable audio is not a good look for B&O. If this is your first encounter with the Danish brand, we don’t think it’s a true reflection of B&O’s audio chops. With this TV, you’d be better off with an inexpensive soundbar and sub if a proper 5.1-channel system is out of reach.

TCL has almost all of the I/O on the right (if you’re facing the front). The removable power plug is on the left. Of those I/O ports, you’ll find the usual suspects, including two HDMI 2.1 ports. One of those has eARC capabilities, which you’ll need if you want to get the full Dolby Atmos experience.

Is it really that super?

SQD-MiniLED, or Super Quantum Dot-MiniLED, refers to layers in this TV’s LCD stack. We’ve already covered this new display technology and how it stacks up against other display technologies. But the short of it is, by reducing the size of the quantum dots, TCL claims the C7L can cover more of the BT.2020 colour gamut, offer a higher peak brightness, and a slightly better contrast ratio.

Read More: What is TCL’s new SQD-MiniLED technology anyway?

Do the super quantum dots make a measurable difference to picture quality? Yes. Are you likely to notice these things while watching sport or The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives? Probably not, unless you’re looking for them and have an older TCL to compare against. Does that mean you’ll have a horrible time? Of course not. SQD-MiniLED isn’t quite the ‘pinnacle of display technology’ that TCL’s marketing department claims, but it’s certainly better than all regular LED TVs.

Putting the marketing jargon aside, the C7L displays great native contrast for an LED TV thanks to the 1,624 local dimming zones in the 85in model. The number of zones changes with the size of the TV, but we expect consistent performance across all models in this regard.

There’s still some haloing around bright objects in dark scenes – if you’re a fan of reading your movies with subtitles, you might notice this more – but for the most part, the C7L is able to put all those dimming zones to good use.

An excuse to wear sunnies indoors

The C7L is plenty bright enough, meaning it will do well in a bright sitting room with no curtains, or in a dedicated home theatre room. TCL claims a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, but you’ll seldom reach that while viewing real-world full-screen content. Not that it will matter. In fact, you might find yourself needing to lower the brightness in some cases. If only the C7L’s remote had the dedicated brightness rocker of the C8L. We’d also love it if the remote was backlit, but hey, TCL has to save some features for the pricier models.

A quick word of caution regarding the dynamic tone mapping feature. It will increase the brightness of the whole image but sacrifices accuracy. We suggest leaving it off. While you’re in the settings, you should also look for the energy-saving brightness setting and turn it off.  If you see a green leaf next to the brightness slider, it’s still on.

You’re also leaving accuracy on the table if you keep the C7L in its standard picture mode. Out of the box, the standard preset on our model displayed a much cooler colour temperature than we’d have liked. Thankfully, switching to filmmaker mode fixed most of the issues right away and was the preset we used in most of our testing.

There are some caveats, however. Whether it’s that the C7L uses the HVA 2.0 Pro panel instead of the superior WHVA 2.0 Ultra panel, or something to do with the processor, we were not impressed by the viewing angles. Watching Dune 2 head-on showed off Greig Fraser’s fantastic cinematography. Taking a few steps to either side made the same scenes look washed out and flat. The off-angles also displayed more haloing than we noted from head-on.

If you’re buying this TV to enjoy alone or with one or two friends and you’re all sitting close to centre, you should all have the same great experience. When you start to add more people who will likely need to occupy the fringe seats, they are likely to have a different viewing experience. That’s not really a deal breaker, but something to keep in mind if you’re usually the host of movie night.

Another area where the C7L drops the ball is with fast motion due to sluggish pixel response times. Unfortunately, a TV needs more than a fast 144Hz refresh rate with AMD FreeSync or VRR (variable refresh rate) support to deliver good motion handling. This is most notable while playing a fast-paced first-person shooter, or watching any sport with a lot of fast-moving players or cars (we tried F1, rugby, and football). This is not a consistent problem across all content types, and some folks might not even mind that much.

If you don’t mind sacrificing image quality and can stomach the soap opera effect, tweaking the motion clarity settings can help. But serious gamers aren’t going to want to do that, as that almost always leads to significantly more input lag. For this reason, the C7L misses out on a lounge gaming recommendation.

Fitting into your home

While its motion handling isn’t great, the TCL C7L is much easier to live with thanks to its Google TV OS. It’s one of the better TV operating systems in terms of compatibility – you’re likely to find every platform you stream from, and a few you’ve never heard of. It supports separate profiles for different family members, so you don’t have to worry about anyone messing up your settings or home screen layout. And yes, while there are annoying ads, you can ignore them for the most part, or circumvent them if you know how.

TCL 85in C7L verdict

The TCL C7L might not score high on objective scorecards, but we reckon the average viewer will be okay with the decent picture quality if it means they can get an 85in TV for R30k. They might even be okay with the sub-par motion handling if they don’t plan on gaming. Google TV makes everything you’re likely to reach for a few button presses away. Sure, there are ads. Yes, they can be annoying. But it was only a few years ago that a TV this size would’ve cost you double. Is that a trade-off you’re willing to make? Before you answer, we’d challenge you to find a TV that doesn’t display ads on its home screen in 2026.

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Again, that’s not too unusual. This year’s A57 bore a striking resemblance to the A56, a bit of a trend from the South Korean company. The lack of change is understandable, given the current situation (that Samsung benefits from in other ways). It does mean that you can safely ignore 2027’s mid-range releases from the company.

Galaxy A-gain?

The folks from GalaxyClub have picked up camera details for the A38 and A58, well in advance of their early-2027 launch. The website has found that, in camera tech at least, the next round of mid-rangers will be identical to the last ones. That is, a 50MP main sensor, a 12MP ultrawide, and a 5MP macro are present in next year’s phones. Unfortunately, that’s also the same arrangement found in both the A36 and A56 from 2024.

The lack of innovation stretches back to 2023, if you’re the sort to pay too much attention to these things. Samsung has kept camera upgrades for the Galaxy A smartphones largely static for three years, so far. If GalaxyClub‘s sources are correct, the South Korean company will make it four by 2027.

It works out to several years of stagnation from Samsung, but there is also speculation that despite any notable changes, the new A-series handsets will be more expensive than predecessors. South Africa has so far skipped most price spikes from Samsung. We might be spared this outcome.

But if past years are any indication, the Galaxy A58/A38 will be the same phones we first saw in 2023 with moderately upgraded Exynos chipsets. There’s just enough change coming to justify swapping the name on the box. Unless Samsung has an actual surprise in store for us…?

Source 1, 2

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Loosen those purse strings

This is Apple we’re talking about. An Apple that’s gotta bring its products via expensive shipping corridors just to get them onto local shelves. But even we didn’t think the iPhone Duo would go quite as high as it has. If you’re looking for a run-of-the-mill Apple foldable, which basically means 256GB storage, you must hand over R48,000.

Going up to 512GB will knock the price up to R53,000. Whether the Duo can justify that figure remains to be seen. It looks to be an impressive specimen on paper, touting the company’s latest A20 chip and an IP68 rating we’ll have to see to believe. All that, with the promise of being only a mere 5.2mm when unfolded, is impressive.

Read More: The Apple TV 4K, HomeView, and HomePod mini 2 pre-orders open in SA – here’s what they cost

If you’re certain that the cloud can’t handle your storage needs, there is a 1TB model in South Africa too. It’ll add another R9,500 to the price, bringing the total up to a whopping R63,500. If you can’t swing that, iStore South Africa will gladly accept a payment of R15,625/m for the next four months straight. We’ll pass, thanks.

And finally, at the top of its game sits the 2TB iPhone Duo. You’ve seen the headline. You know it’ll cost R77,000 at the till. Reminder: this model can do everything that its fellow foldables can, apart from holding a couple more songs and pictures. Okay, a lot more. Whichever model you get, it’ll ship in the next 1-2 weeks, iStore says.

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Don’t go expecting OLED-like perfection from the incoming screen tech, though. The Kaleido 4 panel offers a wider colour gamut and better contrast, but it still won’t match the vibrancy of even a mediocre LCD. But if your primary screen is one that replicates paper, this will be a marked improvement.

Kaleido’s scope

You can even have access to the screen tech early, if you’re willing to search. The first product to include it is the Hanvon M10C II, an ePaper notebook available from the Chinese market. Odds are good that the regulars like Kobo and Kindle will offer a similar upgrade as soon as their device refresh schedule allows.

Most of what we know about the screen tech derives from the Hanvon product, as it happens. There’s a new TFT oxide backplane that allows for faster refreshes. That’s been a problem with the colour ePaper devices we’ve tested in the past. Black and white is fast enough for comfort. Loading a full-colour page slows the whole experience down a fair bit.

Other improvements, to hear E Ink explain it, are derived from Hanvon Technology’s own work on the display. The company made a custom controller to enable faster page turns, and there’s something called ‘Enhanced Pressure Floating’ tech that isn’t explained.

On E Ink’s side, the Kaleido 3’s colour range has expanded from 4,096 shades to more than 40,000. There’s also “video playback at up to 18 frames per second,” if you can stomach that speed. It’s not quick by anyone’s measure, but it’s also not something you’d expect an e-reader to be able to do.

Right now, the Hanvon notebook is the only one confirmed to be using the Kaleido 4 screen. We expect others to appear in short order, once the Chinese company has achieved its ‘first-to-market’ claim to fame.

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Three versions of the Roadster exist — the Performance, Thrust, and Rocket versions. The latter is the most bonkers option, capable of 0-100km/h in a mere 0.59 seconds. It also includes SpaceX-facilitated thrust vectoring and actual flight. That means it’s not allowed on public roads, which is fine. It’s also only available by invitation. Tesla has to offer you the chance to buy one. Spoiler: They won’t. Not you, anyway.

Roadster leaves the road

Roadster event livestream https://t.co/G0jU4mWfid

— Tesla (@Tesla) October 15, 2026

Y0u owe it to yourself to sit through the whole Tesla Roadster presentation above. All of Tesla’s new cars use something called a multi-mode fan to remove air from beneath the vehicle, increasing downforce. There’s enough suction — nearly five tons of it — to leave the vehicle parked almost horizontally while upside down. That’s not a practical application, unless you’re really struggling for parking at Bob Burnquist’s house.

Instead, the fan tech allows for faster acceleration and increased stability while cornering. The Performance model Roadster reaches 100km/h in 1.6 seconds. The Thrust version does it in 0.9 seconds, while including SpaceX cold gas thrusters pointing to the rear. The Rocket version has those thrusters all over the vehicle, enabling ‘flight’. All three models also have active surfaces on the rear and side for managing downforce and acceleration.

The thrusters are Carbon Fiber Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (CFOPV) that, in the case of the Thrust’s four rear-facing units, generate more than 80 kN of force. The Rocket version has a further six of these underneath the vehicle for altitude and rotational adjustment. The compressed air canisters can refill themselves, but we’ve got no idea what the reload time might be after an actual barrel roll.

Add that to a SpaceX flight control and landing system (in the case of the Rocket) and electronic steer-by-wire, and you’ve got perhaps the most advanced car on the planet. Even the ‘lesser’ models will take some getting used to, since they’ll generate more g-force than most other vehicles.

Not that you’ll ever see a Tesla Roadster EV in your driveway. The Performance version needs a $5,000 deposit, followed by a further $45,000 ten days later. That’s at least R800,000. The Thrust requires the same deposit, followed by another $245,000 payment (R4.1 million). After that, Tesla will get around to telling everyone what these vehicles actually cost when production starts in 2028.

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How do you like them MacBooks?

Apple is now inviting some media to an all-day product launch experience on Oct. 28 in Los Angeles. This is for the touch-screen MacBooks, iPad mini, M6 Macs.

— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) October 15, 2026

The rest of us not located near Apple Park will have to make do with the online announcements. If Gurman is right (and he usually is), we could see an OLED iPad Mini, a 24in iMac with an M6 chip, and two sets of new MacBooks. One is a regular 14in Pro with an M6 chip. The other packs an M5 with a touchscreen OLED display.

That should all be happening on 28 October, says Gurman in a post on X. We’re expecting Apple to mimic its ‘Welcome Home’ event and send out press releases for each of its new products in turn. Gurman also believes it’ll be the last major unveiling from Apple for the year. It’ll likely return in early 2027 to show off the iPhone 18.

Read More: The Apple TV 4K, HomeView, and HomePod mini 2 pre-orders open in SA – here’s what they cost

For now, it’s the MacBook lineup that interests us. Particularly the M5-wielding Pro, which is due for a redesign. We’ve already mentioned the touchscreen OLED, which will join the new Dynamic Island and lightweight body. It was rumoured to get the MacBook ‘Ultra’ moniker, but Apple appears to have ditched that idea altogether.

As for the M6 chip, that’ll be chucked inside the 14- and 16in MacBook Pros as well as the 24in iMac. Other than making the devices faster at opening 100 tabs and three design programs, there’s not much to interest the general audience. The 8th-gen iPad Mini may get more traction with an OLED display and a new speaker system.

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Smart home for a price

All three devices will launch on 13 November — the same day as the States — despite what the iStore’s home page says. No, the Apple TV 4K isn’t launching on 13 October, before the thing had even been announced. Visit each product’s pre-order page directly, and it’ll display the correct 13 November launch date.

Now for the fun bit: the cost. The Apple TV 4K (4th-gen) saw a $300 price attached overseas — double what the 128GB model cost back in 2022. You’ll be the judge of whether the new Siri features, slightly improved controller, 128GB standard storage, and ‘new’ A19 chipset are worth the R6,300 price that the iStore has revealed.

Read More: ShiftCam’s ProRig intends to turn your iPhone 18 Pro into a pro-level video camera

Next up is the Apple HomeView, a new take on a smart home hub that’ll keep an eye on the rest of your home. It’ll either be mounted to your wall or resting on a half-dome speaker base, depending on which model you pick up. There doesn’t appear to be any distinction on the local retailer’s site, which only lists the R6,300 pre-order price.

Finally, there’s the Apple HomePod mini 2. It’s the cheapest of the bunch at R3,500, but it’s also the least intriguing. It’s nothing more than a suped-up smart home speaker that’s added Bluetooth 6, Wi-Fi 6E, and a new S10 chip. Lest we forget the speaker’s new ‘Sound Glow’ feature, which pulses to match your music’s cover art.

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But does the employee know how to do the task?

I’m a professor of management information systems and the academic director of Drexel University’s Center for Applied AI & Business Analytics. In my research on human-AI relationships, I call this latent risk: the possibility that people may lose capabilities their organisations still depend on them to exercise.

AI can continue to perform well while the people overseeing it become less practised at exercising independent judgment and less prepared to intervene. The risk becomes latent when the organisation still depends on that human capability to step in but has little cause to notice that that capability may be weakening.

The concern is not entirely new. The idea of latent risk builds on decades of research into how people respond to automation. For example, studies of automation bias have shown that people can miss problems or follow automated recommendations even when other evidence suggests they should not.

What is different today is the role AI is beginning to play in organisations. It is beginning to assume larger parts of the analysis and decision-making that people previously performed.

The success paradox

The better AI becomes, the more the nature of human work changes. Work that once required an employee to analyse a problem and reach a decision may instead be performed by AI, leaving the employee to review its recommendation. The employee is no longer doing the same work with AI assistance – rather, their job has shifted from doing the work to overseeing what the AI does.

This shift is already beginning to change how some companies train employees. Accounting giant Deloitte, for example, is redesigning its graduate audit training as AI takes over some of the manual work traditionally done by junior auditors. The firm is introducing simulations so trainees can still develop the judgment they will need as they move into more complex work.

More than four decades ago, cognitive psychologist Lisanne Bainbridge described one of the “ironies of automation”: As systems take over more of the work, instead of simply having their workloads lightened, people can be left facing new challenges in monitoring the systems and handling the unusual situations the systems cannot. Later studies found another problem: As people become less involved in a task, they can become less prepared to step in when needed. Researchers have called this the out-of-the-loop performance problem.

This reduced involvement may affect more than a person’s readiness to intervene. It can change the capabilities available to the organisation.

What work remains for people does not necessarily become easier. It may become harder. These are the situations where experience and independent judgment matter most. The result is a paradox: People may be called upon to exercise independent judgment less often, even as the judgments left to them become more difficult.

The accountability problem

Accountability may not change as quickly as the work does when organisations deploy AI systems. An employee may now oversee far more decisions than they make themselves, while remaining responsible for the outcomes. The organization’s expectations may still reflect how the work was divided before AI took on a larger role. The organisation can therefore end up holding people accountable for decisions over which they have less control.

This creates a mismatch. Research on meaningful human control suggests that responsibility should match a person’s authority and ability to act. An employee may retain the authority to override an AI recommendation and remain responsible for the outcome, yet lose the capability to do so. Authority, responsibility and capability can begin to separate.

Latent risk becomes an organisational design problem, not simply a human performance problem.

New HuggingFace paper argues that increasing agent autonomy can gradually make human oversight ineffective by causing approval fatigue, overreliance, loss of situational awareness, and skill degradation.

As agents do more, users are pushed into approval mode: skimming plans, granting permissions, and reconstructing what happened across steps.

Over time, automation bias, approval fatigue, weaker situational awareness, and skill atrophy can make those approvals less reliable.

Worse, weak approvals can become training or evaluation signals, rewarding systems for being easy to approve rather than easy to scrutinize.

Their answer is cognitive scaffolding at 2 levels: developers add strategic friction, better approval design, behavioral monitoring, and checks that force attention at consequential moments.

– arxiv. org/abs/2608.23642

Title: “AI Agents Push Humans Out of the Loop”

— Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) September 1, 2026

The measurement problem

Organisations typically judge AI-enabled processes by measures such as accuracy and productivity. Those numbers may look good even as the human role is changing. Suppose employees override AI recommendations less frequently over time. Is that a sign of growing dependence? Perhaps.

But it could also mean that the AI has become more accurate and there is less reason to intervene. The number of overrides alone tells little about whether employees remain ready to exercise their own judgment.

The key is to understand how the division of work between people and AI is changing. Which decisions have migrated from people to AI? What responsibilities remain with people? Looking at the performance of the employee or the AI separately may miss what is changing between them.

The governance problem

Organisational governance – defining roles and responsibilities – is also under pressure from AI.

Someone may remain formally in the loop with an AI system even as their actual role changes. Defining human and AI roles when a system is introduced is only a starting point. As AI improves and people become accustomed to using it, those roles are likely to change over time. There is nothing inherently wrong with that change.

The problem arises when the relationship changes but the assumptions surrounding it do not. It’s important for organisations to periodically ask: What relationship between people and AI did we design, and what relationship do we actually have today?

In short, organisational governance needs to be dynamic.

Maintaining the human backstop

Not every human capability needs to be preserved. If AI can perform a task well, there is little reason to require people to keep doing the same work. Organisations need to decide which capabilities they still expect people to have when human judgment is required. If people may still be called upon to use a capability, it needs to be maintained.

Overseeing AI is not the same as exercising independent judgment. If people rarely make the decision themselves, the organisation cannot assume they will be ready when they need to. One way to test this is to occasionally ask employees to make a decision without first seeing the AI recommendation. The organisation needs to know that the human backstop it relies on will actually work when needed.

As AI takes on more work, some human capabilities will inevitably be used less often. Some may no longer matter. Others may still be essential when AI reaches its limits. The challenge is knowing the difference and making that choice deliberately.

For me, the central question is this: Which human capabilities does an organisation still depend on, and will they be there when needed?

• Murugan Anandarajan is a Professor of Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems, Drexel University
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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A new chapter for Premium?

Google has reportedly been in discussions with publishers to bring select audiobooks to the platform. What that’d look like exactly is still unknown. The report mentions that they could arrive as soon as 2027, likely pitched as a new perk for Premium subscribers. Better yet, it’d be at no extra cost, though we can see those plans changing.

That almost sounds too good a deal. We’d expect YouTube to copy Spotify’s current audiobook strategy, which only allows up to twelve hours of audiobook listening on the Premium Platinum plan per month. Worse, it’s only for the plan manager, not the individual leeches. Should they run out, they have to purchase more at a costly rate.

We also wouldn’t mind seeing an official storefront that’ll let users purchase books outright. It’d be easier to open the YouTube app than, say, Amazon’s Audible app whenever you get some listening time. We doubt it’d be able to match Audible’s one-credit-per-month deal without first tacking on an extra monthly fee. We’d gladly cough up, assuming the price is right. And if YouTube doesn’t try anything silly like pawning off narration to an AI model.

Source (via)

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The video course was designed by Chiharu Akakura, Megumi Okawa, Yuki Yoshida, and Rikako Nakano. It seeks to teach animators  how to “turn rough key drawings into finished keyframes, completing details and secondary elements before the drawings go to in-betweeners.”

Anime-niacs

The program is a partnership between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Arc & Beyond (part of the Sony Group), and Triggerfish. According to the program’s official communication, “Top performers on the course will be put forward to leading Japanese anime studios for consideration.” That’s… an attractive draw for a free course. Assuming you snag one of the available 100 spots.

There are terms and conditions involved. The program is open to African citizens over the age of 18, no matter where they live in the world. Prospective entrants need “a digital illustration or animation portfolio or showreel,” as well as “access to reliable internet, a digital drawing device, and a computer capable of running 2D animation software like Clip Studio Paint.” Finally, everything will be conducted in English.

There’s one more hurdle — a time limit. Applications for the program close on 1 November. The course itself runs from 6 November to 13 December. That leaves you around two weeks (preferably less) to polish that portfolio so you can take a crack at an anime studio. There’s little else to lose. If you make it in, the course is entirely free. That’s worth repeating.

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