PC Advisor - November 2016

148 Pages·2016·14.16 MB·English

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ISSUE 256
AMD’S NEW ZEN CPU
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70 times per second
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VSTREAM®
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connections transmit
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data at up to one Gigabit
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DUALSTREAM®SF
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20 20 0 0 03 20
PrtSohever IntPertrohnvee tCIS tCIS oEl d Best *Subject to terms and conditions
WELCOME
Editor Jim Martin [email protected]
Group Managing Editor Marie Brewis [email protected]
Art Director Mandie Johnson [email protected]
Production Editor Rob Woodcock [email protected] JIM
Multimedia Editor Dominik Tomaszewski [email protected]
Consumer Tech Editor Chris Martin [email protected] MARTIN
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Associate Editor Karen Haslam [email protected]
Associate Editor Neil Bennett [email protected] Windows 10 turns one
Forum Editor Peter Thomas [email protected]
Editorial Director Matt Egan [email protected]
Microsoft celebrates birthday with Anniversary Update
Contributors
Martyn Casserly, Brad Chacos, Benj Edwards, Mark Hachman, Blair Hanley Frank,
W
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, Gregg Keizer, Paul Monckton, Jared Newman, Ian Paul, elcometotheNovemberissueofPCAdvisor.It’sayearsince
Agam Shah, Gordon Mah Ung, Roland Waddilove, Derek Walter, Andrew Williams
MicrosoftreleasedWindows10totheworldandduringthattime it
Advertising hasbeeninstalledonaround300millionPCs,laptopsandtablets.
Account Director Jonathan Busse [email protected] Thefreeupgradeofferhasended,andMicrosofthasgivenupgraders
Senior Account Manager Gemma Rollason [email protected]
Campaign Support Manager Chris Brown [email protected] abirthdaypresentofsortsintheformoftheAnniversaryUpdate.This
initselfisn’tgoingtopersuadeanyWindows7diehardstoupgrade,but
Marketing
itdoesaddavarietyofnewfeaturesandimprovements,whichyoucan
Marketing Manager Ash Patel [email protected]
readallaboutinourreviewonpage18.
Head of Marketing Design James Walker [email protected]
Subscriptions Customer Services [email protected] BuyanynewPCorlaptoptodayanditwillcomewithWindows10,and
therearesomefineexamples,includingtheHPSpectre13(page28).
Online
Notonlydoesitlookstunningbutit’sfantasticallythinandlightwithout
Online Development Manager Adrian Black [email protected]
Web Developer Victor Chong Junior Developer John Copsey compromisingperformance.Okay,it’salsoexpensive,butifyouwantthe
Web Developer Dominik Koscielak
best,youhavetobepreparedtopayforit.

Accounts Speakingofthebest,SamsunghasachievedasimilarfeatwiththeGalaxy
Financial Director Chris Norman [email protected] Note7(page34).Ifyou’reyettotryoutaNote,anditscompanion–the
Credit Controller Dawnette Gordon [email protected] built-instylus–thenIrecommendthatyoudo.Thislatestmodelimproves
Management Accountant Parit Shah [email protected]
onitspredecessorinlooksandperformance,andit’swaterprooftoboot. If
Publishing it’soutofyourpricerange,Xiaomi’sRedmi3S(page31)showstheincredible
Publishing Director Simon Jary [email protected] valueyoucangetifyou’repreparedtoorderaphonefromChina.
Managing Director Kit Gould [email protected]
We’vetestedyetmoreofthenewgraphicscardsfromAMD-andNvidia’s
newranges,includingAsus’overclockedGTX1080Strix(page46),which is
byfarthefastestGPUwe’veeverseen.It’sfarfromcheap,butifyouwant
toplaygamesat4K,itcanhandlethatwithoutbreakingasweat.Atthe
bottomofthenewrangeistheGTX1060,whichismuchmoreaffordable
atwellunder£300,butisitabetterbuythanAMD’sflagshipRX480at
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CWO DD Cloudstorageisgreat,butoftenyouneedsomefastlocalstorageto
12 issues £37.99 £35.88 store and transfer files. On page 64 we’ve rounded up the best of the latest
Six issues £24.99 £19.99 portable drives, which will suit no matter your budget or desired capacity.
Europe (12 issues) £100 £100 The latest pocketable SSDs offer blistering performance and aren’t fragile
Rest of world (12 issues) £125 £125 like traditional hard drives. It’s going to be a while before they’re as cheap
as their mechanical cousins, but if you can live with under 500GB of
storage space they are very tempting.
WhatdoyouthinkofthisissueofPCAdvisor?Wewelcomefeedback
–[email protected] Finally, as it’s 35 years since IBM released the first PC, we take apart
issuenumberinthesubjectheading a PC 5150 (page 74) to see just how far things have come since 1981.
PC Advisor is published by IDG UK
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While every care is taken, the publisher cannot be held legally responsible for any ISSUE 256 ON SALE 12 OCTOBER 2016
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November 2016 www.pcadvisor.co.uk 3
CONTENTS
NEWS & ANALYSIS FEATURES & GROUP TESTS
6 Latesttechnologynews
10 Intel’s new Atom chips
11 Windows Phone sales fall
12 AMD shows off Zen CPU
14 Chromebook support
15 ProjectAlloytosavePCs?
REGULARS & OFFERS
64
3 Welcome
16 Subscribe
119 Software downloads zone 64 GROUP TEST: 82 What is Monzo Bank?
Portable drives 84 R euse an old tablet
146 Outbox
74 Inside the IBM PC 5150 88 B est Spotify tips and tricks
80 AMD’s Zen CPU: 10 key 90 G oogle Duo vs Skype vs
things you need to know FaceTime vs Messenger
TEST
REVIEWS
CENTRE
PORTABLE DRIVES
18 Windows 10 Anniversary Update
25 Asus ZenBook Flip UX360CA 66 Adata SE730
28 HP Spectre 13 67 Freecom Tablet Mini SSD
31 Xiaomi Redmi 3S 68 PNY Duo-Link 3.0
34 Samsung Galaxy Note7 69 Samsung Portable SSD T3
GET FREE
38 BlackBerry DTEK50 70 SanDisk Extreme 500 Portable SSD
SOFTWARE
40 Vodafone Smart Ultra 7 71 Toshiba Canvio Connect II
PAGE 119
42 Ulefone Future
46 Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080
48 Nvidia GeForceGTX1060
50
Founders Edition
Subscribe to PC Advisor and 50 X FX RadeonRX480
SAVE 50% 52 Guess Connect
54 Amazon Kindle(2016) 18
56 Nextbase 312GW
58 Pokémon GO
SEE PAGE 16 62 Lego Star Wars:
The Force Awakens
34
9
4 www.pcadvisor.co.uk November 2016
INSIDE IBM PC 5150 ALL ABOUT AMD ZEN CPU 80
HOW TO
94
74
WHATISMONZO? 82 REUSE AN OLD TABLET
94UseActiveHours to
preventunwanted installs
96ControlyourAutoPlay settings
98ConnectaBluetooth
speakertoaPC
100Sharemediawith
GooglePlayFamily Library
84 102Backupyourimages
toGooglePhotos
103UseGoogleMaps
withawebconnection
ON THE COVER TEST
CENTRE 104Transformyour photos
16
18 TOP 5 CHARTS: withfreePrisma app
BUYER’S GUIDE 106EditPDFsusing free
softwareandonline tools
121 Laptops
122 Budget laptops
109 Turn on Twitter’s
123 Ultraportable laptops
filters and silence trolls
124 Chromebooks
125 Gaming laptops
110 Install a customised
126 Gaming PCs
Android boot animation
128 All-in-one PCs
129 Smartphones
112 Give your smartphone’s
130 Budget smartphones
battery a boost
131 Phablets
132 7- and 8in tablets
133 9- and 10in tablets 114 Use Facebook Slideshow
134 Smartwatches to share your photos
135 Activity trackers
136 Budget printers/Printers 116 U pload Facebook
137 Wireless routers/ 360-degree images to
Powerline adaptors
138 NAS drives/External hard drives 104
139 SSDs/Smart thermostats
140 B udget graphics cards/
Graphics cards
141 4 K flat-panel TVs/
4K flat-panel displays
142 e-book readers/Media streamers
143 G ames console/
Budget portable speakers
144 Budget headphones/Headphones
64 80 48-51 145 Power banks/Desktop chargers
November 2016 www.pcadvisor.co.uk 5
NEWS
IDF 2016: Powerful chips,
super-fast data lasers
and robot brains
Brad Chacos reveals the highlights from this year’s Intel Developer Forum
The Intel of today isn’t the Intel you know, Windows Holographic, which powers
and that truth was hammered home at the Project Alloy and Microsoft’s own HoloLens,
company’s recent annual Intel Developers uses augmented reality to show digital
Forum in San Francisco. objects overlaid in the physical world, such
Sure, it’s still by far the most prodigious asMinecraft blocks or wall-sized calendars.
PC chipmaker in the world, but its focus Microsoft will push Windows Holographic
has shifted away from computers alone to every Windows 10 PC sometime in
to embrace the idea of bringing smarts 2017 – presumably around the time Intel
to all sorts of devices. While the IDFs open-sources Project Alloy’s design.
of yesteryear leaned heavily on PC
processors and new tech designed to Kaby Lake
make computers more potent, at IDF Virtual reality demands more computing
2016 PCs shared the stage with drones, performance than most tasks. At IDF,
DJ tables, robots, Raspberry Pi-esque Intel formally showed off its next generation
maker boards, and even 5G networks. ofCPUs, dubbed Kaby Lake.
Intel CEO Brian
And that’s not even mentioning the Krzanich shows off Intel actually spent more time talking
announcement about Intel and ARM – or the new Joule chip upthe card’s graphics performance than
the surprise mic-drop moment from AMD. itscomputing chops, which may not be
The times are definitely changing, but Project Alloy uses dual Intel RealSense surprising when you consider that the
at the same time, IDF has always been 3D cameras to detect the outside world, chips were hastily added to Intel’s road
about what’s coming next in the world of offering ‘five-finger detection’ to help you map as Moore’s Law slows. The seventh-
computing – and IDF 2016 delivered wild manipulate virtual objects. Whereas the generation Core processors feature
visions of the future in spades. Let’s dig in, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive focus on straight hardware-accelerated video decoding and
starting with some radical new PC hardware. virtual reality – placing you wholly inside graphics cores powerful enough to push 4K
virtual worlds – and Microsoft’s HoloLens video, Intel says. The company also showed
Project Alloy uses augmented reality to overlay digital those integrated graphics cores running
The star of IDF’s day one keynote wasn’t objects in the physical world, Project Alloy Overwatch smooth as silk, though Intel didn’t
a ferocious new processor or an arcane is a marriage of the two. Intel’s headset uses say which graphics settings or resolution
Internet of Things invention. Instead, it was its cameras to display real-world objects were used in the demo. Don’t expect Kaby
Project Alloy, a wireless VR headset created inside a 3D-rendered virtual world. Lake’s built-in graphics to play games at
by Intel with help from Microsoft. Intel didn’t dive into specifics; we don’t 4K resolution, is what we’re saying.
know when Project Alloy will be released, or Laptops based on Kaby Lake – like the
Project Alloy for how much, or even what chip powers it. Asus Transformer 3 pictured above – will
But the company plans to open-source the start shipping sometime this autumn.
design of this potential PC
saviour sometime mid-2017. Kaby Lake
Windows Holographic
Open-sourced VR headsets
are only part of the equation,
though. Hardware is useless
without software. Fortunately,
Windows chief Terry Myerson strodeon
stage shortly after Project Alloy’srevealto
announce that Microsoft is
bringing Windows Holographic
to the masses.
6 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news November 2016
NEWS
Keep up to date with PC Advisor news:
pcadvisor.co.uk/news twitter.com/pcadvisor
facebook.com/pcadvisor youtube.com/pcadvisor
Photonic connectors CHRIS
MARTIN
centres, at blistering 100Gb/s rates. And
while it’s based on the widely used ethernet
protocol, servers will require special switches
to support silicon photonics.
But the really intriguing titbit is what lies
beyond this rollout: over time, Intel will bake
optical communications directly inside its
chips, which means blazing-fast beams of
light will push the data inside PCs.
DDR5 memory
The future of memory was explored, too. No,
we’re not talking about Intel’s revolutionary
3D XPoint memory (though it made an
appearance in an enterprise-only role).
AMD Zen that can help the chip make decisions in Instead, we’re talking about DDR5 RAM.
But Kaby Lake is evolution. AMD’s neural networks. It’s a direct response to the “What? Isn’t DDR4 memory just starting
forthcoming Zen architecture is a CPU meteoric rise of Nvidia GPUs for AI tasks. to roll out?” you ask. Yes indeed, dear
revolution for the company, and the firm hypothetical reader, but DDR5 isn’t expected
piggybacked on IDF for a major reveal of Photonic connectors until 2020. But seeing its mere existence on
its own. It’s been teasing Zen details for a After 16 long years of testing and teasing, an IDF 2016 slide is eye-opening, as many
while now, but pulled back the curtain pretty Intel is finally making good on its promise hardware experts expected DDR4 to be the
far at an evening event in San Francisco. to move beyond copper. At IDF 2016, the last major DDR RAM iteration before the
The highlight was a demonstration of company announced that it has begun technology gives way to better, brighter
two PCs – one powered by an octa-core Zen shipping silicon photonics modules, which things (like the aforementioned 3D XPoint,
chip, the other by Intel’s octa-core Core i7- use light and lasers to turbocharge data or phase-change memory).
6900K – set to 3GHz clock speeds and facing transfers between computers. DDR5 DRAM will have many benefits:
off in a multithreaded Blender rendering This initial broadside focuses on optical users will be able to cram more memory
task. AMD’s Zen chip beat out Intel’s latest, communications technology inside of data into PCs, and applications will run faster.
greatest octa-core processor by a hair.
Considering that the internet rumour AMD Zen
mill pegged Zen performance as roughly on
par with old-school Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’ chips,
that’s incredibly exciting. For more details
read our feature on page 80.
Knight’s Mill
Intel’s truly awe-inspiring hardware is
destined for datacentres, though. During
day two’s keynote, Intel took the wraps
off ‘Knight’s Mill’ – a powerful, secretive
new Xeon Phi chip loaded with dozens
of CPU cores and cutting-edge stacked
memory in order to chew through
artificial intelligence tasks.
Knight’s Mill isn’t a direct replacement
for the 72-core Knight’s Landing chip, nor
Knight’s Hill (aka Knight’s Landing’s eventual
successor). Instead, the processor’s cores
focus on ‘low-precision calculations’, which
can be strung together for approximations
November 2015 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news 7
News
–thelatter of which helps dispelconcerns
about digital audio’s effect on mobilebattery
life.Embracing USB-C audio could
alsoresult in thinner, lighter
devices by doing away with
therelatively wide 3.5mm
jack as well as the complex
digital-to-analogue
circuitry that spec entails.
Add it all up and those
features “will really makeUSBType-C
the right connector for audio,”Intel
architect Brad Saunderssays.And Euclid
industry-wide USB-C support could
truly replace the ubiquitous 3.5mm Euclid
jack – unlike Apple’s rumoured plans to Joule wasn’t the only maker-centric
funnel audio duties through proprietary announcement at IDF 2016. ‘Euclid’ looks
Lightning cables in the iPhone 7. very similar to the Microsoft Kinect sensor,
but it’s actually a fully self-contained
Joule computer designed to power robots. Its
Intelcontinued its quest to woo the hearts magic stems from its Atom processor
oftinkerers and electronic enthusiasts at and world-defining RealSense camera,
IDF2016, where it announced Joule, a new paired with Ubuntu Linux and the ROS
high-end maker board. But whereas the £29 (Robot Operating System) set of robot
DDR5 memory will also be denser and Raspberry Pi 3 keeps things lean to stay development tools and libraries, which
consume less power than earlier DRAM, affordable, Intel’s Joule is loaded with all are used to create many robots today.
which could extend battery life in laptops. sorts of advanced features, such as 802.11ac
Look for the initial DDR5 specification to connectivity, DDR4 memory, graphics Project Aero
land later this year. capable of playing 4K videos and a 64-bit Likewise, the tech giant also announced
quad-core Atom processor. It also supports its new ‘Project Aero’ development kit for
Intel <3 ARM Intel’s RealSense 3D camera. drones, which Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich
Speaking of chips, Intel is ramping up plans Joule is intended to provide big-time says is a complete drone system all on
to make processors for other entities, and in computing power for robots, drones, smart a single board. Project Aero packs LTE
a big way. At IDF 2016, the firm announced devices, and wearables. Intel showed it off in communications, a flight controller, Airmap
that it’s open to fabricating custom chips a variety of projects, including a bartending SDKs, and a RealSense camera for vision.
based on designs from arch-rival ARM. It robot and a smart motorcycle helmet. You’ll be able to preorder Project
appears its retreat from x86-based mobile But the price may be a barrier for all but Aero for $400 (UK price TBC), though
chips is well and truly complete. the most devoted developers: The Joule Krzanich failed to say when the board
On the other hand, the mix of Intel’s board will set you back a cool $370 (UK will actually ship. Intel also plans to
manufacturing capabilities and its newfound price TBC). That’s more than 10 times the release Project Aero kits with everything
willingness to create ARM-based chips (even cost of the Raspberry Pi, and even pricier you need to create a full-blown drone at
using the cutting-edge 10nm process) could than some entry-level PCs. some point in the future.
lead to big new business for the company,
no doubt to the chagrin of Qualcomm, Project Aero
Samsung, and other notable ARM chip
creators. LG has already revealed plans
to create custom ARM chips for its mobile
devices in Intel’s fabs. And who knows?
Intel may even succeed in winning Apple’s
iPhone business, nearly a decade after
famously turning down the opportunity to
make chips for the original version.
USB-C tunes
Intel is keeping its fingers in the mobile
pie in other ways, too. At IDF, the company
seized the opportunity to preach the
superiority of USB-C digital audio over
the analogue signal of traditional 3.5mm
headphone jacks in smartphones.
Digital audio over USB-C facilitates killer
features like noise cancellation, specialised
sound effects, and smart power management
8 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news November 2016
News
Android 7.0 Nougat rollout
begins for Nexus devices
with LG’s V20 on deck
Nexus hardware and the Pixel C tablet will begin getting over-the-air updates for Nougat over the
next few weeks, while LG’s V20 will ship with the operating system built in, writes Blair Hanley Frank
Red alert, Nexus owners: Google has We’re told there are no ‘big differences’ bunch of small quality-of-life features, such
announced it has begun rolling out Android between the upcoming public release of as the ability to toggle between your two
7.0 Nougat via over-the-air updates. The the operating system and the last Developer most recently used apps with a double-tap
first devices to get the new operating Preview that may already be loaded on your of the Overview button, and customisation
system will be Nexus 5X, 6P and 6 phones, Nexus device. And, in fact, if you’re running control over which settings appear in
as well as Nexus 9 and C tablets. the Developer Preview, it will automatically your Quick Settings Menu.
Like all new Android releases, expect receive the OTA update. If you don’t own one of the latest Nexus
the rollout to take a few weeks, with some Getting the latest version of Google’s OS phones, or have any plans to buy one, you’ll
carriers moving quicker than others. Top-line before anyone else is one of the reasons to need to wait for LG’s V20, which is due to
features include a new multi-window mode buy a Nexus phone. The side-by-side app arrive in September with Nougat built in.
for app multitasking, better control over multitasking, for example, will be especially It will feature dual front-facing cameras
Quick Settings and recent apps, direct reply useful on Google’s Pixel C tablet, but we’re (for varying fields of view), manual video
in notifications and 72 new emoji. excited to try this on our 5.7in Nexus 6P as controls, and a 32-bit digital-to-analogue
There are also some behind-the-scenes well. Beyond that, Nougat is packed with a audio converter. J
improvements for power management,
gaming performance and security. Google
says there are more than 250 improvements.
Top-linefeaturesincludeanewmulti-windowmodeforapp
You can, for example, customise exactly
which settings appear in your Quick multitasking,bettercontroloverQuickSettingsandrecent
Settings menu. It’s these little quality-of-life
apps,directreplyinnotificationsand72newemoji
improvements that make Nougat so tasty.
November 2015 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news 9
NEWSANALYSIS
Intel’s new Atom chips bring 4K
video to VR headsets, robots
Intel’s Atom T5500 and 5700 chips to come with Gen9 integrated graphics processors, writes Agam Shah
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich speaks
at IDF 2016 in San Francisco
I
n 2009, Apple CEO Tim Cook The target markets for Broxton chips The T5500 and T5700 chips are based on
memorably trashed Atom-based align with the chipmaker’s focus on the Intel’s latest Goldmont architecture, which
netbooks for being “junky” growing markets of virtual reality and the will also be found in upcoming Celeron and
hardware that underperformed. Intel’s Atom Internet of Things. Intel is trying to position Pentium chips codenamed Apollo Lake. The
chipshave come a long way since then, with Atom chips for devices outside of PCs, chips draw just 6- to 12W of power.
the latest generation code-named Broxton which have seen shipments fall. The 4K video capabilities come thanks
boasting the most impressive improvements. But over the past few months, the firm to an improved Gen9 integrated graphics
The company’s new Atom T5500 and has softened its stance on how it could use processor, which is also in Intel’s current
5700 chips have features found in low-end Atom chips. Broxton could be employed in batch of chips based on the Skylake
PC processors, but they are instead specialised enterprise tablets, and there’s architecture. They can support up to
targeted at robots, drones, wearables a remote possibility that device makers three 4K DisplayPort sockets, while HDMI
and smart home devices. will use the new Atom processors in low-end will display at a refresh rate of 60Hz.
A standout feature is the ability to both or thumb stick-sized PCs. Visual computing is becoming important,
decode and encode 4K, which could allow The chips will support Windows 10 especially with robots, drones (see page
the chips to be used in virtual reality and desktop, Windows 10 IoT Core, Linux, 8), and self-driving cars relying on cameras
augmented reality headsets. Android and the VxWorks real-time OS. for motion tracking and gesture and
Intel showed smart glasses, a bartending You can get the new Atom chip through image recognition. The Atom chips have a
robot, and a smart motorcycle helmet Intel’s latest Joule (see page 8) developer next-generation image processing engine
with the Broxton chips at the recent Intel board, which like Raspberry Pi 3, is targeted that speeds up visual computing.
Developer Forum (see page 6 for details). at people looking to build devices. The $370 There is also a 50- to 80 percent
The tech giant also said the chips could be (UK price TBC) Joule 570x has a 1.7GHz improvement in memory bandwidth
used be in storage or media servers. Atom T5700 processor, 4GB of LPDDR4 compared to the previous Atom chip, based
Earlier this year, Intel discontinued its RAM, 16GB of storage, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. on the Silvermont architecture released in
Atom chips for phones. At the time, it said it The Joule could be an expensive, albeit 2015, according to Intel. Finally, it supports
would stop developing Broxton chips, but the excellent, media server with support for 4K error correction, which was previously
company appears to have changed its mind. and the latest Wi-Fi technology. available only on Atom server chips. J
10 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news November 2016