At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Excellent anti-glare OLED Wonderfully light Port variety and quantity for its size Cons Middling performance Average battery life in this class High price Our Verdict The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition has elegance and feels great to use. But Lenovo should have stepped up its game, as the system lags behind in performance and battery next to a bunch of cheaper competitors, and Lenovo’s not the only brand making great-feeling systems. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Lenovo carries the ThinkPad torch ever further with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. The name is a mouthful, but there’s plenty of meat to get excited about. The laptop is built around a new Intel Lunar Lake processor, features a snazzy OLED display with an effective anti-glare finish, and has the fit and finish of a high-end ThinkPad all built into a compact and lightweight laptop.  For the privilege of owning it, you’ll be looking at a steep $2519 price tag, and it’s not as though there aren’t a host of competing systems ready to undercut Lenovo. It’s a shame, too, as Lenovo could have made better use of the Lunar Lake processor inside. Instead, it falls behind systems running AMD and even Meteor Lake processors like the $1689 HP OmniBook Ultra 14 and $999 Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 (2024). Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Specs and features Lenovo may introduce more models in the future, but for now, the Aura Edition appears to come in just two configurations with the only difference between them being storage. Our test sample shipped with 512GB of storage, but Lenovo now lists the base storage at 1TB. A 512GB base would feel rather stingy for a laptop with a starting price over $2,000. But on the plus side, Lenovo didn’t opt for low-quality storage. A quick run through CrystalDiskMark 8 showed the drive capable of hitting read speeds of 13,023MB/s and 6,991MB/s write speeds, clearly taking advantage of extra PCIe bandwidth.  CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V Display: 14-inch 2880×1800 OLED, 120Hz Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen5 SSD Webcam: 1080p+IR Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C, 2x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x Kensington Nano lock slot Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint, facial recognition Battery capacity: 57 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.31 x 8.45 x 0.56 inches Weight: 2.15 pounds MSRP: $2,519 as-tested ($2,519 base) Lenovo’s had a knack for quality laptop keyboards for some time, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition gets a good one. The keys are decently stabilized, though there’s still some room for improvement. They have a short but snappy travel, providing clear tactility and a quick reset, which helps for quick and accurate typing. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp Lenovo has a practiced hand at designing its ThinkPad laptops, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition doesn’t fall short. It combines a premium bill of materials with carbon fiber, aluminum, and magnesium into a lightweight, thin, and sturdy chassis. That’s all coated with a finish that makes the laptop feel a little softer to the touch than its materials might otherwise let on. It may show fingerprints too readily, but that’s just a minor aesthetic drawback.  Lenovo squeezed in about as big a display as it could in a device this size with the 14-inch panel surrounded by thin bezels. Above the display is a little extra lip that houses the camera and IR sensor as well as a small privacy cover that can slide into place when you want the camera disabled. The display has a wide hinge that folds easily, holds its place readily, and can flip back flat.  The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition gets a classic ThinkPad keyboard complete with trackpoint nib in the middle and a specialized trackpad underneath. The limited space on the surface of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition made for a rather small trackpad, albeit a wide one. Even in a small laptop like this, Lenovo opted for the handy inverted-T arrow key arrangement and dedicated Page Up and Page Down buttons. The function row is also broken up into little clusters, so you can feel them out. Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys are also slipped into the top right corner. The keys get simple white backlighting to help you see them in the dark.  One thing you won’t spot on the keyboard deck is a power button. Lenovo curiously shifted this over to the right edge of the laptop. It’s a little tricky to feel out, and with the laptop sitting so close to whatever surface it’s on, it can be hard to press.  The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition doesn’t have much ventilation. The exhaust vents are hard to spot, as they’re tucked into the slot that the display hinge lives in. Two small fans on the underside of the system gather fresh air. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp Lenovo’s had a knack for quality laptop keyboards for some time, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition gets a good one. The keys are decently stabilized, though there’s still some room for improvement. They have a short but snappy travel, providing clear tactility and a quick reset, which helps for quick and accurate typing. That said, they’re not quite the snappiest I’ve felt. I struggle to get much above 100 words per minute while typing (120WPM is about where I get with great keyboards), and it feels like a combination of the soft dome switches underneath and the not-quite-perfect stabilization is the culprit.  The trackpad seems to be quite touchy, and all the more so when the system is processing more. I frequently will be scrolling with a two-finger gesture, and the scrolling will stutter. Sometimes, the result is a mouse movement instead of a scrolling movement. Other times, the scrolling just stops and then skips down. That latter issue happens more often while scrolling down a busy webpage that’s loading in content. While the trackpad is plenty wide, Lenovo’s inclusion of physical buttons above the trackpad limits its vertical space, which can make scrolling long webpages more tedious.  Of course, with a ThinkPad the trackpad isn’t the only tool. The laptop still includes the little TrackPoint nib at the center of the keyboard, which works well with the three buttons at the top of the trackpad. Tapping into this, suddenly scrolling long webpages or documents doesn’t have to be such a pain. I don’t find the TrackPoint easy to use as accurately as the trackpad, but it’s an effective extra input device.  Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition has a gorgeous display. It’s of a sort I’ve seen plenty before, but Lenovo has added a convenient touch for utility: an anti-glare finish that’s highly effective. I don’t struggle to see the display as I often might at lower brightness settings on reflective OLED panels. It’s not matted, so visuals remain sharp, but any bright reflections it might have picked up are significantly subdued. Even in unfavorable conditions, the display has plenty of brightness to work with. Hitting a peak of 409 nits in my testing, and having wiggle room to go even higher for smaller HDR highlights. On a 14-inch panel, the 2880×1800 resolution is brilliantly sharp. The color is vibrant, readily achieving 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, and the contrast is naturally exceptional. With a 120Hz refresh rate, the display is also smooth, which makes scrolling content more visually pleasing and can even come in handy for gaming or media viewing (as 30fps and 24fps content can all be displayed without 3-2 pulldown). I checked the display with DataColor’s Spyder X2 Ultra colorimeter, and it even proved quite accurate, with a dE1976 average of 0.65 and a max dE of 1.3, well within the margins of error for professional use.  The speakers on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition pack a punch. They get plenty loud for use in a small room, and they have a surprising amount of bass. There’s the subtlest hint of them being boxed in, and that may come from the fact they’re tucked away out of sight, with much of the sound coming through the keyboard. They get a bit of stereo separation and have crisp mids, but there’s some harshness in the higher registers that can make louder music grating  Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Webcam, microphone, biometrics Above the display, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition features a webcam with Windows Hello facial recognition. The camera itself has a 1080p sensor that can capture a decently crisp image in bright lighting conditions. But the visuals get grainy quickly if the lighting is anything less than dazzling. The facial recognition works quickly at least. If you want a backup to facial recognition, there’s also a fingerprint sensor built into the keyboard right next to the Copilot key and the arrow keys. I found it about as quick as the facial recognition. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition’s microphones capture my voice loud and clear in a quiet room, albeit with some room echo. They provide decent fullness, as well. When they’re active, the system automatically kicks in a Dolby Voice Noise Suppression system. In a noisy environment, this proves effective at eliminating these extra sounds, but it makes my own voice sound more compressed and digitized. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp Lenovo does good work when it comes to connectivity here. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition may be thin and light, but it’s not acting like other thin-and-lights when it comes to its port offerings. You’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 ports and two 5Gbps USB-A ports. There’s also a full-size HDMI 2.1 port good for 4K/60Hz output. Lenovo might have put the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition over the top with a SD or microSD card reader, but at least it didn’t decide that 3.5mm audio output was irrelevant and omit it. The laptop also benefits from Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, which works well with more common Wi-Fi 6 networks and will be ready for the expansion of Wi-Fi 7. It’s a bit surprising to see Bluetooth 5.3 and not a newer tier, but it does the job when connecting to headphones and peripherals.  Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Performance The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition may pack one of Intel’s newest processors, but it’s not one of the company’s most powerful options. The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V is a low-power processor that may benefit from strong single-core performance but doesn’t zoom through multi-core workloads like its competition. For the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, that’s not the end of the world. It musters solid performance for everyday computing, falling slightly shy of 7,000 points in the holistic PCMark 10 benchmark. This puts it largely in line with other thin-and-light laptop competitors with both Intel and AMD components. An ample helping of fast memory and exceptionally fast storage help the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: keep up in this test. When it comes to pure CPU performance, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition falls behind. Its diminutive size and tight cooling vents aren’t helping out here, nor are the overall capabilities of the CPU. Our Handbrake encoding benchmark takes some time to run on even very powerful CPUs, and that gives the system a chance to heat up and experience some throttling. Sure enough, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition slows down, lagging far behind even the Acer Swift 14 AI, which features the same processor. AMD processors also zip ahead and even the prior-generation Intel Core Ultra 7 155H proves more capable. Unsurprisingly, Cinebench also shows the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition struggling to keep up under large loads. In Cinebench R23, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition trailed these other laptops yet again, and by no small margin in some cases. AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 in the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 completely dominated the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, and the newer CPU was again bested by the older Intel Core Ultra 7 155H. Multi-core performance only shows part of the picture, though, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition actually showed nearly the best single-core performance of these laptops in Cinebench R15, R20, and R23, only falling behind the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 in each. Single-threaded performance can be important, but heavier workloads are increasingly taking advantage of the extra cores that most PCs have nowadays, and that’s where the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition will lag behind.  Thankfully, Intel’s graphics solutions have improved dramatically in recent years, and even in the lower power Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, the integrated graphics keeps up. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition’s graphics performance breaks the pattern its CPU performance had set, with the system falling right into the middle of the pack. The irony here is that it could have been at the top of the pack if Lenovo had done more to optimize performance in this laptop, as the Acer Swift 14 AI uses that same Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics to lead the pack in both 3DMark Time Spy and Night Raid benchmarks Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Battery life Usually, when I see a system that has lackluster performance next to its competitors, I expect to see battery life help it regain some ground. But the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: doesn’t prove itself remarkable in this respect.  Make no mistake, it offers a solid runtime in our battery benchmark, coming up just shy of a 17-hour runtime playing video. But it’s rivaled by systems that manage to run just as long or even longer. I had really hoped to see Lenovo pull off another upset against the competition, as it did with the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and its incredible 23:32 runtime, but it simply didn’t.  The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: settles for just being good. And of course, actual runtime will be less than what we saw in our video playback benchmark. Generally, I could get through an eight hour workday on battery power with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition:, though. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition: Conclusion The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition’s key assets are its great looks and excellent feel. It’s a modestly capable system thanks to the new Lunar Lake processor inside, but it’s not the most reasonable system. At $2,519, it’s incredibly expensive for a system that will force you to settle for mediocre performance and you won’t even get extreme battery life in exchange. While the hardware has a lot to love, so do plenty of other laptops, and they can deliver both increased performance and a lower price. The ThinkPad tax is real on this one, and I can only hope Lenovo quickly applies the same kind of massive discounts I’ve seen it tack onto just about every other computer it makes, until then, this won’t be the most sensible choice Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Imaging, file backup, sync, and disaster recovery Super-friendly interface Disaster recovery media even with the free version 1TB of online storage for $40 Cons A bit on the pricey side Telemetry Doesn’t support third-party cloud storage natively A couple of minor non-fatal errors Our Verdict Slicker than ever, super capable, and super easy to use, ToDo Backup 2025 has become one of our favorite backup suites. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Easeus ToDo Backup 2025 Retailer Price EaseUS $39.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Though it’s a slow burn with enhancements, Easeus ToDo Backup has gradually developed into one of the most capable backup suites on the market. It also features the most efficient workflow we’ve seen and is supremely fast. There’s even a surprisingly competent free version. A short-lister for sure, though I ran into a couple of non-fatal operational issues. What are EaseUS ToDo Backup Home 2025’s features? As mentioned, ToDo Backup is a suite featuring whole drive and partition imaging, file and folder backup, as well as one-way and two-way sync. It also offers the ability to clone disks, a pre-OS recovery environment (recover the system without a boot disc), and a secure (hidden) partition for safely storing backups. Further reading: See our roundup of the best Windows backup software to learn about competing products. EaseUS ToDo Backup 2025 offers a number of handy features including a hidden secure recovery partition. There’s also a WinPE recovery disc featuring a full version of the program for restoring files, or even making new backups. You can even log on to your EaseUS account if you’re using the company’s online storage. The ability to back up from the recovery disc can be handy if you’re looking to safeguard the data on a failing machine that you aren’t sure has been backed up recently. When I help friends recover data, I always create a full image of the drive in question before diving in with other recovery and repair utilities. ToDo Backup 2025 running from the recovery disc.Foundry ToDo Backup also sports one of the latest en vogue features — backup protection. As ToDo Backup (like others) features an agent running in the background, it monitors your backup files and warns you if there’s any attempt to delete them. This includes by you. My only issue with this feature is that when you select the drives to protect, the dialog doesn’t show you the name of the drives. ToDo Backup allows you to protect your backups from accidental deletion. Other features include granular scheduling, full support for network locations (read/write), compression, encryption, task priority, splitting of images, as well as pre-run and post-run commands. There’s also an offsite copy option, which allows you to create a second copy of any backup on an FTP site. Why this doesn’t extend to the cloud, or SMB, or even another local storage location I can’t say. That would be super handy. Generally speaking, I found the ToDo Backup 2025 interface a joy. While all the options for backups are on the same page, there’s a list of general categories on the left that when chosen, scrolls quickly to the related options. In particular I really enjoyed the way ToDo Backup 2025 handles the restore chore. If you’re using a full partition backup, you can of course restore it wholesale, overwriting the existing partition. However, there’s also a file mode button. If you hit that, the window morphs into an individual file and folder restore dialog. While I love the ToDo Backup 2025 interface in general, I’d prefer not to be asked to “please wait patiently” while a backup is proceeding. “In progress” would do just fine. Also, not overwriting an existing file during a restore isn’t a “fail,” it’s merely skipping a file that doesn’t need to be restored. Generally speaking, I found the ToDo Backup 2025 interface a joy. The online cloud storage interface. I hadn’t tested it at this time. Though I find the integrated EaseUS Cloud handy, and $40 for 1TB of capacity is an exceptional deal (OneDrive is $70, though it includes the full version of Office), it would still be nice if EaseUS supported some third-party repositories. That said, you can leverage those with any backup software by employing a cloud manager. How much is EaseUS ToDo 2025 Backup? ToDo Backup is available either by subscription or with a perpetual license, and there are some hefty (40%) educational discounts. As noted, if you’re looking for cloud storage, $40 a year for 1TB is one of the better deals out there, even forgetting the included software. $60 gets you a perpetual ToDo Backup license, and an additional $20 gets you said perpetual license plus lifetime upgrades. If you’re looking for cloud storage, $40 a year for 1TB is one of the better deals out there. And you get a highly competent backup suite as well. You can save a bit of coin on ToDo Backup if you’re a student — 1TB of online storage for only $24 is a steal. You can save a bit of coin on ToDo Backup if you’re a student, and 1TB of online storage for only $24 is a steal. EaseUS hadn’t confirmed it, but generally speaking when a subscription runs out, you’ll have 30 days to retrieve your data from the cloud, and restore functionality remains intact. It’s unlikely the company could disable backup on the boot disc (especially without an internet connection), so this likely remains functional as well. How does ToDo Backup 2025 perform? In general, ToDo Backup worked very well, and exceptionally quickly. However, there were a couple of non-fatal oddities. Both a two-way and a one-way sync of My Documents continually complained about the My Pictures, My Videos, and My Music folders not syncing when they’re not actually included in the original folder or mirror. See below. The offending folders didn’t exist at either end of this two-way sync. Mystery errors. Also, even though I added nearly a terabyte to my D: drive, subsequent imaging runs didn’t copy the additional data. A brand-new imaging job on the same drive failed similarly. The issue turned out to be that much of the data I copied there was an existing ToDo Backup image that the program decided to skip. Go figure. Other large files that I used copied off fine. On the other hand, as mentioned, speed was exceptional and then some. It took the program only around 13 minutes to create a 700GB image file using the fast compression algorithm to a second internal NVMe SSD. It took R-Drive Image over a half hour to accomplish the same task. ToDo Backup 2025 offers three clone modes, though the first two are essentially the same thing. Cloning the 700GB system drive took a breezy 26 minutes, and ToDo Backup didn’t mind that I was cloning a 2TB SSD to a 1TB SSD. It simply resized the partitions without complaint or my instructions. Restoring the full image was almost as fast as creating it; however, a complete restore of individual files and folders was estimated for 16 hours for the 600GB. Ahem. I bailed on that and highly recommend using File Mode only for small sets of files. Something it’s eminently handy for. You can easily switch between full image and file/folder restore on the same page One of the reasons I might favor ToDo Backup over, say, Acronis True Image, is that there’s only one process running in the background compared to True Image’s 12, although Acronis is doing a lot of malware checking. That said, neither program affected system response subjectively. Something I consider a peccadillo is calling continuous backup “real time,” as does ToDo Backup. It’s very granular continuous backup, but the new files I created took a minute or two to propagate to the sync destination. Good enough for most scenarios, but not real time, which is immediate. This entry in ToDo Backup 2025’s extensive logs show how fast it cloned a system disk. In general, I was pleased with ToDo Backup’s performance, but as I’ve said many times: A low tolerance for failure is required when reviewing backup programs. This is users’ data we’re talking about and I don’t want to cause tears. While neither of the issues I experienced was fatal, they diminished my trust in the programmers and EaseUS quality control. I’m assuming the errors will be fixed in short order, but they cost the program half a star. Should you buy ToDo Backup 2025? I must admit, ToDo Backup 2025 gives our favorite — R-Drive Image — more than a run for its money in terms of features and ease of use. Additionally, ToDo Backup 2025’s interface will be a better fit for many users. So the answer is — yes, qualified by my not-quite-complete faith in all the operations. But 1TB of online storage for $40/$24 a year is appealing and then some. Read...

If you’re working with high-resolution video like 4K or 8K, then there is one guarantee to your work: You’re going to produce a monstrous quantity of data. That in turn often means working with many inadequate memory cards. They’re not big enough to store all your data, and certainly not fast enough to get it off the card in a timely manner. But that’s just the price you pay for dealing with UHD video, right? Not necessarily. A new generation of memory cards using the PCIe 4 protocol is set to increase  memory card performance by 10-fold, ushering in a new era of high-performance, portable storage cards that will finally make dealing with 4K and 8K more viable. The Biwin Amber CB500 CFexpress 4.0 Type B delivers unmatched speed and durability for demanding work on the go. Reaching new heights Until recently, even the fastest cards could only manage a few hundred megabytes per second of sustained read and write performance, making mass transfers of files from your supporting devices to a PC or laptop a painfully slow experience. With this next-generation of CB500 CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards, though, there’s a whole new frontier of performance to unlock, which fundamentally changes how you’ll use them. The 1TB model of Biwin’s CB500 cards can deliver sustained read speeds up to 3,750 MBps, and sustained write speeds up to 3,500 MBps, leveraging the full power of its PCIexpress Gen 4 x2 interface to get data on and off the card faster than ever before. These are designed to work directly with the most high-resolution digital imaging and video cameras out there, with native support for 4K, 6K, and 8K raw recording. They’re ready for future 12K cameras with built in CFxexpress 4 Type B slots, too. Ultimately, all that means that your waiting days are over. With this next-generation of Biwin CB500 cards, you can get even a full terabyte of data off it and onto your PC or Mac in a matter of seconds, rather than minutes. That boosts productivity, and reduces the number of cards you need, since you can clean one out and get back to using it almost immediately. Worried about heat? All that added performance does come at a cost, so the Amber CB500 range is built with intelligent thermal control algorithms that help manage performance to modulate heat and prevent thermal throttling. The housing of these cards is made with aluminium and smart conductive layers to aid heat dissipation, too. Still, there’s no accounting for the environment you’re filming in, so these cards are built to withstand it all. Their operating temperatures range from -12 degrees C, all the way up to 72 degrees C, and you can store them at up to -20 or +85 degrees C, without difficulty. That aluminium shell doubles as a protective housing, too, making these cards almost entirely immune to shock and magnetic interference, as well as physical wear and tear. View BIWIN AMBER CB500 Want more? There’s more Biwin What UHD filmmaker couldn’t use additional storage? While the new Biwin CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards are a great fit for all your devices, they’re not the best solution for storing masses of footage on the go. For that, you want either a laptop, or a leaner portable SSD, like Biwin’s PR2000. These drives introduce a whole new generation of portable SSD performance, promising up to 2,050 MB/s of sustained read performance, and up to an 8 TB capacity, making it an all-in-one storage solution for all the data you’ll produce on the move. Alongside high performance, these drives are built to withstand the elements, too. With an integrated carry loop making transport easy, even in harsh environments, the two-shot, injection-molded design is tough and resilient, with an added silicon cover providing a secondary layer of impact and drop protection. This is a drive that’s ready for whatever you throw at it. View Biwin PR2000 Read...

After a controversial launch on the desktop, Intel is debuting its Arrow Lake processor for laptops here at CES 2025, hoping that the chip’s emphasis on low power has a more welcome reception. It’s the first time the Core Ultra branding has been rolled out for gaming laptops. And for those who have wondered when fanless chip cooling solutions will ever debut in the real world, Intel also has some news on that front. The company confirmed that it’s working with Ventiva’s silent cooling solution as well an undisclosed laptop maker as part of Intel’s “Evo” co-engineering program with its laptop partners. Intel unveiled new chips in three different processor families: the Core U for thin-and-light laptops; the Core H for high performance laptops; and the Core HX for similarly high performance laptops, but geared towards gaming. One Core Ultra Series 2 family, three CPU architectures That these latter two families are largely built around the Arrow Lake architecture isn’t unusual; Intel said to expect mobile Arrow Lake chips last year. But the Arrow Lake-U Core Ultra 2 chips are built around a refreshed version of the Meteor Lake architecture found in first-gen Core Ultra chips, complete with that architecture’s low-power efficiency cores. This summer, Intel debuted “Lunar Lake,” the Core Ultra Series 2 processor specifically designed for long battery life, powered by its own unique architecture. As our Lunar Lake tests proved, Intel’s chip kept up with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processor platform quite well, both in performance and all-day battery life. AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 mobile platform, however, took the overall performance crown. Put another way, Lunar Lake was a small step down in performance from the first Core Ultra chip, Meteor Lake. In our tests, an Asus ZenBook 14 OLED with a Core Ultra 7 155H chip inside outperformed an identical ZenBook with a Core 7 258V by 17 percent in a multithreaded test of Geekbench 6.3. The 155H outperformed Lunar Lake by about 39 percent on a single-threaded test. Intel hopes these “Arrow Lake” Core Ultra Series 2 H-series chips can change the narrative. Intel Core Ultra 200H, Intel’s chip for “performance” laptops Intel is launching five new Core Ultra 200H processors, with 14 to 16 cores and threads. (These chips lack hyperthreading, too.) The Core Ultra 5 225H, the slowest of the family, runs at 4.9GHz; the fastest, the 285H, runs at 5.4GHz. The power draw ranges from 28 to 45W base power, and either 60W or 115W when in turbo mode. Intel is saying the “next-gen” Lion Cove performance cores and Skymont efficiency cores inside this new family offer greater than 15 percent performance boosts in both single-threaded and multi-threaded performance compared to the Core Ultra 100H. It’s not clear whether they’ve received additional tuning, since Intel originally said that there was a 14 percent delta between Lion Cove and Meteor Lake’s performance core, known as Redwood Cove. These Core Ultra 200H chips do include the low-power efficiency cores of Meteor Lake, however. Intel They also include the updated second-gen Arc GPU that accompanied Arrow Lake, which delivers 15 percent better graphics performance than Meteor Lake, according to Intel vice president Josh Newman. Viewed from an AI perspective, that offers this latest collection of Core H chips up to 99 TOPS across the platform, including the GPU, NPU, and CPU. Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop chip consists of compute, GPU, SOC, and I/O tiles along with a “filler” and “base” tile for stability — all linked together using Intel’s Foveros technology inside a single package. Presumably, the mobile Core Ultra 200H chips will be the same, too. The H-series platform will offer a x8 PCI Express Gen 5 connection plus a pair of x4 PCI Express Gen 4 connections. Intel will provide four Thunderbolt 4 ports (double the typical two) and make discrete Thunderbolt 5 chips available to notebook manufacturers. Integrated Wi-Fi 6e is available, with Wi-Fi 7 as an option. Otherwise, Core Ultra 200H laptops will be able to connect to LPDDR5X-8400 memory, DDR5-6400 memory, and even LPDDR5/5X CAMM2 memory, for a total of 96GB (DDR5) and 64GB (LPDDR5). Intel’s Core H chips will ship to customers later in the first quarter. Intel Core Ultra 200HX: Intel’s gaming champion Architecturally, Intel executives have said they consider the Arrow Lake-S desktop chip and the mobile Arrow Lake-HX for laptops essentially two versions of the same chip for the enthusiast PC segment — there are differences in the packaging, the power which they draw, and a few other software tweaks. Otherwise, they’re identical, Greg Boots, Arrow Lake’s product marketing manager, said at the Lunar Lake launch. Intel Intel isn’t saying much about the Core Ultra 200HX’s performance, but the combination of eight Lion Cove P-cores and 16 Skymont cores should boost performance by 5 percent in a single-threaded environment and 20 percent in multithreaded performance versus the previous Core-HX part, based on Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh. “Enthusiast-level performance at lower power” is how Intel is putting it. While desktop versions of Arrow Lake didn’t always ship alongside a discrete GPU, it’s much more common for a Core HX gaming notebook to include a discrete GPU. Those systems will be coming in “late Q1 2025,” Intel says, which probably means in March. You’ll have to wait until then for Intel to deliver its estimates of how well they’ll fare in gaming performance. Intel will ship six Core HX chips, Newman said, from the Core Ultra 9 285HX (8 P cores, 16 E-Cores/24 threads, 5.5GHz) down to the Ultra 5 235HX (6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, 14 threads; 5.1GHz). They range from a base power of 15W on up to turbo power of 57W. Compared to Intel’s 14th-gen Core HX parts, it’s not a clear win for Intel’s latest Core 200HX parts. The Core i9-14900HX, for example, offered the same 24 threads. That chip offered P-core turbo frequencies at up to 5.8GHz, versus the 5.5GHz on the Core Ultra 9 285HX. On the other hand, the 285HX runs the E-cores at up to 2.8GHz, significantly faster than the 2.2GHz minimum E-core speed of the i9-14900HX. (We expect more performance data soon, hopefully.) From a platform point of view, a Core Ultra 200HX part will address the same memory configurations as the Core Ultra 200H parts — up to 64GB or 96GB of DDR5 and LPDDR5x, respectively. Intel gives laptop makers a x4 PCIe Gen 5 connection and four PCIe Gen 4 lanes, however, and only two Thunderbolt 4 ports to work with. Discrete Thunderbolt 5 is also available. Intel is also disclosing that it will ship additional “Arrow Lake” S-series desktop products early in the first quarter, and deliver new laptops with new U-series chip for laptops, also based upon Arrow Lake. Intel’s Arrow Lake U series fuse both Core Ultra processors These U-series chips are interesting, as they represent an intriguing combination of Intel’s Core Ultra processors. Intel “The Intel Core Ultra 200U series processors utilize the Redwood Cove (P-core) architecture, which originally debuted in Intel Core Ultra Series 1 processors and Crestmont (E-core) architecture that is found throughout the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 family of processors,” an Intel spokesman said in an email. “However, the Intel Core Ultra 200U series is built on the Intel 3 process node, rather than the Intel 4 process used for Intel Core Ultra Series 1 processors, which helps improve performance of the processor overall.” The Intel Core Ultra 200U series also features increased clock speed on the NPU, along with integrated Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, the Intel spokesman added. Intel also plans to ship commercial versions of the Core Ultra 200V series — the products that Intel rolled out as part of Arrow Lake “shortly after CES,” Intel’s Newman said. Finally, Newman said that the company’s Evo-certified program, which co-engineers laptops and PC peripherals with the device makers themselves, has now reached 24 vendors and over 70 devices. Read...

Tackling climate change is a team sport, and we all have to be in it together if we want to win. So, not only should we hold companies to high standards as far as mitigating their environmental impact, we should also laud them when they make positive steps in the right direction. With almost 190 million laptops expected to ship throughout 2024, laptop manufacturers are some of the companies we should be forcing to do better — and fortunately, many of them already are. From using recycled cardboard for packaging and ocean-bound plastic in laptops themselves, to relying on renewable energy on company property and closed-loop industrial practices. Here’s what the top laptop manufacturers are doing to go green and help save the world. Dell Dell has been a household name in laptops for decades, having become one of the top five manufacturers by market share since the late 90s. The company expanded over time and acquired brands (like the gaming-focused Alienware), while also supplying some of the most iconic product lines in the industry (like its XPS line of premium laptops). As with many modernizing brands, Dell has taken on several eco-driven initiatives that help reduce its carbon footprint: the reduction of non-recycled and non-recyclable materials in laptop construction; improving the repairability of its devices; and making it easier to recycle its products once they’ve reached the ends of their lives. Dell continues to drive up the repairability of its devices, in an effort to extend their lifespans and reduce transport and manufacturing costs for new devices.Dell Dell incorporates several different sources for its recycled materials, too. Some of its laptops use plastics recycled from post-consumer devices, while others utilize recycled ocean-bound plastic, while still others use recycled steel, magnesium, and cobalt. Recycled materials don’t just reduce their impact on landfills and ocean-dumping, but cut down on the carbon output that goes into producing those materials (since metals and plastics don’t need to be harvested and refined to the same extent). Dell makes it easy to recycle your laptop as an individual and for businesses to do the same. It’s an incentivized scheme, too, which ensures destruction of sensitive company data and leads to money back on future purchases. Overall, it helps cut down on laptop e-waste. In the company’s sustainability brochure (PDF), Dell promises that “100 percent of [their] packaging and more than 50 percent of [their] product content will be made from recycled or renewable materials” by 2030. Lenovo By sheer volume of PCs and laptops sold, Lenovo has been the biggest computer manufacturer in the world for over a decade — so any eco-friendly initiatives by this company will not only have a huge impact, but could also encourage its competition to do the same. Like its contemporaries, Lenovo is utilizing more and more recycled materials in its laptop designs, including ocean-bound plastic, closed-loop post-consumer plastics, and recycled metals. Its goals aren’t quite as ambitious as Dell’s, but in Lenovo’s 2024 Sustainability Report (PDF), it has pledged to have 100% of its products contain some post-consumer recycled materials by 2025. It claims around 14.6 million net pounds of plastics containing recycled content were used in 2023. Lenovo continues to expand its renewable energy initiatives at its facilities to reduce its energy-based carbon footprint.Lenovo Lenovo also offers a “reduced carbon transport” service to business customers. They can also pay for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credits, which helps offset the CO2 output by transporting the laptops and other devices to the customer. While that does rely on customers paying for the reduced carbon transport option, Lenovo is investing in that itself, too. As part of its net-zero-by-2050 commitment, Lenovo is utilizing more rail and sea freight as lower-carbon shipping options, as well as pushing for the use of SAF in Europe and South America. It also has targets to reduce transport costs in its repairs, with a pledge that by 2026 over 84 percent of all repairs of Lenovo products will take place at a repair shop, without the need to ship it to a service center. HP HP has one of the most ambitious green goals for its business, aiming to achieve net-zero emissions throughout its entire value chain by 2040 — that’s a good 10 years ahead of most of its competitors. In its 2023 sustainability report (PDF), HP claimed to have already reached a 27 percent reduction since 2019, with over 184,000 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions avoided in 2023 alone through its partnerships and energy efficiency programs. HP’s upper-tier laptops still feel luxuriously premium even as they rely on increasingly more recycled materials, proving that greener production can still be great.tech kiga / Unsplash The company is also innovating on its products, making them smaller and leaner with less wasted materials, all while using more and more recycled materials in their construction. Its newest print cartridges are 30 percent smaller while also using 35 percent recycled content. Some of its laptops, like the EliteBook 1040, are made from over 90 percent recycled magnesium and have 50 percent recycled plastics in its keycaps. Since 2019, HP claims to have used over a billion pounds of recycled plastics in its devices. Pretty impressive, if you ask me. HP’s certified refurbished systems provide cheaper and more environmentally friendly pathways for companies looking to upgrade their computer systems, too. The HP Device Life Extension program (PDF) offers corporations the option to have their devices cleaned and updated with newer and faster components, extending the life of existing hardware and reducing the need to buy entirely new systems. HP is also working to eliminate single-use plastics in its packaging, having reached a 62 percent reduction between 2018 and 2023, on track to reach 75 percent by 2025. That should coincide with a complete removal of all landfill waste solutions for HP operations that same year. Asus Asus offers tons of in-depth data on its carbon footprint reduction initiatives, so if you want to really dig into the numbers on what it’s done and what it’s doing, there’s loads to chew on. Want to see an exact breakdown of its CO2 emissions? It’s here. A breakdown of how it audits the recycling companies it uses for end-of-life devices? That’s here. As for its more digestible data points, Asus claims that over 11,600 tons of CO2 have been reduced by its use of recycled materials in its products since 2017. This includes ocean-bound plastics, post-consumer plastics, and post-industrial recycled magnesium and aluminum. Asus is pushing for more recyclable materials in its packaging and a greater recycling rate for all of its products, plus more responsibly sourced materials in general.Joachim Pressl / Unsplash The company has also managed to use 90 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging, while also prioritizing lighter packaging to help cut back on transport costs and fuel usage. Some of Asus’ goals for 2025 include: reaching 100 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging; reaching a 20 percent recycling rate for all Asus products; and expanding its use of responsibly sourced materials like cobalt to 100 percent. By 2030, Asus also plans to reduce company-wide global carbon emissions by 50 percent and reach 100 percent renewable energy usage in all Taiwan-based operations. Apple Apple stands among these companies taking aggressive action to reduce their carbon footprints. In its 2024 sustainability report (PDF), Apple claims a 55 percent reduction in overall emissions since 2015, and that doesn’t include carbon credits either. It’s all part of Apple’s ongoing drive to reduce the company’s global emissions to carbon neutrality by 2030 — by far the most ambitious of all emissions goals on this list. On the road to that lofty goal, Apple has: reduced emissions from transporting its products by 20 percent since 2022; cut back the energy use of its product ranges by as much as 70 percent since 2008; and increased its stock of refurbished devices to nearly 13 million globally. In 2023, Apple increased the quantity of recycled materials in its products, now using 100 percent recycled cobalt in the Apple Watch and iPhone batteries, as well as 25 percent recycled gold across all product lines. It also now uses 100 percent recycled aluminum in the chassis of its Mac, MacBook, and iPad lines. Apple helped pioneer the elaborate unboxing experience, and now it’s helping to drive out plastic with a 100 percent fiber-based Apple Watch packaging design.Apple By 2025, Apple will have 100 percent fiber-based packaging for all of its products, and the company will continue increasing the quantities of recycled metals and minerals in its various lines. Apple is also driving environmental changes up the chain, too. For example, Apple has secured over 320 suppliers who have committed to sourcing their electricity from renewable sources. Although Apple doesn’t expect to eliminate emissions entirely from its production and transportation lines, it will use carbon offsets to get the last leg of the way towards making Apple a carbon-neutral company by the end of the decade. Acer Acer has set its sights on 2050 to make its entire business carbon-neutral, innovating within and encouraging suppliers to join in on its ambitious climate goals. In Acer’s 2023 sustainability report (PDF), the company highlights several key achievements along this road so far, with plans to expand its initiatives as we head into 2025. So far, Acer has managed to reach a 48 percent usage of renewable electricity throughout its business, with a goal to reach 60 percent in 2025 and 100 percent by 2035. It has also managed to get 76 percent of its suppliers to agree to a similar goal, with ongoing efforts to get that number up to 80 percent of critical supplies in 2025. Acer is still playing catch-up to the other major laptop manufacturers when it comes to carbon neutrality, but it’s making steady progress.Raphael Brasileiro / Unsplash Acer is slowly introducing more and more recycled materials into its products, too. Its 2024 Aspire Vero 16 used 60 percent recycled plastics, representing a doubling since the 2021 model. The kinds of innovations that make this possible are set to be introduced in other Acer product lines going forward as well, with a goal to reach 30 percent post-consumer recycled plastics in all Acer products by 2025. As much as 90 percent of Acer’s packaging is now made from recycled pulp, which is itself entirely recyclable, but the company hasn’t quite eliminated the use of plastic in all packaging yet. Acer also continues to expand its device recycling operations, with over 61,000 tons of e-waste recycled between 2018 and 2022. A greener future for laptops Some companies are certainly working harder than others in their efforts to reduce their impact on the global environment, with Apple and HP apparently the most aggressive in their goals so far. There’s plenty of room for those other companies to catch up, though. Ultimately, fighting climate change is a goal that the entire world needs to work towards together. To that end, it’s always nice to see giant megacorporations doing something even if they could be doing more. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Solar-powered design eliminates frequent battery swaps Smart detection features included without a subscription Easy installation and user-friendly app Cons Limited to 1080p resolution, which may not satisfy some users Performance heavily depends on Consistent sunlight for charging Cloud subscription required for some features Our Verdict The Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit is an affordable and eco-friendly security solution that’s perfect for low-maintenance outdoor monitoring, though its reliance on sunlight to recharge its battery and its 1080p resolution won’t meet every user’s needs. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit Retailer Price $44.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit ($59.99) offers a simple, wire-free solution for homeowners looking to secure their outdoor spaces without the hassle of battery swaps or complicated installations. Powered by a solar panel and built to withstand the elements, it provides eco-friendly, low-maintenance monitoring. Its compact, weather-resistant design and user-friendly setup make it a convenient choice for just about anyone. Design and features The bullet-style SolarCam is built to handle outdoor environments while maintaining a modern and compact design. Rated IP65 for weather resistance, our IP code guide indicates it’s impervious to dust ingress and protected from water jets coming from any direction. It can operate in diverse climates, at temperatures ranging from minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit to 113F (-20C to 45C). Its minimalist black-and-white aesthetic allows it to blend seamlessly into most outdoor settings, whether mounted on a porch, a fence, or a backyard wall. The solar panel is designed for easy placement, with mounting hardware that supports various angles–or even mounted separately from the camera–to maximize sunlight exposure. Once installed, the panel works to keep the camera charged without the need for manual intervention, offering a nearly maintenance-free experience. This makes it especially appealing for hard-to-reach installations where changing its batteries would be a chore. The camera delivers 1080p video resolution, ensuring clear capture of faces, license plates, and other critical details. Its 125-degree diagonal field of view provides wide-area coverage, making it well-suited for driveways, large porches, or expansive backyard spaces. Dual spotlights, which can be set to activate upon motion detection, illuminate dark areas up to 30 feet, helping to deter potential intruders. These spotlights also enhance the camera’s color night vision, allowing it to record vivid, full-color footage even in low-light conditions. For additional versatility, the camera includes infrared black-and-white night vision. The bullet-style camera has a compact, modern design and is built to withstand the elements. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry The SolarCam’s smart features take its functionality up a notch. With person, vehicle, and animal detection—all available without a cloud subscription—the motion detection system effectively filters out false alerts from irrelevant movements, like swaying foliage, so you can focus on genuine security concerns. The camera also integrates with Google Assistant and Alexa, enabling voice commands for tasks like checking the live feed. Two-way audio provides a simple way to communicate with visitors or ward off intruders, all in real-time. For storage, the Tapo SolarCam offers both local and cloud options. You can insert a microSD card (capacities up to 512GB, though none is included) for on-device recording, or you can opt for Tapo Care’s Premium subscription service. Priced at $3.49 per month or $34.99 annually, it covers covers up to 10 cameras and adds 30 days of video history, rich notifications, and Smart Sort, which lets you classify your recorded videos with different tags. A 30-day no-obligation free trial of the plan is included with purchase of the camera Setup and performance Setting up the Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit is easy. Once you’re logged into the Tapo app, tap the “+” icon to add a new device and follow the on-screen instructions to pair the camera. The app will guide you through connecting the camera to your Wi-Fi network and optimizing its placement. The kit includes all the necessary mounting hardware for both the camera and solar panel, along with clear instructions to guide you through the process. The adjustable mount for the solar panel allows placement flexibility, helping you capture optimal sunlight regardless of your outdoor setup. A power drill is recommended for secure installation, but the process is otherwise simple and can be completed in less than an hour. Video quality is quite good, considering its limited resolution. The daytime footage I recorded was crisp and detailed, capturing clear images of faces, vehicle plates, and other key details. Night vision is equally impressive, delivering sharp, well-lit footage in both color and monochrome modes. The two-way audio is reliable, offering clear sound for both communication and deterrence purposes, though windy conditions can introduce minor interference. The Tapo app has clear menus for accessing live feeds, adjusting settings, reviewing recorded footage, and setting smart actions. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry I had good results with the various motion detection options. Person detection worked well to filter out irrelevant activity, minimizing false alarms from things like tree limbs, animals, or passing cars. If you want to be notified about animals or vehicles, those detection modes also performed reliably in my testing. Push notifications were quick, keeping me informed of potential security events almost in real time. The Tapo app interface is intuitive, with clear menus for accessing live feeds, adjusting settings, and reviewing recorded footage. Customization options for motion detection are plentiful, including detection zones that allow you to monitor targeted areas and adjust the sensitivity to suit the environment. Notifications can also be tailored to reduce unnecessary alerts, making the system less intrusive while still effective. The solar panel’s performance is critical to the system’s appeal, and it largely delivers on its promises. In sunny conditions, the panel kept the camera’s battery charged consistently, even with regular use of live view and motion recording. In cloudy or low-light conditions, the camera draws its internal battery down, but efficient power management ensured it continued to operate without interruptions. Under typical usage conditions, the battery can last up to 180 days on a single charge according to TP-Link. Should you buy the Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit? The Tapo SolarCam C402 KIT is a good choice for anyone seeking a low-maintenance outdoor security solution. Its solar-powered design minimizes upkeep while providing continuous coverage, and its high-resolution video ensures you won’t miss important details. The durable, weather-resistant build makes it a practical option for most outdoor environments. That said, it’s not for everyone. Those in regions with limited sunlight might find the system less dependable, as its performance hinges on consistent solar charging. But overall, it’s a great option for those prioritizing ease of use and sustainable design. Read...

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, are one of the most effective ways to keep your data private and secure while online. They encrypt and hide our confidential web activity and are a key component in helping us to navigate safely while connected to the internet. As VPN usage continues to increase globally these apps are quickly becoming a cornerstone of our online security. Due to this importance, it’s worth looking at what’s in store for the next-gen VPNs to see how they’ll continue to provide us privacy and security into the future. From VPNs utilizing blockchain to new encryption standards even quantum computers can’t break—and maybe even anonymity for your smart appliances—here are the coming advancements in VPN tech I’m most excited for. Further reading: Best VPN services 2024: Top picks for speed, price, privacy, and more Blockchain technology is coming to VPNs The decentralized node structure of a dVPN may be the way of the future.NordVPN Decentralized VPNs, or dVPNs, offer a new twist on VPN technology and they are quickly growing in popularity. By distributing network functions across many nodes rather than routing traffic through one company’s centralized servers, they can theoretically afford better privacy and security to users. A dVPN runs on a peer-to-peer network that leverages blockchain technology. Decentralized nodes, operated by volunteer hosts, eliminate single points of failure and ensure that no single entity has control over every user’s data. Due to a dVPN’s more democratic functioning, they are also seen as being more resistant to censorship and government data sharing. Just over the last year or two, decentralized VPNs have started to gain traction in the global market. So does this mean crypto bros are about to take over your VPNs? Not likely. While dVPNs certainly seem like an attractive offer, more so with all of the hype surrounding everything crypto and blockchain nowadays, this decentralization doesn’t inherently mean a better experience.  With a traditional VPN, you have to put your trust in just one company. But this company, assuming you choose wisely, will run regular audits to prove it’s trustworthy, has a vested interest in keeping its network secure, and has the financial backing to continually make improvements to its applications. Using a dVPN on the other hand means that you have to trust each volunteer node host. Depending on how the dVPN company operates, these hosts may not be required to prove their trustworthiness or the privacy of their nodes.  So, while dVPNs are sure to become a popular choice for those seeking decentralized privacy, there will still be a place for traditional VPNs in the future. What is most likely is that you’ll see two separate markets develop, one for dVPN services and another for traditional centralized VPN services. It will then be up to you as the user to choose which you believe is best suited to protect your data. The post-quantum encryption revolution is upon us Post-quantum encryption will become the new standard for VPNs in the near future.Pixabay In August of this year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made history by releasing the first quantum-resistant encryption standards. Outside of a few overly enthusiastic cryptographers, this news might not have made a splash but it’s set to have huge implications for the future of online privacy and security. Researchers and tech companies are racing to build quantum computers that will have the capability to crush the encryption standards of today’s machines in mere minutes—something currently impossible. So, how does this relate to VPNs? Well, VPNs are heavily reliant on cryptographic protocols for securing communication on their networks. When you connect to a VPN, it encrypts your traffic by scrambling the data into an unreadable form, thereby preventing third parties from viewing and understanding that data. If a quantum computer with vastly greater computational power were to get ahold of this same encrypted data, it could decipher it with ease. These new ‘post-quantum’ encryption standards will not only set the bar for VPN providers in the coming years, but also provide a roadmap to help them become more secure. “Post-quantum” encryption will become a selling point that VPNs will advertise and market to consumers. For users, it might seem like a boutique feature now, but once quantum computers are up and running—most experts believe it could be within the next decade—you’ll absolutely want your VPN to be using these new standards. We’re already seeing some VPN providers offer ‘post-quantum’ encryption. Just recently NordVPN took the initiative and launched an app with post-quantum support. Others such as ExpressVPN and Surfshark have also implemented their own versions as well. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes the new norm for all VPNs.  VPNs will soon protect your refrigerator, too The all encompassing internet of things, or IoT, refers to a network of connected devices that communicate and share data with each other. For most people, this takes the form of smart home devices such as thermostats, TVs, lights, refrigerators, and home security systems. Thanks to IoT devices we now have more control over our environment than ever before. When it comes to cybersecurity however, smart devices are generally some of the most vulnerable and least protected pieces on your home network. Cybercriminals love to exploit IoT devices and in many cases, simply hacking one device will give them access to everything else. VPNs are out to change this in the near future. By providing fully integrated home network security, a VPN can encrypt and protect communications for all of your devices. Unlike the typical personal VPN that requires you to connect each individual device, IoT VPNs extend across an entire network to safeguard all devices. At home this can already be done via a router VPN.  Unfortunately, there are still a few drawbacks to using a router method. Many VPN providers still impose simultaneous device connection limits that can be taken up quickly by all of your IoT devices. Router VPNs also create a single point of failure meaning you need to make sure failsafes, such as an automatic killswitch, are set up correctly. This all requires a bit of technical know-how which the average layperson may not have. Routers with built-in VPNs, like Aircove from ExpressVPN, are just one of the ways that next-gen VPNs will protect all of the devices on your home network. ExpressVPN VPN companies are working on new and innovative solutions for at-home IoT coverage. More and more services are switching over to unlimited device connection models. Others such as ExpressVPN have even started selling their own routers, ready to go right out of the box, with the VPN built into them. VPNs are likely to begin offering configurable IoT options in their mobile apps as well. This will allow users to easily control which devices on their home network are connected through the VPN, all in a centralized hub. So in the future, even the AI-generated grocery list from your smart fridge will be encrypted and secure from prying eyes. Read...

Sir Peter Skelton - who was also an Environment Canterbury Commissioner - has been made Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to environmental law. Read...

Egypt`s environment ministry says the attack occurred in `deep waters outside of the designated swimming area`. Read...

A free New Year’s eve shindig on a downtown Invercargill street will feature 1000 prize giveaways and cater for families in an alcohol-free environment. Read...