Search results for 'Entertainment' - Page: 6
| PC World - 3 Sep (PC World)TL;DR: For $89.97 through September 29, the Auto Wireless Car Adapter lets you stream movies and shows from your phone to your car’s screen, keeping passengers entertained on the go.
Using a car monitor for navigation is pretty common on summer road trips, but what about keeping your passengers entertained along the way? For $89.97 until September 29, the Auto Wireless Car Adapter transforms your car’s screen into a movie theater on wheels, letting you stream video content from your iOS or Android device. It’s an easy way to make long drives more enjoyable, especially when traveling with restless kids.
This adapter is versatile, connecting to most modern cars via Bluetooth, and it comes with a USB cable for additional connectivity options. It has dual-connect technology, which allows you to pair a second device simultaneously, making it simple to switch between devices if needed.
Pre-loaded with popular streaming apps like Netflix and YouTube, you can start watching as soon as you log in on your phone. With 16GB of built-in storage, you can also save videos directly to the device, and it even supports extra storage via a TF card (not included).
Whether you’re on a cross-country adventure or just running errands, this adapter turns your car monitor into an all-in-one entertainment system for passengers.
Until September 29, get the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto Wireless Adapter with streaming service support for $89.97 (reg. $149).
Apple CarPlay & Android Auto Wireless Adapter with Streaming Service Support (2024 Edition) – $89.97
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StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | BBCWorld - 29 Aug (BBCWorld)SM Entertainment said that Moon Tae-il, who is known as Taeil, is fully cooperating with the police investigation. Read...Newslink ©2024 to BBCWorld | |
| | | PC World - 28 Aug (PC World)If you’ve resisted moving to Windows 11 because you hate the Start menu…well, it appears that it may get slightly better.
Keen-eyed code hounds digging into recent Windows betas have unearthed a “category” view that organizes Start apps in a way that looks somewhat like the Windows 10 Start menu of old. The category view isn’t totally customizable — for example, you can’t create your own category of “awesome stuff” — but it appears that the apps will self-organize into categories like “entertainment,” “music,” and so on.
The latest revision was unearthed by Twitter/X user @phantomofearth, who dug up the changes inside the most recent Windows 11 beta, Build 22635.4082 to the Beta Channel. That’s a good thing, since it implies that these beta features will eventually see the light of day on your PC.
The catch is that, well, for now, they won’t. The new category view is apparently still enabled through special tools that can turn on hidden registry entries. It hasn’t even been acknowledged by Microsoft yet, as Neowin notes. But one of the criticisms levied at the Windows 11 Start menu is that it’s been so dang rigid, in that you haven’t been able to organize things as you’d like. Categories is a step forward.
The most recent beta also places media controls on the lock screen, so if you’re sitting in front of a PC without a Windows Hello camera, you can still access the controls without unlocking your PC. (Naturally, if you do have a Windows Hello camera, it will likely recognize you and unlock your PC, so…)
Windows continues to march towards a more general release of Windows 11 24H2 sometime this fall. Maybe Start’s Categories will end up as a feature? Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | PC World - 23 Aug (PC World)At a glanceExpert`s Rating
ProsImmersive contrastVery wide, vivid color gamutAppealing motion clarity at 175HzConsGeneric look and feelColor accuracy is a tad behind competitorsDoesn’t stand out from QD-OLED alternativesOur VerdictThe Gigabyte MO34WQC is a generically great QD-OLED display. Unfortunately, opting for its dull design doesn’t save you any cash.
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Shoppers looking to buy a 34-inch ultrawide OLED monitor have no shortage of options this summer, and that means the details matter. Gigabyte’s MO34WQC has an OLED panel with image quality and motion clarity typical of the competition, but tries to stand out with additional USB-C and USB connectivity. While this does improve its appeal, your decision is likely to be based on its price.
Gigabyte MO34WQC specs and features
The Gigabyte MO34WQC has a Samsung QD-OLED panel with a resolution of 3440×1440 and a refresh rate of up to 175Hz. This is similar to most QD-OLED monitors on the market, but behind the latest panels, which can hit 240Hz or higher.
Gigabyte offers an alternative model, the MO34WQC2, which has a QD-OLED panel with a higher maximum refresh rate of 240Hz. It’s also more expensive with a typical retail price of $1,000. The two monitors are similar enough that Gigabyte issued the same user manual for both, but we haven’t tested the MO34WQC2 yet.
Display size: 34-inch ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio
Native resolution: 3440×1440
Panel type: Anti-reflection QD-OLED
Refresh rate: Up to 175Hz
Adaptive sync: Adaptive Sync, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro
Ports: 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB-C with DisplayPort Alternate Mode and 18 watts USB Power Delivery, 2x USB-A 3.2 downstream, 1x USB-B 3.2 upstream, 1x 3.5mm headphone jack, 1x 3.5mm microphone jack
VESA mount: 100x100mm
Speakers: Yes, 2x 3-watt speaker system
Price: $949.99 MSRP, $849.99 typical retail
Panel aside, the MO34WQC’s specifications have a few highlights. The monitor features two HDMI 2.1 ports, in addition to DisplayPort and a USB-C port with DisplayPort support, for a total of four video inputs. The USB-C port also provides power, though not enough to charge a PC laptop quickly. Built-in speakers are included as well, which isn’t true of all competitors.
Further reading: See our roundup of the best monitors to learn about competing products.
Gigabyte MO34WQC design
The Gigabyte MO34WQC is sold as a gaming monitor but it’s not part of Gigabyte’s Aorus gaming sub-brand, so it delivers a more basic, workmanlike design. The front of the panel boasts slim black bezels on three sides and a small plastic chin at the bottom, while the rear of the panel is coated in black plastic that feels sturdy but looks unremarkable. The MO34WQC strikes a much more generic profile than design leaders like the Alienware AW3423DWF or Samsung Odyssey G85SB.
Gigabyte ships the monitor with an ergonomic stand that adjusts for height, tilt, and swivel. The stand has a wide base that takes up a fair bit of room on a desk, but the base is flat and not too thick, so it’s possible to place items on the space it occupies. The stand also feels sturdy and proves easy to adjust with modest effort. A 100x100mm VESA mount is available for use with a third-party monitor arm, stand, or wall mount.
The monitor is curved with a radius of 1800R, meaning the display panel would need to continue for 1,800 millimeters (about 6 feet) to form a full circle. The curve is noticeable but doesn’t draw too much attention, and most 34-inch QD-OLED monitors have settled on 1800R as the preferred curve radius for this size of monitor.
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Gigabyte MO34WQC design connectivity and menus
Gigabyte provides a total of four video inputs for the MO34WQC: two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, and a USB-C port, which also supports DisplayPort mode. While four video inputs are not unusual for a monitor in this price range, they do cover most use cases, and all available ports support the display’s maximum refresh rate.
The monitor also has two USB-A downstream ports, which can be driven either by the USB-C port or, if your PC lacks USB-C, through a USB-A to USB-B connection. Gigabyte includes a KVM switch function, allowing you to use the monitor as a KVM switch if you connect your wired keyboard and mouse to the monitor. The USB-C port has Power Delivery, but only up to 18 watts, which means it’s not a good choice for powering and charging a laptop with USB-C.
Gigabyte provides an intuitive and responsive joystick to control the on-screen menus. The menus themselves are large and well-organized but, despite their size, the font is still thin and a bit difficult to read. Gigabyte offers a good range of image quality options, including multiple color temperature, gamma presets, and six-axis color calibration — but that’s typical at this price point.
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Also typical is the monitor’s gaming features: It has a black equalizer to elevate the brightness of dark areas in games and some optional on-screen elements like a crosshair. There’s multiple aspect ratio modes, too, which emulate the size of a 24-inch or 22-inch display, as well as a 1:1 aspect ratio mode. Picture-by-picture and picture-in-picture modes are also available.
While the MO34WQC includes built-in speakers, they’re unremarkable. The maximum volume is adequate, and sound quality is clear in basic situations such as listening to podcasts. But games, movies, and other entertainment will quickly overwhelm them, resulting in muddy and unpleasant sound. External speakers or headphones are still recommended for most people.
Gigabyte MO34WQC SDR image quality
At this point, you might be sensing a theme: The Gigabyte MO34WQC is a good QD-OLED monitor, but not one that stands out from the crowd. This continues to be true when it comes to image quality. It’s a fantastic monitor for SDR content, but no more so than its QD-OLED peers.
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
The MO34WQC’s brightness is typical for an OLED monitor, with a maximum measured sustained SDR brightness of 245 nits. This is in line with other OLED monitors and is bright enough for use in a room with moderate light control. However, the monitor might appear dim or suffer from glare if used in a room with bright, sunlit windows. In that case, no OLED monitor is a great choice, and a brighter IPS-LED or Mini-LED display would be a better fit for your environment.
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Unsurprisingly, contrast is excellent, with an effectively infinite contrast ratio thanks to the monitor’s ability to achieve a perfect minimum luminance of zero nits. This is a defining characteristic of modern OLED display panels, so Gigabyte has no advantage here. Still, it contributes to the monitor’s overall image quality. An OLED display panel like the one on the MO34WQC achieves a level of depth and immersion LCD monitors can’t match.
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Color gamut is among the MO34WQC’s best traits but, once again, it’s similar to other monitors with a Samsung QD-OLED panel.
The Gigabyte achieves 100 percent of the sRGB gamut, 98 percent of DCI-P3, and 94 percent of Adobe RGB. That’s excellent coverage of each color gamut and close to the best available from any modern monitor. Photographers, videographers, digital artists, and other content will find the MO34WQC capable of displaying a dazzling range of color.
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
Matthew Smith / Foundry
The Gigabyte MO34WQC’s color accuracy is good but technically a bit less accurate out of the box than some competitors, which might sway some shoppers towards alternatives.
Related to that, we noticed the monitor had a gamma result of 2.4, which is off the target of 2.2, and a default color temperature of 6100K, which is warmer than the target of 6500K. In general, content on the monitor looked darker and slightly warmer than it should have with the monitor at its default settings. However, calibration can help resolve the issue.
Resolution comes in at 3440×1440, which is standard for a 34-inch QD-OLED ultrawide monitor. Sharpness is good thanks to the monitor’s pixel density of about 110 pixels per inch (PPI), but QD-OLED has subpixel issues which can cause pixelation or off-color effects around high-contrast edges and small fonts. It’s rarely a problem in gaming, but the monitor’s sharpness might prove inadequate if you spend a lot of time staring at Excel spreadsheets with a 10-point font.
On balance, the Gigabyte MO34WQC’s SDR image quality is what we’ve come to expect from Samsung QD-OLED display panels in this size and resolution. The monitor benefits from an outstanding contrast ratio and an extremely wide color gamut, though its brightness is low for brighter rooms.
HDR performance is okay for most games but might not be sufficient if you plan to watch a lot of HDR movies and have a critical eye for image quality.
Gigabyte MO34WQC HDR image quality
The Gigabyte MO34WQC supports HDR and is VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certified. Most QD-OLED monitors have this level of certification, and while the QD-OLED panel provides some benefit in HDR content, it’s not the best available.
I measured a maximum HDR brightness of 402 nits in a 10 percent window, meaning 10 percent of the display’s total area was lit while the rest remained entirely black. This result is not particularly impressive, though it’s fairly typical for a Samsung QD-OLED panel. In contrast, LG’s newest WOLED panels, which are available in monitors like the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP, can achieve a much higher maximum HDR brightness; for instance, the Asus hit 731 nits in a 10 percent window.
In practice, the Gigabyte’s HDR performance is passable. HDR Highlights, like a flash of lightning or a star in the night sky, will appear reasonably bright and deliver decent luminance detail. However, there’s a noticeable reduction in luminance detail compared to an LG WOLED panel or a good Mini-LED monitor. When viewing the “Gargantua” scene from Interstellar, for example, I noticed less gradient and details to the swirling, super-heated gas surrounding the black hole. This level of HDR performance is okay for most games but might not be sufficient if you plan to watch a lot of HDR movies and have a critical eye for image quality.
Gigabyte MO34WQC motion performance
Motion clarity is a strength for the Gigabyte MO34WQC, as is true for other QD-OLED monitors. The Gigabyte offers a maximum refresh rate of 175Hz and a quoted pixel response time of 0.03 milliseconds. It also supports adaptive sync through AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, which helps improve motion fluidity.
Testing motion clarity with fast-paced games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 showed that most of the game elements were easy to view during motion. Details like character sprites and health bars remained reasonably visible, even when scrolling quickly. Yet some small details, like character names, were at times difficult to make out, especially when the text’s color didn’t contrast well with the background. This is similar to other QD-OLED monitors with refresh rates in the 160Hz to 180Hz range and close to what you can expect to find on a 240Hz IPS or VA panel monitor.
The monitor’s enhanced refresh rate is most relevant to gamers but also improves responsiveness in everyday tasks on the Windows desktop by reducing input lag and improving clarity. Viewers who are sensitive to motion clarity will notice that actions like opening and closing windows, or moving them across the desktop, look smoother and feel more fluid compared to monitors with a lower refresh rate.
Should you buy the Gigabyte MO34WQC?
The proliferation of Samsung’s excellent QD-OLED panel technology has made it difficult for monitors that use it to stand out from the crowd. It’s a bit of a catch-22 for monitor makers: They want to use QD-OLED because it’s excellent, but when everyone uses it, it’s hard for any monitor to stand out.
That’s certainly the case for the Gigabyte MO34WQC. It’s a great display for SDR content and benefits from excellent motion clarity. However, like other QD-OLED displays, it could be brighter, and sharpness can be an issue when viewing smaller fonts or other fine details.
Ultimately, your decision to buy or skip the MO34WQC should come down to the price. At the moment, it retails for $850 at most online retailers. That’s not bad but hard to recommend when competitors like the Alienware AW3423DWF are now down to $700, and even Samsung’s Odyssey G85SB is available for $800. The MO34WQC becomes a strong pick if you find it for $750 or less — a price I wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit over the holiday shopping season. Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | PC World - 20 Aug (PC World)At a glanceExpert`s Rating
ProsAlluring ceramic-aluminum finishLarge touchpadGood battery lifeConsCeramic-aluminum only applies to display lidMulti-core CPU performance fails to impressIntegrated GPU doesn’t stand outExternal temperatures peak at uncomfortable levelsOur VerdictThe Asus Zenbook S 16 is an attractive laptop, but the Ryzen AI 9 delivers mediocre performance and external temperatures peak at 130 degrees under load.
In recent years, Windows laptops have suffered one noticeable disadvantage compared to MacBooks: with Windows, you can have incredible performance or excellent portability, but you can’t have both.
The Asus Zenbook S 16 is one of several new AMD-powered laptops looking to challenge that status quo. It features a Ryzen AI 9 365 processor, 32GB of RAM, and Radeon 880M integrated graphics. It’s a beautiful system but suffers several flaws.
Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more
Asus Zenbook S 16: Let’s talk about the elephant in the room
Before we even dive into the nitty-gritty of this review, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: The heat. The Asus Zenbook S 16 reaches unreasonable levels of warmth. It’s a major issue that drastically lowered our overall opinion of an otherwise attractive laptop.
I measured a maximum external temperature of 130.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This was near the center of the laptop towards the rear, beside (but not on) the fan vents. This peak temperature appeared only during CPU benchmarks, but the laptop was at times uncomfortable in less demanding situations. For example, syncing many large files on OneDrive can require more processor overhead than you might expect, and make the laptop warm significantly. And I’m apparently not alone in making this observation, as consumer reviews also complain the laptop can at times become too warm.
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
The only thing I can say to mitigate this problem is that it doesn’t always happen. In many situations, when browsing the web or watching a movie, the laptop is rather cool. But let’s be real: a temperature of 130 degrees is not acceptable under any workload for a laptop sold to consumers.
We reached out to Asus about this and it are now aware of the temperature problem, having validated our results with its own hardware. Asus engineers are currently working on adjusting the thermal policy, but weren’t able to provide us with an ETA just yet. Since this laptop is already on sale, however, we decided to publish this review now so consumers are aware of this crucial caveat with the Zenbook S 16’s default settings. Although PCWorld doesn’t typically update reviews, this particular review warrants one, as we’d like to reflect a potentially monumental change once the new thermal settings land.
But heat aside, how does the Zenbook S 16 stack up? Let’s dig in.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Specs and features
The Zenbook’s most important feature is undoubtedly AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 365. It packs a 10-core CPU composed of four standard Zen 5 cores and six less power-hungry Zen 5c cores, a Radeon 880M integrated GPU with 12 compute units, and an integrated AI neural processing unit capable of performing up to 50 trillion operations per second.
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 2.0GHz
Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X
Graphics/GPU: AMD Radeon 880M (12 CUs)
NPU: AMD XDNA NPU up to 50 TOPS
Display: 16-inch OLED touchscreen 2880×1800 at up to 120Hz, 16:10 aspect ratio
Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 solid state drive
Webcam: 1080p webcam with Windows Hello support
Connectivity: 2x USB-C 4.0 Gen 3 with DisplayPort Alternate Mode and Power Delivery, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x SDcard reader
Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition
Battery capacity: 78 watt-hours
Dimensions: 13.92 x 9.57 x .51 inches
Weight: 3.31 pounds
MSRP: $1,699.99
However, Asus doesn’t cut back elsewhere, as the laptop also features a 16-inch OLED display, 32 GB of memory, two USB 4.0 ports, Wi-Fi 7, and a terabyte of solid-state storage. Although not inexpensive at roughly $1,700, on paper it looks like decent value for money.
It’s an elegant, thin machine—too thin, apparently, to handle the Ryzen AI 9 365.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Design and build quality
The Asus Zenbook S 16 is one of several recent Asus laptops to use what the company calls a “ceraluminum” finish. It fuses ceramic to an aluminum surface to create a unique matte texture.
I like it, especially in the Scandinavian White finish of the Zenbook S 16 I received. I’ve criticized some Asus laptops for their dull and generic look, but the Zenbook S 16’s alluring finish helps it stand out from the crowd. Oddly, the white colorway is only available on the less expensive model I reviewed. Those with quicker Ryzen AI processors have a less ambitious gray colorway.
It’s not all good news when it comes to design, though. The ceraluminum coat applies to the lid, but not the interior, so the surface you’ll be touching most often looks and feels unremarkable. I also noticed a portion of the ceraluminum had worn away on the edge of the laptop, despite the fact that I haven’t dropped it or treated it roughly in any way, so that’s concerning.
Looks aside, the Zenbook S 16’s design focuses on pairing portability with performance. Despite its powerful chip and strong integrated graphics, the machine is only half an inch thick, and with thin bezels on all sides, it measures under 14 inches wide. It’s also light at about 3.3 pounds. This is close to as portable as it gets for a 16-inch machine, though a few outliers like LG’s Gram laptops, are noticeably lighter.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Keyboard, trackpad
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
The Asus Zenbook S 16 has a spacious, center-aligned keyboard that lacks a numpad. I prefer this keyboard design over those that include a numpad, but your preference may vary depending on your needs. In any case, the keys are large across the entire keyboard surface, so it feels comfortable and intuitive. A keyboard backlight is standard and does the job, though it offers just a few brightness options.
Key feel is just ok. Individual keys have good travel, but the keyboard’s bottoming action is soft and quiet. That’s good news if you’re worried about disturbing a coworker, but I’d prefer a bit more tactile feedback. Even so, the keyboard is functional, and I was able to type at high speed without issues.
The laptop is graced with a huge touchpad that measures almost 6 inches wide and nearly four inches deep. Touchpads of similar size can be found on competitors like the Dell XPS 16 or Razer Blade 16, but those are more expensive laptops, so it’s great to see a large touchpad on an upper mid-range laptop. The touchpad’s surface was responsive, yet I didn’t have any issues with unintended inputs.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Display, audio
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
Every Asus Zenbook S 16 ships with a 2880×1880 resolution OLED touchscreen, which is gorgeous in all the ways modern OLED displays usually are. It has an effectively infinite contrast ratio, a wide and vibrant color gamut, and better HDR performance than past OLEDs, as it can now reach up to 500 nits of brightness in HDR highlights. It’s an excellent display for most tasks.
It’s a glossy display, though, so glare is an issue and this is worsened by the display’s relatively low SDR brightness of up to 344 nits. OLED is still superior to an IPS-LCD display in most situations, but the display can prove hard to use in bright rooms.
The display is a touchscreen which, although of limited use in a clamshell laptop, is still nice to have and provides a useful alternative to the touchpad. The display also boasts a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, which can provide great motion clarity in 3D games. Additionally, it supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, which helps with motion fluidity in games.
An upward-firing speaker system is placed above the keyboard. Audio quality is clear and crisp at lower volumes but worsens as the volume is increased. At higher volumes, bass hits take on an abrupt, punchy quality while the highs become grating. It’s ok for podcasts, but music, movies, and other entertainment become grating to listen to.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Webcam, microphone, biometrics
A 1080p webcam is squeezed in the Asus Zenbook S 16’s top bezel. It delivered good video quality with attractive color reproduction and reasonable sharpness though, like most webcams, it will look grainy without proper lighting. The microphone array captured crisp, clear audio and I didn’t need to speak loudly to record at an acceptable volume.
Biometric login is available through Microsoft’s Windows Hello facial recognition. It provides a quick, easy way to log in to the laptop without typing a passcode or PIN. The laptop also supports presence detection, so it can lock the laptop and/or turn off the screen when you step away from it. This feature can save battery life if you sometimes step away from your laptop when it’s on battery power.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Connectivity
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
A pair of USB-C 4.0 ports can be found on the Asus Zenbook S 16’s left side. Both support DisplayPort alternate mode and power delivery, meaning either port can be used to charge the laptop or drive an external display. The laptop’s included 65W charger can charge the device through either of these ports.
The USB-C ports are accompanied by just one USB-A port, which is a minor disappointment. I would have liked a second USB-A port, as is available with the Acer Swift Edge 16, but some competitors don’t include any USB-A ports at all. There’s also an HDMI 2.1 port, an SDcard reader, and a 3.5mm audio jack, which provides a good range of connectivity options.
Wireless connectivity is good, too. The laptop supports Wi-Fi 7, the latest version of the Wi-Fi standard, and Bluetooth 5.4, the latest version of Bluetooth. This should make the laptop future-proof for wireless connectivity, as I expect these versions of each standard to remain relevant for five to 10 years.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Performance
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 is the least performant of the Ryzen AI 9 chips, but it still looks good on paper. It has a total of ten cores, four of which are conventional Zen 5 cores and six of which are more miserly Zen 5c cores. It also has AMD Radeon 880M integrated graphics with 12 compute units.
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
AMD’s new chip and the Asus Zenbook S 16 get off to a rough start in PCMark 10, a synthetic multi-workload test. Here, the Zenbook lags the pack with a score that’s notably lower than most of its peers and falls behind Intel Core Ultra 7 and only slightly beats the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H in the Lenovo Yoga 7i 16-inch. The Ryzen AI 9 branding implies the laptop should deliver top-tier performance, but that’s not the case here.
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
The result isn’t much better in Cinebench R23, where the Zenbook’s multi-core score lands way behind competitors like the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus, though it does manage to beat the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H. That perhaps isn’t a surprise, because the 10-core Ryzen AI 365 finds itself at a core count deficient when compared to the 16-core Intel Core Ultra 7 155H. Still, Intel’s margin of victory here is notable.
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
Handbrake delivers more bad news, as once again the Zenbook ends up achieving modest results when compared to other 16-inch laptops. It’s difficult to say anything positive about this result: there’s just not enough power on tap.
Taken as a whole, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365’s processor performance doesn’t look great. Don’t get me wrong: it’s certainly still fine for most tasks and feels snappy in day-to-day use. However, the Zenbook S 16 doesn’t impress in multi-core tests and seems generally slower than other laptops available at this price.
This might seem strange, because the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 is a new chip. However, its performance appears to be a sideways step from the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U. That makes AMD’s decision to brand this as a “Ryzen AI 9” chip look a bit misleading. This is a far cry from flagship performance, but it gets flagship branding.
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 has an AMD Radeon 880M integrated graphics solution with 12 compute units. It’s rather similar to the preceding Radeon 780M, and that comes across in its performance, though is updated to AMD’s RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture.
The Asus Zenbook S 16’s integrated graphics performance is good, but a long way from setting records, and not noticeably better than the prior generation. Intel Arc integrated graphics often falls behind (though we have seen it perform better in some other laptops). But the Acer Swift Edge 16, which had AMD’s prior Radeon 780M, effectively tied the AMD Radeon 880M. It’s another sideways step.
That doesn’t mean you can’t play PC games: on the contrary, many older titles run without issue. Even triple-A games like Cyberpunk 2077 are playable, but only at minimum image detail. I fired up 2077 at 1080p resolution and Low detail with FSR turned on and saw an average of 34 frames per second in the game’s benchmark with some dips below 30 frames per second. It’s definitely not the best experience, but it’s playable.
So, the Zenbook’s overall performance results weren’t great.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Battery life
Asus stuffs a modest 78 watt-hour battery in the Zenbook S 16. That’s not huge for a 16-inch laptop, but the efficient Ryzen AI processor seems to make the most of the power on tap.
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
IDG / Matthew Smith
We recorded about 13 and a half hours of battery life from the Zenbook S 16 in our standard battery test, which loops a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel.
That’s a solid result for a 16-inch laptop and defeats many competitors we’ve tested recently, including the Acer Swift Edge 16 and Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. It shows that consumers in this price bracket have a choice between performance and battery life.
However, the new wave of Copilot Plus PCs with Qualcomm chips, such as the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, have a notable lead in battery life. Many Qualcomm-powered laptops come close to, or exceed, 20 hours of endurance in our test.
Asus Zenbook S 16: Conclusion
The Asus Zenbook S 16 is a mediocre debut of AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 365 in a mid-range laptop. Performance isn’t bad, but it also fails to move the needle—and I find it more than a little strange that AMD brands this processor with the Ryzen AI 9 label despite the fact that, at least in this laptop, it delivers performance hardly different from the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U.What’s even less pleasant, however, is the laptop’s extremely high external temperatures under load, which make the laptop exceptionally uncomfortable to use. This makes the laptop’s performance results look even worse.
That’s a shame, because the Zenbook S 16 is otherwise a good mid-range laptop. I like the ceraluminum finish, the huge touchpad, and the gorgeous OLED display, all of which make the laptop pleasant to use day-to-day. It’s an elegant, thin machine—too thin, apparently, to handle the Ryzen AI 9 365. Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | PC World - 20 Aug (PC World)The school year is sneaking up on us and, believe me, you don’t want to be caught under-geared when the first day of class hits.
Whether you’re a wide-eyed freshman who’s entering college for the first time or you’re a seasoned student who has one final year to knock out, you’re going to need a solid laptop that offers reliable performance and long battery life. That’s just the facts.
That’s why Samsung’s current back-to-school sale is worth checking out. I’ve hand-selected the best Samsung laptop deals going on so you can save up to 30 percent on a laptop that fits your needs.
Best deals on productivity laptops
Samsung Galaxy Book4, Intel Core 7 CPU/15.6-inch touch display/16GB RAM/512GB SSD storage, $549.99 ($350 off)
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 is a well-rounded laptop and a great option for most people. It comes loaded with an Intel Core 7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage — zippy enough for work, assignments, surfing the web, sending last-minute emails to your professor, and more.
The Galaxy Book4 also has a number of positive reviews on Samsung’s website. Buyers claim this laptop runs fast and the huge display makes “entertainment and gaming a lot of fun.”
Best deals on premium laptops
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, Snapdragon X Elite CPU/14-inch AMOLED touch display/16GB RAM/512GB eUFS storage, $999.99 ($350 off)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 360, 2-in-1 form factor/Intel Core 7 CPU/15.6-inch touch display/16GB RAM/512GB SSD storage, $999.99 ($350 off)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro 360, Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU/16-inch AMOLED touch display/16GB RAM/1TB SSD storage/S Pen included, $1,299.99 ($600 off)
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU/Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU/16-inch touch display/16GB RAM/1TB SSD storage, $1,799.99 ($774.99 off)
The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge offers a lightweight form factor, a beautiful touchscreen display, and a super power-efficient Snapdragon X Elite processor.
When PCWorld reviewed a slightly different configuration of this laptop, we were floored by the 21+ hour battery life. We expect this model that’s on sale to have similar battery life results, which is why I feel it’s a fantastic option for anyone who travels often.
The Galaxy Book4 Edge also weighs just 2.62 pounds, which is so light it may float up into the clouds if you aren’t careful. Other cool features include a 14-inch AMOLED touchscreen display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 512GB of SSD storage, and two USB 4.0 ports.
Further reading: Our daily roundup of the best current laptop deals Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | BBCWorld - 15 Aug (BBCWorld)The entertainment giant says the terms of a free trial prevent it from being sued for wrongful death. Read...Newslink ©2024 to BBCWorld | |
| | | BBCWorld - 11 Aug (BBCWorld)Some flyers are giving up in-flight entertainment and even drinking water but experts warn it could be dangerous. Read...Newslink ©2024 to BBCWorld | |
| | | PC World - 10 Aug (PC World)At a glanceExpert`s Rating
ProsSolid antivirus protectionComprehensive protection against online threatsConsNotable performance impact on some PCsUser interface is a little scatteredMany of the tools and services feel a bit underbakedPassword manager is difficult to useOur VerdictMcAfee+ Ultimate offers strong antivirus protection and a vast array of online protections, but its apps, services, and tools could use more polish. Its scans also can tangibly decrease performance on mid-range and budget PCs. As attractive as this comprehensive all-in-one package is, it’s currently a hard sell.
Among the top-tier antivirus software plans, McAfee’s version is an especially loaded offering—and less common in how it bundles together an extraordinary number of online protections.
Many rivals have a premium antivirus suite, then offer services like a VPN, password manager, and identity protection and recovery as separate subscriptions. McAfee instead stuffs everything into one package. This simplifies how much you have to think about, of course, but there’s just one problem—this security suite lacks the polish you’d expect of such a premium product.
Further reading: See our roundup of the best antivirus software for Windows PCs to learn about competing products.
What does McAfee+ Ultimate include?
The full list of features in McAfee’s flagship subscription is exhaustive. Antivirus, link screening, and firewall protection are just the start. You get other major online protections as well—password manager, VPN, web link screening, identity monitoring on the dark web, tracker removal, and if you’re signed up for a family plan, parental controls.
McAfee next throws in its Social Privacy Manager, which offers privacy settings suggestions for social media services; Scam Protection, an AI-powered tool to help screen for risky links in text messages; Online Account Cleanup, which helps you find and delete unused accounts; Personal Data Cleanup, which scans data broker sites and helps you remove yourself from them; and live assistance in setting up your plan’s privacy and identity protections.
McAfee+ Ultimate’s list of online protections is exhaustive.
McAfee+ Ultimate’s list of online protections is exhaustive.
McAfee+ Ultimate’s list of online protections is exhaustive.
Finally, on top of all that are financial protections. McAfee+ Ultimate will keep tabs on your bank and credit card transactions, investment and loan account activity, potential bank takeovers, possible payday loans taken in your name, and your credit reports and score. It also offers a centralized interface for locking your credit and placing security freezes on credit, banking, and utilities. And the company provides direct assistance with identity theft restoration, as well as up to $25,000 of coverage for losses related to ransomware and up to $2 million related to identity theft losses and restoration efforts. McAfee even helps with replacing identification, credit, and debit cards for a lost wallet.
Family plans allow you to share these benefits among a maximum of six people—two adult accounts and four child accounts. Each adult account gets its own loss coverage, for a total of $50K ransomware and $4 million for identity theft.) And only adult accounts have access to the data broker and financial protections.
How much does McAfee+ Ultimate cost?
When you buy McAfee+ Ultimate through the McAfee website, an individual subscription is $200 for the first year, then goes up to a full price of $280 afterward. A family plan costs $250 for the first year, and then reverts to $425 per year thereafter. Plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee. Be aware that McAfee enrolls users into auto-renewal by default—and charges for the next year a whole 30 days before your current subscription ends.
McAfee+ Ultimate (Unlimited devices)
$200 for the first year (Individual plan)
$280 per year thereafter (Individual plan)
$250 for the first year (Family plan)
$425 per year thereafter (Family plan)
All McAfee+ Ultimate plans let you protect an unlimited number of devices, with software support for Windows, Windows for Arm, macOS, ChromeOS, iOS, and Android. (Not all features are multiplatform, however.) Family subscriptions offer up to six seats, split between two adult and four child accounts.
Unfortunately, you can’t bring down the cost of a McAfee+ Ultimate plan further by purchasing it from an online retailer. You can only get it through McAfee.
Key features of McAfee+ Ultimate
Installation and user interface
The McAfee app has a clean and modern look, but it feels oddly disorganized despite its simple aesthetic. On the home screen, you get just four shortcuts to main features—antivirus, VPN, Tracker Remover, and Personal Data Cleanup. A fifth helps you add McAfee to more devices, and the sixth leads off to McAfee’s protection score, which rates how completely you’ve set up your plan’s protections.
The main menu for accessing most of McAfee+ Ultimate’s features.
The main menu for accessing most of McAfee+ Ultimate’s features.
The main menu for accessing most of McAfee+ Ultimate’s features.
To access all of McAfee’s major features, you must use the left navigation bar. Clicking on the icon with four squares opens a slide-out menu with scanning and web protection options; access to the VPN; firewall info; shortcuts to tools; and links to identity and privacy monitoring, as well as the password manager.
The bottom-most icon in the left navigation bar leads to subscription info, general settings, app updates, help, and privacy and legal terms. These are very simple, and there’s not much you can configure.
Frustratingly, the most premium parts of the McAfee+ Ultimate subscription are nowhere to be found within the app. Instead, you must to head to the McAfee Protection Center portal site (protection.mcafee.com). There you’ll find the links to financial transaction and credit monitoring, parental controls (if you have a family plan), and the Social Privacy Manager browser extension.
The McAfee Protection Center website.
The McAfee Protection Center website.
The McAfee Protection Center website.
Until you’ve poked around thoroughly, remembering if a feature is located in the McAfee app, a separate app, one of three McAfee websites, or a web browser extension can take a while. The apps and the websites don’t always behave quite as expected, either. When I set up Identity Monitoring, adding a second email address triggered new findings (alas), but those results wouldn’t show until I’d refreshed the website. Nothing was wrong, per se, but the experience lacked the kind of polish I expected from an expensive, top-tier security suite.
Unfortunately, this vibe extends through much of McAfee+ Ultimate’s features—not just the methods that you access them through.
Virus, malware, and threat protection
Real-time protection
As you use your computer, McAfee+ Ultimate continually evaluates the files you open and also monitors apps for unusual behavior. While the program does a good job on this front (it earns high marks in independent testing—more info on that below), you’re largely removed from the process, as you never get to see behind the curtain.
Unlike with major rivals, you can’t do things like specifically select folders to protect from ransomware, change settings related to email attachment and script scanning, choose which apps have access to your webcam, or see how external drives are handled. The interface is so simplified that you only have the choice of leaving real-time scanning on, or turning it off. (Presumably only for troubleshooting purposes—otherwise, you lose much of the software’s point.)
For protection while surfing the web, you must install the McAfee WebAdvisor browser extension, which scans for dangerous links and content as you browse online. It gives search engine results safety ratings, warns you about clicking on a possible bad site, and blocks malicious content on compromised but legitimate sites. It works well enough, but oddly, Bing is not on the list of supported search engines. (Sorry, Bing fans.)
The McAfee WebAdvisor extension in action—those green checkmarks are its safety ratings.
The McAfee WebAdvisor extension in action—those green checkmarks are its safety ratings.
The McAfee WebAdvisor extension in action—those green checkmarks are its safety ratings.
Scheduled and manual scans
By default, McAfee+ Ultimate scans your system once a month, during the wee hours of the morning. You can change the day to another of the three presets, or create your own custom schedule that runs weekly, every other week, or the first week of the month.
If you want to run a manual scan, you get just two options: Quick and Full. Quick focuses just on PC locations typically targeted by threats, while Full examines all the drives and folders on the PC (except for network drives). You can also scan individual files and folders by right-clicking on them and choosing Scan in the context menu that appears.
Firewall
Rather than replace Windows’ built-in firewall, the Advanced Firewall feature works alongside it. It lets Windows screen incoming connections, while McAfee evaluates outgoing connections. If an app tries to connect to what McAfee believes is a bad site, it’ll put it on the block list—at which point you can leave it there, or choose to allow the connection.
Scam Protection
McAfee recently launched a new AI-based tool to help screen text messages for fraudulent links. For it to work, you have to install the McAfee Security & Wi-Fi Privacy app (iOS) or the McAfee Security: VPN Antivirus app (Android). Afterward, it runs in the background, screening messages. To see any that are flagged as dangerous, you’ll have to go to your filtered messages for iOS. On Android, you can see reports about questionable text messages within McAfee’s app.
Scam Text Protection in the Android app.
Scam Text Protection in the Android app.
Scam Text Protection in the Android app.
VPN
On PC, you can access McAfee’s VPN in two ways—through the McAfee app, or by separately downloading and installing McAfee Safe Connect. The main difference between them is their interfaces.
In the McAfee app, the controls are consolidated onto one screen. You can turn the VPN on or off, select or change your location, choose auto-connect settings, and turn on the safe reconnect feature (aka kill switch—it automatically shuts off the internet if your VPN connection is disrupted).
If you instead use the McAfee Safe Connect app, it separates VPN use from the settings, putting them on different screens. You can view usage stats and help files related to Safe Connect as well. The Safe Connect VPN works on PC, Chromebooks, and smartphones, with a limit of five devices connected simultaneously.
When using the Safe Connect app, I ran into some bugs. After I installed it and connected to a server for the first time, I couldn’t disconnect afterward—it was only fixed after a reboot. Safe Connect also behaved erratically if I tried starting it before my Wi-Fi finished connecting. A pop-up notification appeared saying I had to upgrade, and then wouldn’t clear. I had to force-quit the program and restart to resolve the issue.
The VPN interface within the McAfee app is cleaner and more modern.
The VPN interface within the McAfee app is cleaner and more modern.
The VPN interface within the McAfee app is cleaner and more modern.
This VPN offers servers in 47 countries, which span Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Password Manager
McAfee’s password manager, True Key, covers the basics and not much more. Presumably, the company kept things simple on purpose, but it’s at the expense of better security. For example, your two-factor authentication methods are limited—there’s no way to use OTP software codes, much less a hardware key.
More damningly, True Key’s login protections are flawed. New devices require verification through an emailed link before you can log in. However, McAfee doesn’t always send that email before the login request expires, which happens after about a minute. Sometimes the email wouldn’t hit my inbox until ten minutes after the login attempt. I almost gave up at one point, and then the system worked for a brief moment and I managed to successfully complete the process. This isn’t a new issue, either—look at McAfee’s forums and you’ll see complaints about this dating back years.
McAfee True Key is a simple, basic password manager, but its weaknesses make it feel unreliable.
McAfee True Key is a simple, basic password manager, but its weaknesses make it feel unreliable.PCWorld
McAfee True Key is a simple, basic password manager, but its weaknesses make it feel unreliable.PCWorld
PCWorld
You’re also only able to use True Key through a web browser extension or a mobile app (iOS and Android). If you’re ever in a position where you can only log into a website for access, you’re out of luck. Plus, when you first setup the service, you have to manually enter an activation code—and if you can’t find the email with that information, you’ll have to dig into McAfee’s account portal (head to Downloads & devices) or McAfee’s Protection Center (My protection) to find it.
All this to say, True Key doesn’t feel like a reliable feature. You’re better off using a standalone service—even a good free password manager outperforms McAfee’s offering by a lot.
Parental controls
Parental controls are managed through a separate piece of software called Safe Family. You install it on the device(s) used by the child, but also on a device managed by the guardian—no web interface exists for monitoring your kid’s usage.
Each child gets their own profile, so you can tailor your restrictions based on age and needs. Safe Family automatically applies default rules based on the stated age of the kid—for example, the app automatically blocked my (imaginary) 13-year old from viewing dating, gambling, and sexually explicit sites, but let them use search engines and view streaming, entertainment, and shopping sites. You can further refine (or overhaul) the default settings, though.
McAfee’s parental controls may look a bit outdated, but they’re easy enough to navigate.
McAfee’s parental controls may look a bit outdated, but they’re easy enough to navigate.
McAfee’s parental controls may look a bit outdated, but they’re easy enough to navigate.
App rules can be created as well, which let you allow or block specific apps on Windows, Android, and iOS. (These are the only devices compatible with Safe Family.) Screen time limits can also be put in place, though you only get two different rules. One’s meant for the weekdays and the other for the weekends, but you can adjust as you see fit.
You can track device location for phones as well, including visits to known places (as set in the app), though I had trouble getting it to work consistently on Android.
Identity and financial protections
McAfee+ Ultimate’s premium features—that is, the reason you pay so much more for this plan compared to the others below it—lie in its identity and financial protections, and they cover quite a bit of ground.
Identity Monitoring scans data from breaches and leaks for your personal information. You have to provide your details to McAfee, which allows you to add credit cards, bank accounts, email addresses, usernames, and phone numbers (up to 10 each); tax IDs, passports, driver’s licenses, and health IDs (up to two each); and your social security number (SSN) and date of birth. The results aren’t always as helpful as they could be; for one email address, several of the listed breaches didn’t give the name of the breach or circumstances, making it harder to know what specific follow-up steps to take. McAfee only gives general advice on how to protect yourself, which is helpful for security newbies but less so for more seasoned internet users.
Personal Data Cleanup helps you find which data brokers have you in their system, and assists with removing you from those sites. Data brokers comb public records and other databases to collect info like your name, current and past addresses, birthdate, phone number, and the names of your relatives. In order for the scan to work, you’ll have to provide your name, birthdate, and full physical address. (You can also optionally add an email address and up to three phone numbers.) McAfee will send removal requests on your behalf, too, but the results can take anywhere from 30 to 45 days. However, for some data brokers, you may have to still follow up on your own.
McAfee’s identity monitoring helps keep track of your leaked personal data on the web.
McAfee’s identity monitoring helps keep track of your leaked personal data on the web.
McAfee’s identity monitoring helps keep track of your leaked personal data on the web.
Investment, 401(K), bank, and credit card transaction tracking is done through Envestnet Yodlee, which handles this monitoring for McAfee. It centralizes the types of alerts you may already be receiving (provided you set them up) from your financial institutions. You must log into your accounts via McAfee’s Protection Center portal to link them to Yodlee.
Credit monitoring keeps track of changes to your credit reports at the three major bureaus (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax). McAfee also gives you access to your daily credit score, lets you lock and unlock your credit, and helps set up security freezes for credit, banking, and utilities as desired.
Identity theft coverage includes the previously mentioned $2 million to cover losses and restoration expenses, as well as $25,000 for losses related to ransomware. (Again, the family plan offers this coverage to each adult account, for a total of $4 million identity theft coverage and $50,000 ransomware coverage.) Identity theft assistance includes access to “identity restoration experts,” or agents who help clean up the aftermath of identity theft. (Note: You must grant a limited power of attorney to McAfee in order for agents to act on your behalf and handle the bulk of the work.) McAfee also offers lost wallet protection, where the company helps cancel and replace identification, credit, and debit cards that are lost or stolen with your wallet.
Additional features
Browser extensions
McAfee+ Ultimate isn’t complete if you don’t install its affiliated browser extensions—though arguably, only one of them is vital.
As mentioned above, McAfee WebAdvisor scans for risky links and content while you browse online, though it won’t evaluate Bing search results. You won’t see a safety rating for any of the links, the way you would for a search through Google. (Yahoo and AOL are still supported, though.) You also won’t immediately see them for the Chrome extension—I had to go into the extension’s settings, scroll down to Secure Search, and choose Tell me if a search result is safe in any search engine.
In Chrome, I had to manually change the extension settings to show the safety ratings for search engine results.
In Chrome, I had to manually change the extension settings to show the safety ratings for search engine results.
In Chrome, I had to manually change the extension settings to show the safety ratings for search engine results.
Meanwhile, McAfee True Key—the password manager in the security suite—won’t work on PC unless you install the extension. You can’t log via a website, as you might another service. That said, True Key isn’t my pick for a good password manager, as explained above. I recommend going with a different password manager and installing its browser extension instead. (It makes using a password manager less cumbersome.)
For strengthening your online privacy, you can also install McAfee’s Social Privacy Manager extension. It screens the privacy settings for Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google accounts, then suggests improvements. McAfee’s findings are pretty decent—but asking the extension to apply the changes doesn’t always work.
File shredder
To prevent someone from recovering a deleted file, McAfee offers a built-in tool called File Shredder, which overwrites the data using the Department of Defense (DoD) standard. You can use the tool to blanket-erase whole batches of files at once (Recycling Bin contents, temporary internet files, or a custom folder of your choosing), or individual files.
However, this tool comes with one big caveat—you should only use it for files and folders stored on a hard-disk drive. This method of secure erasing doesn’t work as well on solid-state drives (SSDs), which are found in most modern laptops and desktops. It can also shorten their lifespans. You’re better off using other methods for securely wiping an SSD.
Online Account Cleanup
Unused online accounts can hold data you might not want to leave on file—like your credit card details or home address. Data breaches are just too common these days, and when they happen, you could end up losing sensitive data. It can be hard to keep track of the riskiest sites to leave unattended, though.
McAfee tries to speed up the process of cleaning up dormant accounts with its Online Account Cleanup tool, which you’ll use through the McAfee Protection Center portal. It scans one email address from Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo for associated online accounts, then flags the ones it thinks are vulnerable. If you no longer need the account, you can have McAfee delete it for you—or at least, try to. I found that, like McAfee’s other privacy tools, Online Account Cleanup is helpful for pointing you in the right direction, but doesn’t always eliminate as much work as it’s supposed to.
Social Privacy Manager
The Social Privacy Manager actually suggests useful changes to privacy settings.
The Social Privacy Manager actually suggests useful changes to privacy settings.
The Social Privacy Manager actually suggests useful changes to privacy settings.
If you need help locking down your social media accounts—that is, keeping your private life out of the hands of advertisers and random snoops—McAfee offers a browser extension that scans five different services (Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google), then suggests privacy changes. The proposed changes are generally good, but the issue I ran into was having the extension automatically make them. I also had some problems manually finding the settings in order to do the updates myself.
Customer support
If you need help with McAfee+ Ultimate, you can find it on McAfee’s support website (either through the knowledge database or the virtual assistant), community forums, social media (Facebook, X/Twitter, and YouTube), or by contacting the company though chat or phone. You can reach out to McAfee at any time of day, though the support pages are generally an easy place to start.
However, one problem with McAfee’s support is that their help files can be out of date—some don’t accurately reflect how the interface looks and behaves now, making it harder to figure out what’s a currently available feature (and how to access it).
Updates and maintenance
By default, updates run automatically in the background. For best protection, it’s best to leave this setting as-is. However, if for some reason you’re on a limited internet connection, you can also choose to tweak the settings so that updates are downloaded automatically but not installed automatically, or only be notified when updates are available.
You can also perform a manual check for updates by heading to Help and then Update App.
Performance
For online protection, McAfee performs well in tests performed by leading security research institutes. In AV-Test’s zero-day attack and malware tests for March and April 2024 (the most current results released by the organization), McAfee’s engine caught 99.3 percent of the 316 zero-day malware samples in March, and 100 percent in April. For widespread and prevalent malware, it caught 100 percent of the 19,228 samples.
In AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection test for February through May 2024, McAfee detected 98.8 percent of the 498 test cases, with four false positives. (A false positive is when the antivirus software blocks a legitimate website or download.) The samples cover exploits like drive-by downloads, malicious web addresses, and URLs linking directly to malware. The software performs similarly in AV-Comparatives’ March 2024 malware protection test, which tests the ability to detect and block malware locally on a PC. When connected to the internet, McAfee does a good job of on both fronts, with a 98.7 percent online detection and 99.91 percent online protection rate of the 10,053 samples.
AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for February through May 2024.
AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for February through May 2024.
PCWorld
AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for February through May 2024.
PCWorld
PCWorld
However, McAfee’s weakness is its offline detection rate in the same malware protection test—it caught threats only 58.7 percent of the time. It also had a higher false positive rate, with 19 false alarms. Put another way, McAfee won’t protect your system well without an active internet connection, and it has a slightly higher chance of mistakenly detecting a threat. For comparison, Microsoft’s Windows Defender (which is free) has an offline detection rate of 63.1 percent, while the top performers clock in at 95 percent and above.
McAfee did not take part in AV-Comparatives’ November 2023 Advanced Threat Protection Test. It evaluates an antivirus program’s resistance to targeted threats like fileless attacks and malicious scripts.
AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for March 2024.
AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for March 2024.
PCWorld
AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for March 2024.
PCWorld
PCWorld
When running heavy scans, McAfee can notably affect performance on mid-range and budget PCs. Running a continuous full scan during PCMark 10’s benchmark, which simulates web browsing, video chatting, gaming, and editing in open-souce programs like GIMP and LibreOffice for images and documents, dropped the test scores by about 21 percent.
More dramatically, our UL Procyon scores dropped by 41 percent. This particular benchmark simulates using Microsoft Office apps—constantly working in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, with a fair amount of editing and updating multiple documents. Meanwhile, in Handbrake, the time it took to encode a large video into a smaller 1080p30 file increased by almost 29 percent.
That’s not the whole picture, though. McAfee isn’t a complete killer of performance. When the app was quietly hanging out in the background, watching for threats, benchmark scores in PCMark, Procyon, and Handbrake were virtually the same as before McAfee was installed. And these numbers don’t show how McAfee usually handles full scans. After an initial thorough examination of all files on a PC and any attached external drives, subsequent ones look for new or altered files, which speeds up the scan time considerably. (That then reduces the impact on system resources.)
All this to say, if you don’t transfer or update a ton of files on your system often, you won’t see as much of an effect. But if you do, and you’re running mid-range to budget hardware, then you could feel the impact of a scan while working. McAfee does schedule its full scans for off-hours by default, though.
This error window popped up randomly and frequently enough to be irritating.
This error window popped up randomly and frequently enough to be irritating.
This error window popped up randomly and frequently enough to be irritating.
Instead, I’d say McAfee’s biggest performance issue is a bit different right now—and relates to how it behaves in Windows. After completing my hardware benchmarks, a Windows error notification began to pop up periodically (“mc-wns-client.exe – This application could not be started”) while I evaluated the software features. The steps suggested by McAfee’s help forums—updating the Windows App SDK, uninstalling and reinstalling McAfee+ Ultimate, and manually downloading and installing the latest Windows App Runtime package—did not solve the problem, either.
When I spoke to the company about the issue, McAfee said it was still working with Microsoft, and that a resolution was expected in “early 2024.” That’s a long time to wait for a pretty annoying issue to go away.
How private is my data when using McAfee?
With the amount of sensitive details McAfee asks for—social security number, addresses, birthdate, etc—you might wonder how safe it is to hand over the whole set to one entity. McAfee outlines how it handles your info in its privacy and legal terms, but I also asked the company who specifically sees the data and the protocols used to safeguard it.
McAfee says that it partners with Transunion (one of the three major US credit bureaus) for matters related to identity theft and power of attorney, and Yodlee for transaction monitoring. As for the data itself, McAfee says AES-256 encryption is used, and the engine that monitors for threats keeps only a hash of the values. (That is, it stores the result of encrypting your social security number or full name, etc, rather than the details themselves.) It’s only decrypted when a user views reports related to these sensitive pieces of information. McAfee says those unencrypted, plaintext versions of the data is only ever kept on the backend server, and “never exposed to the front end.”
While this methodology is reasonable enough, you’ll have to decide for yourself how comfortable you are with it—as well as the general principle of having your most sensitive info so centralized.
Conclusion
With more polish, McAfee+ Ultimate would be an ideal security suite for someone who wants an easy-to-understand yet still comprehensive set of online protections. Its interface has a look and feel that’s friendly toward people less familiar with online security; the antivirus protection is solid; and its features span everything you’d want to safeguard. But until its tools and services can nail their promises, and the performance glitches are resolved, McAfee+ Ultimate is a hard sell right now—especially at full price.
Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article. Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | PC World - 9 Aug (PC World)I never really thought you could have too many power outlets or USB ports — but then I saw today’s deal.
Amazon is selling this SUPERDANNY Surge Protector for just $25.99, a 28 percent discount off its normal price, and this glorious behemoth of a power strip verges on overkill… in the best way possible.
The SUPERDANNY (we don’t normally capitalize full brand names, but SUPERDANNY!) offers up a heaping helping of not one, not two, but 22 grounded three-prong outlets for all your heavy-duty electrical demands.
What, that’s not enough? There are also six USB charge ports on tap — one Type-C, the rest Type-A — so you can plug in your phones and other USB-powered devices, bringing the total number of charging sockets up to a whopping 28. Wild!
This heavy-duty surge protector comes with a thick 6.5-foot cord (longer lengths are available for more money) and four keyholes on its flat rear, making it easy to mount almost anywhere. SUPERDANNY can deliver up to 1,875W/15A of total power to the devices you connect to it.
Amazon buyers go nuts for this thing: It averages a 4.8-star rating across nearly 10,000 reviews, and Amazon says SUPERDANNY “has fewer returns than average compared to similar products.”
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Get this SUPERDANNY Surge Protector for $26Buy now on Amazon Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
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