Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 Review: Ultra Fast, Affordable Next-Gen Wi-Fi

Over the past few months, we have seen a spattering of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) routers enter the fray, including the ASUS ROG GT-AX11000 and Netgear Nighthawk AX8, both of which we recently put to the test. There was a caveat to our testing, however—we had to benchmark them using Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) hardware, because at the time, Wi-Fi 6 had not yet really permeated the marketplace on the client side. That's to say, practically every modern device with Wi-Fi connectivity is sporting a Wi-Fi 5 adapter. In a sense, companies like ASUS and Netgear had put the cart before the horse. It is not that...

Which Major AI Companies Care Most About Your Privacy: Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook?

by Brittany Goetting - Mon, Sep 30, 2019

Many companies are working hard to improve their artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. AI could impact everything from medicine to silly Instagram overlays and everything in between. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are all toiling to gain an edge in the AI field by leveraging their massive treasure troves of data, but what are their existing privacy policies and user data security track records? Which of these companies cares the most about protecting your privacy? Should you even trust Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google with your data? We examined the kind of data that is collected by...

Integer Scaling Explored: Sharper Pixels For Retro And Modern Games

by Ben Funk - Tue, Sep 24, 2019

It'd be a gross understatement to say that retro gaming has experienced something of a renaissance in recent years. Nintendo's NES Classic and SNES Classic mini-consoles or the Switch Online's NES and SNES catalogs might be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about older games, but the House of Mario is hardly alone. Sony stumbled into the retro scene last year, and both the Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 (by way of rights-holder Konami) will get their respective official love letters shortly. We'd be remiss, however, if we didn't think about the technology at the heart of...

Raspberry Pi 4 With Lakka May Be The Best Retro Game Console Yet

by Ben Funk - Fri, Sep 20, 2019

Back in June, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced their newest single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi 4. This tiny PC packs a quad-core Cortex A72 SoC from Broadcom and up to 4 GB of DDR4 memory at a very attractive price. While aimed at emerging markets for folks new to computers, the Pi really caught on with retro gamers and "makers" in general from the start. The latest Pi has a whole lot more computing horsepower than the last iteration, but software support hadn't quite caught up—until just now. The LibRetro team released Lakka version 2.3 with a ton of new features, a retro gaming...

Gears 5 Review: UE4 Performance, Guts And Glory Explored

by Ben Funk - Tue, Sep 10, 2019

Gears 5 officially drops on Tuesday, September 10th, but if you've got Xbox Ultimate Game Pass or Xbox Game Pass for PC you may have already played quite a bit of it. The newest Xbox One and PC exclusive launched for Microsoft's subscription service on Friday. The Coalition's newest Gears title brings with it a whole host of new graphical effects and HDR lighting to both the console and PC alike, thanks to the latest iteration of Epic's Unreal Engine 4. We took the PC version for a spin and spent some time testing how the latest Gears title runs.   Gears 5 features lots of details in the characters...

Control: A Visually Stunning Ray Traced Gem Of A Game Explored

by Ben Funk - Mon, Aug 26, 2019

Finnish game studio Remedy Entertainment makes some of the finest-looking, quirkiest games around. Perhaps best known for the Max Payne series (but not Max Payne 3, which was developed solely by Rockstar), Remedy has been publishing its games exclusively on Xbox and PC for the last several years. The studio has delivered interesting, story-driven games more recently in the form of cult survival classic Alan Wake and the more recent sci-fi thriller Quantum Break. Both games featured cutting-edge graphics for their respective times. For that reason, maybe it's no surprise that the...

Building An AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Liquid-Cooled Performance Desktop PC With Maingear

by Dave Altavilla, Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 13, 2019

AMD's Ryzen 3000 series processors have made a positive impact on the PC enthusiast market, the likes of which we haven't seen in years. From a performance-per-dollar standpoint, AMD's disruptive Zen 2 architecture offers a strong value proposition for new desktop PC builders from all walks of life and for many use cases including gaming, content creation and other workstation-class requirements. In fact, we were so impressed by Ryzen 3000 series processors in our launch review, that we decided we needed to have AMD's new architecture in our production flow here at HotHardware. This also presented...

Gigabyte Aorus CV27F Monitor Review: 27" Of 165Hz Curved Gaming Bliss

by Ben Funk - Fri, Aug 09, 2019

It seems like a great time to buy a shiny new monitor for a gaming PC. FreeSync 2-certified monitors are plentiful on the open market and multiple companies are actively pushing them out the door to fight for your hard-earned dollars. Since NVIDIA started supporting FreeSync earlier this year, both GeForce and Radeon owners can take full advantage of variable refresh rate goodness without paying the price premiums associated with buying certain displays with G-Sync modules inside. If you haven't already, the time is right to start shopping for a high-refresh-rate FreeSync display -- the...

Corsair RGB Gaming Mouse Round-Up: M55, Glaive Pro, Nightsword, Ironclaw Tested

by Chris Goetting - Tue, Aug 06, 2019

You've just finished meticulously routing cables in your new battlestation and are basking in the subtle glow of RGB LEDs, but your setup is not ready yet. Your old generic mouse has served you well, but its bargain-bin sensor is holding you back. Your crosshairs are unsteady and trying to select individual units is frustrating. Worst of all, it disrupts the svelte aesthetics of your new rig. Fortunately, Corsair has recently released a family of gaming mice with something to fit anyone's needs and budget. These newest additions are the ambidextrous M55 RGB Pro, the shape-shifting Glaive RGB...

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Review: More Bang For The Buck

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jul 23, 2019

The final member of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX Super-series officially arrives today, the GeForce RTX 2080 Super. In case you missed it, a couple of weeks back, NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super, to preemptively zing AMD in the lead-up to the Radeon RX 5700 series launch. The GeForce RTX Super-series will supplant and eventually replace their original, “non-Super” counterparts once availability dries up. At the top and bottom of the stack, however, the GeForce RTX 2060 and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti will remain. It is in the meat of the 20-series where the Supers...

ORIGIN PC EVO17-S Laptop Review: Powerful, Thin GeForce RTX-Powered Gaming

by Chris Ledenican - Fri, Jun 28, 2019

The EVO series is a member of Origin's thin-and-light family of gaming laptops. The words "thin-and-light" aren't often used when describing powerful gaming laptops, but considering Origin PC has managed to squeeze both an Intel 9th generation 6-core processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX series GPU into the EVO17-S, a machine that is less than an inch thick, the moniker fits. However, at about 6.6lbs the machine isn't exactly light either, though we digress... The Intel Core i7-9750H inside this gaming laptop is a high-end mobile processor that’s based on the Coffee Lake architecture...

HP Omen X Emperium 65 Review: Massive 144Hz 4K G-SYNC Gaming

by Brandon Hill - Tue, Jun 18, 2019

HP is hoping to offer gamers the best of both world with its Omen X Emperium 65. Although HP is careful not to call the Omen X Emperium 65 a television, per se, there's no escaping that fact that this is a massive display that would be more at home in your living room, den, or bonus room than your average computer desk. The Omen X Emperium measures a massive 65 inches diagonally, which puts it squarely in big-screen 4K HDTV territory. However, it borrows technology from the gaming world that we don't see in typical consumer-grade televisions, like NVIDIA G-SYNC and support for 144Hz refresh...

Lenovo Smart Clock Review: A Bedside Google Assistant

by Brittany Goetting - Thu, Jun 06, 2019

Humans have been dreaming up machines that take care of everyday household tasks since the Industrial Revolution. Smart home devices of various types have existed for several decades, but have become increasingly popular over the last few years as they have become more powerful, intelligent, and connected. Many consumers are now able to do everything from preheating their ovens to checking up on their home security cameras, with a simple tap on their smart device. Lenovo started to inch its way into the smart home market last year. The Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant was released...

Lenovo Legion Y740 Gaming Laptop Deep Dive Review With Benchmarks

by Chris Ledenican - Tue, May 07, 2019

Lenovo's line of Legion laptops and desktops are designed for gamers, but one complaint levied against last year's Legion Y730 model was the lack of more powerful graphics options. However, Lenovo was obviously listening to consumer feedback and the new Lenovo Legion Y740 we are looking at today, rights this previous wrong by giving potential buyers not one, but two powerful NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs to choose from. The base model comes with a GeForce RTX 2060, but if you're able to spend a few more greenbacks on your config, you can move up to a GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2070...