Roundup articles

With every new Wi-Fi generation come new devices that take advantage of all the new standard capabilities. Today we're testing Wi-Fi 6 systems from Asus, Netgear, Arris, TP-Link and Linksys to see how they perform.

Mesh Wi-Fi routers are a recent trend in the networking market and aim to bring some of the advanced features of enterprise networking systems to the consumer. How well do they work, and what performance benefit do you get by switching to one? We'll take a deep dive today into the top players on the market to find out.

The SSD market can seem overwhelming at first glance, but we'll tell you, it is a great time to upgrade your storage considering ever-lower prices and two distinct segments that go from fast and relatively affordable to extremely fast and more costly solutions, which we're looking at today: NVMe solid storage.

SSD technology grew stale after saturating the SATA 6Gb/s bus, bringing minor improvements and making up for it with price cuts. With new PCIe and M.2 drives presenting a high performance alternative, it's time for a roundup. We review fourteen of the best consumer-grade SSDs using the SATA, PCI Express or M.2 interfaces and tell you what to buy.

I have long relied on desktop speakers when playing games. Now that I am a father, however, those speakers are too loud for me to enjoy the combined 500 Watts RMS of 5.1 audio. Having only ever bought relatively cheap headsets with proportionally cheap audio quality, it seems about time for me to upgrade. In the process of settling on a new headset, I've acquired six sub-$100 gaming-oriented models from separate hardware manufacturers to compare in a roundup.

PC gamers have got a pretty great thing going. Interesting, experimental indie games? Yup. The shiniest, most visually impressive versions of big-budget games? Yeah, they get a lot of those, too. Let's say you've recently joined the ranks of the PC elite. What games should you install? Well, you can start out with the games listed on this roundup.

Didn't clear your schedule to track E3? Here are 40 plus PC game trailers from the event along with expected release dates and launch platforms for each title, ordered alphabetically. Some highlights include Batman: Arkham Knight, The Division, Star Wars: Battlefront, Far Cry 4 and the much anticipated PC version of Grand Theft Auto V.

Twenty-thirteen has been an eventful year marked by a changing landscape in the computing world, product refreshes in the mobile scene, a new generation of consoles, the rise of Bitcoin and the harsh realization that pretty much nothing you do online (and sometimes offline) is private. Our yearly recount of the most relevant tech happenings awaits...

With many hot PC game releases scheduled over the coming months, it seems like a fine opportunity to step up your game with a new mouse this holiday season if you were thinking about pitting your trusty, dusty retail rodent against Battlefield 4. Come along as a dozen mice compete for spots in our holiday and PC buying guides, and ultimately for your cash.

Screw Apple, you say. You don't need to enter their closed system to taste sweet mobile bliss! Look, you have a perfectly fine Android handset or tablet on your person. It's still wrapped in plastic, even. Once you remove that protective layer, it's Fun City! We've got you covered on games, you non-conformist rebel.

Google's mobile OS keeps proliferating on more and more handsets and the games hitting that hardware keep getting better. Among our picks are Angry Birds Star Wars II, which is a mild improvement over the original but an improvement nonetheless, as well as Reaper, Temple Run 2, The Room, and more.

As the year comes to an end it's time to look back at the most interesting and relevant tech stories of 2012. Numerous trends consolidated during 2012: Apple's dominance in the sector, mobile growth, fast-paced releases on the smartphone world, the Windows 8 launch, only to name a few.

This year we have divided stories in 12 heavily packed categories, with nearly 500 hand-picked headlines total. Feel free to jump around between your favored topics, but try not to miss the tech culture section where we revisit some of the most entertaining stories we covered this year. Here's our take on 2012...

Hardware Apple The Web CPU/Graphics Google Tech Culture Software Microsoft Gaming Mobile Patent Wars Security

The major issue with SSD adoption over the past few years has been price, the astronomically high price when you are counting in hundreds of gigabytes. In today's comparison review we are going to look at 8 popular SSDs that cost $100 or less and feature capacities of up to 128GB.

The contenders include the OCZ Vertex 4 128GB, Samsung 840 120GB and Crucial m4 128GB. The most affordable high-capacity SSD featured in our roundup is the Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB, while the OCZ Vertex 4 64GB, Crucial m4 64GB and Samsung 830 64GB should all offer stellar performance for under $80.

By mid 2012, SSD prices fell through the floor, costing approximately half as much as last year. Granted, that's still nowhere near as economical as standard hard drives, so companies have continued to offer affordable solutions in addition to their high-end series to drive sale volumes.

Such is the case with OCZ and the Agility 4, a budget-minded counterpart to the Vertex 4 that employs cheaper NAND flash memory. In similar fashion we recently saw the arrival of the Crucial v4 series. With both the Agility 4 and Crucial's v4 priced at just under $200 for 256GB models, it seems we have the makings of a value-driven shootout...

Massively multiplayer online gamers have different needs than those of first-person shooter or real-time strategy fans. They need social interaction. They need extremely comfortable chairs. But most of all they need buttons. So many buttons.

PC peripheral manufacturers have sensed this need and have responded with specialized MMO mice featuring so many buttons. Today we take a look at three of them --- the Logitech G600, the Razer Naga 2012 and the Cyborg M.M.O. 7 from Mad Catz --- to determine which is most worthy of your MMOney.