You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/powera-moga-xp7-x-plus-bluetooth-controller.2084/

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a fond place for handheld gaming. Growing up in a house with two siblings and parents not keen on seeing yellow rats beating up psychic children, it was always hard to find the right time to hook the GameCube up to the TV. Instead I’d pick up my GBA and go into a world that was entirely my own. It was brilliant, and it was always with me. Times have changed and technology has moved on, but even now I find myself looking ways to keep my gaming on the go. At the highest end I have a gaming laptop, and then a Steam Deck, Switch, and 3DS depending on how much space I have allocated to a given journey. Outside of these gaming-oriented devices though, I like so many others always have a phone. Maybe it’s time to use it to its fullest potential.

So I’m no stranger to mobile controllers, this isn’t my first rodeo. Having previously used a Razer Kishi to middling reception, I’ve played with cheap MFI controllers and grips that wrap around official Xbox controllers for an authentic Xbox feel. Authentic because it’s an actual Xbox controller. Here I have a bit of a middle-ground between the Kishi’s wrap-around design and the form factor of an Xbox controller with PowerA’s latest MOGA-branded controller, the XP7-X Plus.

Taking it out of the box for the first time, I’d be remiss for not mentioning just how odd it looks. It’s like if somebody threw a door wedge in between an Xbox controller, and reminds me of HORI’s Split Pad Pro peripheral to join them together. While it does look odd for its wideness, I am really fond of the overall aesthetic and just how the controller feels to hold. Discounting the wedge, the controller matches almost perfectly to the real deal in terms of size. There’s no real learning curve or hand position to adjust to, if you’ve used an Xbox controller before you’ll feel right at home. It’s not a perfect match though, with there being some good and some bad on show.

Starting with the good, the analogue sticks feel absolutely delightful. They do appear marginally taller than the Xbox Series controller I have on hand, but thanks to the textured thumb grips I do prefer them. The view and menu buttons (I had to Google the actual names for these, I would usually just call them start and select) are much clickier than the Series controller, and the face buttons feel almost identical. I have no complaints with the bumpers, and the controller even features two mappable grip buttons that can be whatever you want them to be. Really my only complaint comes from the triggers. They aren’t satisfying and feel as though I should be able to press them more than I can. It’s very similar to the Kishi’s triggers in that respect. The D-Pad is definitely passable, but a definite downgrade if you’re used to the Series controller, or even the Xbox One pad. D-Pads are very much a thing of preference though. I like very tactile ones with the Series controller being my all-time favourite. This is a bit mushier, but not so much that I wouldn’t use it for a platformer or something similar. The wedge that sits in the middle of the controller also detaches to fit the phone, but it also serves a secondary use as a stand for larger devices. It’s a neat idea but realistically only has two angles it can be positioned in. I wish it were a little more flexible, but it’s nice to have.

Looking at connectivity you can use the XP7-X via Bluetooth, which will realistically be your primary way of using it with your phone, or via Micro USB. While I am really sad to see Micro USB on a 2022 device, it is a neat option to have. You also get an incredibly cursed USB C to Micro USB cable in the box that I can’t help but be amused at.

Probably the most interesting feature on show is the inclusion of a wireless charger within the controller. If your phone supports it, this means you can be keeping it going for longer while you game with no cables required. I adore this as a feature, even if my Android phone of choice doesn’t support wireless charging. I did get to test the wireless charging by throwing my iPhone 13 Pro Max in the grip and it worked perfectly. The controller unfortunately doesn’t work with iOS devices, but I’ll be very interested to try an iOS model should it come out in future. The wireless charging can be toggled so if your device doesn’t support it, it won’t be using the resources unnecessarily.

Perfectly fitting my 13 Pro Max with a relatively bulky case, it’s very likely the XP7-X will accommodate your device. Thanks to the grip being U shaped and leaving the top open, it also handles tall devices really well. Putting this to what I would call the ultimate test, I threw my Surface Duo in and found myself amazingly amused at the monstrosity I had created. Though it looks odd, it did show me how well the controller handled thinner devices. It gripped the phone incredibly well, and didn’t really wobble. I can’t see many other people wanting to put a Surface Duo into this, but it bodes well for people with thin devices.

In actual use, the XP7-X is just as simple as an Xbox controller. Once connected by Bluetooth, everything works out of the box for apps like Game Pass or GeForce Now. Emulators naturally work great too, with the setup being about as simple as any other standard controller. It’s worth saying that the grip buttons can’t be mapped as unique buttons though, them instead having to be one of the available Xbox buttons. This comes down to the fact the button is mapped on the controller itself. It’s not an issue for game streaming, but if you like having hotkeys handy on emulators you might be disappointed.

To me the XP7-X is the best way to transform your phone into an on the go gaming handheld. Between its fantastic form factor, its built-in wireless charging capabilities, and its ability to double as a USB controller, it’s a brilliantly versatile pick for any Android gamer. I’m just waiting for the iOS version now.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/fire-emblem-warriors-three-hopes.2078/

Oh boy here we go again. It’s Warriors, it’s Fire Emblem, it’s Fire Emblem Warriors! I want to get my usual Warriors disclaimer out of the way from the start to just avoid wasting time. It’s a Warriors game, you know what I’m going to say. You hack, you slash, and I’m fairly sure you already know whether you enjoy the base gameplay. With that said, let’s get into it.

This is Fodlan, but not quite as you know it. Completely separate from the events of Three Houses, Three Hopes starts the story before the upstart professor Byleth gets the chance to meet the house leaders and join them in their respective ambitions. Instead we get to catch a glimpse of Byleth’s mercenary days as the Ashen Demon, and pip them to the post in meeting the house leaders. What this ultimately does is splinter the timeline and take us on an entirely new journey. It’s a really interesting premise for a second game set in Fodlan and provides a lot of creative liberty in the writing to build on the lore of its predecessor and give screen time to characters that previously fell into the shadows. To this end, the game spends far less time on the common events of all three routes, instead opting to devote as much of the game as possible to the new and unique events. This avoids a lot of treading water for people already familiar with Three Houses, and while it does spoil a few events, keeps the majority of its strategic predecessor to one side so as not to ruin it for those who happen to pick up Three Hopes first. I would say knowledge of Three Houses enhances the overall experience, but the plot comes together in a way where it’s not as necessary as I thought it would be. You have three core routes to sink your teeth into here, and with my first playthrough clocking in at 30 hours, that’s a lot of content for those wanting it.

While the core gameplay is characteristically Warriors as I said at the start, I do feel the game should be commended for just how well it blends in elements of the Fire Emblem franchise. The original Fire Emblem Warriors game did this by introducing a degree of strategy in being able to order inactive units to areas of the map to complete objectives by themselves, but Three Hopes takes this union of genres to another level. It really does just feel like Three Houses if you take out the classroom elements.

Your cast of characters, much like Three Houses, is entirely dependant on your choice of house. Every character has a preferred class and path of progression, but you’re entirely free to ignore this and customise your army to your liking. This is a stark change from the original Fire Emblem Warriors where each character had a locked in moveset, many of which being duplicates of an already-limited cast of characters. I personally like being able to use my favourite characters and pick and choose which weapons and classes I like the most to pair with them. It ultimately means your moveset choices are limited by the number of classes in oppose to the number of characters, and this works well in the context of a Fire Emblem mashup. If like me you become attached to certain characters, you can work towards mastering each class to keep the gameplay feeling fresh without having to pull out your undesirables just because they have that one unique weapon you might want to try out.

Support ranks and conversations return, and for fans of the Fodlan cast you have an absolute encyclopaedia of additional interactions. I was religious in viewing these at the start of the game, and the writing is just as good as its predecessor. I won’t lie though, after 30 hours I did find myself just skipping them to get rid of the notification icon on my menu. The support conversations aren’t a large part of the game for me, but knowing I can just go back and watch them later anyway I didn’t feel too bad. On top of support ranks, you also have a new variant of the teatime minigame in the ability to go on expeditions with your allies. There’s not really much to say here if you’re familiar with teatime. You go on a little date and a picnic with a character of your choice to boost your support ranking and stare at their face up close for a bit. Again this isn’t really for me, but it’s also entirely optional, so it’s not something I’d really hold against the game.

Moving past character interactions, Three Hopes has a lot to keep you busy between your Warriors hacking and slashing. Your camp serves as a constant base of operations as you progress through the story, and has characters littered around it to talk to. On top of this, you have a number of facilities to aid you, each providing a useful function that can be upgraded using resources. Between upgrading facilities, training characters, and forging weapons, you find money and other resources stretched unless you’re willing to grind out maps on completion. Being a fan of older and more linear Fire Emblem titles, I’m actually really fond of this thanks to the additional level of strategy it adds to the game. It naturally doesn’t play quite as heavy a part as it might have in a game like Shadow Dragon, where you can find yourself rationing out your best weapon due to limited uses, but it still pushes you to make decisions for yourself to progress in a way that’s most meaningful to you.

When it comes to difficulty, the best I can do is describe it as fine. You start with three levels in Easy, Normal, and Hard, each being swappable on the fly if you find yourself feeling too strong or too weak. I found that early on, Hard difficulty just made the game take too long, with enemies sponging hits to a degree that I wasn’t having fun. This is made worse by the fact each chapter is ranked, requiring you to beat a set number of enemies and beat the map within a set time limit to get a one-time reward. Once you get going with the game this evens out a lot, but the starting few chapters can be quite off-putting if you happen to hit that wall. The game does actually feature a fourth difficulty option to mirror Three Houses in its Maddening mode, this unlocking exclusively after completing the game. Maddening is an appropriate title, with enemies in the first chapter being around Level 120. For context, the level cap in this game is 255, and my strongest character came out to around Level 70 when I finished my first play through. Surprisingly though, I had a blast going straight into Maddening. Between the stat boosts I had fed my main party along the way, as well as the weapons I’d refined, that gap of 50 or so levels was somewhat evened out for a challenging experience that was deceptively not maddening. For those not wanting to go through this however, the game does provide you with the option to level down your cast when moving into New Game Plus. This means you can go through a fresh route on a more standard difficulty setting without completely overwhelming every map. It’s great to have both options available.

Though I won’t talk about it in depth for obvious reasons, I do want to say how much I enjoyed the overall plot. It’s different to Three Houses, but it’s different in a way that doesn’t necessarily stray from any of the established lore or knowledge you might have brought with you. It feels like a supplementary experience that explores a “what if” timeline that’s sparked by something as small as a different mercenary meeting the lordly trio. The Warriors environment also proves to be a fantastic match for the war-torn story, with almost all of the game naturally being in this setting. It does feel as though there are fewer twists and turns when compared to Three Houses, but it’s certainly not without a few of its own to keep you invested.

One last point I did just want to touch on in brief is how the game looks and performs on Nintendo’s hybrid wonderkid. I did previously praise the game when looking at the demo for how well it ran, and I am disappointed to say this doesn’t carry into the full game as well as I’d have liked. The camp area in particular seems to tank the game’s framerate more than any of the battles, which is really quite odd. For the most part the battles do seem fine, but on some of the larger maps with a lot of effects on-screen, you will see dips and stutters. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it is definitely playable. Graphically the game looks characteristically ‘Switch’. You know the console you’re playing it on, and it doesn’t try to really push the boat out. It’s rough around the edges, but not offensively so as to detract from the larger experience.

All things considered I do feel this is a new peak for Warriors mashups, and an absolute gem of a title for Fire Emblem fans wanting some great writing and a rest from the aggressive strategising of the main series. This is a trip back to Fodlan that ticks all the right boxes for me, and it’s a game I can happily recommend to any fan of Fire Emblem or anybody looking for their next Warriors fix. It’s brilliant.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/mario-strikers-battle-league-football.2068/

Football. The sport where you kick a spherical ball across a field and try to get it into a rectangular metal cage. It’s one of the most recognisable in the world with fans in the tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands. Football! Frankly I’ve never got on with it. There’s just not enough there in its raw form for me to sit and watch 20 or so people for 90 minutes at a time. Though your FIFAs and Pro Evolution Soccers never hit home, there have been a few series that take the basic premise of football and twist it so magnificently that I couldn’t help but be intrigued. You have Inazuma Eleven that has flashy moves and intense strategy. You have Behold the Kickmen that takes the basic rules and just makes up the rest. And then you have Mario. You have Mario and friends brutally slamming each other into an electric fence. You have your favourite colourful cohort taunting, scowling, and scoring. You have Mario Strikers, and after more than ten years it is back and kicking.

I may not be in love with the sport it bases itself on, but my oh my have I missed Mario Strikers. It’s a beautiful meld of chaos that blends so well into an easy to pick up control scheme. It never felt so much like a game to master as it did a game to just play in short bursts and have a good time, and I think it did brilliantly in that regard in both of its previous iterations. It’s not to say there was no skill involved, more that the chaos often overtook it in a way where you were either on board with it or just not having fun. I was always in the former group. Battle League is different, and I still don’t know if I can say it’s a positive step for the series.

Going straight into the game will probably feel alien for series veterans. It sure looks like Mario Strikers, but it really doesn’t feel like it. The chaos is dulled and the game gives you far more control than it ever has to manoeuvre the field and get the ball where it needs to be. It just feels odd, and I think it’s because I just haven’t put enough time into the game to come to terms with it. You have individual buttons for using items, shooting, ground passes, and air passes. Then with the ball you can also use dodges, and without the ball you can tackle. You can even charge and aim your shots to specific parts of the goal to slice through the defence. It’s neat. Everything has an optimal timing that provides you with satisfying feedback and increased power when you nail it, but even doing everything right it just doesn’t have the same impact as previous titles. It feels toned down to the realm of somewhat realism and it can really feel dull at times, especially in your first few hours when you’re learning the basics. It does get better as you start to land those weird and technical shots, but even after two weeks of somewhat regular play it still hasn’t gelled with me the way the other games did. I don’t think the gameplay is inherently bad. It’s just different. It feels like it’s designed to keep you engaged by a drive to improve, where the others were better framed as games to pick up and play, and then put them back down. In my mind this would be fine if the game did more to actually engage you; there’s just not enough content to come back to for you to meaningfully improve the way the game wants you to.

There are six cups that all follow the same structure. Match after match, and your reward for completion? A new character maybe? Coins. Coins to buy gear to augment the stats of the ten available characters. It’s not as though the previous Strikers games had all that much in the way of unique content themselves, but both of them had larger rosters and meaningful unlockables. Everything just feels lacking here though. You have no sidekicks, with your team being wholly the captains of previous games… With the exception of Toad and Yoshi. I guess they’re seen as a species more than actual characters? The biggest sin of all here is the replacement of Kritter as a goal keeper. Boom Boom just suck sucks, and lacks all the flair and personality of his crocky counterpart. I can only hope more goalies get patched in with the regular updates, but I’m not holding out much hope. The stadiums also seem somewhat lacklustre, even if there is an interesting idea on show. At the start of the game, you can select a stadium. Your opponent also selects a stadium, with the two being smashed together for a visually impressive spectacle. But that’s all it is: a spectacle. These stadiums have no impact on the actual gameplay, which feels like a missed opportunity. Even if it were relegated to its own game mode, I’d have liked to have seen some kind of stage hazard put in place to up the ante. It’s just a step away from realising its potential. 

Much like with Switch Sports, if you’re buying this game, you need to be buying it to play online. That’s where your real replayability is going to be for a good while until something more is patched in down the line. To the game’s credit, the online feels really great. You get the odd blip which can be frustrating when a lot of the gameplay is reliant on timing, but as a whole it works well.

While the connection was fine, I do have complaints when it comes to matchmaking. When playing online you can play alone or with a friend, with each person able to bring two people per console. What this means is that you have the potential for some brilliantly chaotic 4v4 matches, which sound like fantastic fun. Where I find fault is in the game matching single players with same-system multiplayers. This is a game where the AI does you no favours, so having a teammate who can cover you while you charge a strike or even just gang up on the opponent as they’re moving really is priceless. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not fantastic at this game, but this takes what could be an interesting learning experience and warps it into a dissatisfying curb stomp. If you have a friend or two to play with, or if you’re happy to reject matches until you find your 1v1, there is still a good time to be had though. I do think this is the highlight of the game at the moment if you can work through the difficulties.

Mario Strikers: Battle League Football is a fun game that at the very least keeps the great spirit of its predecessors alive. It is fun. And though I say it almost as if reassuring myself of this, I do come back to it for a game or two when I’m traveling or have a spare moment. It’s fun, but it’s nowhere close to what the series was before this, at least not to me. If you’re wanting a game to play and to master that’s flashy and genuinely satisfying when you’re doing it right, this is going to be a series high for you. Strikers was just never that for me, and with the scaled back content at launch I would not be able to justify paying the £50 asking price. At something closer to £30 and when they’ve patched the rest of the game in I’ll be far more comfortable recommending it.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/nintendo-switch-sports.2057/

Wii Sports was an instant classic that needed no real explanation. It was an intuitive showcase of what the Wii’s new hardware was capable of and was packed to the brim with the spirit of Nintendo gaming. Fun and frantic couch co-op with a sprinkling of weirdness. When Nintendo launched their Motion Plus accessory we saw another sporting title in Wii Sports Resort, again here as a surprisingly content-packed tech demo to show the value of their newest toys. Since then, it’s been a bit quiet. Sure we saw the Wii U release of Wii Sports Club, but who really remembers that? You were back to the five classic Wii Sports games with additional online multiplayer, albeit originally releasing with an incredibly awkward payment model. While it tried to use the Wii U’s gamepad in interesting ways as Nintendo had previously done with the original Wiimote and Wii Motion Plus, there were already better titles out there that had already filled this role, and with both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort still perfectly playable on a Wii U, the game had a lot to live up to, and somewhat fell flat.

Roll on the Switch’s launch in 2017. After Wii Sports for the Wiimote, Wii Sports Resort for the Wii Motion Plus, and Nintendoland showing what the Wii U’s gamepad could do in an incredibly fun assortment of games, Nintendo surely had something similar lined up for their brand new Joy Cons. Right? 1-2-Switch just wasn’t it. It was fun for five minutes and left in a drawer, and after seeing just how much variety and replayability Nintendo can stuff into a game like this with Wii Sports Resort, it felt like a kick in the teeth for those who went out and bought this for the full £39.99 retail price. What we wanted and what we needed was a Switch Sports, and even if we had to wait five years for it, it is here. And it’s still not as good as Wii Sports Resort.

So after the wait, just how much are you getting in this modern sporting package? Six sports: two returning in tennis and bowling, and four new in chambara, volleyball, badminton, and football (soccer for the non-UK folk among us). This is one more than the original Wii Sports, which is nice, but falls so vastly short of Wii Sports Resort’s 12. Each of these individual games do feel great to play and keep the spirit of the series alive. They also all come with online play, including a ranked league and a few interesting modes. Bowling has a really cool knockout mode where the bottom few players get eliminated every few rounds for a genuinely cool finale that feels like it has higher stakes than it really should. What keeps you coming back to the game is a loop of playing online, ranking up, and getting new stuff to customise your character with. While you’re doing these things it is genuinely quite engaging, but there is a key word in the previous sentence: online. Any and all progression is locked to playing online, and that really isn’t a great thing.

To clarify, you can play everything the game has to offer offline. You can play alone against computer opponents, or you can play with friends on the same console. It’s just as fun in isolation, but once you’ve done your one or two games, there’s nothing to keep you coming back. In Wii Sports Resort you had challenges associated with every game, and a number of interesting game modes to experience. Even in some of the returning games you’re missing content and challenges you previously had. There’s no 100 pin bowling, and there’s nothing that compares to Sword Showdown for chambara despite it being a brilliantly natural evolution of its predecessor’s sword-fighting game. Even the original Wii Sports had a number of medals you could win by perfecting certain practice games, and some were ridiculously difficult to keep you coming back and improve your scores. If you don’t have Switch Online, or even don’t have the most stable internet connection, I cannot in good faith recommend Switch Sports to you. Without an online connection, you’re looking at a Nintendo sports title with the same replayability as 1-2 Switch.

But let’s look past that for now; let’s assume you’re going into this with a NSO subscription and want to collect some accessories for your nice character and engage in the gameplay loop. Are the individual games good? For me some are great, and others fall flat. The game I was most looking forward to was bowling, as silly as that sounds. It’s simple and it’s been a staple of Nintendo sports titles. It’s always felt fun and surprisingly challenging to master. This iteration let me down in ways I struggle to express. It feels devoid of fun, and after five minutes of playing I found myself hitting strike after strike by just lining up a simple shot and throwing it at full speed. There’s no intricacy and the charm of its predecessors is nowhere to be seen here. You can’t even throw the ball backwards. What’s up with that? The knockout “battle royale” mode I mentioned earlier is a genuinely cool idea, but it needs more to it if it wants to be fulfilling.

Most of the other sports suffer from the opposite issue. Chambara feels great to play, as do volleyball, tennis, and badminton. But none of these modes have anything to do outside of their basic game. Tennis, badminton, and volleyball could all have challenge modes for holding rallies, aiming, or even weirder things like playing with a larger ball or having the net move. It feels like the smallest amount of effort could have been put in to add a significant amount of replayability and variety to games that really do feel great to play. In large, this is a game that suffers from the same major issue Mario Tennis games have faced for more than 15 years now; there’s so much in the way of refinement, but nothing to do with the polished blade of a game they’ve crafted.

Football deserves a special mention for using the leg strap in a neat way, and allowing you to actually kick the ball for one of its modes. For its more standard gameplay, I found myself really enjoying it for how wacky and out of control it felt. It’s like Rocket League if all the cars broke down. Again it would’ve really shined if there were some kind of challenge mode to go with it. An obstacle course or target practice would’ve been a great fit here.

There is still fun to be had. If you just want a game you can pick up with friends once every so often you’ll get your money’s worth eventually, even if you are sticking to what’s available offline. Switch Sports’ biggest issue is the shadow it finds itself living in and the expectations that have been setup that have just not been met. We’ve had confirmation that an additional sport, golf, will be coming in a free update later in the year. This is great, but the game really would benefit more from making the most of what’s already there. I can only hope we get this in an update too.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/asus-rog-zephyrus-duo-16-gaming-laptop.2040/

I’ve always avoided having a gaming laptop. Seeing them as a poor option in terms of value for performance with limited upgrade options and an even more limited lifespan, I have for as long as I remember seen them as a weird stepchild of PC gaming. Having said that, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been somewhat intrigued. I love portable gaming, and while gaming laptops generally need to be plugged into a power supply to get the most out of them, it’s a significant improvement on lugging a desktop around for a game night at a friend’s house. Pair this with the unique two screen design of ASUS’ Duo line and you have a disaster in the making for my poor wallet. Though it may lament my poor spending choices, I can say I don’t. This thing is spectacular.

So let’s get the nitty gritty out of the way first in terms of what’s being offered here. What I went out and bought was the lowest spec model of the Duo 16, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a powerhouse either way, and weirdly the only model that’s actually available at the time of writing. It comes kitted out with a Ryzen R7-6800H CPU paired with the laptop flavour of Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti. On top of this you get 16 GB of DDR5 RAM running at 4800 MHz and a fairly decent 2 TB M2 SSD itself capable of 7000 MB/s read and 5200 MB/s sequential write speed. Though the SSD is advertised as two 1 TB SSDs running in RAID 0, I was pleasantly surprised to find a single 2 TB stick with one slot open for you to add your own. I went out of my way to upgrade this laptop about as much as you can, so I’ll go more into that later. To complete the package you have a 16:10 aspect ratio 1080p screen capable of 165 Hz, along with its unique secondary 1920×550 display that runs at a more standard 60 Hz. In the more expensive models you’ll find a Ryzen 9-6980HX CPU and a laptop 3080 Ti, as well as more ram, larger SSD configurations, and a more luxurious 1440p HDR display. The 3070 Ti model I have came in at a relatively eyewatering £2700, with the next model up supposedly retailing for £3700, and the most expensive model hitting a terrifying £4300.

While you’re still taking in the price we can take a look at the design of the laptop, with it being by far the most interesting element on show. This laptop has two screens. It has two screens and that’s awesome. When resting flush with laptop, the secondary screen takes up around half of the space available, meaning some compromises had to be made in terms of the keyboard and trackpad. Where you would usually have a good bit of space to rest your hands when using a laptop, you will find every bit of space available filled here. The keyboard sits right at the bottom of the body, with the trackpad being taller than usual and pushed to the right. It’s far more usable than I was expecting. While it does take some getting used to, I have no issue using this both on a desk and on my lap. The desk is naturally more ideal with you being able to push the laptop back a bit though, giving you an experience closer to what you’re used to with other systems. The trackpad being on the right is probably the more divisive element. If you use the trackpad with your left hand, this laptop is going to be unusable for you unless you’re happy to be tethered to a desk with a mouse constantly plugged in. As somebody who uses the trackpad with my right hand, this positioning really hasn’t been an issue though. You do also have the ability to change the trackpad into a touch numpad, and while this is a neat feature on paper, it just didn’t sit right with me due to the lack of any kind of haptic feedback. It just didn’t feel like I was hitting anything, so I ended up disabling the button to enable this and put it out of mind.

The second screen itself, dubbed the ScreenPad+, is a 14 inch display spanning the length of the laptop and sitting above the keyboard. As you open the laptop shell, the second screen tilts towards you, making it easier to see and, by extension, use. While this screen is what drew me to the laptop in the first place, the 1080×550 resolution had me somewhat concerned. With it being so slender, what exactly can you fit on it? Is it actually useful? To my relief, it’s been fine. For better context on what kind of room you have to play with, it’s just shy of a further 50% of the main display, vertically speaking. If you’re curious how an app would look on it, you can just snap it to a corner of your own 1080p screen and you’ll have a fairly good idea. Though I primarily use it as a means of keeping Outlook and Telegram constantly in my eye line, I’ve had a great time with it when playing games too. It’s so nice to just have the room to have a guide up. When playing Elden Ring I had Smithing Stone locations open to save me going back and forth between different things. It’s entirely non-essential, but it’s nice to have. The best use I’ve come across by far however has been OBS. This was largely the use case I envisioned when buying the laptop in the first place, and I really haven’t been disappointed. For streaming I’d argue a second screen essential, particularly when you’re streaming a game that’s being played on the PC itself. It keeps all your settings and configurations out of the way but still easily accessible, and I adore it. You can see the layout I use below and though it feels a bit unconventional, it really does work great.

The primary display is about what I’ve come to expect from ASUS. It’s just really nice, advertising full sRGB coverage and being pleasantly bright. It’s difficult to find specific information on the 1080p panel because it was never actually advertised by ASUS, with the most premium model supposedly launching with a 4K screen and the cheaper ones sporting a HDR 1440p display. Even the Amazon page for this laptop still shows the 1440p display amidst a mishmash of outdated information. Though I was at first disappointed to see the downgrade, I’m actually quite happy with the end result. At 16 inches a 1080p display still looks wonderfully sharp, and naturally squeezes out better performance from games, letting you get closer to its 165 Hz potential. I just wish the advertising materials were a bit more up front about what you’re getting.

As you might expect from a laptop in this price range, everything under the hood is fantastic. To give you a better idea of what it can do, I’ve popped a few benchmarks below for both the CPU and GPU. For the sake of transparency, the power profile was set to Turbo via the Armoury Crate software for each of these benchmarks, pushing the CPU and GPU to the limit of what it’s capable of in the laptop. With this profile, the fans are pretty much constantly pushing out air quite loudly, so it’s a mode I’d only really use while gaming where you actually need that power.

Of the results above, it’s the GPU scores on Geekbench that stand out to me. Looking at the Vulkan score, the average on Geekbench is 82032, which is significantly lower than the average on show. At first I assumed this was a result of the Turbo power profile, but switching it down to the normal Performance profile put out very similar results. For context, the average desktop 3070 Ti scores 104828 on this test. As much as I would love to believe this laptop GPU can outperform its desktop counterpart, I would assume something is going askew in the testing and take it with a pinch of salt. I’ve included two in-game benchmarks for a bit of a better picture in a more tangible scenario.

Regardless of the benchmarks, the system has shown its capabilities by handling pretty much everything I’ve thrown at it. With the base configuration the only problem child I came across was Elden Ring, where the game would perform the stutters it’s gained a bit of a reputation for on PC a little too frequently for my liking, even on low settings. Between Elden Ring and a few Chrome tabs, I did notice the RAM usage was a bit too close to the available 16 GB than I’d have liked, so decided to go out of my way to upgrade it. The original plan was to put in two 16 GB sticks for 32 GB total, but I ended up buying a 32 GB stick by mistake, and a combination of laziness to send it back and overexcitement to have some savings to burn drove me to just buy a second 32 GB stick instead. What this means is that I have elevated this laptop to the absolute limits of its upgradability, also fitting it with a second 2 TB M2 SSD and a 1 TB Micro SD card. Since throwing more RAM into the system, Elden Ring has run near-flawless, even on maximum settings. Having a bit of breathing room also helps with having streaming apps like OBS open at the same time as your more memory hungry titles, though 32 GB is almost certainly the sweet spot. Nobody’s going to argue that 64 GB of RAM is overkill at this point in time, least of all me.

The upgrade process is really quite simple for those interested in a laptop like this. The bottom of the laptop comes off after removing a number of torx screws with incredibly easy access to both the RAM and M2 slots once off. If you happen to pick up this model, you should have a spare M2 slot sat right there waiting for you, so you may as well put it to use.

I really and genuinely adore this laptop, and it might just be my current favourite piece of technology. Like a lot of more modern gaming laptops it actually feels portable, and is unique and innovative for its secondary display. Even so it’s a hard sell, if only for the premium put on that second screen. From a quick Google I can see laptops with similar performance thresholds sitting around £1000 cheaper, some even coming with more luxurious 1440p primary displays. I love ASUS for making something that seems to fit my own niche needs so wonderfully, but if you’re only interested in bang for buck, this isn’t going to be for you. For those of you set on the dual screen lifestyle though, the 3070 Ti model to me puts forward the best value with a good bit of space to upgrade if wanted. It’s your only option at the moment regardless.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/xiaomi-redmi-note-11-pro-5g.2031/

In my wardrobe lies a graveyard of phones that I’ve used throughout my life. From my sliding Samsung phone to an original OnePlus running Ubuntu Mobile to a cheap Vodafone device I had to get me through my early uni days. In recent years I’ve upgraded to powerful gaming phones in the form of RedMagic’s 5S and more recently 6S Pro, before moving to the obscure and brilliant Surface Duo. I’ve been enamoured with the weird and interesting, the clunky but power, but it’s been a number of years since I’ve had a phone that just works as a phone. A phone for somebody not wanting to run the entirety of their Wii library from out of their pocket with a nice screen, a nice camera, and a nice battery. After some time using it, I think Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G is that phone, even if I struggle to say its name in one breath.

Before going any further, let’s get the spec sheet out of the way:

• Screen: 6.67” 120hz AMOLED HDR10 compatible, 1080x2400p
• CPU: MediaTek Dimensity 920 5G (6 nm) – Octa-core (2×2.5 GHz Cortex-A78 & 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55)
• GPU: Mali-G68 MC4
• RAM: 6GB, 8GB
• Storage: 128GB, 256GB
• Rear Cameras: 108 MP wide, 8 MP 118˚ ultrawide, 2 MP macro lens
• Front Camera: 16 MP wide
• Android Version: MIUI 13, Android 11
• Sensors: Fingerprint scanner, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity sensor, Compass, IR Blaster
• Battery: 4500mAh
• Charger: up to 120W Fast 
• Color: Graphite Gray, Polar White, Atlantic Blue
• Price: $369.99 (128GB/6GB), $399.99(128GB/8GB), $449.99 (256GB, 8GB)

On paper, you may notice something familiar. Quite a bit of something familiar, with a good chunk of that sheet being identical to the phone Tom recently reviewed, the Note 11 Pro+’s predecessor, the Note 11 Pro. If you’ve already checked out that review, you might be wondering exactly what’s changed in what seems to be a rather iterative update. There are only two major differences: the CPU and the charging capabilities. In place of the Snapdragon 695G we have the more powerful but equally midrange Dimensity 920. On top of that, this phone comes with a battery capable of 120W charging, with the trade off of it being 4500mAh battery, down from 5000mAh. You can also get this phone with 256GB internal storage, up from a maximum of 128GB in the basic Pro model.

We’ll cover the CPU and its performance later, but the battery is perhaps the most interesting change, with 120W charging being a first for the Redmi Note line. I am unfortunately unable to test these capabilities due to being sent a model with a US plug, but I have found the battery to be ample to last me comfortably for two days of regular use. The smaller overall capacity comes down to the Note 11 Pro+ using two smaller batteries 2250mAh batteries capable of charging at 60W apiece, likely in an attempt to limit the heat coming from this intense charge, with the lesser capacity required to fit them in the same shell as its predecessor. Without the kit to open this for myself, I can’t show you what this looks like though. When I have needed to charge it, my Surface Duo’s 18W charger has done a fine job, getting it up to capacity within a few hours. It’s a distance from the advertised potential of 120W charging though, apparently capable of a full charge in just 15 minutes. If I can track down a 120W charger, I’ll update this review with how it is, but at the time of writing the closest I have is a 65W charger from my 2019 Razer Blade laptop. Maybe the UK just isn’t ready for such swift charging?

The overall user experience has been a joy. Xiaomi’s MIUI Android skin is something I’ve really come to enjoy, taking a number of design principles from Apple’s iOS. It’s clean and it attempts to make Android more accessible and simpler to use. It succeeds, but mimicking Apple it also makes the phone a bit more difficult to use for the power users among us. Using the standard Settings app, I wasn’t able to disable certain system apps I didn’t want to use. On top of this, the downloads app wouldn’t let me download any large files over around 2GB over a mobile network. It’s entirely possible there are settings to get around these limitations, but despite my searching I certainly couldn’t find them. A couple of Xiaomi’s installed apps also come with adverts as standard. Even if you can disable these with a simple and admittedly easy to find option, they go a long way in cheapening the experience. It also feels somewhat exploitative of the folks who might not have thought to look for a way to disable them. I know my mum would struggle with that, even if it’s simple for me. And I feel people like my mum would be exactly the target demographic for this device. All things considered I am fond of MIUI though. There are a lot of small bits and pieces I could call out, but as a whole it’s a really responsive flavour of Android that has no major quirks. Coming from the RedMagic and Surface Duo, this is appreciated. I love them both but they are filled with their own quirks and trade-offs for the experience they offer.

Looking to performance you shouldn’t be expecting flagship numbers. Though it looks and feels great, this is still a midrange device, and it’s in the benchmarking it really shows. Looking at the numbers from Geekbench 5, we get a single-core score of 735 and a multi-core score of 2223. Though this is a marked improvement over its non-plus predecessor, coming in at 683 and 2014 respectively, it’s not a game-changing improvement. You’ll get on fine with the Pro+ if you’re wanting to do day to day activities and some non-taxing gaming like Disgaea 1 Complete+ or the mobile Danganronpa ports, just don’t go expecting perfect performance from apps like Dolphin or AetherSX2.

The camera, though identical to the phone Tom covered, does deserve a shoutout for just how nice it is on a non-flagship device. I’ve included a few snaps below. It’s incredibly responsive and capable of some really nice quality images, even if I’m not the best photographer.

A few areas of note worth a quick mention are the NFC and 5G capabilities. Coming from the original Surface Duo, it’s been great to have Google Pay as an option again. Having recently stayed at a hotel in an area with 5G, I also had a great opportunity to put the Pro+ through its paces as a hotspot, and I was pleasantly surprised with the phone’s temperature. Despite being hooked up to my laptop and downloading more than 700GB of Steam games over a few hours, the phone never got hot. It was warm sure, but it handled the fairly constant strain surprisingly well.

As a generalist device for people not likely to venture into the more demanding areas of Android potential, the Pro+ excels. You’re not going to be blown away by its performance, but between its vibrant screen, fantastic camera, and clean Android skin, it’s a great pick for anybody wanting a smartphone that’s just a smartphone. It’ll definitely be my daily driver for the foreseeable future.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/rog-strix-scope-rx-tkl-wireless-deluxe-keyboard.2027/

It’s been a while since I’ve had a new keyboard to look at in front of me. Ever the enthusiast, I jumped at the chance to see what ASUS had coming up in a fresh new tenkeyless variety. Here we have the ROG STRIX Scope RX TKL Wireless Deluxe, and boy is it a nice one. It does have an obscenely long name however, so I’ll just be calling it the Scope from here, not to be confused with its non-wireless version that we as a site have not covered.

Now this isn’t my first ASUS keyboard, and there are a lot of parallels to be drawn between this and the ROG Claymore II I covered last year. You have the same fundamental RX red and blue switches on offer, with both Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz connectivity available on top of a standard USB C cable. You also have support for Armoury Crate, the ASUS gaming driver suite, and all its benefits and pitfalls. There’s also a few changes in terms of key configuration, some of which I like, others I’m a little more on the fence with.

At a glance, we have a fairly versatile keyboard that’s targeting FPS gaming in particular, with the lack of reliance on a numpad and the bindings you could throw onto it for something like an MMO. The idea here is that the space otherwise occupied by the numpad can now be where your hand sits, leading to some slightly more comfortable gaming sessions. Despite the numerous keyboards lying beside my desk, this is actually the first traditional tenkeyless design I’ve looked at, and I’m a little split on what’s offered. I am quite fond of the lower profile in terms of desk space, which is a positive of the design as a whole. I do feel like the folks at ASUS could have done better with the space available though, with the upper-right of the keyboard being occupied by a large ROG logo. It’s aesthetically pleasing and lights up in gamer colours, but there’s space there for three additional keys that would be much more functional.

For any long-time user of a computer keyboard, the glaring oddity on the Scope is its left control key. It’s huge, and I really don’t know why. I can understand it’s used a lot in games, and especially in first-person shooters as a means of crouching or sprinting, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody complain about it being too small. It’s possible I’m just not in the right spheres to hear such whispers but for day to day usage, I found myself hitting it instead of the Windows key more often than not. It’s an odd problem to have, but I suppose if you find yourself catching the Windows key too much when gaming, this might be a boon for you.

The other odd key would be the one sitting atop F12, dubbed the “stealth key”. It has a picture of a hooded individual and everything. Though I think the branding of what is ultimately a show desktop key is rather goofy, it is a somewhat neat idea in terms of swift privacy. There are certainly worse features that could sit atop the function keys. The function keys themselves are quite interesting here too. Something I haven’t come across on my own keyboard adventures, F1 through F4 function as normal, with only F5 through F12 being set to their media functions as default. On paper this is really neat, with having easy F2 access being particularly great as somebody who spends plenty of time renaming files, and F4 for closing apps quickly. I do wish they left F5 as standard as well though, with it being one of the more useful function keys. You can of course still use it by holding the Fn key, or even change this but it feels one step away from being as good as it could have been. I will add in here that it’s possible to remap the behaviour using Armoury Crate, so assuming you don’t mind going through the software, this can be tweaked to your liking.

Looking at the switches, I still only have good things to say about the proprietary RX switches on offer. I’ve previously had the chance to use both the red and blue variants, with the reds being what I have here with me today. Though the memory of the blues has somewhat faded outside of that I really liked them, I can confidently say these are some of the smoothest linear switches I’ve used to date. Of my personal collection, they’re only really etched out by the Wooting two HE’s incredibly interesting Lekker switch. It does of course all come down to preference, but I’ve consistently enjoyed what ASUS put out in this department. As a bit of an addendum, RX switches also come with a unique stalk design, rooting the keycaps to the switch at four points, resulting in an incredibly stable keycap that really does feel great. 

The lighting for the Scope is another standard affair for an ASUS keyboard. The colours are really quite vivid and crisp, but at the end of the day they’re fairly standard across the board when looking at these big-name brands. When connected to Armoury Crate you can customise these to your liking with your usual assortment of effects. Whether you want a rainbow crossing your keyboard or a laser being sent out for every key you hit, your expectations will more than likely be met.

Based on previous experiences it should go without saying that the wireless experience is a joy. I’m really fond of the fact you can store the wireless dongle within the keyboard to avoid the classic conundrum of losing the blasted thing. The switch on the back of the keyboard works well and makes it clear as to whether you want to use the keyboard wired, via Bluetooth, or via the included dongle. In each mode I can’t say I felt any noticeable lag, but as always, this should be taken with a pinch of salt as I’m not the most perceptive to it. If it is a genuine concern, using the keyboard wired for your serious gaming sessions really is no hassle at all. One aspect I was confused about in particular when looking at the keyboard was what I thought to be a useless ROG logo in the top-right, where a few keys could quite comfortably sit. After a bit of confusion, I did find you could enable this as a battery indicator using Armoury Crate, though there really isn’t much in the way of signposting to say so. I still do prefer the clear and visually quite appealing barred battery of the Claymore II, but this does do the job once setup. 

I really do like this keyboard, but whether I can or can’t recommend it largely falls on its pricing, and right now, I don’t actually know how much it’ll cost. The wired variant of this retails for £140, with it currently discounted to £90 at a number of retailers at the time of writing. If ASUS could price this close to its wired RRP I do think it’s a good buy, but much more would put it too close to the Claymore II for me to be able to recommend this over that, especially given the additional versatility of the Claymore II. The ROG STRIX Scope RX TKL Wireless Deluxe keyboard has an outrageously long name, but its unique switches and tweaks make it a joy to use. If you find yourself wanting to save space on your desk over a full layout keyboard and see this one around at a good price, it’s one to consider.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/asus-rog-strix-xg16ahp-portable-monitor.1999/

I’ve had some good fun covering some of ASUS’ recent hardware releases. Having previously looked at their ZenScreen and enjoying the additional versatility a portable monitor could provide, I kept an eye out for the perfect match. The monitor that would surpass what I had previously tried and slot perfectly into my on the go setup. This is that monitor.

It’s no secret that I’m not the most technically-minded reviewer with this kind of things, and as ever I hold my hands up to that. As usual though, I will try my best with the hand I have been dealt to show you what I like so much about this thing. At a glance you have a 1920 by 1080 panel that’s capable of 144 Hz and supports variable refresh rates. At 15.6 inches diagonally, it strikes a great balance of portability and screen space, and comes packed with a whopper 7800 mAh battery to boot, enabling you to use it on the go with no wall plug to tether you down. Looking at the ports available, you have a USB C for charging, a USB C for display input, as well as a more traditional micro HDMI port. Everything on offer is a significant step up from the ZenScreen I looked at last year from ASUS.

With the ZenScreen coming in at around £220 at the time of writing, and the Strix being almost double that, you would expect a certain difference in feature sets. The flashiest upgrade is in the monitor refresh rate, letting you push your mobile setup to its absolute limits. At first I did think 144 Hz was somewhat overkill in a product where you might want to prioritise play time over pushing the most frames, but it didn’t take long for me to appreciate it. To my surprise, my GPD Win 3 was capable of playing games like Monster Hunter Rise above 100 FPS, which gave me a really enjoyable time when I went to visit my friend for the game’s launch. With VRR enabled, the gameplay felt smooth despite not actually hitting that 144 Hz cap. You can naturally play at lower refresh rates if you want to get a longer play session out of your charge though. 

Much like the ZenScreen, I found myself incredibly impressed with the colours on offer in the display. With every ASUS display I’ve tried to date, it’s a constant I’m glad to see upheld in the Strix. A bit of a surprise to me, all of the specific gaming features found in the larger VG28U were available here too. This means I had a great array of colour settings to play with, as well as a few game enhancing and fun features like a zoomed-in sniper spot in the middle of the screen. It’s fun to pretend I could definitely make an insane pistol shot from across the map in Hitman. Maybe one day I’ll do it without the training wheels. 

With this being a gaming-centric monitor, my biggest point of relief was the 3ms response time from the IPS panel. On paper the difference between 5ms in the ZenScreen and 3ms here doesn’t seem all that noteworthy, but it’s night and day in terms of usability. You do get used to 5ms if all you’re wanting is a monitor for watching videos and a bit of additional productivity, which is exactly the audience the ZenScreen is targeting. For any more than that though you’ll likely be left wanting. The Strix on the other hand slotted right into my setup. When I’m at home, it sits on my oh so cluttered desk, and when I head out to play games with friends, it comes with me in my bag. It’s effortless. It doesn’t feel like a portable monitor. It feels like a monitor that I can just put in my bag, and while that might sound like meaningless semantics, to me it’s a testament to its quality in surpassing the flaws of what I’ve seen in portable monitors. It even comes with an adjustable tripod you can mount it to, on top of the built-in kickstand. With me never really coming to terms with the folio case of the ZenScreen, both of these options proved to be great. The kickstand being diagonally oriented across the back of the display, it’s able to accommodate both the traditional landscape and ever-useful portrait layouts. Even at home it’s become my favourite option for playing Groove Coaster on the Switch with how easy it is to just pick up and turn on its side. 

The built in speakers go a long way in completing the gaming on the go package. While you’re naturally not going to find the same volume or depth of sound as a standalone speaker, I’ve found them more than adequate for what I need. Those wanting something better do have access to a 3.5mm jack on the side of the monitor though, so you’re free to use something a bit beefier if your setup demands it.  

This monitor was originally offered to me on loan like the ZenScreen was, but on seeing its specs, I just went out to buy one before the lovely PR folks had a chance to send it my way. A little over a month later I can say I have absolutely no regrets in this choice. While it is an expensive piece of kit, it does a lot to justify its premium price point. This is the creme de la creme of portable monitors, and an asset to any on the go setups, which might be more significant with the Steam Deck right around the corner. If you have the budget, I can’t recommend it enough.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/intel-i5-12600k-cpu.1987/

Intel is a name that needs no introduction. For many years the de facto choice for your PC’s CPU, they’ve since found themselves fiercely competing with AMD in both power and affordability. Hoping to be back on top once more, the 12th generation is here in three forms: the i9 12900, the i7 12700, and the i5 12600 we have on hand for review today. Each CPU comes in both a K and KF model, including and not including integrated graphics respectively, giving you a small saving if you’re going to be using a graphics card either way.

You can find an overview of the specs below:

So to jump to the point, what exactly makes the 12th generation of Intel CPU any different to the 11th? They have a higher performance ceiling, that much can be assumed. The real point of interest here is in the hybrid architecture, taking a page out of Arm’s book with its big-little design. Instead of having each core operate at the same level, the CPUs on offer here have two types: performance and efficiency. Performance cores are the heavy lifters, while efficiency cores are designed to operate, as the name suggests, as efficiently as possible. Where in mobile computing this is particularly useful in battery preservation, only bringing out the performance cores when necessary, there are other aspects that also benefit the battery-less desktop design. Frankly, not every app you run on your PC is going to need its full power. The efficiency cores can be used to handle tasks that are perhaps non-time critical, or that simply don’t need everything being thrown at it. I’ve simplified this a fair bit, but if you are interested in the architecture, there’s a ton of information on big-little floating around.

It isn’t without its flaws, though the biggest kinks have been worked out since the chips launched late last year. Due to the hybrid design, certain DRM detected the efficiency cores as a separate system, causing crashes at startup or randomly during gameplay. Bravely Default 2, Mortal Kombat 11, and Far Cry Primal were among a list of more than 50 titles known to have issues. Though this has since been resolved through patches to games and Windows updates, it does shine an interesting light on the issues that come with this kind of change, at least for early adopters. With some luck, this is the last we’ll hear of it.

Looking to the actual performance of the 12600 you’re unlikely to be disappointed. I only have two CPUs at my disposal at the moment, the 12600 itself and a more budget Ryzen 5 3600 in my main desktop setup. It’s worth noting the 3600 is more than a year old now and it’s not an even comparison. Our local mag staffer Tom also pitched in with the benchmarks, contributing his scores from a more comparable Ryzen 7 5800X. If you want to look up more CPU benchmarks to get a better idea of where this lands, check out a site like cpubenchmark.net.

The benchmarking tool I had handy was Cinebench R23, a free utility designed to push a CPU to its limits. I had originally installed this when isolating an issue on my personal PC build that caused it to crash, this ultimately leading to me upgrading my cooling solution when I found out the stock fan was causing my CPU to peak at 110 degrees Celsius. As well as this, you can find the scores from Geekbench 5 in the table below.

Beyond raw performance, the 12600K does a good job in future proofing itself in its compatibility for both DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, whilst still retaining compatibility with DDR4 RAM for those not looking to completely overhaul their setup at the moment. This is particularly important with the high costs of DDR5 at the moment though you’ll be needing to buy a new motherboard for the LGA1700 socket either way, and at the time of writing at least, they don’t come cheap. With the CPU also not including a stock fan, you’ll also need to go out of your way to get something that supports this new socket, though it should be noted companies like Noctua already have kits available to fit their existing range.

For those curious, you can find the full build used in the review below:

• Motherboard: ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming WiFi
• GPU: TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
• RAM: Polaris RGB 32 GB (2×16 GB) @ 4800 MHz

All in all, the 12600 stands out as the current primo pick for any budding new gaming PC build, but whether it’s worth upgrading for might be a more difficult question. It’s a money sink no matter which way you look at it, but the performance on offer paired with the DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support make it a fine choice if you know you’ll be putting money down either way.