The AS SSD Benchmark clearly shows in the sequential read test that today’s high-end SSDs are maxing out the SATA 6Gb/s bus. The Vector reached 504MB/s which places it between 500 - 520MB/s, along with over half a dozen other SSDs. Again the OCZ Vector displayed strong sequential write performance, this time matching the Samsung SSD 840 Pro with 490MB/s. The OCZ Vector was a beast in the 4K-64 thread test with a throughput of 368....

In our single large file copy test the OCZ Vertex 450 256GB was actually slightly faster than the original Vector drive, which is surprising given we were expecting it to be slower. OCZ has likely made optimizations to the firmware since we tested the 256GB and 512GB Vector SSDs and managed to improve performance. Here we see a considerable performance improvement from the OCZ Vector 256GB to the new Vertex 450 256GB, around 14% to be precise....

Throughout my time with the OnePlus 2, I observed battery life to be good without being great. The Snapdragon 810 is still a power-hungry SoC, and the large display does no favours when it comes to lengthy battery life. That said, the 12.5 Wh battery is large enough to compensate for these issues, delivering reasonable battery life that mostly lasted a full day. As for charging, the OnePlus 2 lacks fast charging support, which is a disappointing omission considering many flagships these days support the feature....

We had no issues playing high quality MKV and DivX movies at 1080p. The picture quality was amazing with no signs of stuttering. Unlike the Western Digital TV HD that downscales 1080p content, the picture quality produced by the Box Office was comparable to that of our HTPC. Also, when fast-forwarding or rewinding through movies we never lost audio sync, something many media players that we’ve used tend to struggle with....

QR codes (short for Quick Response codes) were internationally standardized in 2000 and mobile phone users in Japan had already widely adopted the technology by 2002. Although Denso Wave still holds patents over the technology, QR codes are free for anyone to use without a license fee as long as the intellectual property is being used within the defined ISO/JIS standards. As with any other barcode, interacting with a QR code is simple enough: scan one with an image sensor such as the camera in your smartphone, the app you’re using will convert the code to binary and then display the information or perform the programmed action, such as opening a website, essentially allowing real world objects to be hyperlinked to digital places....

As you can see, using the very high preset at 1080p yields pretty low numbers on the R9 390 and GTX 970 – both were well south of 60fps with frame dips around 30fps. Still, for the most part performance was smooth so these frame rates are acceptable in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Interestingly, the Nano and Fury X ran into frame buffer issues and as a result minimums dropped below 20fps, oddly this didn’t impact the GTX 970....

Although the random 512 bytes read performance of the Samsung 830 Series 512GB was average the write performance was exceptional. Here the 830 Series 512GB was 30% faster than the 470 Series 512GB and 35% faster than the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB. The random 1MB read performance was also quite average as the Samsung 830 Series 512GB was 13% slower than the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB and 17% slower than the Crucial m4 256GB....

The Snapdragon 801 model uses an MSM8974AC SoC, which packs a 2.45 GHz quad-core Krait 400 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU clocked at 578 MHz, a dual-channel LPDDR3 controller providing 14.9 GB/s of bandwidth, and Category 4 LTE. I’ve spoken in length about the Snapdragon 801 in previous smartphone reviews, so it’s no longer an exciting new SoC. The more exciting version of the Galaxy Alpha packs the Exynos 5 Octa 5430, a new chip from Samsung that (so far) has only been used in this device....

Noticing that the company was falling behind Apple and other smartphones OEMs in the looks department, Samsung sought to completely revamp the design for their next flagship: the Galaxy S6. Combined with top-of-the-line hardware on every front, this was undoubtedly going to be Samsung’s best effort at creating a compelling high-end phone in a long time. It could finally be the Samsung device I can safely recommend. In the market for a new smartphone unlocked and off contract?...

With both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge retaining the key design aspects of the Galaxy S6, the most obvious change is in the size of the two devices. The Galaxy S7 is still a 5.1-inch handset with a 1440p AMOLED display, but the dual-curved-edge Galaxy S7 Edge has increased in size to 5.5-inches. This sensibly transforms the Edge from a direct competitor to the Galaxy S6, to a device that sits between the S7 and Note 5 in Samsung’s product stack....

TouchWiz on the Galaxy S7, like with previous Galaxy devices, is pretty lackluster. The style is similar to the S6 and it mostly conforms to Google’s Material Design, but it lacks the professional look that you get from stock Android. I wouldn’t go as far to say Samsung’s skin is ugly, but I certainly prefer the stock look. Part of the reason to this is that vanilla Android has far more polish to it, whether that’s in large or small aspects....

It’s clear that in this generation the Snapdragon model is the one you should get, and for those in some of the largest regions around the globe, this will be hard to achieve without importing. The Exynos 9810’s performance is puzzling. In many workloads it doesn’t provide a significant performance uplift over the Exynos 8895, despite the new SoC packing major architectural changes. To make matters worse, in general the Exynos 9810 model performs no better than most Snapdragon 835 devices released in the past year, and that definitely should not be the case....

Last week, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) submitted a controversial regulation change allowing officers to use robots to kill suspects. The rule faced pushback from the Board of Supervisors and civil rights advocates, including the ACLU. After at least one set of revisions, the SFPD finally submitted the proposal to city officials for approval. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved the new rules in an 8-3 vote with revisions....

The first red flag he picked up on is the fact that if the price is too good to be true, it probably is. When you spot a 1TB microSD card from a no-name seller commanding just $25, pass. A legitimate 1TB card from a trusted brand like SanDisk or Lexar starts at a minimum of 5x that price. Hanson discovered that some scammers do ship real micrSD cards, albeit with less capacity than advertised....

This is because Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 are the same physical chips as Ryzen 7, just with a certain degree of resources disabled. In our previous Ryzen 5 simulation we explained this in a bit more detail, so we won’t go over all that info again. In a nutshell, when an 8-core CPU fails the quality control check with one or more cores, the defective cores get shut off and the chip is binned as a lower-end part....

The biggest gripe we had with previous Sony smartphones was the average display. This has been completely solved with the Xperia Z2’s 5.2-inch IPS panel: viewing angles are great, saturation is better than ever, and generally this is a panel that holds its own with competitors who’ve already established strong display offerings. The camera has received some solid tweaks as well. Notably the inclusion of 4K video recording and improvements to low-light imagery....

This year Sony has released the Xperia Z5, which brings a collection of updated hardware to the company’s flagship Android device. While technically a successor to the limited-release Xperia Z4, Sony is positioning the Xperia Z5 as a worthy upgrade over the year-old Xperia Z3, or the Xperia Z1 from 2013 for those on two-year release cycles. In many ways the Xperia Z5 has, on paper, everything you’d want from a high-end smartphone....

SpaceX VP Brian Bjelde said they look forward to working with Mattel to help inspire the next generation of space explorers and enthusiasts. Details are scant but it’s probably safe to assume that the Matchbox line will depict SpaceX’s various rockets. We may even see more exotic creations like Starlink satellites or crew capsules. Hot Wheels, one of Mattel’s other toy brands, has already produced a replica of the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX launched into space back in 2018....

It was way back in the pre-Covid days of 2018 when Squadron 42 got its all-star trailer showing off the likes of Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Mark Strong, John Rhys Davies, Liam Cunningham, Ben Mendelsohn, and Henry Cavill. A few months later, developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) announced that it was scheduled to launch in summer 2020, but, as we know, that never happened. Those anticipating the game’s release were especially disheartened in late 2020 when studio boss Chris Roberts said it would be “done when it’s done....