Philips unveiled its new TV range powered by the company’s new P5 processing engine at IFA 2017, and has also announced a Google Assistant update for its 2017 range.

First, the new P5 processing engine. Philips designed the P5 to enhance and manage on-demand content, HDR and 4K images. The chip is designed to correct imperfections, upscale content to 4K, intensify colors, expand dynamic range and smooth motion.

Philips 8602 introduces Quantum Dot technology

With the Philips 8602, the company has delivered its first 4K Quantum Dot TV. Quantum Dot technology is exciting for the wide color gamut and high peak brightness it can output: with the 8602, the sets are capable of a searing 1110 nits, which should be great for HDR content.

Available in 55-inch and 65-inch, the 8602 sets are powered by the P5 processing engine, have three-sided Ambilight, and are powered by Android. Audio is provided by two front-facing drivers built into the neat ‘floating’ soundbar, which is connected to the stand. No UK launch date or price has been announced.

Related: Quantum Dots Explained: What They Are and Why They’re Great

The 9 series expands the OLED range

The new 65-inch Series 9 OLED TV (model number 9603) is slated to launch in January 2018. With a new OLED panel and three-sided Ambilight, the 9 Series is Philips’ top-of-the-line TV. With perfect blacks and a peak white output of 900 nits, the 9 Series should be able to reproduce every detail in an HDR image.

Because OLED panels are so thin, mounting speakers for quality audio can be difficult. With the 9 Series, Philips’ answer is a 60W 6.1 system. The front-firing soundbase built into the TV’s stand contains six drivers and a rear-firing triple-rin speaker with an integrated bass port on the rear.

The 9603 is scheduled for delivery in January 2018, although pricing has not yet been confirmed.

Google Assistant will come to TVs in 2017

As Philips runs Android on its TVs, it is now able to bring the Google Assistant to its 2017 Android TVs. As with Google Home, Philips TV users can ask Assistant to help find content like Netflix, get the latest weather forecast and even control smart devices. The Google Assistant is operated via TV remote controls with built-in microphones; For the TV models that don’t have these remote controls, the assistant is available through Google’s Android TV Remote app.

Google Assistant will only be available on 2017 and newer TVs once they have been updated to Android Nougat. Philips estimates that the upgrade will begin in fall 2017, although the Google Assistant will be added later in spring 2018.

Nvidia GeForce MX150 laptop graphics explained

A slew of new laptops were unveiled at the IFA 2017 show in Berlin, many of which feature Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics. What is it, how powerful is it and should you care? We take a look.

Nvidia GeForce MX150 gaming performance

For many gaming-loving laptop buyers, the promise of dedicated or discrete graphics is like a warning sign to a bull: it means extra performance in the latest 3D games. The MX150 is a replacement for the GeForce 940MX that has appeared in many laptops over the past few years. The MX150 was first announced in May, but it won’t appear in laptops we can buy until the end of August 2017.

It’s also a replacement for any Intel HD graphics hardware (now called UHD) built into your laptop’s processor. Intel graphics have never been known for their gaming performance, so it’s easy to avoid almost any laptop without a discrete GPU as something.

Related: Best Gaming Laptops

So far we haven’t had an MX150 laptop to test, but Nvidia has provided some of its own numbers to give you a rough idea of ​​what performance to expect. First and foremost, the MX150 is not a high-end GPU. Nvidia’s marketing material for the MX150 only mentions playing eSports games like Dota 2, CS:GO, LoL and World of Tanks in Full HD resolution at 60 fps.

The company makes no claims as to what graphics settings you’ll be running, although this point is quite debatable, as we recommend that you let the Nvidia GeForce Experience software take over and do the heavy lifting of deciding which graphics settings you should be running at.

So only eSports? Maybe, but we can use some other data to see how more advanced games are performing.

In our recent review of the HP Specter x360 15, we ran some benchmarks with the included 940MX GPU. There we saw a performance of 50 fps in Dirty Rally at Full HD, medium settings and 30 fps in Shadow of Mordor at Full HD.

Nvidia claims the MX150 is 25% more powerful than the 940MX (and 4x more powerful than the last-gen Intel HD Graphics 520). So we can conclude that while this GPU isn’t designed to run the latest AAA games, it can technically run them if you dial down the graphics settings and/or the resolution.

Again, if the game is powered by GeForce Experience, Nvidia should automatically be able to tune your game to the best compromise between performance and eye candy.

Nvidia Marketing Material

What you should consider here is that this GPU is commonly found in laptops with relatively low-power 7th and 8th Gen Intel Core CPUs. These chips are often a bit of a bottleneck for your games – some more advanced titles like Battlefield 1 struggle without a really beefy processor, no matter how good your GPU is.

Video and photo editing

According to Nvidia, the MX150 is a master of photo editing in Adobe products. The company reckons you’ll be able to crop and remaster photos up to 2.5x faster than standard Intel HD graphics and up to 4x faster color remastering when working with video content .

Nvidia Marketing Material

Should I Buy a GeForce MX150 Laptop?

Until we’ve tested one for sure we can’t make a final judgment, but we can offer some general advice. The GeForce MX150 will likely be found in thinner and lighter laptops than the full-desktop style GPUs like the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti. If you’re really looking for a gaming laptop, consider a thicker and heavier machine. If you want thin and light, and want to play legacy or eSports titles, these new MX150 should be for you. Check back here when we know more about the MX150 benchmark results.

Related: Best Gaming PC

Let us know what you think of the Nvidia GeForce MX150 on Facebook or Twitter.

“Alexa, find me a 43″ Ultra HD TV that you can control and make it under $400.”

At IFA 2017, Toshiba – or actually Vestel as part of its pan-European licensing deal – removed the covers from a range of affordable TVs that work well with Amazon’s digital assistant. Owners of Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers, like the Echo or Echo Dot, can control the new range with just the sound of their voice. Couch potatoes rejoice.

Related: The Best TVs to Buy

So you no longer need to dive around the sofa to find the remote control, instead a simple utterance of your voice can turn the new Toshiba TVs on or off, change the channel, select inputs, fast-forward and rewind through their shows and adjust settings the volume. Granted, you could do this with any TV with additional devices like the Logitech Harmony Hub, but that’s one less thing to worry about.

By tapping into Amazon’s API, the whole family can now argue about what to watch, hopefully not leading to too many arguments. Toshiba’s new TV range is also expected to include smart TV elements, meaning 4K streaming from Netflix and YouTube, as well as access to the Opera TV store for additional content.

The new Alexa-enabled television costs from 399 euros for the 43-inch model, others in the range up to 75 inches. Toshiba also promises Alexa support for all upcoming 2018 TVs.

Toshiba launches new 55 and 65 inch OLED HDR TVs

For those with more cash to spare, Toshiba has also announced a new Premium range with all the TV amenities you could want, including a stunning bezel-less design for the larger 65-inch model. Designed to hang flush to your TV, with a super slim design and cable management, it’s a real eye-catcher.

Starting at €1,699 for the smaller, slightly chunkier 55-inch model (price TBC for the 65-inch model), both models feature OLED technology with individually illuminated pixels. As a result, you can expect deeper blacks. The TVs are also capable of displaying 99% of the DCI-P3 color space, so you can expect better color accuracy thanks to the wider color space.

See also: Hybrid Log-Gamma: Why It’s the Next Big Thing in 4K TV

You can also expect HDR support in both HDR 10 and Dolby Vision forms, using the latter for scene-by-scene brightness control for a more cinematic experience. Topping it all off is Hybrid Log Gamma support, which is great news for broadcast content.

Toshiba’s new TV series is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2017.

What do you think of Toshiba’s new range of TVs? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook.

advantages

• Elegant design, luxurious construction
• Subtle, dynamic and refined sound
• Hides cables

disadvantage

• Strain a touch at high volumes
• Expensive
• Will cause envy among friends

key specifications

• Valuation Price: £2699.00
• 2.5 way bass reflex design
• Aluminum cabinets and plinth
• 28mm soft dome tweeters and two 5″ woofers
• High gloss finish in red, black or white
• magnetic grid
• “Invisible” cable management system

As the name suggests, Dali is a company with serious artistic intentions, as renowned in Hi-Fi circles for their groundbreaking designs as they are for their refined sound quality. Whether the Dali Fazon F5 is used for home theater or music, its speakers will please both your eyes and ears.

The Fazon F5 are a good example of what the Danish company is all about. These floorstanding speakers look unlike anything else, with a design so lavish and luxurious you might feel self-conscious just by their presence.

But priced at £2,700 these aren’t the sort of speakers you throw in the car at Tesco. They’re aimed at buyers whose love of polished sound quality runs as deep as their pockets, which might rule out many of our readers. But with such an irresistible design that defies convention, we couldn’t help but give them a whirl.

The Fazon F5 are not considered part of a 5.1 system, nor is there a matching subwoofer to create a 2.1 system. As such, they’re primarily designed for music playback, but of course they still add shine to movies or TV programs in their stereo configuration.

Carefully lifting the burly units out of their boxes, their lineage is immediately apparent. The molded aluminum cabinets are 919mm high and finished in a stunning high gloss Ferrari Red that is smooth and shiny to the touch. The sides and rear are seductively curved – a feature that not only looks good but also helps eliminate standing waves – while a black magnetic grille snaps onto the front to cover the drivers.

The whole thing stands on a stable, round aluminum base that has a clever cable winding mechanism. On the back of the stem is a small panel that can be detached and pulled out, which has spring clips attached that accept raw wire or banana plugs. You can route the cables through a hole in the base and into the clamps, then snap the panel back into place for a clean, cable-free appearance. This method is ideal if you intend to run the cables underground, as they run directly and out of sight into the speaker.

The Fazon F5s are quite possibly the most beautiful speakers we’ve ever seen – sleek, modern and distinctive, guaranteed to turn heads in any room. The biggest appeal is the sexy red finish, but if that’s too much for you then it also comes in black or white gloss finish.

The Dali Fazon F5 features a 2.5-way bass reflex design that inherits technology from Dali’s MENTOR series, including a soft dome tweeter that’s a few millimeters wider than most (28mm versus the typical 25mm ), which is supposed to deliver the sound “more air”.

It sits above two 5-inch mid/bass drivers, with cones made from Dali’s wood fiber blend—an ultra-light, stiff material that resists unwanted vibration. The overall frequency response is specified as 49 Hz – 23 kHz, with a sensitivity of 87.5 dB and a recommended amplifier power between 40 and 180 W.

The baffle (which holds the drivers to the front of the speaker) uses a two-layer construction. Its two parts are sandwiched together with polymer sealant to ensure an acoustically inert structure. Combined with the aluminum chassis, this gives the Fazon F5s a wonderfully tight and rigid feel from top to bottom.

This phenomenal build quality results in exceptional sound that is just as insightful and polished as you would expect for the money. Unlike some style-focused speakers that look stunning but have solid pants, this is a proper audiophile achievement – a wonderful example of how style and substance can coexist in perfect harmony.

We played Kind of Blue by Miles Davis on CD and the jazz masterpiece sounds smooth and silky, with the F5s easily digging out the crucial treble detail on the slightly shuffling drums and breaths during the sax and trumpet solos. They orchestrate the complex arrangements and the interplay of the instruments wonderfully, giving each element room to breathe.

They also do justice to Paul Chambers’ deft double bass work, which sounds clunky yet nimble. The perfectly tuned drivers and competent crossovers deliver a harmonious sound.

The F5 are best with Hi-Res music on SACD. The amount of musical detail they unearth is breathtaking, with a dexterity and precision in the high frequencies that you just don’t get from budget speakers.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all dry and clinical – it’s an exciting listening experience when you use the right material. With fast dance music, the sound is effortlessly entertaining, with a sense of rhythm and dynamic punch that draws you into the music. Kick drums and basslines have noticeable depth and solidity.

The Dali Fazon F5 speakers also deliver clean and unadulterated vocals and demonstrate excellent midrange reproduction. They’re accomplished, versatile speakers that make everything from Hi-Res discs to MP3s burned to CD sound absolutely mesmerizing.

Movies also sound great through the F5s, especially ones with lots of busy background noise and subtle details they pull out brilliantly. Loud action scenes are suitably intense, and even in this stereo setup it delivers a wide, spacious soundstage. If we’re picky, the F5s didn’t sound 100% comfortable when we cranked the volume up loud, and showed one or two very minor signs of strain. But other than that, we can’t rate them highly enough.

verdict

Overall the Dali Fazon F5s are a fabulous speaker set that combines stunning design with the right audiophile sound quality. They offer a wealth of detail, with agile bass response and beautiful tone for vocals. Music is their bread and butter, but they can easily handle the rigors of an action movie. Such sonic and aesthetic luxury doesn’t come cheap though – with a £2,700 price tag, you’ll need a large bank balance to make them yours.

Morphy Richards Supervac 732008 – Stairs

As there is no ‘hose and tools’ facility on offer, the Supervac 008 must be carried up the stairs and used on each and every step. Thanks to its super light weight, this isn’t an issue, and the lack of cords gives you excellent range and also eliminates the potential trip hazard. The cleaner easily handles both carpets and hard surfaces, and the pivoting head gives you some latitude to maneuver around turns.

The limiting factor for the 008’s stair cleaning performance is its poor edge cleaning and lack of a hand tool alternative to treat the areas the main floor head misses.

A small domestic dispute ensued in the test facility. While the latter issue was far from ideal, it has been argued that the Supervac 008 was not designed to be a ‘main’ or sole cleaner in the home. Its ability to do a decent job of cleaning open floors and stairs while being lightweight and easy to use made it the perfect secondary cleaner. The assumption is that missing edges and a lack of a truly thorough carpet cleaning are likely to be remedied with a less regular run through with the house’s main wired vacuum.

It’s a fair point, but still no excuse for poor head design in our opinion.

Morphy Richards Supervac 732008 – Animal Hair

With its rotating brush bar and soft bristles, pet hair doesn’t pose too much of a problem for the Supervac 008. A few passes of our pet hair test area on the mixed Collie and Labrador hair carpet showed the area cleaned in around 12 seconds. That’s a fabulous result for a handheld vacuum and isn’t too far off our pet-specific cleaner threshold of under 10 seconds.

Again, poor edge cleaning can result in hairs being embedded in the carpet in the corners, but the 008 surface hairs are easily removed on open carpets and hard floors. Likewise, the lack of tools means it’s not really great for cleaning sofas or pet beds. The soft-bristled brush didn’t seem to tangle hair any more than a traditional stiff-bristled brush, and Morphy has cleverly included a coin twist for access to the bar, making cleaning easier.

Should I buy the Morphy Richards Supervac 732008?

As a second home cleaner, the Supervac 008 offers cordless convenience, super light weight and cleaning performance that rivals most stick vacuums on the market. Plus, the battery life is good enough for a full house cleaning.

It’s pretty messy to empty, though, and doesn’t offer deep or edge cleaning like the best wired models, but for a quick clean, the 008, if not entirely super, is pretty useful.

verdict

The Supervac 732008 is an ideal second vacuum for quick cleaning, but lacks the power for a more thorough cleaning.

advantages

• Good cleaning results for a stick vacuum
• Excellent on hard floors
• Foldable handle for easy storage
• Very quiet in use
• Long runtime, 30+ minutes
• Super light and manoeuvrable

disadvantage

• Small trash can, messy to empty
• Bad edge cleaning
• Pretty low suction power
• No hand tools
• Simple ‘wall-wart’ charger

key specifications

• Evaluation price: £99.99
• Cordless, bagless handheld vacuum cleaner
• 0.3 liter capacity
• 30min running time
• Foldable stick design

What is the Morphy Richards Supervac 732008?

If you’re looking for a super lightweight cordless vacuum that offers plenty of cleaning time on a single charge, then the Morphy Richards Supervac 732008 could be the answer. This powerful handheld bagless vacuum features a powered rotating brush bar, 36 volt motor and 30 minute battery life.

With its reasonably sized bin, folding handle for easy storage and constantly rotating brush bar for the entire floor, the Supervac has a lot going for it and, now at discounted prices, could make a great deal if you fancy a cordless machine.

Morphy Richards Supervac 732008 Theme and Accessories

Morphy Richard’s Supervac Stick Cleaner range comprises a range of models with a variety of features and functions, each identified by a model number ending in a Bond-like ’00’ number. Today we have the Supervac 732008, or 008 as we will call it, on the test bench.

The Supervac 008 is a dedicated stick vacuum with no hose or tools to mess around with. It is very compact and the handle can be folded back to almost halve the height for easy storage in the closet. Its floor care properties come from the special floor nozzle with powered rotating brush bar and transparent front panel so you can clearly see if the bar is clogged. The head pivots from the main body, making it very easy to manoeuvre, and the whole cleaner is extremely light, especially considering the powerful 36 volt battery built in.

So the only real accessory is the charger. This is a wall plug charger with a cord that plugs into the body of the machine. A row of bright green LEDs on the front shows you the charge status of the battery. It takes about five hours to fully charge an empty battery. We prefer proper docking stations, and the Supervac range has those too, but the 008 does well when it comes to charging, so that’s not a huge issue. With our brand new sample the battery lasted over 35 minutes which is a great result and gives plenty of cleaning time between charges.

Interestingly, the Supervac is one of the few cleaners we’ve ever tested where the powered brush roller can’t be turned off and runs constantly. We’re not big believers in this idea, as hard floors, especially delicate surfaces like softwood parquet, are at risk of damage if small pieces of stone or gravel get caught in the brushes.

Morphy Richards addresses this problem with an innovative brush design with thick but very soft rows of bristles that allow small dirt particles to be pushed deep into the bristles and thrown into the vacuum airflow. It’s a risky strategy, but if it works, it could prove incredibly effective at removing even fine, ingrained dust from hard floors.

The dust bin isn’t huge at 0.3 liters and isn’t the easiest bin to empty. It detaches easily enough from the main body, but in order to loosen the dirt you have to pull the filter assembly and cyclone out from inside the bin. This can be quite messy, doubly so if you’re doing it via your keyboard while writing a review, experience has shown us. The filter itself consists of two parts and should be brushed or tapped clean each time the container is emptied. Both parts can be washed out if they are really clogged.

Morphy Richards Supervac 732008 – Cleaning

We charged the Supervac 008 for five hours for its regulation and watched the green LED sequence until it was fully charged. It regulates itself and switches to a trickle charge when the battery is full, so that the 008 can remain connected at all times.

When we first turned it on, we could see the brushroll spinning and hear something – but not much. The 008 is spectacularly quiet and you could probably tidy up around a sleeping baby without waking them up. At just 72dB, that’s much, much lower than most corded vacuums and quieter than most cordless vacuums we’ve also tested. This kind of noise level is about the same as your television program during the day, so it’s not intrusive at all.

In front

The Supervac 008’s low weight – not too much over 3 kg on our scales – makes it a nimble companion in the household. The downside to this light weight is that while the head pivots, the cleaner doesn’t have the weight or traction to actually turn around corners and tends to slide straight ahead. This is especially noticeable on hard floors when the wheels slide sideways. However, the super light weight means you can easily push this stick cleaner around the room with the pivoting neck to get into corners and under furniture. The light action is also very easy on the wrist.

After

The 008 cleans relatively well on open carpets. Suction power is average for a cordless vacuum, which is pretty low, but the powered brush bar moves and loosens dirt enough for the cleaner to suck it up. You’ll never see a neat and raised carpet pile or get a really deep clean with this sort of cordless stick vacuum, but the brush bar certainly helps the 008 perform respectably.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case when it gets to your carpet edges. A cursory look at the underside of the 008 reveals that the brush bar and airflow duct are recessed far from the edge of the floor nozzle. The result is very poor edge cleaning with test powder residue visible more than 1 cm from the baseboard edge.

In front
After

Things are a lot better on hard floors, and while the 008 certainly doesn’t have the power to pull dirt out of deep cracks and crevices, the rotating brush bar offers inspired cleaning performance. We use a test mix of oats and grains as the soil for testing hard floors because our carpet-based test mix of baking soda and floor freshening powder tends to stick to tile, laminate and hardwood floors in a fine film that cannot be removed by vacuuming alone.

The 008’s soft brush bar really works wonders here, sweeping up fine dust that even top-notch corded cleaners might leave behind. We risked putting a few small pieces of gravel in the path across a softwood surface and sure enough the soft bristles lifted the debris without also marking the ground.

Overwatch Beta keys for Xbox One and PS4 are available now for O2 customers.

To redeem the codes, simply log in to the O2 Priority app or the O2 Priority website.

Pre-order Overwatch from Amazon

For those who pre-order the game, the Overwatch Beta will start in Early Access on May 3rd, with the Open Beta a bit later on May 5th.

The open beta runs until May 9th, so make sure you jump in and get a chance to try out some of the game’s 21 heroes and see which ones are your favourites. To get a head start we have a guide detailing every single character in the game and their abilities, click the link below to read it.

See also: Overwatch Character Guide

Check out our Overwatch video preview below:

Overwatch launches May 24 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. TrustedReviews is going to jump straight into beta next week, right?

You have one iPhone, but I have two iPhones, right? Wrong, wrong and wrong again – at least that’s what Apple says.

According to Phil Schiller, Apple’s global marketing director, Apple product names should never be pluralized. That is, if you own two Macs, you should actually say, “I have two Mac computers.”

Schiller taught us our Apple grammar in a post on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/statuses/725791354769399808

Related: iPhone SE review

Schiller clarified his statement with two more tweets:

https://twitter.com/statuses/725937759022514176

https://twitter.com/statuses/725938369826414592

But is he right? Well, Apple actually has its own style guide, which page 121 advises:

Trademark Product Names: Make trademark product names plural by adding the plural generic noun to the singular product name.
Correct: Mac computers, MacBook Pro computers, iMac computers
Incorrect: Macs, MacBook Pros, iMacs

So in Apple’s books, Schiller got it spot on. But we probably won’t be saying “I have three iPhone phones” or “You bought two iPad Pros” any time soon.

Check out our iPhone SE review:

Related: iPhone 8

Do you think Apple products should be exempt from the pluralizing “-s”? Let us know in the comments below.