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3 underrated Amazon Prime Video movies you should watch this weekend (May 23-25)
Product Reviews

3 underrated Amazon Prime Video movies you should watch this weekend (May 23-25)

by admin



If you’ve ever scrolled through Amazon Prime Video for even a few minutes, you’re likely aware of just how deep their library is. That depth can be exciting, but it can also be anxiety-inducing, especially if all you really want to do is find a great movie to watch.

Thankfully, we’ve pulled together a list of three great movies available on Prime Video that are all worth your time. These movies have different vibes and represent different genres, but each of them is a reminder of just how many good movies are available on the streaming service.

We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.

The Hurricane (1999)

Denzel Washington is one of the best actors of all time for a reason. The Hurricane remains one of his greatest and most unseen performances.

The film stars Washington as Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a boxer who dreamed of winning the middleweight title and was then wrongly arrested for murder and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. The film’s depiction of the way Black men, in particular, are demonized and villainized whether they’re guilty or not remains relevant even to this day.

You can watch The Hurricane on Amazon Prime Video.

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Telling the true story of Ron Kovic, an all-American teenager who enlists in the Vietnam War and then eventually becomes one of its more radical opponents, Born on the Fourth of July is a thoroughly American movie. Kovic’s story about a patriotic boy who becomes more and more cynical about his country and the war is a brilliant examination of the way Vietnam destroyed the trust of an entire generation of Americans.

Anchored by one of the best performances of Tom Cruise‘s career, Born on the Fourth of July is honest about the realities of war and also features some stunning, horrific footage depicting the conflict itself.

You can watch Born on the Fourth of July on Amazon Prime Video.

Bernie (2011)

Loosely based on a true story, Bernie follows a beloved assistant funeral director in a small Texas town. When he befriends a prickly widow that nobody else likes, he eventually becomes totally ensconced in her world and her needs.

After she’s found dead and Bernie is charged with her murder, the residents of the town spring to his defense, and we come to appreciate how he wound up in this position. Anchored by one of Jack Black‘s best performances, Bernie is darkly funny from start to finish.

You can watch Bernie on Amazon Prime Video.





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Google Veo 3 video generation.
Product Reviews

Google’s Veo 3 Is Already Deepfaking All of YouTube’s Most Smooth-Brained Content

by admin


Wake up, babe, new viral AI video generator dropped. This time, it’s not OpenAI’s Sora model in the spotlight, it’s Google’s Veo 3, which was announced on Tuesday during the company’s annual I/O keynote. Naturally, people are eager to see what chaos Veo 3 can wreak, and the results have been, well, chaotic. We’ve got disjointed Michael Bay fodder, talking muffins, self-aware AI sims, puppy-centric pharmaceutical ads—the list goes on.

One thing that I keep seeing over and over, however, is—to put it bluntly—AI slop, and a very specific variety. For whatever reason, all of you seem to be absolutely hellbent on getting Veo to conjure up a torrent of smooth-brain YouTube content. The worst part is that this thing is actually kind of good at cranking it out, too. Don’t believe me? Here are the receipts.

You can barely tell this iPhone unboxing isn’t real pic.twitter.com/vfZ2lUoliZ

— Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_) May 21, 2025

Is this 100% convincing? No. No, it is not. At a glance, though, most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if they’re just scrolling through their social feed mindlessly as one does when they’re using literally any social media site/app. Unboxing not cutting it for you? Well, don’t worry, we’ve got some man-on-the-street slop for your viewing pleasure. Sorry, hawk-tuah girl, it’s the singularity’s turn to capitalize on viral fame.

2. Stand-up comedy telling a funny joke that never happenedhttps://t.co/05M6cDZlzK

— Min Choi (@minchoi) May 22, 2025

Again, Veo’s generation is not perfect by any means, but it’s not exactly unconvincing, either. And there’s more bad news: Your Twitch-like smooth-brain content isn’t safe either. Here’s one of a picture-in-picture-style “Fortnite” stream that simulates gameplay and everything. I say “Fortnite” in scare quotes because this is just an AI representation of what Fortnite looks like, not the real thing. Either way, the only thing worse than mindless game streams is arguably mindless game streams that never even happened. And to be honest, the idea of simulating a simulation makes my brain feel achey, so for that reason alone, I’m going to hard pass.

Uhhh… I don’t think Veo 3 is supposed to be generating Fortnite gameplay pic.twitter.com/bWKruQ5Nox

— Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_) May 21, 2025

Listen, I’m not trying to be an alarmist here. In the grand scheme of things, AI-generated YouTube, Twitch, or TikTok chum isn’t going to hurt anyone, exactly, but it also doesn’t paint a rosy portrait of our AI-generated future. If there’s one thing we don’t need more of, it’s filler. Social media, without AI entering the equation, is already mostly junk, and it does make one wonder what the results of widespread generative video will really be in the end. Maybe I’ll wind up with AI-generated egg on my face, and video generators like Flow, Google’s “AI filmmaker,” will be a watershed product for real creators, but I have my doubts.

At the very least, I’d like to see some safeguards if video generation is going to go mainstream. As harmless as AI slop might be, the ability to generate fairly convincing video isn’t one that should be taken lightly. There’s obviously huge potential for misinformation and propaganda, and if all it takes to help mitigate that is watermarking videos created in Veo 3, then it feels like an easy first step. For now, we’ll just have to take the explosion of Veo 3-enabled content with a spoonful of molasses, because there’s a lot of slop to get to, and this might be just the first course.





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Feds Charge 16 Russians Allegedly Tied to Botnets Used in Ransomware, Cyberattacks, and Spying
Product Reviews

Feds Charge 16 Russians Allegedly Tied to Botnets Used in Ransomware, Cyberattacks, and Spying

by admin


The hacker ecosystem in Russia, more than perhaps anywhere else in the world, has long blurred the lines between cybercrime, state-sponsored cyberwarfare, and espionage. Now an indictment of a group of Russian nationals and the takedown of their sprawling botnet offers the clearest example in years of how a single malware operation allegedly enabled hacking operations as varied as ransomware, wartime cyberattacks in Ukraine, and spying against foreign governments.

The US Department of Justice today announced criminal charges today against 16 individuals law enforcement authorities have linked to a malware operation known as DanaBot, which according to a complaint infected at least 300,000 machines around the world. The DOJ’s announcement of the charges describes the group as “Russia-based,” and names two of the suspects, Aleksandr Stepanov and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin, as living in Novosibirsk, Russia. Five other suspects are named in the indictment, while another nine are identified only by their pseudonyms. In addition to those charges, the Justice Department says the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS)—a criminal investigation arm of the Department of Defense—carried out seizures of DanaBot infrastructure around the world, including in the US.

Aside from alleging how DanaBot was used in for-profit criminal hacking, the indictment also makes a rarer claim—it describes how a second variant of the malware it says was used in espionage against military, government, and NGO targets. “Pervasive malware like DanaBot harms hundreds of thousands of victims around the world, including sensitive military, diplomatic, and government entities, and causes many millions of dollars in losses,” US attorney Bill Essayli wrote in a statement.

Since 2018, DanaBot—described in the criminal complaint as “incredibly invasive malware”—has infected millions of computers around the world, initially as a banking trojan designed to steal directly from those PCs’ owners with modular features designed for credit card and cryptocurrency theft. Because its creators allegedly sold it in an “affiliate” model that made it available to other hacker groups for $3,000 to $4,000 a month, however, it was soon used as a tool to install different forms of malware in a broad array of operations, including ransomware. Its targets, too, quickly spread from initial victims in Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Australia to US and Canadian financial institutions, according to an analysis of the operation by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

At one point in 2021, according to Crowdstrike, Danabot was used in a software supply-chain attack that hid the malware in a javascript coding tool called NPM with millions of weekly downloads. Crowdstrike found victims of that compromised tool across the financial service, transportation, technology, and media industries.

That scale and the wide variety of its criminal uses made DanaBot “a juggernaut of the e-crime landscape,” according to Selena Larson, a staff threat researcher at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.

More uniquely, though, DanaBot has also been used at times for hacking campaigns that appear to be state-sponsored or linked to Russian government agency interests. In 2019 and 2020, it was used to target a handful of Western government officials in apparent espionage operations, according to the DOJ’s indictment. According to Proofpoint, the malware in those instances was delivered in phishing messages that impersonated the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and a Kazakhstan government entity.



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Honor 400 Pro on a wicker basket
Product Reviews

Honor 400 Pro review: an AI-packed almost-flagship for the discerning bargain hunter

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Why you can trust TechRadar


We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Honor 400 Pro: Two-minute review

‘Flagship killer’ would perhaps be too strident a term to apply to the Honor 400 Pro. Rather, it seeks to subtly undermine the premium crowd with competitive specifications and a slightly lower asking price.

This is a well-built phone made of flagship-grade materials, with the kind of IP68/IP69 dust and water resistance rating that puts many a full-priced handset to shame. Its 6.67-inch OLED display, too, is about as bright, sharp, and accurate as you could reasonably expect.

While you won’t be getting the absolute best performance the smartphone market has to offer, you simply won’t notice that Honor has opted for last year’s top processor unless you take a glance at the spec sheet. The 400 Pro performs very smoothly indeed.


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The headline feature here is an all-new 200MP main camera, which captures good photos in a range of lighting conditions. You also get a decent dedicated 3x telephoto camera, which can be further boosted through the use of AI.

(Image credit: Future)

Another impressive AI camera trick is Image to video, though its ability to turn stills into brief videos is a party trick that probably won’t see much practical use beyond showcasing the latest artificial intelligence gimmick.

No matter – the Honor 400 Pro is a thoughtfully balanced phone built on solid specifications, which includes a larger-than-average 5,300mAh battery and speedy 100W wired charging support. You also get 50W wireless charging, though both speeds are reliant on you having the necessary charger to hand.

Honor’s Magic OS 9.0 continues the brand’s slightly tiresome obsession with iOS, and it remains a somewhat busy UI. However, it’s also fast and flexible, and Honor’s new six-year update promise is one of the best in the business.

All in all, the Honor 400 Pro is part of a compelling group of in-betweener smartphones, offering less compromise than even the best mid-range smartphones while still costing much less money than your average flagship.

It’s not unique, nor is it without its flaws, but it’s a very accomplished option for those willing to leave the usual suspects behind in pursuit of a bargain.

Honor 400 Pro review: price and availability

(Image credit: Future)

  • Costs £699.99 in the UK
  • Released May 2025
  • No availability in the US or Australia

The Honor 400 Pro was launched globally, alongside its brother, the Honor 400, on May 22, 2025. It won’t be receiving a launch in the US, as is customary from the brand, and there are no plans for Australia at the time of writing.

Pricing for the sole Honor 400 Pro model stands at £699.99 (around $930 / AU$1,450), which isn’t a figure we see all that often. This pitches it well above the Google Pixel 9a and the Samsung Galaxy A56 (both £499), and just short of the Google Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 (both £799).

This isn’t quite a full-on flagship phone, then, but it’s also far too expensive to be classed as a mid-ranger. It’s one of those ‘affordable flagship’ phones like the OnePlus 13R, the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, or the Nubia Z70 Ultra.

Incidentally, an even cheaper version of the Honor 400, the Honor 400 Lite, launched on April 22 at a cost of £249.99.

Honor 400 Pro review: specs

Swipe to scroll horizontallyHonor 400 Pro specs Header Cell – Column 0 Header Cell – Column 1

Dimensions:

160.8mm x 76.1mm x 8.1mm

Weight:

205g

Display:

6.7-inch 1.5K (2800 x 1280) up to 120Hz AMOLED

Chipset:

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

RAM:

12GB

Storage:

512GB

OS:

Android 15 with MagicOS 9.0

Primary camera:

200MP (f/1.9)

Ultra-wide camera:

12MP (f/2.2)

Telephoto camera:

50MP with 3x zoom (f/2.4)

Front camera:

16MP

Battery:

5,300mAh

Charging:

100W wired, 50W wireless

Colors:

Lunar Grey, Midnight Black

Honor 400 Pro review: design

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

  • Silky matte glass back
  • Unusual curved-trapeze camera module
  • IP68 & IP69 dust and water resistance

With the Honor 400 Pro, Honor has dropped the distinctive Casa Milá-inspired camera module of the Honor 200 Pro in favor of a kind of rounded trapezium shape (a trapercle?). It’s a little wonky-looking, though I quite like the unorthodox camera configuration.

Otherwise, Honor has retained the basic look of its affordable flagship range – unlike the regular Honor 400, which has contracted a serious case of the iPhones.

This means that the Honor 400 Pro retains its gently rounded look, with 2.5D glass to the front and back – the latter in a pleasingly silky-to-the-touch finish. The aluminum frame, too, curves around gently, resulting in a phone that sits comfortably in the hand.

These curves also serve to disguise the fact that the Honor 400 is a fairly big phone, with a thickness of 8.1mm (the Honor 400 is 7.3mm) and a relatively heavy weight of 205g (vs 184g).

This time around, Honor has fitted its almost-flagship with both IP68 and IP69 certification. That’s quite an advance on the Honor 200 Pro, which only managed an IP65 rating.

The Honor 400 Pro is available in just two colors: Lunar Grey and Midnight Black. Not the most inspiring selection, it has to be said, but they do look nice and professional, which is kind of the name of the game here.

Honor 400 Pro review: display

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

  • 6.7-inch quad-curved 120Hz OLED display
  • 3,840Hz PWM dimming
  • 5,000 nits peak brightness

Honor has really knocked it out of the park with the displays in the Honor 400 range this year. In the Honor 400, you’re getting a 6.7-inch OLED with a just-so 2800 x 1280 resolution and a 120Hz peak refresh rate.

That’s fractionally smaller than last year’s 6.78-inch screen, but I defy anyone to portray this as meaningful. Not when the peak brightness has been boosted from an already-excellent 4,000 nits in the Honor 200 Pro to 5,000 nits here.

This top-end figure applies to limited HDR scenarios, of course. With autobrightness switched off, I recorded a maximum brightness of around 600 nits. That’s decent enough, though it’s about half what the Pixel 9 can manage.

Color accuracy is superb, at least when you drop the slightly over-the-top Vivid color mode and select Normal instead.

The Honor 400 Pro display also supports an elevated PWM dimming rate of 3840Hz, just like the Honor 200 Pro before it. This helps reduce eye strain by lowering flicker at lower brightness levels. That’s something Samsung and Google continue to overlook.

The main differences between this screen and the Honor 400’s relate to small aesthetic choices. The Pro Display curves away at the edges, though this didn’t interfere with content in any way, nor did it lead to any unintended presses.

Slightly more bothersome is the longer display notch, which crams in depth-sensing capabilities at the expense of a little real estate. If you like to take your video content full screen, you’re more likely to be bothered by this, but it didn’t trouble me too much.

Honor 400 Pro review: cameras

(Image credit: Future)

  • 200MP main (f/1.9)
  • 50MP 3x telephoto (f/2.4)
  • 12MP ultra-wide macro (f/2.2)

Honor has really ramped up its camera offering with the Honor 400 series this year. The headline event for the Honor 400 Pro is a new 200MP AI Main Camera, which packs a large 1/1.4-inch sensor, an f/1.9 aperture, and OIS.

We’ll get into the ‘AI’ part of that main camera soon enough, but at a basic level this camera takes sharp, contrasty shots in most situations. You can choose from three basic looks depending on whether you want your shots to look natural, punched up for social media, or to take on a certain artful film camera aesthetic.

Shots from this main sensor are slightly less impressive here on a £700 phone than they are on the £400 Honor 400, which shares the same component. There’s simply a lot more competition at this level. With that said, they’re still more than serviceable.

Unlike the Honor 400, this main sensor isn’t pulling double duty to provide all of your zoomed shots. There’s major assistance on that front from a dedicated 50MP telephoto camera, utilizing a Sony IMX856 sensor and aided by OIS, which grabs nice, sharp shots at its natural 3x zoom length and usable shots at 6x or even 10x.

Beyond that, you’ll find too much noise for this to be a viable option, though Honor’s AI image enhancement technology is one of the most impressive around. Stray beyond 30x, and the phone should offer you the chance to activate AI assistance. Head back into the picture after shooting and, after a minute or so of processing time, you’ll be given a much clearer shot.

The results here can vary wildly in effectiveness, and it certainly does no favors to the human face, while it can really miss the target with some fine details, particularly at the 50x maximum range. However, there’s no denying that this can turn out much improved hybrid zoom shots given the right subject and shooting conditions.

What I will say is that this 3x telephoto camera does change the tone of the shots from the main sensor. Moving from 2x (which crops in on the main sensor) to 3x sees a slightly jarring shift from a more natural look to a more vivid, dare I say exaggerated one. It’s not ruinous, but you don’t get the seamless transition of the truly top-level flagship phone cameras here.

(Image credit: Future)

The 12MP ultra-wide is the weakest camera of the three, bringing with it a marked drop-off in detail and contrast. Still, it remains a viable camera.

Going back to the matter of AI, perhaps the most attention-grabbing – if not exactly useful – feature of the Honor 400 Pro’s camera is Image to video. The Honor 400 series is the first to utilize this Google AI-driven feature, which essentially turns any normal still photo (it doesn’t even need to have been taken on the phone) into a five-second mini-video.

As with so many AI-driven features these days, the results aren’t universally brilliant, but some prove to be alarmingly convincing.

Using one shot that was sent to me of a chicken and a cat facing off under a table, this AI tool caused the chicken to strut forward while the cat casually twitched its ears. Another chicken scuttled in from off camera, while a second cat was revealed to be lying down behind that original chicken. Neither of those last two creatures even existed in the original shot.

It’s undeniably impressive, and even a little scary. But I have to ask myself when I’d use this feature beyond showing off the power of AI to my friends and family. So far, I’ve got nothing.

The 50MP front camera takes decent selfie shots, aided by an additional depth sensor for better portraits with nicely blurred, clearly delineated backgrounds.

Video capture extends to 4K and 60fps, which is another way in which the Pro stands out from the Honor 400 (which only hits 4K/30fps).

Honor 400 Pro review: camera samples

Image 1 of 33

(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

Honor 400 Pro review: performance

(Image credit: Future)

  • Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset
  • 12GB RAM and 512GB storage

Performance has ostensibly taken an incremental bump over last year’s Honor 200 Pro. Out goes the stripped-back Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, in comes Qualcomm’s full-fat Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

However, that Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip turned out to be much less capable than its name initially suggested, dropping behind Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in graphical terms.

What we have here, then, is a phone that performs as well as the 2024 flagship crowd. That works out to be a pretty good level for a £700 phone, and indeed, this is the same component that runs the excellent OnePlus 13R. It also means that the Honor 400 Pro comfortably outperforms the entire Pixel 9 range.

Benchmark results are precisely what we’ve come to expect from this well-established chip, as is gaming performance. Genshin Impact will run fluidly on high settings, while demanding console racer GRID Legends speeds by at an appreciable lick.

The existence of the Nubia Z70 Ultra and the Poco F7 Ultra means that the Honor 400 Pro isn’t top of its weight class. Both of those rivals run on the superior Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and only charge £649 for the privilege. However, Honor’s phone remains a very capable runner, backed by 12GB of RAM and a generous 512GB of internal storage.

Honor 400 Pro review: software

(Image credit: Future)

  • Magic OS 9.0, based on Android 15
  • Six years of OS updates and security patches

The Honor 400 Pro runs Magic OS 9.0, which is the company’s bespoke Android 15 skin. It’s the same basic software provision as that of the Honor Magic 7 Pro.

I think I can speak for the extended TechRadar family when I say that Honor’s UI isn’t our favorite. Bloatware continues to blight it, with unwanted preinstallations of Booking.com, Temu, ReelShort, and much more besides. Honor itself gives you duplicate App Store and email apps, and a stack of its own tool apps.

While this is a take on Google’s Android, Honor seems to be far more inclined towards Apple’s iOS. Everything from the split notification pane to the Settings menu and the lack of a dedicated app tray (by default) speaks to a fondness for Apple’s mobile operating system. Even the icons and the Settings menu are designed in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s used an iPhone recently.

(Image credit: Future)

You even get a version of Apple’s Dynamic Island, here called Magic Capsule, which offers little widget-like bubbles of information around the extended selfie notch. With that said, it’s an undeniably useful way of surfacing media controls, timers, and the like, and Honor is far from the only Android manufacturer to follow Apple’s lead in this way.

Indeed, Magic OS, for all its clutter and bloat, remains a very functional and extremely snappy UI. Magic Portal is a power user’s dream, providing an easy way to drag text and images between apps. The knuckle gesture shortcut for circling text in this way isn’t 100% reliable, but you can get used to it.

Topping off Honor’s somewhat mixed software provision is a commendably strong commitment to six years of OS updates and security patches. Only Google and Samsung do this better with their respective seven-year promises.

What’s more, Honor has committed to providing an Android 16 update before the end of 2025, which isn’t something you see too often.

Honor 400 Pro review: battery life

(Image credit: Future)

  • 5,300mAh silicon-carbon battery
  • 100W wired charging
  • 50W wireless charging

Honor seems intent on pushing battery and charging technology in its phones. The Honor 400 Pro gets a meaty 5,300mAh battery, which falls comfortably north of the 5,000mAh average – if not quite as far north as the OnePlus 13R and the Nubia Z70 Ultra, both of which hit the giddy heights of 6,000mAh.

It’s sufficient to get the Honor through a full day of heavy use with remaining charge to spare. Indeed, a moderate day with around four hours of screen-on time left me with more than 60% left in the tank. Average use in a fairly consistent network environment will get you two days on a single charge, no problem.

Talking of charging, Honor goes harder than it probably needs to here. There’s 100W wired charging support that’s seemingly able to get you from empty to 51% in just 15 minutes.

I say ‘seemingly’ because Honor, like most modern manufacturers, no longer bundles in a charger. Without one of Honor’s SuperCharge chargers to hand, I was unable to put those claims to the test.

Ditto for the claim of 50W wireless charging support. It’s good to see, but you’ll need one of the brand’s own SuperCharge wireless chargers to hit that maximum speed.

Should I buy the Honor 400 Pro?

Swipe to scroll horizontallyHonor 400 Lite score card

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Design

The Honor 400 Pro isn’t the prettiest phone on the market, but it’s more distinctive than the rest of the range and it’s very well built.

4 / 5

Display

Honor’s display is sharp, bright, and color-accurate, with an appreciable focus on eye health.

4.5 / 5

Performance

It’s not quite a top performer, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 continues to do a good job.

4 / 5

Camera

The 200MP main camera takes good shots in all conditions, while the dedicated 3x telephoto is a competent performer. Honor’s AI features are a little hit and miss, but can be very impressive.

4 / 5

Battery

With a large(ish) 5,300mAh battery supplying two days of use, and rapid 100W wired/50 wireless charging support, the Honor 400 is very well equipped.

4 / 5

Software

Honor’s Magic OS remains cluttered and a little too beholden to iOS, but it’s fast and functional, and Honor’s new six-year update promise is very competitive.

3.5 / 5

Value

You’re getting a solid phone with some unique features at a low price.

4 / 5

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Honor 400 Pro review: also consider

The Honor 400 Pro isn’t the only affordable flagship phone on the market. Here are some of the better alternatives to consider.

How I tested the Honor 400 Pro

  • Review test period = 1 week
  • Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, gaming, streaming video, music playback
  • Tools used = Geekbench 6, GFXBench, 3DMark, native Android stats, Samsung 65W power adapter

First reviewed: May 2025



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Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, looks at the camera.
Product Reviews

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney takes his victory lap as Fortnite returns to the app store after nearly 5 years: ‘Thanks to all of the folks who initially sided with Apple then later came around to the winning side’

by admin



After a protracted legal battle, which is far from over, Apple has restored Fortnite to the US app store. Fortnite was removed in August 2020 after launching its own in-app monetisation system to bypass Apple’s in-app payment system and the 30% commission it charges.

This violated Apple’s terms, and led to a legal challenge from Epic Games, which accused Apple of operating the app store as a monopoly. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney was in an unsurprisingly ebullient mood at the news and thanked those who’d taken Epic’s side in the dispute which, as ever, he characterises as a fight for developer rights.

“Thanks to everyone who supported the effort to open up mobile competition and #FreeFortnite from the very beginning,” said Sweeney. “And thanks to all of the folks who initially sided with Apple then later came around to the winning side, supporting app developer rights and consumer rights.”


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Apple has made no comment.

“This is a clear win for Epic Games,” games business professor Joost van Dreunen told the BBC. “Epic has effectively forced open a door that Apple and others worked very hard to keep shut.

“The industry has long tiptoed around platform gatekeeping, but this moment signals a shift in the balance. Creators and publishers will now have more leverage to challenge entrenched distribution models.”

(Image credit: Epic Games)

Fortnite has been available on iOS in the EU since January. Apple is complying with the court order after it got absolutely slammed by judge Yvonne Rogers Gonzalez for an “obvious cover-up” in a ruling that left no room for doubt:

“This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition.”

That doesn’t mean this is the end: Apple is fiercely protective of its walled garden approach to the app store, which it argues is in consumers’ best interests, and of course has the money to fight this until the bitter end. And Epic Games may well be the David to Apple’s Goliath, but it happens to be an extremely deep-pocketed David with a pugnacious CEO that’s treating this fight like a holy calling.

“Apple lost the 2021 injunction appeal in 2024, and it’s final and unappealable,” says Sweeney. “Now there’s a new contempt of court decision, and Apple is seeking to stay and appeal it, but whatever happens, they’re still obliged to comply with the injunction and the law.”

Sweeney also put things in more Fortnite-y terms: “we back fam.”



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Computex 2025
Product Reviews

Computex 2025 Day Three Wrap-Up: Optical SSDs and $50,000 Immersion-Cooled Systems

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We’re wrapping up our third day of Computex 2025 coverage, and it seems there’s no end to the fascinating hardware announced so far. There’s a lot of ground to cover for today, but also, be sure to see what’s previously been covered in our Day Zero, Day One, and Day Two stories and look at the Tom’s Hardware Computex 2025 hub.

Optical SSDs, Immersion-Cooled Workstations, Manjaro Linux Gaming Handhelds, 512GB G-Skill DDR5

Kioxia is determined to make optical SSDs more mainstream, and it was on hand at Computex to demonstrate the technology. Kioxia uses one of Kyocera’s Optinity PCIe cards, which delivers optical connectivity via PCIe 5.0. One of Kioxia’s CM7 Enterprise SSDs was attached to the Optinity PCIe card and was shown delivering identical performance to the same SSD using a traditional electrical connection.

While delivering the same performance as an existing solution isn’t by itself an impressive feat, what is remarkable is that Kioxia can offer this performance with optical cabling 30 meters in length (or greater). Kioxia also claims superior signal integrity that is more reliable in “challenging environments.”


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(Image credit: Future)

Heat is a boss-level enemy of high-performance PCs, and enthusiasts always look for new ways to improve cooling output. Enermax is no stranger to developing high-end components to deliver power and cool PC hardware, and its latest demo takes those efforts to the extreme. Witness the Cirrus Mk1, which uses two-phase liquid immersion cooling to efficiently transfer heat away from hardware components to an external heat exchanger.

The cooling system can handle up to 3,300 watts of power, and to demonstrate this capability, Enermax’s test system used an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7960X processor and four GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs attached to a Gigabyte TRX50 AI-TOP motherboard. Powering everything (including the cooling system) were two Enermax Platimax II 2400 watt PSUs. The cooling Cirrus Mk1 alone costs $50,000 before you even think of adding hardware, so it’s definitely not for the average gaming enthusiast.

The market for handheld gaming PCs continues to explode, and the introduction of the Nintendo Switch 2 will likely further drive interest in the category. Zotac’s Zone 2 is the follow-up to last year’s Zone and features an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (rather than the handheld gaming PC-centric Ryzen Z2 Extreme). The system features a 7-inch 1080p display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, up to 32GB of LPDDR5x, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. The system runs Manjaro Linux with KDE Plasma 6 and, most certainly, Proton to provide the broadest compatibility with games.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

If you are looking for extreme performance or capacity regarding DDR5 memory, G.Skill has you covered. On the former front, the company showcased 2x 24GB DDR5 memory using SK hynix ICs, hitting a speed of 10,934 MT/s on an ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 APEX motherboard. Also on display was a 4x 64GB DDR5-7000 setup running on an ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard.

(Image credit: Future)

If you’d rather lean more into capacity than outright performance, it also loaded up eight 64GB R-DIMM DDR5-6600 CL42 modules for a total of 512GB with an ASUS Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE motherboard.

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‘A profound mistake’: Sonos’ CEO talks about its broken app and why it’s been so hard to fix
Product Reviews

‘A profound mistake’: Sonos’ CEO talks about its broken app and why it’s been so hard to fix

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On May 7, 2024, Sonos launched a new version of its software intended to help customers manage their music and their Sonos system more easily, and with fewer taps. What happened next can only be described as a fiasco. Upon opening the new app for the first time, Sonos users were not only greeted with an unfamiliar interface, many found that their systems had become unresponsive and that features they had come to rely on (like alarms and play queue access) had evaporated.

As days and weeks passed, it became clear that these weren’t temporary glitches. Sonos’ CEO, Patrick Spence, spent the following summer and fall apologizing and assuring his customers (and presumably his board of directors) that the company had adopted an all-hands-on-deck stance and that fixing the broken app was everyone’s top priority. However, eight months after the launch the app was still far from fixed and Spence was fired on January 13, 2025. His replacement, board member Tom Conrad, was announced the same day.

Sonos CEO, Tom Conrad Sono

Conrad’s list of previous gigs in senior engineering and product roles at companies like Pandora, Snapchat, Quibi, and Apple makes him a strong choice as Sonos’ interim CEO. But that doesn’t mean it’s been an easy transition.

In fact, when I caught up with Conrad on his 116th day on the job, he described it as a fairly hellish period marked by a number of challenges, including his family’s relocation from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara — a small distance on the map that nonetheless turned into a mini odyssey beset by the unprecedented L.A. wildfires, four different AirBnBs, two flat tires, and having his L.A. home burglarized. Oh, and his dog got skunked. Twice. 

And that was before we started to chat about the job he’d been hired to do: Fix the still-broken Sonos platform so that its customers could finally get back to enjoying their music.

Our short chat managed to cover lot of ground: the company, its products, its now-defunct Ikea partnership, and, of course, the app (and why, one year later, our Sonos systems still aren’t working as they should.)

Too many silos

Sonos

When he arrived, Conrad discovered that Sonos’ internal teams were siloed by product category (headphones, home theater, etc.), making it difficult to prioritize, share resources, or maintain a cohesive user experience.

“The first thing that I did was to take that apart and put the team back together into hardware and software design, and then do a comprehensive inventory of all of the projects that were underway, many of which, it turned out, were insufficiently staffed for success.”

Conrad slashed a list of “dozens” of these projects down to 11 well-staffed initiatives. “It changed the mood inside the company, kind of overnight.”

A neglected core

Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

It also became apparent that the sheer number of projects and silos had played a big role in the atrophy of Sonos’ core software platform. Since 2019, Sonos had launched a lot of new products. Dolby Atmos soundbars, two types of portable speaker, a Sonos-developed voice assistant, its first wireless headphones, plus a major push into the professional installation market. “The investment that the company was making [in the core software],” Conrad notes, “was not enough.”

And while the app redesign fiasco of 2024 is simply the most recent symptom of this neglect, Conrad says it’s responsible for the kinds of reliability and performance issues that have been left unaddressed since 2019, or longer.

No more trust

Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

Clearly, having a customer base that can’t use your product isn’t ideal for any company. “No one wakes up in the morning and says, I want to spend some time in the Sonos app today,” Conrad quipped. 

He’s crystal clear on the gap between how the app should work: “I think we have one obligation. The experience has to be fast, reliable, usable, and mostly get out of your way,” versus where it’s at today, “The sad reality is that Sonos still fails too often.”

But the worst part of the redesign’s fallout has been the erosion of trust. “The rollout of the app last year was such a profound mistake. All of the goodwill that our customers would normally have applied when they have a little hiccup in their experience — we don’t get any of that benefit of the doubt.” 

Legacy is still Sonos’ greatest strength … and its greatest weakness

Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

Conrad also appears to be gradually making his peace with an inconvenient and unavoidable truth: Longtime Sonos customers often own wireless speakers and components that date back to 2010 or older, and they expect them to keep working — “even though the iPhone 4 they bought the same year has long been relegated to the dust bin.”

He reminded me that Sonos gear is “sensitive to the details of your home network in ways that almost nothing else you own is.” We discussed the intricacies of Wi-Fi and how, long before there were any commercially available mesh routers like Eero or Orbi, the company had created its own mesh system known as SonosNet.

For a moment, it sounded like Conrad might be trying to blame the company’s performance woes on its customers’ networks. In fairness, we live in a very different Wi-Fi environment than the one Sonos found itself in back in 2005, when it launched its first product. However, he acknowledged that despite these challenges, Sonos has to own the solutions. “We made promises to our customers that we will synchronize audio across their [devices], and so we have to solve for this environment. This is the life we’ve chosen.”

He’s also quick to point out that if once-loyal Sonos customers now instinctively blame the company’s products (instead of looking at their internet connection or Wi-Fi for the flaw), “it’s totally deserved.”

Brighter days ahead

One of the biggest problems with the new app is that it hasn’t proven to be an easier-to-use experience than the one it replaced. Conrad sympathizes with those who are wondering, “Why did Sonos invent this new navigation paradigm?” Like many Sonos users, he can be quite critical. “It’s not my appraisal that all of those design decisions were good ones.”

Still, Conrad sounds confident about the future.

“I think we really have cracked the code on the big issues that we needed to solve on performance and reliability, and we’re well on our way to putting that chapter behind us.” He says that fixes to the remaining usability and experiential issues are coming through the summer and fall. “ I feel really great about Sonos right now.”

On Ikea and that mysterious Pinewood project

Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

At the tail end of our chat, I was able to squeeze in one last series of questions around the end of the Ikea Symfonisk speaker partnership — one which produced the most affordable and decor-friendly Sonos speakers to date. Why nix such a seemingly good match?

“That partnership is eight years old and has diminished to the point of being immaterial to our business and theirs. It was a question of walking away from something whose heyday was long in the rearview.”

I was surprised to hear that, given how well the Symfonisk speakers matched Sonos’ previous mission statement of “fill every home with music.”

“That line of thinking is how we got into the partnership,” Conrad acknowledged, “but it’s not really how it ever played out in the real world.”

As for the much-rumored but never officially discussed Pinewood project — Sonos’ now-shelved move into the video streaming world — Conrad refused to be drawn into a discussion. However, he did note that, “You have to know what you can be best in the world at, and you have to bite off an appropriate amount to tackle. Without commenting specifically, you’ll see us continue to focus where we can win.”

Down, but not out

Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

From the start of his tenure as Sonos’ CEO, Conrad has said all of the right things. I came away from our chat believing that even though Sonos’ problems run deeper than anyone had previously acknowledged, he’s focused on what matters most: restoring our Sonos systems so that they just work.

Unfortunately, it sounds like it’s going to be several more months — at least — until that day arrives. Some Sonos customers have already called it quits and I can’t say I blame them. Our home has Sonos speakers in every room (including one of the bathrooms) and my family has grown weary of not being able to play the music they want without encountering bugs. We’ve even started saying “Sonos” as curse word, kinda like Jerry Seinfeld used to utter the name of his nemesis, Newman.

Still, when it works, I have yet to find a multiroom audio system that sounds as good and has as many useful features as Sonos. Wiim is catching up fast — very fast — but for all of its strengths (design, hi-res compatibility, affordability, and reliability), it’s still not as simple and easy to use as Sonos (again, when it works).

I’ll be sticking with Sonos for a little longer. As frustrated as I am by its ongoing issues, I think Tom Conrad deserves a shot at fixing them. And since Sonos didn’t get itself into this mess overnight (even though that’s what it felt like to most of us), I know the fix will also take time. I just hope that patiently waiting doesn’t also prove to be a profound mistake.





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Product Reviews

HP’s 11-in-1 Docking Station Is Nearly 50% Off for Memorial Day on Amazon, and Yes, It’s Selling Fast

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If your desk setup is starting to feel like a collection of tangled cables, scattered peripherals, and daily plug-unplug chaos, you’re not alone. It can be hard to keep things neat and straight, and you probably don’t want to worry about having to plug in and unplug things just to be able to work each day. The easy solution is a dock. If you want to save big on a dock that you can use every day, you should head to Amazon and make sure you take advantage of this sale.

Right now, Amazon has the HP G5 USB-C Dock and 11-in-1 Adapter for $120, down from its usual price of $230. That’s $110 off and a discount of 48%.

See at Amazon

Simplify your setup with a multifaceted dock

This dock is designed to keep your entire setup running through a single USB-C connection. That means one cable goes into your laptop, and everything else so your monitors, keyboard, mouse, external storage, and even power, stays connected through the dock. It helps cut back on the daily hassle of plugging in multiple accessories and instantly makes your workspace feel more polished.

This dock is the perfect solution for anyone who works with multiple displays. You can connect it to up to three external displays, which is a big plus. You can get much more done when you have additional screen real estate to deal with, and you can differentiate between different products, too. There’s also plenty of room to plug in your USB accessories, a wired network connection, and even headphones, all without cluttering up your laptop’s built-in ports.

It’s also powerful enough to keep your laptop charged while you work. With up to 100W of power delivery through USB-C, you don’t need a separate charger crowding your outlet or desk space. Everything runs through the dock, which simplifies your setup and cuts down on cable mess.

What’s great is that this dock isn’t limited to HP laptops, even though it’s a branded item. You don’t have to worry about just sticking to that type of computer. It actually works with a broad range of USB-C and Thunderbolt-enabled devices, so if you switch between machines or use something from another brand, it’ll likely still work just fine. For IT teams managing a fleet of laptops, it even supports network manageability features that make firmware updates and remote access smoother.

At $120, the HP USB-C Dock G5 is a practical upgrade for anyone looking to clean up their workspace and boost productivity. It’s not flashy, but once you have it, you won’t want to go back.

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LG’s Blazingly Brilliant G5 OLED Is the Pacesetter for Best TV of the Year
Product Reviews

LG’s Blazingly Brilliant G5 OLED Is the Pacesetter for Best TV of the Year

by admin


More annoying is the fact that the TV froze on me a few times while streaming with both Apple TV+ and Disney+, usually when trying to rewatch or fast-forward a scene. A streaming box is an easy solution, but I’m hoping LG will address these issues in a future update.

The G5’s Gaming Portal is the only place I couldn’t seem to kill the ads, but the 2025 iteration makes up for it with the addition of Xbox Cloud streaming, alongside options like Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now, and others. The TV is built for gaming on all fronts, with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 inputs, support for VRR at up to 165 Hz with compatible PCs, and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM). Games look brilliant by default, and LG’s Game Optimizer provides loads of customization options.

There are plenty of other ways to customize your experience, including multiple “AI” features such as LG’s AI Picture and Sound modes. AI is a big theme with the G5 (it’s even in the full name), including the new AI Concierge, which is a helpful if clunky navigation tool.

Speaking of navigation, the new remote is more stylish and more confusing. I’m glad LG kept the Wii-like point-and click-cursor, but the lack of a mute key requires you to hold the volume key down to mute, which I had to look up to figure out. The lack of a dedicated input key also tripped me up until I tried the encircled home key, which pulls up the full input list alongside a dedicated smart hub. In keeping with the AI theme, both Google Assistant and Alexa are supported, as is streaming over AirPlay and Google Cast.

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

On Picture Modes

I’ve got a detailed guide to locking in a great picture, and you can certainly get in the weeds with the G5’s many options and cinema-forward modes, but the most accurate picture proved delightfully simple to achieve. After futzing with modes and settings like the Professional Mode for precise tone mapping at different mastering levels, the Filmmaker Mode looked nearly perfect as-is for both SDR (standard dynamic range) and HDR10 (LG doesn’t support the fancier HDR10+).

If Filmmaker is too dim, you can raise the backlight in SDR or turn on Tone Mapping for HDR10 for a serious boost. That’s not available for Dolby Vision, so I used the slightly brighter Cinema Home with a few minor tweaks, including turning off motion smoothing. For consistent testing, I also turned off the TV’s light sensors in the eco and picture mode settings.

Picture Perfect

LG’s revolutionary MLA OLED panel pushed TVs to a whole new level, evidenced by last year’s G4 and Z95A. Adding truly impactful HDR brightness to a screen that emits light from a perfectly black void is a stirring experience, with everything from menus to a flickering candle seeming to emerge from the blackness like ink drawn with flame. Those TVs are bright enough for nearly any use case, especially since most streaming content is capped at just 1,000 nits.

The G5 is brighter still, but like Sony’s excellent Bravia 9, LG is judicious with its new Brightness Booster. Most scenes look refined and even resigned in the Filmmaker modes. That keeps films and prestige dramas looking rich, saturated, and almost sumptuous as the TV follows the director’s intent, saving the true glitz and punch for select highlights. But when this TV pops, it really pops, especially when you feed it high-nit 4K Blu-rays.



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Fujifilm's X Half is an $850 digital camera with an analog film aesthetic
Product Reviews

Fujifilm’s X Half is an $850 digital camera with an analog film aesthetic

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Fujifilm has already released one unusual camera this year in the GFX100 RF medium format compact, but it’s latest model may be the most offbeat yet. The $850 X Half is an 18-megapixel digital compact camera, but it uses half of a 1-inch sensor to shoot 3:4 vertical photos. To drive home the retro vibe, it has a rear screen dedicated to displaying the camera’s 13 film simulation modes and can only shoot JPEG and not RAW images.

The name comes from “half-frame” cameras popular in the ’60s, like the famous Olympus Pen F, that use a 35mm film frame sawed in half (18mm x 24mm in size). The backside-illuminated sensor on Fujifilm’s X Half is, well, half that size in both dimensions (8.8mm x 13.3mm) or a quarter the area. It’s also the smallest sensor on any recent Fujifilm digital camera, as the X-series uses the APS-C format and GFX models medium format. In fact, the X Half has the same 3:4 vertical ratio as Fuji’s Instax Mini instant cameras — so you can make prints using an Instax Mini printer via the new dedicated X Half smartphone app.

Fujifilm

The X Half naturally uses Fujifilm’s film simulation and grain effect modes. Among the new ones are “light leak” for a blown-out quality that happens when film get exposed to light inadvertently, “expired film” and “halation,” an effect caused by light bouncing off film emulsion layers. To really get you into that analog film mood, you can switch to the new Film Camera Mode that limits your view to the optical viewfinder, makes you pull a frame advance lever for each new shot and only lets you see the photos once they’re “developed” through the X Half app. It even produces a “contact sheet” layout for 36, 54 or 72 images.

Another feature is 2-in-1 images that let you combine two still images or movies into one composition in-camera for extra artistic possibilities (using the film advance lever again). That also means the X Half can shoot video as well as photos, with a vertical or square size (up to 2,160 x 2,160) that looks ideal for social media — especially with film simulations applied. Also exuding nostalgic vibes is the “Date Stamp” function that lets you imprint dates in the bottom right of images, just like on old-school Kodak-style film camera.

On top of the main rear 2.40inch LCD 3:4 monitor, the X Half has an optical rather than an electronic viewfinder, adding another analog touch (and the accompanying parallax distortion errors). The camera itself is small enough to slide into a pocket and weighs just 210 grams (7.4 ounces). Other features include a built-in flash, massive 880 frame battery life and SD UHS-I card slot.

The X Half looks like it could be coveted by social media users or anyone looking for a fun party or vacation camera. However, it’s expensive considering that you can just get an Instax (or regular film camera and a lot of film) for a lot less. Fujifilm has definitely captured the photography zeitgeist before with models like the X100 VI, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a hit. The X Half is now on preorder for $850 (in black, charcoal silver and silver) with shipping set to start on June 12.



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