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Ocypus Iota C7
Product Reviews

Ocypus Iota C70 case review: digital display and low noise levels

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Today’s review features a cooling newcomer I’ve just begun to become acquainted with – Ocypus, which was founded in Shenzhen in 2023. We last covered their Iota A62 WH air cooler and found it to have good thermals combined with a nice all-white aesthetic and digital temperature display.

Today’s review will cover their Iota C70 computer case. This case is a bit smaller than most we’ve reviewed recently, which might appeal to those looking for a not-so-large form factor. It features a wrap-around design to show off your PC’s inner components, low noise levels, and – like the A62 WH Air Cooler – a digital display for monitoring GPU or CPU thermals.

Will Ocypus Iota C70 make our list of best PC cases? Let’s take a look at the specifications and features of the case, then we’ll look at it in detail and wrap up our review with thermal testing.


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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Product Specifications

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Standard Motherboard Support

ATX, Micro ATX, ITX

Back Connect Motherboard Support

ATX, Micro ATX, ITX

Color

Black or white

Type

Mid-tower

Case Dimensions (D x W x H)

425 x 295 x 388 mm / 16.7 x 11.6 x 15.3 inches

Drive Support

Up to 2x 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives supported

PCIe Expansion Slots

Six

Fan Support

Up to nine fans

Pre-Installed fans

6x 120mm ARGB fans

CPU Cooler Clearance

175mm

GPU Clearance

400mm

Vertical GPU Support

No

PSU Length

Up to 205 mm (with drive bay installed) Up to 410 mm (without drive bay)

Radiator Support

360 mm supported in top or bottom, 240mm supported on the side

MSRP

$129.99 US

Other features

Digital display for monitoring thermals

Features of Ocypus Iota C70

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶️ Build quality

The build quality of this case seems pretty sturdy, I didn’t notice any obvious weaknesses while testing this product. I expect this from most cases, especially those which cost over $100 USD.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶️ Side view

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The look of the side view is clean, but there’s not too much to comment about, as this case is more compact than most. The biggest thing that stands out to me is back-connect motherboard support, indicated by the holes in the motherboard area. At the bottom and side are intake fans, and there’s a standard exhaust fan at the rear.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶️ Radiator and fan support

This case can be equipped with up to ten fans. Up to 360 mm-sized radiators can be installed at the top, bottom, and side of the case.

▶️ Dust filters, Bottom View

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The case is supported by two metal bars with two rubber feet on them, to prevent it from sliding.

One nice thing about the Iota C70 case is the dust filters – all four of them are magnetically attached and are easily removed for cleaning.

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶️ Rear side view, storage, and cable management features

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The first thing that struck me when I looked at the back of this case is that the cabling is a bit of a mess, and it doesn’t offer much in terms of cable management options. While I suppose this won’t matter most of the time as you’ll have the cover on it, some will find this annoying.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

At the bottom of the case, there is an included ARGB and PWM controller hub, which many users will find handy. However, it does not have any expansion slots available – as all of the headers are occupied by the pre-installed fans. This might annoy users interested in adding fans to the top of the case for increased thermal effectiveness, but honestly you’d be better off just installing an AIO liquid cooler if that’s your concern.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

There’s also a drive bay in the top corner that supports up to two drives of either 2.5-inch or 2.5-inch size.

▶️ Front view

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

As this is a wrap-around case, the front has a glass panel in order to give you a full view of the inner components. The main thing that stands apart from competitors is the golden O in the top right corner. At first you might think it’s the power button, but it’s actually a digital display that allows you to monitor GPU or CPU thermals when the system is powered on.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The front display is designed to show a temperature reading and nothing else. As such, there are limited customization options. To change what the front display measures, you’ll have to download the control software. The process of doing this might scare you at first, because the first time you boot your computer into windows after plugging the case display’s USB header into your motherboard, the computer will automatically open your default web browser and download a zip file from a seemingly strange website. The zip file contains the control software, which is very simple.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

You have three sets of options to choose from. The first is the ability to turn the display on or off. The second is the ability to display readings in Celsius or Fahrenheit. Finally, you can choose to display the temperature of your CPU or GPU. There are no further ways to tweak the display.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

▶️ IO Panel

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The included IO panel is directly above the digital display. It includes your standard power button, audio jack, two USB-A ports, and one USB-C port. It also includes a button to change ARGB lighting settings on the fly.

▶️ Rear view

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

From the rear view, you’ll notice that the power supply is mounted vertically, this is typical of many dual-chambered cases, to keep them from being even wider. It supports six PCIe expansion slots and has a cover for the slots.

▶️ Included accessories

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

There’s not much in terms of included accessories. You have the standard screws and motherboard studs, a few zip ties, replacement panel securing parts, and a tool to easily remove or install motherboard studs using a screwdriver.

Thermal tests, test setup, and testing methodology

Swipe to scroll horizontally

CPU

Intel i9-14900K

CPU Cooler

Ocypus Iota A62 WH dual-tower cooler, configured with a single fan

System fans

Default Pre-installed fans Ocypus Gamma F12 BK ARGB

Motherboard

ASUS Z790-P Prime Wifi

GPU

MSI RTX 4070Ti Super Ventus 3X OC

Our thermal tests are presented to give you more information about the product’s performance, but aren’t intended as the sole judgment of the chassis. The style, price, features, and noise levels of a case should also be considered, and we all have different preferences. What I might like in a case, you might not, and that’s OK. My goal with these reviews is to give everyone, no matter their preferences, enough information to decide whether or not a product is right for them.

With today’s review, I’ve updated the configuration and testing methods I use for testing compared to previous reviews. For example, I used to use a single tower air cooler, but I’ve decided to use a dual-tower air cooler in case reviews going forward.

The measurements I’ve benchmarked this case against focus on the efficiency of the case’s thermal transfer.

We’ll test the system with its pre-installed fans at full speed and noise normalized at 38.9 dBA. For standardized testing, we’ll show one set of benchmarks with Ocypus fans set at full speeds for maximum potential. The other set of benchmarks will show performance with fan speeds set to 30% for those who prefer silently running systems.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)



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Monster Train 2 review | Rock Paper Shotgun
Game Reviews

Monster Train 2 review | Rock Paper Shotgun

by admin


Monster Train 2 review

A juicy and reasonably inventive roguelike card-battling sequel that will devour all the commutes you throw at it.

  • Developer: Shiny Shoe
  • Publisher: Big Fan Games
  • Release: May 21st 2025
  • On: Windows
  • From: Steam
  • Price: $25/£21/€20
  • Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7 12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060, Windows 11


The roguelike deckbuilder is a remorseless evil that strives to colonise every dream ever dreamt by the human brain. It is a sparkling, shuffling plague, germinated by Slay The Spire, that threatens to absorb every other mortal pastime, from space travel through poker to carpentry. We must find a way to neutralise the entity before it assimilates us all. But in the words of the oldest proverb: just one more go. Just one more go, before I dissipate raging into that goodnight. Just one more run, before I play all those shortform avant garde releases in my Itch.io wallet.


If Monster Train 2 were the last roguelike deckbuilder I ever played, I would consider myself fairly pleased, and also very relieved. While not a huge departure from the game that plunged Matt Cox (RPS in peace) into unholy raptures, it’s a great pick if you’re fond of numbers going up and realising it’s 1.30am and that you are now too addled by card synergies to sleep. You do not have to like or understand trains, but it’s a plus.


As with Monster Train, Monster Train 2 is about riding a demon locomotive through an alternating series of battles and upgrade or customisation opportunities. In the first game, you were trying to oust the angelic hosts from the heart of hell. In this one, the angels and devils have bandied together to chase off the Titans, who’ve taken possession of Heaven.

There’s a certain amount of plot lodged in the crevices of the lobby town. This worried me at first – character development? In my progression system? – but it mostly consists of gentle sitcom sketches in which dragons complain about their husbands. Rest assured that none of it will keep you from your precious synergies. While embarked on your celestial commute, you will also bumble into random storylets that sometimes offer boons plucked from other roguelike deckbuilders, such as Balatro. The roguebuilding decklike singularity is nigh.

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The game’s big draw versus those other turn-based card battlers is that it’s actually three card battles in parallel, each feeding into the next like cunningly enfolded lanes in a tower defence game. During each skirmish, you pop unit cards on the lower three floors of your train to protect the all-important pyre on your fourth floor. The pyre is the source of points you’ll spend to play cards each turn. If it gets smashed to bits, your run is over.


Following a deployment phase, waves of enemies appear at the bottom (mostly) and travel upwards through the train, fighting a single round of combat per floor. This continues until the final assault from the local boss, which dispenses with the single-round-per-floor parameter – the boss must clear each floor of defenders before moving on. While units do battle automatically at the end of each turn, generally targeting the first enemy in the opposing line-up, you can intervene manually using spell cards that, for example, coat critters in Pyrogel to multiply damage received, or dazzle them with stardust so that they miss a turn.


It may seem a rickety, unintuitive format on paper. In practice, it’s wonderful. The overall challenge is to divide your cards and points scientifically between floors. An obvious gambit is to stock the bottom floor with your tankiest, most damaging cards to bollard the onslaught and saddle enemies with debuffs early on – there are plenty of attackers that power-up as they fight or climb. But the one-round-per-floor setup ensures that you can’t rely on any single floor. Besides, if that over-fortified foundation crumbles, the other, under-crewed layers will probably fall as well.

Enemy waves also form deviously alternating combinations of unit types, which thwart efforts to optimise any particular floor. Your heavies in Second Class might excel at melting juggernauts, but they’ll struggle against the hordes of fungus making their way back from the cafeteria.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Big Fan Games


Monster Train 2 retains all this curious, rattling magic, but fills out the gaps with a bunch of new card categories and interactables, probably derived from careful observation of the first game’s players. There’s now a choice of starting pyres, with varying stats and modifiers. Some unit cards have or may acquire abilities, which essentially give you a free move: these include conjuring back the last spell you cast, and body-slamming targets into the rearguard.

New equipment cards can be clapped on friend and foe alike to, for example, harm assailants based on the wearer’s max health, or chip-damage a unit when they shift between floors. I’ve found that last one especially useful in the case of more agile bosses, who roam around like disgruntled ticket collectors before committing to the push.


Room cards, meanwhile, help you specialise floors. Turn one into a fighting arena and you can farm the small fry for easy pyre points to spend on expensive cards elsewhere. Introduce a planetarium and you’ll amplify any magic you weave within. I have never been brave enough to play the burning room that does 50 points of damage to units inside, but there’s probably a way to hack the card chemistry so that the incendiary conditions actually benefit your defenders.


All of these ins and outs are shaped by the five factions, each a reworking and elaboration of elements from the original game. You pick two as your primary and secondary clan for each run, which dictates your starting champion card – a named unit with a choice of upgrade paths – and the kinds of cards you’ll acquire at rest stops between battles.


The factions are a treat, each a verdant entanglement of playstyles. I will spoil the workings of just two. The strength of the Lunar Coven waxes and wanes with the phases of the moon. As such, victory often comes from delicately timing your most powerful cards, but the hitch is that some cards are more potent when the moon is full, others when it’s in shadow.

The dragons of Pyreborn, meanwhile, are all about gold – grabbing fat stacks early in the run, melting it down into lobbable slag (“Make It Rain”), or jealously hoarding it for buffs. The first time I beat Monster Train 2 it was thanks to the Pyreborn’s Greed Dragons, who accrue health and attack points based on how many dragon eggs you’ve acquired. You can hatch those eggs for artifacts, which may be sensible when you’re trundling up to the last boss, but I consider that a poor return for sacrificing a train’s worth of Smaughs.


Buffs! Buffs? Buffs. As with many a Spirelike, much of Monster Train 2’s enchantment comes from “breaking” the combat, which is to say, violently skewing the starting card capacities in ways doubtless envisaged by the designers using an artful compound of hallucinogens and spreadsheets. A case study: here is how you transform Ekka, High Witch of the Coven with a proud total of five attack and health points, into a titan slayer. First, you’ll want to pick either the Celestial Spellweaver or Silver Empress upgrade paths, each of which steadily accrues magical power, or Conduit. The Spellweaver gains it for every spell you cast on the same floor, while the Empress gets a massive boost while the moon is full.


You’ll probably want to deploy Ekka alongside a Lunar Priestess, who performs a ritual each turn that slops yet more spelljuice over friendly units. Now, hand the High Witch a Moonlit Glaive that confers a “mageblade” multiplier based on all that pent-up sorcery. The result should be a champion who looks like an ailing fortune teller yet can somehow dish out 300+ damage a turn, mulching the chewiest of chthonic crusaders in a single hit – and that’s before you exploit the ludicrous multipliers for your spells on Ekka’s floor, afforded by her conduit level.

True, she still has a glass jaw, and true, if she cops it, your wizardly arsenal will be proportionately punier. But you can head off those risks by wedging her behind a Silent Sentinel that absorbs damage while making foes even more susceptible to spells.


I gaze upon my willowy Wiccan wrecking ball with boundless, aching pride and satisfaction. And then I start to feel like Bilbo Baggins regaining his senses after beating a large woodlouse to death in Mirkwood. The appeal of the roguelite deckbuilder is the joy of expressing your wit and invention through alchemical mastery of maths. At best, it is like improvising a tune in response to haphazard melodies, dancing your own composition into the cadences of enemies and bosses.


At worst, it is like doing times-tables with fancier graphics – not that much fancier, in the case of Monster Train 2, which is readable and digestible, but badly needs a more interesting colour scheme and some more creative character designs. And even at its best, there’s a necessary hollowness to it, as anybody who’s ever yielded 100 hours of day and night to such games will know. The randomisation element sinks its blood-crusted hook, even as the glittery card effects make no bones of the genre’s adjacency to casino slot machines. Run gives way to run gives way to run.

Still, that’s more of a wider, philosophical objection to the genre than a criticism of Monster Train 2 in particular. If you have no such hoity-toity qualms, this is as bountiful an experience as you could ask for. Each victorious raid on heaven produces a shower of unlockable cards and items that you can put immediately to the test. If you’re weary of raiding the main campaign for cards, there are bespoke puzzle-campaigns via dimensional portal back at the starting depot, where you can test out various overarching modifiers. Or, if you really trust the hand you’ve amassed, you can segue your victory directly into Endless mode and extend this roguelike railway unto infinity. Heaven is only a fleeting fiction, next to the protean immensity of the deck.



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Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam
Product Reviews

Nexar Beam2 mini Dash Cam review: a mixed bag

by admin



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.

Nexar Beam2 mini Dash Cam: two-minute review

I tried the original Nexar Beam dash cam around three years ago, but I seem to recall that it did everything I wanted it to do at the time. Things have moved on since then, though, and for the Beam2 mini Nexar has tweaked the design and features in a bid to stay up there with the best dash cams.

In fact, none of the latest crop of Beam models bear much resemblance to the original incarnation. The Nexar Beam2 Mini is my pick of these products – there are also Beam2 (road only) and Beam2 road and cabin model variants, plus an optional rear view camera.

The others are chunkier, and might suit folks with space on their windshields and the willingness to spend more for a beefier array of features. The Nexar Beam2 mini is right up my street though, especially when I need to fix it to the small screen of my sports car. I’m looking for compact, which was a key part of the appeal with the first edition.

However, the Nexar Beam2 mini isn’t quite as dinky as I’d anticipated, at 6.86 x 6.49 x 3.83 inches / 17.4 x 16.5 x 9.7cm. It feels quite hefty too, weighing in at 1.74lbs / 0.8kg, but that’s no bad thing, as it helps make the package feel like a quality purchase. Perhaps some of the additional weight comes from the internal storage, as there’s no microSD media card slot available on this model.


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This model features a landscape-oriented body design, with a 160-degree field of view lens that can be swiveled to get the view of the road suited to any type of vehicle. It attaches to the windshield in standard fashion, using a self-adhesive pad that sticks the base of the camera unit to the glass.

(Image credit: Future)

The Nexar Beam2 mini is available with 4G LTE connectivity, which means that it can deliver ‘always on’ performance including remote video live streaming. There’s 1080p resolution and internal storage of up to 256GB, though as mentioned there’s no external microSD storage. It features GPS tracking, a parking mode with real-time alerts plus 2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and comes with an ODBII pass through connector cable, rather than a 12V plug for power.

Nexar offers the Beam2 mini with three different storage options: 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, which offer recording storage times of 30 hours, 62 hours and 130 hours respectively. The internal storage can work harmoniously with Nexar’s unlimited cloud storage option, plus there’s the option to invest in an ongoing LTE Protection Plan that boosts this model’s appeal for just $9.99 (about £8) per month.

Due to its core ‘always on’ functionality, the Nexar Beam2 mini is ideally suited to folks who want to be sure they can keep tabs on their vehicle from anywhere, and at any time. The Nexar app helps here, enabling you to check in on your vehicle, as long as connectivity is retained. There are quirks, though, such as the need for a permanent connection, which can present power implications and add extra hassle during setup.

Performance is solid enough, and the features and functions do what they’re supposed to do. Nexar has tried to make purchasing the Beam2 mini as easy as possible too, with an array of plans to suit all budgets. There are cheap and cheerful models out there though, that offer greater plug-and-play simplicity, which might make the Nexar Beam2 mini seem a little too quirky for some needs.

Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam: price and availability

  • Price starts at $149.95 / £113
  • There are three storage capacity variants: 64GB, 128GB and 256GB

The Nexar Beam2 mini is available in three storage variants. The base-level edition currently costs $149.95 / £113 (down from $199.95) and features 64GB of capacity. The 128GB model is $169.95 / £128, while the range tops out in terms of storage at 256GB, which costs $199.95 / £151.

An optional LTE Protection Plan is also available, and costs $9.99 per month or $71.90 annually, which at the time of writing represents a 40% discount. The latter delivers live streaming capability, unlimited cloud storage, a 24/7 Live Parking mode, real-time GPS tracking, and real-time emergency alerts too.

Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam: specs

Swipe to scroll horizontallyNexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam specs

Video

Front 1080p FHD

Field of view (FOV)

135 degrees front

Storage

Internal 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, Cloud

GPS

Yes

Parking mode

Yes, with constant ODBII power cable

App support

Nexar app

Dimensions

6.86 x 6.49 x 3.83 inches / 17.4 x 16.5 x 9.7cm

Weight

1.74lbs / 0.8kg

Battery

Yes

Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam: Design

  • Slimline letterbox design and no screen
  • ODBII connector supplied for always-on power
  • Internal storage, with 64, 128 and 256GB versions

Anyone who needs something fairly compact will find the design of the Nexar Beam2 mini one of its most appealing aspects. This is a landscape-oriented box of tricks, with very little on its exterior to either fiddle with or go wrong. The design might not work for everyone, though, firstly because there’s no rear screen, so everything has to be done via the Nexar app. Second, until you have the app installed it’s quite tricky to get the angle of the lens correct.

The lens itself is housed in the front of the unit, and can be swiveled up or down, depending on the angle of the windshield in your vehicle. The power cable port is up on top of the unit though, which means it’s easy to get this out of the way during installation. The dash cam can be fitted to the windshield in the usual way, either using an anti-static film sheet first and sticking the adhesive mount to that, or directly to the glass itself. There’s no suction-cup arrangement though, and no removable option in the mount design either. Again, not for everyone.

(Image credit: Future)

There’s a small blue/green indicator light that flashes during setup and stays on when the camera is doing its thing. Power to the unit comes from a supplied ODBII connector setup, which is why this model is good if an ‘always on’ setup is required. However, the Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam will also work if it’s plugged in via a sufficiently high-powered USB port, which widens its appeal somewhat, especially if a user doesn’t require constant surveillance. Don’t bother looking for a card slot though, because there isn’t one. My review unit came with a 64GB internal storage drive instead.

(Image credit: Future)

Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam: Performance

  • Fiddly setup
  • Decent image and audio quality

I have to admit that initial setup and installation wasn’t as seamless as I’d hoped for. Sure, the power cable procedure is simple enough, just as long as you know where your ODBII connector is under the dash – these can be quite tricky to find in some vehicles. The Beam2 mini can be powered by a cable running into the 12V socket if preferred, although this isn’t supplied with the package, which only contains a ODBII adapter. Hard-wiring it is also an option, but you’ll need to pay for this additional accessory.

The main problem I had was connecting and verifying the app. Downloading it was easy enough, but the country code listings for inputting my number weren’t listed alphabetically. I then twigged Nexars lists by country codes on the right-hand side of the menu. Even then, with my country code and phone number entered, I couldn’t get a verification text to come through. Curiously, right after I’d tried this, I also got a couple of spam calls, so I’m hoping this was coincidental rather than anything to do with the Nexar setup process.

As it turned out, and after I got in touch with Nexar directly, I was told that there is currently an issue with UK cell phone companies blocking the verification codes. This appears to be a country-specific issue, so for US users this should hopefully not be an issue. A note on the Nexar website to explain this would have stopped me wasting a lot of time though.

(Image credit: Future)

One other thing that appears to be a potential issue, especially for anyone wanting to use the Nexar Beam2 mini in the UK, is that a strong mobile signal is needed for it to function correctly. As I drove off on my first journey, while the camera was doing its initial setup procedure, I kept on getting an audible alert suggesting I find a stronger cell phone signal. However, after a reboot, things seemed to settle down somewhat and the message stopped.

(Image credit: Future)

Maybe I was just unlucky, but the various teething troubles tainted my experience of the Nexar Beam2 Dash Cam somewhat. Nevertheless, this is a very decent dash camera, with results that left a positive impression. It’s great at capturing video in a wide variety of scenarios, and the audio quality seems really good too. Things look slightly less impressive on finer details, such as license plates, but this model is affordable, so some element of compromise is inevitable.

Should you buy the Nexar Beam2 mini Dash Cam?

(Image credit: Future)

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

How I tested the Nexar Beam2 Mini Dash Cam

  • I installed the dash cam in one test car for an initial period of two weeks
  • I used it for a wide range of journeys during the day and at night
  • I connected it to my phone and downloaded recordings to assess their quality

I was sent a loan package of the Beam2 mini Dash Cam by Nexar, which also provided me with the LTE Protection Plan for good measure. The camera was installed in a car I was testing at the time, and powered using the setup described in the review above. I also installed the Nexar app on an iPhone, which required me to follow a verification process that required the phone to receive a text in order to proceed.

I then tested the Beam2 mini over several days and in a variety of driving conditions, including local roads as well as larger highways. I was able to explore its capabilities in various weather conditions, including rainy days and in low-light as well as after dark.



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Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: passable GPU, shame about the drivers
Game Reviews

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: passable GPU, shame about the drivers

by admin


Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5060 Solo specs:

  • CUDA Cores: 3840
  • Base Clock Speed: 2.28GHz
  • Boost Clock Speed: 2.49GHz
  • VRAM: 8GB GDDR7
  • Power: 145W
  • Recommended System Power: 550W
  • Price: From £270 / $299

I’d so desperately like to do a graphics card review without the fug of a wider controversy (or cacked-up market conditions), but the RTX 50 series hasn’t been particularly cooperative in that regard, so why should the RTX 5060 be any different? This time, the sadness cloud comes wafting from Nvidia themselves, amid accusations of engineering dodgy RTX 5060 previews and attempting to trade access for greater coverage of its Multi Frame Generation (MFG) capability.

Such scheming, if true and intentional, would suggest a remarkable lack of faith in the RTX 5060’s core, un-frame-genned performance. Yet now that I’ve spent some quality time with the card myself – independent of any tit-for-tat preview shenanigans, obviously – it really isn’t that bad, on pure hardware terms. It’s not equipped for cut-price 1440p but as an affordable 1080p pusher, it’s fine. Adequate. Reasonable. Hardly some catastrophe that needs a thunder-running PR offensive to cover up with MFG figures.

The drivers, though? Now there’s a disaster. And not because of the convention-breaking lack of early review software for press hacks – I got access to the RTX 5060’s Game Reader Driver 576.52 update at the same time everyone else did, when both it and the GPU released on May 19th. The real problem is that it’s the latest in a series of GeForce driver updates that have invited all manner of unforced errors upon games old and new, including several of my benchmarking regulars.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Some, like Horizon Forbidden West and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, began suffering sustained framerate drops that they’ve never exhibited before. Meanwhile, Metro Exodus would crash on startup, and F1 24 would perform worse with Nvidia’s precious DLSS frame generation than without. Even if these aren’t the fault of the RTX 5060 hardware, these driver problems are just yet more bad vibes around a graphics card that should be – like the RTX 3060 and, after a while, the RTX 4060 before it – a people’s champion.

This is, after all, the more affordable RTX 50 GPU of the bunch, and thus the least taxing entry point (literally, if you’re over the pond in Tariffs Land) into full-spectrum DLSS 4 support. In fact the very model you see here, the nicely compact Zotac GeForce RTX 5060 Solo, is one of several that are actually selling at RRP/MSRP, or £270 / $299. That’s a snip, by 2025 standards, especially when most RTX 5060 Ti models have already gained a few quid. If nothing else, then it’s at least worth looking for some upsides.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: 1440p benchmarks

Granted, 1440p maybe isn’t the best place to start the search. After various restarts and reloads, I did eventually get some usable data from the 576.52 drivers, and at native resolution the RTX 5060 does make for visibly smoother framerates than the RTX 4060 in most games – Metro Exodus and Total War: Warhammer III especially. But then it only produced a single extra frame in Forbidden West, forcing it to drop behind the older and cheaper Intel Arc B580. That’s an underdog GPU that the RTX 5060 could also only hold to a draw in both Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 24.

Click to embiggen! | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

The RPS test PC:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  • RAM: 32GB Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5
  • Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
  • PSU: NZXT C1000 Gold

Points for coming close to the Radeon RX 7700 XT, a potential challenger from the second-hand market, but if I was speccing a 1440p rig on a budget, I’d still save up for an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. In part because the VRAM difference does become evident at this kind of rez, particularly in Forbidden West, which had a certain jittery quality that I don’t think is entirely explained by the lower frame output alone. Playable evidence suggests 8GB is okay for most 1080p games, despite recent grumbles from tech enthusiasts, but an extra 8GB on top of that likely will help cope with the rigours of Quad HD.

You’ll also need to invest more if you want to partake in path tracing. Even with Quality DLSS upscaling, neither of my path traced test games could reach 30fps on the RTX 5060, again making an argument for the RTX 5060 Ti. MFG could get the numbers up, but only Cyberpunk 2077 at 2x felt remotely playable: at 4x, input lag went off the charts, and Alan Wake II had a similarly sludgy feeling (along with noticeable blurring on camera movements).

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

DLSS 4 is still the best overall upscaler/frame gen package in the biz, but as I seem to say every time it comes up, it just doesn’t work as a means of smoothening out low performance. It’s great at taking quite-fast games and making them look even slicker, but that really needs a foundation of ordinarily rendered frames for DLSS to generate new ones from; without that, it’s the gaming hardware equivalent of sitting in a rusty wheelbarrow with a Ferrari livery. You’ll pick up some good speeds on the right hill, but won’t enjoy the sensation.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: 1080p benchmarks

Life is much better at 1080p. The B580 still beats the RTX 5060 in Horizon, but only by a few frames, and it’s practically on par with the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in Metro and Cyberpunk. Not far behind in Warhammer III or Assassin’s Creed Mirage, either.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Vitally, there’s also – more often than not – a decent improvement on the RTX 4060, especially in Metro and Cyberpunk. This is sustained with the application of regular ray tracing, too. Adding Ultra-quality RT effects to Metro only brought the RTX 5060 down to 77fps, while the RTX 4060 managed 62fps.

Will it consistently fill out a 165Hz monitor on max quality? No, but then for less than £300 it doesn’t need to. It’s fine. Adequate. Reasonable, I remember someone saying. VRAM-wise, you should probably think about whether you might like to upgrade to 1440p within this card’s shelf life, but for the time being it does look like you can get away with 8GB at 1080p. I didn’t see much more of that jittering in Forbidden West, for one thing, and a side-jaunt into Doom: The Dark Ages – with its always-on ray tracing and Ultra Nightmare settings – produced a smooth, stutter-free 73fps, once again besting the RTX 4060 at 60fps.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Path tracing remains a questionable endeavour, mind. Although the RTX 5060 could crawl to an ostensibly playable 30fps-plus in both games at this lower rez, this wasn’t enough to avoid an offputting deluge of input lag once MFG tried to make up the difference. Alan Wake 2 wasn’t as blurry as at 1440p, but still, it felt sharper to just have Ultra-quality ray tracing at 44fps instead.

In fairness, I did find a use case for MFG in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. With Ultra settings, DLSS on Quality and all ray tracing effects enabled, Nvidia’s tech turned 53fps into 88fps on 2x and 150fps with a 4x override. Crucially, neither of the heightened results came with excessive latency, thanks largely to the fact that the RTX 5060 was already running the game acceptably without them.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

It’s just unfortunate that to get these numbers, I had to re-run the test every time one of those newfound framerate collapses took place, on top of having to restart the game after every settings change because otherwise they’d kill performance for no apparent reason. That’s not because of a recent bad patch on Bioware’s part, and it’s certainly not a problem with how the RTX 5060 itself is engineered, with Zotac’s single fan keeping peak GPU temps to a sensible 68°c. Nope, this was the fault of my lifelong enemy for the past two days: those 576.52 drivers.

A possibility exists that they’ll be fixed, and might not even be replaced by something worse, but at this point, there have been enough faulty Game Ready drivers – whose faults are usually specific to the RTX 50 series – that it’s become a problem for the entire GPU family. Sadly, that has to include the RTX 5060. By Nvidia’s own hand, this puts it in the unenviable position of being the most powerful and flexible 1080p graphics card in its price range yet also one that makes the words “Yes, you should buy this” disproportionately difficult to say out loud. Why would, or should, someone invest in a component when its requisite drivers have such a high chance of breaking their games?

This review is based on a retail unit provided by the manufacturer.



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Key art for the game Blades of Fire
Product Reviews

Blades of Fire review: Forging a path with mid-budget retro charm

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Having toiled away on critically-acclaimed titles in the Metroid series and reviving Konami’s Castlevania series, developer MercurySteam has taken the risk of co-financing their latest project. Blades of Fire is its chance to prove their development skills at crafting their own original idea, and there’s a lot to love about this game’s blend of dark fantasy and mythology.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: May 22, 2025

That being said, it’s hard not to feel the weight of legacy and industry trends, rather than instilling this world with bold new ideas, holding this game back from greatness.

Rather than focusing on the negatives, there’s much to appreciate in this new game, particularly the father-son-esque bond at the heart of this story. While the game builds up a story about an ancient race of giants known as Forgers, instilling the knowledge to craft weapons from steel into humanity, with this power being seized by the anointed Queen Nerea to curse those who oppose her and turn steel to stone, the plot is simple. Aran de Lira possesses one of the ancient hammers necessary to forge his own steel, and alongside Asdo, the son of his deceased friend, embarks on a quest to kill the queen.


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(Image credit: MercurySteam)

Classic is queen

There’s an almost-quaint retro simplicity to which the world of Blades of Fire is introduced: Aran is a lonely figure with an unspoken past that fuels his desire for a solitary existence, yet he’s more than willing to go and save an old friend he hears in danger nearby. The child desires revenge for his father’s death and, thanks to his knowledge of the Forgers, goes on this adventure with Aran to take down the queen.

The contrast of scholarly child and mysterious scarred older man soon warms to you, and not solely due to the similarities between their bond and that of Kratos and Atreus in the recent God of War titles. Asdo is far from an annoying sidekick, balancing wisdom with genuinely funny quips that are enough to make you laugh without grating (and you can always send him away, if you do wish for him to be quiet). I felt a warmth for Aran and a desire to learn more of his past, especially the guarded secrets of his past relationship to the Queen before her descent to despotic control.

Having first expected a practical but minimal story, I was surprised to find myself attached and with a desire to learn more of the rich lore the devs instilled into this world.

There’s an unabashed videogame-y nature to this world and cast, imbued with a quirkiness reminiscent of mid-budget adventure games abundant in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era

This is balanced with an engaging combat system that, though its quirks and intricacies will take time to learn, thanks to an at-first clunky and uncomfortable control scheme, you soon come to appreciate. Victory requires players to learn enemy attack patterns and the best weapons to counter each of them.

All four face buttons are each mapped to their direction of attack: on a PlayStation controller, this means Triangle will strike from above, X from below, and Square and Circle from each side. Depending on an opponent’s armor, it’s required to consider where you strike in order to deal maximum damage, or at times, inflict any damage at all.

The need to be aware of not just when but where you strike is most important in boss fights. One early sub-boss, a troll, requires you to whittle down its health, then slice off a part of the enemy’s body in order to drain it further before it can regenerate. Whether fighting big bosses – one boss at the end of the Crimson Fort is particularly interesting in how it forces you to learn both attack patterns and strike direction to defeat it most effectively – or small-fry enemies, it rarely tires even after dozens of hours have passed.

It may take time to get used to the stamina system that is required to inflict stronger, quicker attacks, and your hands will strain getting used to the unusual grip of having both block and dodging mapped to the left bumper and trigger, but you soon adjust to the fascinating tension it instils to high-stakes conflict.

(Image credit: MercurySteam)

Nerves of steel

Embodying the blacksmith skills key to the game’s identity, you must collect materials around the world to forge new weapons. You have complete control over the type of steel you use, which determines weight, speed, strength, blocking, and more, and once you’ve refined this selection, you must then physically hammer the weapon into shape. The closer to the real shape, the more refined the weapon, and therefore the more you can repair it before it’s unusable.

It’s fun, at first. After a while, it becomes repetitive and time-consuming. If you craft a good enough weapon, you can automatically recraft it to this level without replaying the minigame, but if you wish to improve this stat or build a new weapon, you must spend upwards of five minutes forging, grinding the momentum to a shuddering halt.

It’s one of a few issues holding the game back, many tied to the long legacy leading into this game’s development and the weight of adjusting the game’s design to chase industry trends. Many senior developers on Blades of Fire worked on the mostly forgotten 2001 action title named Severance: Blade of Darkness, which, beyond visual similarities, is often regarded as a precursor to the Dark Souls genre in its careful use of stamina and deliberate action.

Best bit

While it takes some time to get used to it, getting to grips with this unusual control scheme and observing a difficult boss’ attack patterns to correctly slice, dodge, and weave your way to victory brings about a primal joy that wills you forward towards the next area on your adventure.

While this makes it perhaps unfair to compare a game refining these 2001 ideas to Dark Souls, it’s hard not to see their implementation, and many other mechanics not found in Severance but introduced to this game are clearly inspired by the industry’s wholesale embrace of the beloved FromSoftware title. Players have limited flasks of health potions that can only be restored by resting at anvils, this game’s thematically fitting equivalent to bonfires, and upon death, players must return to the location they were felled in order to rescue their weapon.

Even if we were to credit these ideas to Severance and not an attempt to create a Soulslike adventure, Blades of Fire’s level design and enemies feel best suited to a style of action opposite to the plodding action and unstoppable attack animations of both titles. In battles against undead hordes, you can at times be facing close to a dozen enemies at once, and even your fastest weapons are useless with the rate at which your attacks are interrupted.

As this game lacks the punishment of lost resources or the risk of losing your weapon forever if you die before reclaiming it, recovering your weapon feels more like a chore and an obligatory feature to adhere to the formula than a design suited to the pace of this adventure.

(Image credit: MercurySteam)

A search for souls

It contributed to an overwhelming feeling that the embrace of so many Souls-isms only served to hinder the natural flow of the game, rather than enhance it.

This is before we discuss the game’s cumbersome map, which, through its lack of dimension, can become nearly useless when navigating more complex, multi-level terrain for the next objective.

This is only compounded by the fact that there’s no clear indication in the environment on where to go next, and even the optional objective markers activated by navigating menus and automatically disabled upon clearing that specific objective, unless reactivated, are often useless in more complex multi-level areas. If you’re navigating a multi-floor fortress and miss an inconspicuous door you must unlock with a newly-obtained key, even a marker won’t stop you wandering in circles for 20 minutes or longer, lost and frustrated.

Yet despite my complaints, I felt just enough charm to find myself soldiering forward. There’s an unabashed gamey nature to this world and cast, imbued with a quirkiness reminiscent of mid-budget adventure games abundant in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but non-existent in this modern era of spiraling budgets.

(Image credit: MercurySteam)

For all I can complain about Soulslike inspirations that these days induce more groans than excitement, there’s a simplicity to this quest to go and kill the queen while offering just enough mechanical depth without bogging you down in an overwhelming number of unnecessary systems.

You craft weapons, you fight enemies, you move forward. Simple, but the sense of a human hand touching every asset rather than some overcautious executive or an overzealous focus group drew me even to its flaws.

Blades of Fire is charming, even if its soulslike eccentricities were more of a hindrance to the characters and adventure housed within. This blend of retro simplicity and modern flair won’t be the best game you play in 2025, but it’s likely going to be one of the more charming (and as such memorable), and isn’t that just as good?

Should you play Blades of Fire?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

Accessibility features in Blades of Fire are limited. Camera shake and motion blur can be adjusted, alongside the size and color of subtitles but otherwise, the default text is small, and it lacks many commonplace accessibility features such as colorblind modes.

How I reviewed Blades of Fire

I played just over 30 hours of the game on a base PS5 model using a standard DualSense controller on standard difficulty, getting all the way through the game to the latter stages of the main story.

I utilized an ASUS VG27AQL1A gaming monitor, while for audio, a mix of Denon speakers and a wireless audio adapter, and AirPods Max were used.

First reviewed May 2025

Blades of Fire: Price Comparison



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Samsung Odyssey G81SF OLED Gaming Monitor Review: Gorgeous
Product Reviews

Samsung Odyssey G81SF OLED Gaming Monitor Review: Gorgeous

by admin


Let’s cut to the chase—Samsung’s latest QD-OLED computer monitor is absolutely awesome, and I’ve loved having it at my desk for the past month or so. Every game I play on it looks incredible, and it has quickly become the centerpiece of my battle station.

Even so, I’m still having trouble recommending 4K high-refresh monitors to people who have to buy and build their own systems. Having a monitor with some room to grow is the right choice, but the gap between performance and capability can be frustrating if you’re on otherwise budget-friendly hardware. If you’re thinking of making an upgrade, really nice 1440p screens are available for under $400, and they might be a better performance fit for most people.

On the other hand, if you’ve already got the most powerful gaming PC in your friend group and you’ve got the cash to spare, you’ll be extremely pleased with the Samsung G81SF. It offers the best panel type in the category, the highest resolution and refresh rate modern systems can reasonably manage, and the suite of features to match.

Fast Refresh, High Resolution

The G81SF features Quantum-Dot OLED technology. (We have an in-depth explainer about panel types if you want the technical details.) The result is just about the best gaming monitor experience you can have at the moment. Colors are super bright and vivid, and shadows and dark areas totally disappear into blackness. It makes me want to turn off the lights, put on some headphones, and settle in for too many hours of some deeply cinematic game.

For most folks, the QD-OLED screens are going to be the absolute best gaming experience you can find, but there are alternatives. If you’re just set on 4K and 240Hz, the Mini LED version of the same screen from Samsung has a slower response time, and won’t have the same beautiful Quantum Dot-powered colors, but can be found for $700 or less. If you’re considering this screen, I don’t think that one will impress you nearly as much, but it does indicate the kind of premium you’re paying for the newest tech.

Given the high refresh and resolution, leveraging adaptive refresh here will be crucial for preventing tearing, and the Samsung features FreeSync Premium Plus, rather than Nvidia G-Sync. The most noticeable advantage to doing so is that it saves you some bucks, with FreeSync screens generally being a bit cheaper than their counterparts. The other advantage is that it works with both Nvidia and AMD cards, so you won’t be tied to one or the other when shopping for GPUs.

The issue for most people will just be getting games to run smoothly. I’m lucky enough to have an RTX 5090 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) for review purposes. Even with Nvidia’s current top-end, recently released card, most modern games won’t get anywhere close to 240 FPS at 4K without significant settings tweaking and liberal use of frame generation. If you’re on a lower-powered or older card, you might get frustrated to find that only Terraria runs at full resolution and refresh rate. People with cards older than the RTX 20 Series should avert their eyes, because it’s likely you won’t even be able to output at 4K and 240Hz, let alone game.

Tech and Stand

It has a simple platform stand, which is sufficiently sturdy given the relatively heavy screen, with a basic cable loop at the base. It also has RGB lights in a small ring around the back, but in order to see them your room will need to be dark and your monitor fairly close to the wall behind it. You can set them from the on-screen display, so no extra software needed.

New monitors often come out of the box with the screen brightness turned way up, and I recommend turning it down to anywhere from 20 to 30 percent. You might be surprised how much it spares your eyes over the course of a few hours of gaming, and it will save you a few bucks on your power bill. I tweaked a few other settings as well, including turning down the contrast to 40 and the color to 20.

It’s really important to touch on the ports, because both DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 rely on Digital Stream Compression to reach 4K at 240Hz. Compression might sound like a scary word here, but according to the VESA the effects shouldn’t be visually apparent. Technically, the HDMI port has a higher bandwidth, but I couldn’t tell the difference when switching back and forth between them.



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Roborock Saros Z70 review: a great robot vacuum with a sometimes helpful arm
Product Reviews

Roborock Saros Z70 review: a great robot vacuum with a sometimes helpful arm

by admin


I suspect my dog does not like the Roborock Saros Z70. Unlike the dozens of other robot vacuums that Gus happily lets clean around him while he sleeps, the Z70 keeps stealing his treasures. Not his dog toys — although that could be a future feature — but my family’s socks that he loves to collect and carry around the house with him.

Since the Z70 arrived, he’s had competition. The first robot vacuum with a mechanical arm, the Z70 features a five-axis arm, branded the OmniGrip, that uses onboard sensors and a camera to see, pick up, and tidy away a small list of light items, including the aforementioned socks, footwear such as slippers and sandals, tissues, and paper. In theory, this means I should spend less time picking up after my kids or rummaging in Gus’ bed to find the socks he’s stolen.

The Z70 can take objects it picks up to designated areas, including this box Roborock supplies with the robot.

In practice, it’s nowhere near achieving this goal. Yes, the arm can pick up items and put them away, which is seriously impressive. It collected my son’s discarded socks and a few balls of paper, putting them where I asked it to. But the Z70’s limitations are deal-breakers at this point, and its lack of consistency also lets it down.

For example, while the bot would detect footwear, it nearly always opted not to pick up any shoes, only once retrieving a slipper or sandal of its own volition. It also consistently struggled to place more than one item in the correct spot each time it cleaned.

Still, this is the first consumer robot vacuum to venture into appendage territory, and even in this beta-like stage, it’s remarkable. But for an eye-watering $2,599, the Saros Z70 needs to pick up more than a few socks.

$2599

The Good

  • Picks up smelly socks
  • Great vacuum and mop
  • Excellent navigation
  • Automatically removes its mops
  • Low profile gets under most furniture

The Bad

  • Twenty-six hundred dollars
  • Fails to pick up most shoes
  • Can’t see items on carpet
  • Sometimes misses its target

The Saros Z70 is a flagship robot vacuum that’s a big step up from my current top pick floor sweeper, the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra. With over twice the suction power, a more advanced navigation and obstacle detection system, and dual spinning mops that it can automatically remove, it’s an impressive cleaner.

However, aside from the arm, it’s essentially the same vacuum as the $1,599.99 Saros 10R that launched with it earlier this year — with a few modifications made to accommodate the mechanism, including a different roller brush and a smaller onboard bin and water tank. For $1,000 less, the 10R is a better bet right now.

The Z70 identified rug tassels as socks, but let go once it realized they were too heavy. I was also able to flag this in the app as something not to pick up.

While cleaning my house, the Saros Z70 used an AI-powered camera on the front of the robot to identify potential pickable objects, then returned to “sort” them. This process, which was very slow, involved scrutinizing the object for a few moments, then shuffling around, pausing to unfold the arm from the body of the robot, extending it, twisting it horizontally or vertically, and using its pincer grip to grab the item.

A camera in the “hand” sees the item and determines how to pick it up, then a grip sensor measures the weight of the object — 300 grams (0.66 pounds) is the max. Sensors along the arm also detect if anything is in the way, to stop it pinching an object or banging into something. At one point, it tried to pick up a rug tassel, realized it was too heavy, and let it go.

When it did manage to pick something up, it’d hoist the object high into the air and triumphantly carry it toward the zone I’d designated in the app. Socks or paper went into a Roborock-provided bin, with about an 80 percent success rate. The robot always dropped stuff, just not always in the bin. Sometimes just alongside it, and once or twice, when it got confused, absolutely nowhere near it.

Footwear was supposed to go to the shoe storage area, but it only managed to pick up one sandal during my testing, studiously avoiding the slippers, flip-flops, and Crocs I left strewn around. Even then, it deposited the sandal just outside the shoe storage zone.

Roborock suggested trying the manual control option in the app, which gives a live view from the camera on the arm to see if the bot could accurately identify and pick up one of the shoes it had been ignoring. This worked on the flip-flop, with the arm picking it up when directed. It just wouldn’t do it autonomously. (Sidenote: The camera in the arm can be used as a roaming home security camera, providing an additional vantage point to the forward-facing one.)

The Z70 did a good job with large socks, small fabric toys that looked like socks, and paper, but it didn’t like small socks. However, in most cleaning runs, it only picked up one or two items, even if there were half a dozen shoes and socks scattered around.

It also can’t pick up items on carpet, so those socks my husband slipped off and hid under the coffee table while watching telly will go untidied. Speaking of tables, the arm can’t reach under low furniture; if it detects anything above it within 45cm (17.7 inches), it won’t deploy its arm.

1/3The Saros Z70 should autonomously pick up footwear such as sandals and slippers, but I had to use the remote control option in the app to get it to pick up my flip-flop.

All of this illustrates the technology’s promise versus its current reality. The robot uses AI to identify obstacles and determine whether to avoid them (like pet poop), clean around them (like cables), or pick them up. The logs in the app revealed that its success was comparable to that of a preschooler using flashcards. On one run, it identified the black flip-flop as a cable, a piece of paper as a plastic bag, and a brown slipper as pet poop. But on the next run, it picked up the same ball of paper with no issues.

The arm is an impressive novelty, but not functional enough to be worth your money

Today, the arm is an impressive novelty, but not functional enough to be worth your money. However, the hardware feels solid, and if the software can be improved, it could be very useful.

I’m constantly picking up and relocating footwear that my family discards, and having a robot do it reliably would make my life easier, not to mention help with the Monday morning panic when we can’t find my daughter’s Crocs. If it could pick up larger items like clothes, deal with phone charging cables, and other common household clutter, I’d love to set it loose on my teenage kids’ rooms to tidy up before cleaning.

1/4One reason the Z70 didn’t try to tidy my shoes is that it thought my slipper was pet poop.

  • Price: $2,600
  • Suction: 22,000Pa
  • Brushes: Single “freeflow” rubber/bristle brush
  • Mopping: Dual spinning mop pads, auto removal, 22mm mop lift, warm water mopping
  • Battery capacity: 6,400 mAh, 2.5-hour fast charging
  • Obstacle detection: Recognizes 108 objects
  • Navigation: StarSight 2.0 navigation system
  • Height: 3.14 inches (7.98 cm)
  • Dock: Auto-empty, dual water tanks, detergent dispenser, hot water washing, hot air drying
  • Voice control: Built-in Rocky voice assistant
  • Smart home control: Matter (including Apple Home, Samsung SmartThings), Amazon Alexa, Google Home

Roborock claims to have a slew of updates in the works for the bot, beginning next month, which it says should improve reliability and expand its object repertoire, crucially to heavier items like sneakers. The bot is currently limited to 300 grams (0.66 pounds) but is capable of handling up to 700 grams (1.5 pounds), according to Roborock.

Hopefully, this will make the arm more confident when picking up footwear. Currently, it’s very specific about what it will collect, largely as a safety feature. It did pick up the occasional small cat toy and stuffed animal, but mostly opted against trying to grasp an item if there was any doubt.

Speaking of safety, both Gus and my cat, Boone, tried playing with the arm, and it immediately stopped moving, so I felt confident that they were safe. The arm is also surprisingly sturdy, although I’m not sure it would hold up to 70-pound Gus if he were determined to retrieve a sock. (There is an emergency stop button for the arm should something go wrong.)

Arm issues aside, the Saros Z70 excels as a robot vacuum. Its StarSight 2.0 navigation system (a combination of solid-state lidar, 3D sensors, and cameras) navigated smoothly, dodging obstacles and ably avoiding common robot traps thanks to its ability to lift itself up 10mm and cross thresholds of up to 4cm.

It’s the first robot vacuum I’ve tested that never once got stuck on my rug, under my sofa, or between my lounge chair’s spindly legs. Its 22,000Pa suction power demolished my oatmeal and Cheerio tests, and the dual spinning mop pads efficiently dispatched small spills of milk, juice, and dried ketchup.

1/4The Saros Z70 is an excellent vacuum and mop. At just 3.14 inches high, it can get into places few Roborocks have ventured.

If you love the latest tech and are willing to pay (a lot) for potential, the Saros Z70 is a fascinating peek into the future — not to mention a fun toy (yes, you can remote control the arm). But if you’re happy to pick up your own socks, Roborock’s Saros 10R ($1,599.99) offers all the same floor cleaning abilities, minus the arm, for $1,000 less. (The Z70 was initially priced at $1,899.99, but Roborock recently raised it to $2,599 due to tariffs.)

Are robotic arms the future of home cleaning? Probably. With the speed of innovation in home robotics, a Rosie the Robot-like autonomous cleaning machine in our homes is starting to feel less like science fiction. Roborock may have shipped the first robot with an autonomous arm, but it won’t be the last. For now, the Z70 is an impressive, if flawed, glimpse of what’s to come.

Bringing connected devices into your home also brings with it concerns about how the data they collect is protected. The Verge asks each company whose smart home products we review about safeguards it has in place for your data.

  • The primary home data a robot vacuum like the Roborock manages are the maps it generates and video and image data from its onboard cameras. Roborock says that all map / cleaning data is encrypted before being sent to the cloud. Additionally, it says data only leaves the device if you view the map on its smartphone app. Otherwise, it stays locally on the device.
  • The company says a maximum of 20 cleaning maps are stored at any one time, and any maps stored in the cloud are deleted after one year. A factory reset of the robot will remove any locally stored map information.
  • The remote viewing and obstacle photo features are optional, not enabled by default, must be physically enabled on device, and can be turned off in the app. Remote viewing is live-streaming only (no video is recorded or stored).
  • When viewing is enabled, the device collects your “user ID, network IP address, and video information captured via the camera,” according to Roborock’s Privacy Policy for Remote Viewing. This is in addition to Roborock’s standard Privacy Policy.
  • Photos of obstacles are governed by an Obstacle Photo Privacy Policy. Roborock says they are encrypted and stored on the robot vacuum and only sent to the cloud if you click on an icon on the map to view the image on your phone. Then it’s secured with Transport Layer Security. It will be deleted from the server within three working days and from your phone when you exit the app.
  • The robotic arm requires a camera to function. It is disabled by default and must be manually activated by the user. Once activated, it can be deactivated in the app.

Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge





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Deliver At All Costs review
Game Reviews

Deliver At All Costs review

by admin


Deliver At All Costs review

Excellent dumb fun and constantly creative mission design, hobbled by tedious interludes and an insistent, unconvincing, and unnecessary story.

  • Developer: Studio Far Out Games
  • Publisher: Konami
  • Release: May 22nd, 2025
  • On: Windows
  • From: Steam/GOG/Epic Games
  • Price: £25/€30/$30
  • Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 11

They say that if you ignore your detractors, you also have to ignore the praise. But I’m proud that my boss told me I’m a good courier. “I am a good courier”, I think, ramming a remote control corvette destined for a local child’s chimney into a pedestrian’s shins, knocking them skyward, zipping away before the sound of soft bones on hard concrete catches up with me. “The best courier,” I nod, reversing my truck into a beach-front bar on the way to fumigate a truckful of rotting melons. “The best damn courier in town!”, I exclaim, honking my newly-installed cursehorn, shattering nearby windows and streetlights into glinting injury confetti.

Sometimes, confidence is more valuable than a measured perspective on things, and if you need to focus on the praise to block out the little voice telling you the way you’re driving to these sun-kissed surf guitars is less Dennis Wilson, more Charlie Manson, so be it. Deliver At All Costs has me thinking a lot about confidence, in fact. It invokes GTA with a linked series of open maps, constantly devil-whispering your attention away from main and side missions with the promise of the hallowed fuckaboutsesh – smashable suburbia detailed down to the individual fence picket taking the place of rocket launchers and car pile-ups. But tragically, it’s also cursed with a lack of confidence that this is enough. It wants to be something more.

With games, I’ve come to view silliness – joyful, knowing, celebratory, confident silliness – as a kind of fearlessness. There was a much-mocked Tweet by an apparently well-known industry human a few years back along the lines of “in a world where every game is John Wick, The Last Of Us 2 is Schindler’s list”. Allusion aside, I remember thinking that my problem was that not enough games are John Wick. We should be so lucky to have more games exhibit that level of technical virtuosity and playfulness and inventiveness and character while also displaying such prescient levels of self-awareness and comfort regarding their own limits. Excellent, dumb fun with nothing to prove is in shorter supply than you might think.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

To wit: Deliver At All Costs is about 70% videogame-ass videogame, and a pretty great one at that. The rest is dull cutscenes and conversations and other assorted faff, starring a deeply unlikable protagonist, standoffish enough to be instantly repellant while also being the sort of bozo who says shit like “well, here goes nothing!” out loud to himself before walking into a job interview. It’s been ages since I’ve played a freeform chaos ’em up (Destroy All Humans! springs to mind, in spirit if not specifics), and the result was like going for lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, only for them to grab the delicious milkshake out of my hands every ten minutes and refuse to give it back until I’d listened to the next part of their screenplay. It’s not a good screenplay, Eric. And give me back my milkshake.

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I wouldn’t even say that the game’s writing is bad, in the sense that it does contain very good things resulting from humans putting imaginative ideas on paper. The formula stays consistent. Either get a thing and take it to a place, sometimes with a few stops across the way, without it getting ruined. Or, collect or deliver lots of things quickly, sometimes with a time limit, sometimes while being attacked by cops or other vermin. You’ll get a few cargo-loading tools to upgrade your truck as your progress – a winch, a crane. But the game is so creative with its twists and framing that each delivery stands out.

One mission, you’re delivering a stone statue of the mayor to replace an old one that’s been painted white over the years by a truly biblical quantity of bird plop. As you’re making your way back down treacherous volcano slopes, you’re set upon by a swarming armada of dysentery pigeons, forced to swerve incoming shit sheets to deliver your cargo as pristine as possible. Another, you’re delivering a gigantic marlin, driving through barrels of feed en route so it doesn’t get hangry and attempt to flip over your car with its tail. Next, you might be ramming into rival courier trucks and crane-stealing their packages to make the deliveries yourself.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

This is all made goofier by what Brendy described as “slip-slidey Micro Machines goodness”. While I’d imagine trying to drive such a pressure-sensitive vehicle with a mouse and keyboard is a nightmare, on controller your truck is tight and responsive while also reacting to the slightest bit of overzealousness on your part with clownish histrionics. This is fine and good and welcome. The worse you drive, the more fun it is, and after playing two parryful games in a row that ceaselessly screamed at me like J. K. Simmons in Whiplash to get it right, it feels great to play something this joyously permissiveness of sloppy, slippy smashbastardry.

So, what’d be the perfect chaser to all this creative mayhem? Why, some sort of traumatic backstory for your courier, naturally. Comic strips where an overbearing father unsupportive of your engineer-tagonist’s love for “those damn gizmos” wants him to go shoot a fox instead. But he can’t do it! He can’t pull the trigger! I ran over twelve people yesterday, game. I made at least twice that many people homeless. There’s a rivalry with upper management trying to uncover your courier’s not-actually-that-dark past. You have to go to bed and wake up and get dressed every few missions in your apartment, despite there being no other life sim elements that would give this stuff purpose. There’s a sequence at the end of the first act where you have to push crates and filing cabinets from doorways to escape a burning building. It’s unconvincing, uninteresting, unfocused, and there’s far too much of it.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

Thing is though, the city is already a nice enough place to spend time, vibes-wise; a toytown pastiche of mid-century Americana that creates a familiar and vibrant enough sense of place for you to enjoy levelling that place to bits. There’s enough here to convey the game’s identity without all the faff. And this is where I return to thinking about confidence. More specifically, how Deliver At All Costs has a lack of trust in itself. The game seems afraid to let itself be defined by its strongest elements, and attempts a type of storytelling structure that serves it not at all.

Because this doesn’t strike me as a story someone especially wanted to tell, nor the additional sequences ones anyone especially wanted to make. They are inclusions born of a nervous yearning to fulfill the mold of an impersonal idea of what constitutes a real videogame, a ladder to worthiness built from checkboxes. Worse, they drag the party down and refuse to give me back my damn milkshake. If you reckon you’ve got a higher tolerance for battering the ‘skip dialogue’ button though, by all means go for it. There is, as I say, some excellent, dumb fun to be had here.



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Only press who previewed the RTX 5060 under Nvidia’s test conditions are getting review drivers, reports claim
Game Updates

Only press who previewed the RTX 5060 under Nvidia’s test conditions are getting review drivers, reports claim

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In classic me fashion, I swanned off for a few days just as another graphics card fracas has spilled out into public view. At the centre this time is the previously unassuming RTX 5060, which you may have noticed is due for launch today yet only has a handful of “hands-on previews” to tell you how big of a graphics it does. Allegedly, that’s because Nvidia have been keeping hold of the drivers needed for full reviews, only providing them at the eleventh hour to press outlets that have previously run these previews. No preview? No review, at least until the drivers release publicly later today, and what’s more, the same reports say that these previews were only offered under strict testing provisos set by Nvidia themselves.

According to VideoCardz and Hardware Unboxed, the mandated test conditions supposedly range from only allowing certain games for benchmarking – judging from the previews currently online, these were Doom: The Dark Ages, Avowed, Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy and Marvel Rivals – to the more egregious demand that RTX 5060 performance figures would focus on DLSS 4’s Multi Frame Generation (MFG). And, in turn, would only be compared to results from older XX60 GPUs that lack DLSS frame gen support entirely.

“We worked with a few chosen media on previews with a pre-release driver,” an Nvidia spokesperson told me this afternoon. No comment on the review driver situation, other than a 5pm BST release time, was given.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

RPS was not invited to take part in these previews, and I can’t imagine agreeing to such terms if we were. Although it doesn’t appear that Nvidia required previewers to give positive RTX 5060 takes, with several highlighting the shortcomings of its 8GB VRAM limit, the limited game selection and emphasis on frame-genned performance versus the much older RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 Super are clearly intended to push a particular narrative: one that at best downplays the drawbacks of frame generation and at worst misleads readers with an unhelpfully narrow view of relative performance. GameStar, a German site that took Nvidia up on the offer, said in their preview that the GPU giant even specified the in-game settings that each game should be tested with.

The sense that a big, green thumb is pressing down on the critical scales is deepened by the alleged trading of earlier review drivers for a compliant preview. Even if, by that point, reviewers are free to use their own, independently-set benchmarks, the initial wave of RTX 5060 reviews will come from publications that Nvidia has – accurately or otherwise – deemed more friendly than others. Those who refused the locked-down previews, and have thus demonstrated less of a willingness to go along with the desired messaging, will be forced to wait before sharing impressions.

I can’t claim absolute moral superiority here because again, I wasn’t invited, and thus didn’t have the chance to send a “Thanks but no thanks” email (even I hadn’t simultaneously been too busy recovering from gin-assisted groomsman duty). Still, yeah, not a fan.

I have recently noticed Nvidia PRs becoming unusually pushy about how great it would be to test such and such frame generation in such and such game, but functionally those have only ever been suggestions, and I’ve never faced even a veiled hint at retribution for ignoring them in my reviews. Nonetheless, I now find myself in the bizarre position of having had physical possession of an RTX 5060 for nearly a week (posted by Zotac, with no strings attached other than to please not lose or break it), yet don’t have the software means to test or appraise it on the day of release. Like, man, at least Bethesda didn’t send us copies of Starfield while they were withholding the activation keys.

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More disturbing still is that this isn’t even the only accusation of editorial manhandling to be laid at Nvidia’s feet today. Big-deal tech YooToobers Gamers Nexus claimed in a video (above) that Nvidia have, with varying levels of subtlety, threatened to cut off their interview access to Nvidia engineering staff in response to a perceived lack of focus on DLSS and MFG performance testing in their reviews. Gamers Nexus have, in fact, produced multiple long-form vids on these topics specifically.

It isn’t unheard of for, nor technically outside the rights of, companies to pick and choose who gets primo access for coverage. In tech media especially, there may even be a minor, ethically unbothersome quid-pro-quo involved: attending a virtual briefing, for instance, in exchange for getting onto the review list. But there’s a honking great difference between asking journalists to sit through a thirty-minute slideshow and, essentially, demanding editorial jurisdiction over how their products are evaluated. Nvidia, one of the richest, most powerful firms on Earth, should know better – and should have at least had an idea that being caught fiddling with the independent review process might cause more damage to the RTX 5060 than a few variations of “It’s not much faster than the 4060, is it?”



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Acer
Product Reviews

Acer Vero B247Y business monitor review

by admin



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All around, the monitor world has continued to flourish. People want better displays to work on, create on, game on, and consume on, and the prices continue to rise. So, it’s worth noting when I find a budget monitor that I don’t hate. Not everyone, in fact, very few, needs the biggest and best display.

Even with what I do, I barely need a high-resolution display. I could get most of what I do done on a 1080p screen if needed, or if the budget required it. There are quite a few drawbacks for choosing this kind of display, like screen quality in both picture and frame, the speakers sound like someone whispering into a soup can, but at the same time, if it gets the job done, and saves me a ton of money, why wouldn’t I consider it?

And with that in mind, it’s not hard to recommend the Acer Vero B247Y as one of the best business monitors for anyone looking for a budget display.


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(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)

Acer Vero B247Y: Unboxing & first impressions

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t expect much when I started unboxing the simple cardboard box that held the Acer B247Y monitor.

But once I opened it up, I noticed it had a DisplayPort cable, an HDMI cable, a power cable, a stand, and some nice documentation. I could put it all together before I realized what I was doing, and I was using it after mere moments of unboxing.

The monitor is incredibly light, so light that it doesn’t make sense. Once I got this display on my desk, I pretty quickly threw it on a VESA mount monitor arm to get it positioned right where I wanted it, then I got to work using the display.

While it may feel like the exact monitor (probably not), my mom grew up on a corner desk littered with receipts connected via VGA to a tower pc that weighed more than I did, but it’s not half bad when you consider the price.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)

Acer Vero B247Y: Design & Build Quality

Specs

Display: 23.8″ IPS
Resolution: 1920×1080
Refresh Rate: 120Hz (HDMI + DP)
Brightness: 250 nits
Inputs: HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2, VGA, Audio In/Out, Headphone jack
Speakers: 2x 2W (bless them for trying)
Adjustments: Height, tilt, swivel, pivot
Weight: 12.06 lbs with stand

The display build quality is mediocre despite the realization that this monitor can be found for under $100. It’s super lightweight, which is great for moving it around, but it does not feel premium.

In fact, it feels like if I sneeze or cough too aggressively, it might fall down, which is why I added it to my monitor arm. The black plastic frame looks cheap, but it hides the cheap factor quite nicely since it’s matted black.

The port layout is simple and easy to use. No frills, no add-ons, just video in. Sometimes, that’s all you want, and with this guy, that’s all you get.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)

Acer Vero B247Y: In use

Jokes aside, this monitor is good enough to get some business work done. I of course wouldn’t use it for graphic design or much creative work, if any, but for Slack, documents, email, browsing the internet, Excel sheets, and so on, this display gets the job done for cheap. Especially if this monitor is not frequently used, sits in a high-traffic office area where it could get damaged, or if you are simply just working on basic tasks and don’t require 4K at all.

Plus, since it’s so cheap, you can spend that money on accessories, a better computer, or just simply save it for something else.

Moving on, I wouldn’t recommend using this display for playing any audio of any kind. It’s actually comical to me that they even tried adding speakers to this, coming in with a whopping two 2W speakers. I tried taking a video call through this and the speaking voices were terrible, music is worse, and I didn’t dare try any sort of mixing audio levels for a video or project through this.

If you’re looking for a simple monitor to get business work done that won’t break the bank, then this is a monitor you should consider. It’s a good budget option. But, if you’re going to expect it to be great for gaming, consuming high-resolution content, color grading, or anything like that, I would look elsewhere.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)Swipe to scroll horizontally

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Design

Cheap and simple

⭐⭐⭐

Ease of use

Easy to use

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Practicality

Right for a budget

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Price

Very cheap

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Acer Vero B247Y: Final verdict

If you find yourself looking for “any monitor” within a budget, you should check out the B247Y as your budget solution.

It’s great for budget setups, secondary setups, your old tower pc that just needs a display, a server display, replacing the monitor you just broke and don’t want to pay for a replacement for, or for displays you are worried are going to quickly break for one reason or another.

Bump up the resolution with our round-up of the best 5K and 8K monitors for professional use.



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