Magazine

The first installment of [Tuesday Tweaks] covers Lossless Scaling, its vendor-neutral Frame Generation, and how it can be used to achieve higher framerates in games locked to 30 or 60 FPS, including emulators, fighting games, and etc. The actual Scaling functionality will also be briefly discussed.

The Lumix L10 is one of the most exciting compact cameras of the year, as Panasonic combines a large FourThirds sensor with a fast 24 - 75 mm zoom lens and an OLED viewfinder. The features are not just coincidentally reminiscent of the Leica D-Lux 8, which may be the better choice for some customers.

The cat is out of the bag, the Forerunner 70 is official. With it, Garmin is not only offering additional technologies, but also staying fairly true to its pricing strategy. From a business perspective, Garmin basically has little to complain about, though the question of future viability certainly arises.

Bambu Lab is offering a new filament that is also intended to meet higher health protection requirements. The corresponding tests are said to have been carried out on finished prints as well, though there are still several things to keep in mind.

[Modern Mondays] begins with an overview of the best Devil May Cry 5 mods ahead of Season 2 of the Netflix series premiering tomorrow. PC players missing out on Special Edition features need not worry—thanks to mods, the best way to play DMC is on PC.

Exclusive Hitoshi Sakimoto settles a 29-year debate exclusively with Notebookcheck: Final Fantasy Tactics is a rock record. We also got a chance to discuss his London Game Music Festival 2026 debut, made possible by the Game Music Foundation's efforts.

With a 200 MP primary sensor, a 3.5x tele lens, and a 12 MP ultrawide + macro shooter, the Honor 600 Pro has the best camera setup in its price segment. The smartphone not only outdoes midrange competitors but also rivals flagships from Samsung and Google with a premium build and a versatile camera setup.

CheckMag As the May 13 launch approaches, official Sony teasers for the Xperia 1 VIII hint at a "full circle" design with illuminated camera modules. But is the glowing camera design a real rival to the Nothing Phone, or simply a marketing campaign?

Icons flicker like an old CRT display: Elgato’s Stream Deck+ is more than just a control panel — it quickly turns into a creative playground for customizing your setup. One particularly interesting feature is animated icon packs, which transform every key into a tiny display. A Fallout-inspired design especially caught our attention thanks to its unique visual style. Here’s how to install and use it on the Stream Deck+.

The Sony Xperia 1 VIII is said to get rid of one of the most unique features of the Xperia 1 VII - the telephoto camera with true optical zoom. Thanks to a drastic sensor upgrade, this is (almost) always an upgrade for users, but this change in strategy is a loss for the smartphone market.

Amazon content restricted, no access to the home server: geoblocking can quickly become annoying while on vacation. That’s why, before leaving, I installed Tailscale on my small home server/NAS and on the devices I take with me. Together, they form a network that lets my travel devices browse through my home network and its German IP address.

CheckMag Notebookcheck reviews hundreds of laptops every year. Some review units earn extra points for features not found elsewhere, or delivering higher-than-average performance, or being easier on the user's eyes. It's the last category that gets some spotlight today.

The M249 is CS2's most expensive weapon at $5,200 - and its most useless. With worse stats than guns half its price, zero pro pick rate, and a kill reward identical to budget rifles, Valve's forgotten LMG is less a weapon, more a $5,200 mistake.

South Korea once invested heavily in maglev research and built a public-transit maglev system, the Incheon Airport Maglev, which offered everything that German projects have so far failed to deliver. Although the Ecobee is back in operation, it now runs very infrequently and remains closed one day a week.

Owlcat Games' The Expanse: Osiris Reborn closed beta is live today. One mission in, it is already one of the most exciting sci-fi RPGs in development, with sharp combat and stunning zero-gravity gameplay.

CheckMag Amazon is flooded with cheap Chinese Android-based car stereos at bargain-basement prices, which significantly undercut the competition from big brands like Pioneer and Kenwood. This is how an $80 Chinese head-unit holds up after 5 years.

After the failure of Skull and Bones, Windrose is emerging as a new hope for pirate fans. Here’s what sets the game apart from its competitors – and why abandoning the MMO model was probably the right decision.

Is $20 Casio F-91W a steal or just a "Heritage Tax"? Outclassed by MRW-100H and AE-1200, the legend’s value is under fire nowadays. We explore why this icon might be overpriced - and why enthusiasts still keep giving it a nod of approval.

RTX, No ₹eceipt. Nvidia's GeForce Now is officially live in India, offering up to RTX 5080 GPUs in the Ultimate tier. In this review, we take a deep dive into the hardware that makes GeForce Now tick and evaluate the service across three popular AAA titles to see if this is worth ditching that enthusiast gaming PC build you've been holding back so far.

With a list price of $449, the Nintendo Switch 2 is more expensive than the Steam Deck, and could soon become even more expensive due to the DRAM crisis. With a version of the Nintendo Switch 2 that only functions as a home console, Nintendo could offer more performance at a lower price.

Leica has already hinted that the Leica M12 could be offered as a "Heritage Edition". The compact full-frame camera could take up the legacy of the Leica M series with a range of retro features, clearly setting it apart from all digital cameras on the market.

CheckMag GoPro’s new Mission 1 camera series disrupts the market by introducing internal 32-bit float audio, a "safety net" technology previously exclusive to the $2,200 Nikon ZR. Launching May 28, 2026, the Mission 1 allows any external mic to record "un-clippable" sound, which sets a new industry standard.

Ronald Wayne helped found Apple with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on April 1, 1976, then left the company just 12 days later in one of tech history’s most famous early turning points.

CheckMag 2025 may go down as a year of rather poor decisions for PC manufacturer Dell. In 2026, Dell course corrects, with new models and new designs - not just with Dell XPS, but also with their Dell Pro laptops for the enterprise.

Starfield is now available for the PS5/PS5 Pro, but unlike when it launched on the Xbox, there isn't a limited edition controller based on the video game. However, it isn't too late to make one.

Why does a $4M-per-episode show look like a PowerPoint? From single-frame animation sequences to the 'fat baby' Thragg character design, Amazon’s celebrity tax is killing the series. This is a look inside the Hollywood-first strategy that’s trading actual frames for marquee names. This article contains spoilers.

Mike Willette, voice actor and producer, discusses his work on Killer Instinct 2013 as part of Invincible VS' background during its simultaneous Game Informer cover story and Open Beta start earlier today.

CheckMag When HP invited us to their event in New York, we naturally took a look at complete their 2026 business lineup. The expensive HP EliteBook X is the standout, but every model in this lineup is interesting.

As of April 2026, a huge chunk of new web pages are AI-generated, which is making finding authentic hardware benchmarks harder than ever. This flood of automated slop warrants a return to whitelist browsing and verified sources.

CheckMag Samsung is defying its record $38 billion Q1 2026 profit by hiking prices across its US lineup. The Galaxy Book5 series sees a flat $300 jump, while Galaxy Tab prices have increased by up to $100. With a $599 MacBook Neo and new Asus Zenbooks here, Samsung’s aggressive price hikes on older hardware may drive loyalists toward the competition.

Not every Counter-Strike update is good, and not every video essay is worthy of an essay—but Counter-Strike 2's new animgraph overhaul ported and overhauled from Half-Life: Alyx may be worth revisiting the game.

CheckMag When HP invited me to New York for their HP Imagine 2026, I expected to hear about AI and see some new business laptops. I did not expect the HP Dimension with Google Beam, which blew me away.

The latest episode of Invincible, Season 4 Episode 5: Give Us A Moment, may be the most-balanced episode of television the show can ever give us. This is thanks to a 50-50 split between some of the best slow character work and most savage action the series has to offer. Warning for minor spoilers ahead.

CheckMag A full-frame sensor, an OLED viewfinder, and a flip-out display for €799, including a zoom lens. With this aggressive price, the Panasonic Lumix S5D makes entry into the world of full-frame cameras more affordable than ever.

Gaming handhelds are mainly used for action games and relaxed indie adventures. However, the Steam Deck is surprisingly well suited to real-time strategy games such as Stronghold - so well, in fact, that I have already played over 600 hours of RTS games on the Steam Deck.

CheckMag The DRAM crunch is hitting console and PC gamers alike. Starting today, the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro officially costs €899, while Valve has so far declined to confirm the price of the Steam Machine. Anyone looking to spend about €899 on a gaming PC currently has two main options.

The Leica D-Lux 8 is cheaper than some flagship smartphones, but still offers a much larger sensor, an OLED viewfinder, a fast 24 - 75 mm zoom lens and better ergonomics. With a few simple upgrades, the Leica D-Lux 9 could become the perfect smartphone upgrade.

With two 200 MP cameras and two teleconverters at its disposal, the Vivo X300 Ultra is set to be one of the most impressive camera smartphones of the year. However, anyone who prioritizes image quality and versatility can already purchase a full-frame camera for roughly the same price.

CheckMag With the new ThinkPad T laptops, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 and ThinkPad T16 Gen 5, Lenovo has announced a major update to its "bread and butter" models for corporate customers. We were able to talk to the product manager, Christoph Blindenbacher, about the new repairable ThinkPads.

Crimson Desert is one of the hottest games of 2026 and combines open-world systems like few other titles. At the same time, Crimson Desert is systemic, a reflection of the industry in 2026, and is polarizing the community.

CheckMag Whether you are looking to host a D&D campaign, troubleshoot code, generate ideas, create NSFW content, or bypass the guardrails set out by the big players, hosting your own LLM is easy with KoboldCPP, and works surprisingly well, even without a GPU.

With the new iOS update, Apple Music has pulled ahead with stronger discovery tools, neat new UI elements, and steadier pricing, while Spotify is struggling with late lossless rollout and rising costs. For users in Apple’s ecosystem, the transition is now easier to justify than before.

The PlayStation 5 and 5 Pro price hikes make this the best time for Valve to secure truly competitive Steam Machine pricing, which matters greatly even if the product does end up trailing PlayStation 5 Pro in graphics performance. The beefier CPU of Steam Machine and superior PC upscalers versus base PS5 turn the coming showdown into an interesting battle, indeed.

When it comes to HBO’s new Harry Potter series, most people are looking first at the cast, the sets and the script. But one crucial factor in its success is often overlooked: the music. Why the new score by Hans Zimmer and Bleeding Fingers could become the series’ biggest nostalgia hurdle.

Netflix’s March 2026 price hike creates an $11 gap between privacy and data-harvesting. For many, the $26.99 Premium tier is a huge hardware tax on the 4K OLED screens they already bought. Ownership is officially over.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s adaptation of Project Hail Mary arrived in theaters on March 20, 2026, and I just gave it a watch. Aside from the whole "sci-fi" premise, the film's depiction of tactile, physical ship controls is a neat critique of modern touchscreen-heavy designs. This article contains spoilers.

Mark Grayson is travelling into the Underrealm with Damien Darkblood in "Hurm," the fourth episode of Invincible Season 4. Released March 25 on Prime Video, this chapter gets rid of battles and the core comic-book storyline, and trades it for some much-needed reflection before a crazy reunion.

According to reports, PlayStation is rethinking its strategy around exclusives. In the long term, AAA games from PlayStation Studios may no longer come to PC, which is a pretty bleak prospect for me as a die-hard gamer. After all, some of my personal highlights of recent years originally came from Sony’s console.

Seiko keeps asserting its dominance on the watch industry - it has a rich heritage, in-house innovation, and solid pricing on multiple models. From quartz to Spring Drive, its massive portfolio and steady, ongoing evolution has helped it stay relevant across segments while competitors keep chasing trends.