The LEGO Group and Formula 1 have unveiled 22 fully drivable LEGO minicars that will take to the track ahead of the British Grand Prix, with every driver on the 2026 grid getting their own brick-built machine for the traditional pre-race parade.

That's a significant upgrade on last year's Miami Grand Prix, where drivers shared just 10 LEGO cars in a parade that quickly descended into the kind of light-hearted chaos fans couldn't get enough of. Instead of politely waving to the crowd, the drivers spent most of the lap laughing, overtaking each other and nudging rival teams, creating one of the most widely shared moments of the entire F1 season.

Fans wanted more, and it's been delivered.

Rather than sharing cars between teams, every one of the 22 current Formula 1 drivers will have their own personalised LEGO racer, each inspired by their team's 2026 livery and complete with official colours, sponsor detailing, team logos and driver numbers.

These aren't static display pieces either. Each minicar is made from more than 28,000 LEGO bricks, is fully drivable and can reach speeds of up to 25km/h, meaning they'll complete a full lap of Silverstone before the main event gets underway.

Building the fleet was no small task. A team of 20 LEGO designers, engineers and builders spent more than 6,400 hours bringing the cars to life at the LEGO Group's factory in Kladno, Czech Republic, balancing authentic Formula 1 styling with LEGO's unmistakably playful design.

The expanded parade is the latest step in the growing partnership between LEGO and Formula 1, which has become one of the sport's most successful collaborations since launching its full product range earlier this year.

With rivalries already bubbling away across the 2026 championship, don't expect the drivers to take it easy just because they're behind the wheel of something made from plastic bricks. If Miami proved anything, it's that once the helmets go on, every race becomes competitive, even when the top speed is closer to an e-bike than an F1 car.

The British Grand Prix gets underway this Sunday at Silverstone, but there's every chance the biggest smiles of the weekend will arrive long before the lights go out. If the sequel is anything like last year's viral hit, expect plenty of bumping, overtaking and the sort of racing that reminds everyone that, underneath it all, Formula 1 drivers are still just big kids when you hand them a LEGO car.

• Looking to buy some LEGO? Here's some more of our favourites on store shelves today

LG has officially unveiled the StanbyME 2 Max, a supersized version of its portable lifestyle screen that swaps the original's 27-inch display for a much larger 32-inch 4K panel. It sits somewhere between a TV and a giant tablet, whilst making you consider whether you need a television fixed to your wall.

The headline upgrade is the bigger screen. The StanbyME 2 Max now packs a 32-inch 4K UHD display, giving films, games and box sets a noticeable boost over the original model's QHD panel. LG has also added Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support, so the picture should look sharper and the built-in speakers should sound considerably fuller, too.

Under the bonnet sits LG's latest Alpha 8 AI Processor Gen3, which handles everything from upscaling lower-resolution content to optimising sound on the fly. AI Picture Pro enhances contrast and detail, AI Super Upscaling sharpens older content to better suit the larger display, while AI Sound Pro creates a virtual 11.1.2 surround sound effect without needing an external speaker system.

Of course, the StanbyME has never really been about raw specs. The whole point is that it goes where a normal TV can't.

Like its predecessor, the screen clips onto a wheeled stand that can be rolled from room to room, but it can also be detached completely if you want to use it elsewhere. It's a very posh version of seeing a screen rolled into history to watch Downfall.

It'll also rotate between landscape and portrait mode, making it better suited to everything from TikTok and Instagram Reels to video calls and mobile apps. In many ways, it feels less like a traditional television, but it's easy to see how it can fit into modern life.

LG is also leaning into the "lifestyle" side of things. The StanbyME 2 Max comes with access to LG Gallery+, letting users display more than 5,000 artworks when the screen isn't busy streaming TV. So instead of staring at a blank black rectangle in your living room, you can pretend you're the sort of person who owns a digital art gallery.

Powering the whole thing is a built-in battery that promises up to four-and-a-half hours of video playback on a single charge, meaning you won't need to be tethered to a socket. When it does eventually run flat, you can recharge it either through the docking stand or directly via USB-C.

Entertainment options include LG Channels, the company's free ad-supported streaming service, alongside the usual selection of apps available through webOS.

The StanbyME 2 Max has already picked up a CES 2026 Innovation Award in the Content & Entertainment category, although LG has yet to confirm UK pricing or a release date. Given the original StanbyME wasn't exactly cheap, expect this bigger, smarter model to command a fairly premium price when it eventually lands.

• 10 London festivals worth leaving the house for this summer

Olivia Rodrigo is heading to Fortnite – and she's swapping headshots for heartbreak, butterflies and karaoke.

The three-time Grammy winner officially joins Fortnite's coveted Icon Series today (25th June), becoming the latest music superstar to cross over into Epic Games' ever-expanding digital universe.

Launching at 8pm ET (1am BST), the collaboration arrives just as Rodrigo's third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, continues its chart-conquering run. The record delivered another milestone for the singer-songwriter, making her the first artist to debut her first three lead singles at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, while all three of her studio albums have opened atop the Billboard 200.

Now Fortnite players can step directly into Rodrigo's world.

SOUR skins

The crossover includes two playable skins inspired by different eras of the singer's career. The SOUR Olivia Rodrigo Outfit channels the purple-hued aesthetic of her breakthrough debut, while the Lover Girl Olivia Rodrigo Outfit celebrates her latest album. Both come with reactive styles and LEGO Fortnite variants.

Fans can also pick up a collection of themed cosmetics, including Olivia's Butterfly Wings Back Bling, new emotes based on good 4 u and maggots for brains, plus three Jam Tracks featuring drop dead, maggots for brains and the Rodrigo classic deja vu. Someone really needs to show her where that SHIFT key on her keyboard is.

The timing isn't accidental. Epic is also launching Fortnite Festival Karaoke on mobile, allowing players on iOS and Android to sing along to six Olivia Rodrigo tracks with performances scored in real time.

"I've always loved how Fortnite brings people together in a really specific way," Rodrigo said. "It's exciting to have my music brought into this world and to have players embrace different looks from my albums."

There's even a freebie for dedicated fans. Rodrigo now appears as an NPC on the Battle Royale island, and players who track her down and jam nearby can unlock a Heart Locket Spray and exclusive Loading Screen at no extra cost.

The Olivia Rodrigo takeover runs until 25th July.

• The best Steam Deck games: 35 essential titles for Valve’s handheld PC wonder

If you've spent any time on the London Underground during the current heatwave, you have my sympathies — we know all too well the feeling.

The Central line is somehow hotter than the sun. The tube mice have little sombreros on. And the tiny handheld fan you panic-bought during last summer's heatwave is doing little more than sputtering warm air directly into your face.

Enter the Sony Reon Pocket Pro Plus — a wearable cooling gadget that feels like it has been designed specifically for surviving a sweltering Tube commute. I've been using it for a few weeks now and, as the mercury rises, it's one of the only things keeping me sane.

Reon Pocket Pro Plus: In Short...

• Hands-free cooling throughout the day
• Sauna-like tube journeys become considerably more bearable
• More effective than a handheld fan
• Discreet enough for office wear
• Heating function useful in winter too
• Up to 10 hours battery life
• Priced at £199

There’s no denying though that the Reon Pocket Pro Plus is an odd looking thing. Like a backpack for a miniature astronaut, it has a vaguely medical look to it. Its angular white box, finished with a metal plate on one side and balancing on your back just below your neck with the help of two rubber-coated arms that reach over your shoulders, isn't immediately intuitive. Without a bit of explanation, a newbie wouldn't know what to do with it.

It won’t win any style awards, but that doesn’t matter — it's a surprisingly practical device that sits discreetly beneath your shirt and actively cools your body while you travel. Sony describes it as a wearable thermo device, but let's be honest: it's essentially a personal air conditioner for your back.

How it works

Rather than blasting air like a fan, the Reon Pocket Pro Plus uses a cooled stainless steel plate that sits against the upper spine, with an internal heat regulator working away to keep it fridge-like cool. The effect is immediate. Imagine pressing an ice cube against the back of your neck on a 30°C day, except it doesn’t melt, and continues working throughout your journey. Out and about in this oppressive heat, and even just sitting at my desk, I have found it noticeably more effective than conventional portable fans, particularly during commuting.

The latest Pro Plus model arrives at exactly the right moment, with London set to see a June record temperature of a 38°C high.

Sony claims it offers 20% greater cooling performance than its predecessor and can achieve an additional 2°C reduction in cooling plate temperature thanks to a redesigned thermal system and upgraded cooling algorithms. Measuring exactly how much it cooled me without thermal imaging gear wasn't really possible, but I can attest it's more than just a placebo — I felt calmer and more comfortable during the hottest moments of the day while wearing it.

More importantly for Londoners, Sony has also fixed one of the biggest complaints about previous versions. The new 'Adaptive Hold' neckband increases stability by as much as 40% they say, helping the device stay firmly in contact with your skin while walking through stations, climbing escalators or sprinting to catch a train. You'll need to maintain relatively good posture to get the greatest effect from the Reon Pocket Pro Plus, but that's no bad habit to get into.

It's also remarkably discreet. Despite being about the size of a Magnum ice cream (to keep the theme going), it's worn underneath a shirt with the top poking over your collar, so most people won't even realise you've got a cooling device attached to your back. Unlike a fan, it doesn't occupy a hand, is practically silent, and doesn't advertise your desperation to everybody in the carriage.

It takes some getting used to its sensation in use, but after a short while you forget its place against your skin, its little removable and adjustable exhaust fan (a larger one comes in the box for collared shirts) silently venting air away from you.

A companion app allows you to fine-tune cooling levels, while Smart Cool mode automatically adjusts performance depending on your surroundings. The Reon Pocket Pro Plus also comes with a small temperature sensor, the Reon Pocket Tag, on a carabiner that can be hooked onto a bag and paired with the app, giving detailed ambient heat and humidity readings and working in conjunction with the Smart Cool mode to balance cooling needs against unnecessary battery drain. Battery life is rated at up to 10 hours, which is enough to handle a full workday and commute.

It IS expensive though. £199 isn't cheap. But neither is arriving at the office looking like you've just completed ran a marathon ending in the fires of Mount Doom. We've also already seen retailers offering significant discounts on the device (though whether those cuts will survive the heatwave remains to be seen).

And unlike many seasonal gadgets, the Reon Pocket Pro Plus also includes a warming mode for winter use, potentially making it one of the few gadgets you'll appreciate in both July and January.

Verdict

As temperatures continue to climb and London's ageing transport network struggles to keep commuters comfortable, Sony's wearable cooler feels less like a novelty and more like a glimpse into how we'll all be surviving summer in the years ahead. It’s the end of the world as we know it, but this little gadget might just make you feel fine.

• Dreading the heatwave? This map shows you which places have air con near you

There's no shortage of LEGO sets aimed squarely at grown-ups these days. You can build a Formula 1 car, recreate a famous painting, assemble a working typewriter or spend an entire weekend constructing a botanical garden that never needs watering.

The company has unveiled the LEGO Icons Arcade Pinball Machine, its first-ever playable pinball machine, giving fans the chance to build their own miniature arcade cabinet complete with functioning gameplay mechanics.

Unlike some of LEGO's more display-focused adult sets, this one is designed to be used once you've finished building it.

Made up of 2,274 pieces, the set recreates the look and feel of a vintage arcade machine while packing in a surprising amount of functionality. There's a spring-powered launcher to fire the ball into play, dual flippers to keep it alive, spinning bumpers, targets to hit and even an elevated ramp bridge that sends the ball looping back onto the playfield.

In other words, this isn't just a decorative nod to pinball. It's an actual game.

The set uses entirely mechanical systems rather than electronics, making it feel much closer to a traditional pinball table than some might expect. Once assembled, players can launch the ball and work their way around the board aiming for various targets and scoring opportunities.

The machine is built around a playful space theme that feels like a love letter to some of the company's most beloved classic sets. Players take on a mission to reunite a stranded astronaut with a baby astronaut travelling through space. Hitting key targets advances progress through the adventure, while an integrated progress tracker can be reset so the game can be played over and over again.

The set includes two minifigures to bring that story to life: a classic LEGO space astronaut and the fan-favourite "space baby", which has become something of a cult character among LEGO fans in recent years.

While the playable mechanics are the obvious headline feature, the finished model has also been designed to work as a display piece. Inspired by retro arcade cabinets, it features colourful space-themed artwork and plenty of nostalgic detailing. At 24cm high, 38cm long and 28cm wide, it's substantial enough to stand out on a shelf without completely taking over a room.

The release also continues LEGO's recent fascination with nostalgia. Over the past few years the company has increasingly targeted adult builders with sets inspired by childhood hobbies, vintage technology and pop culture icons. We've had brick-built Nintendo consoles, retro radios, Polaroid cameras and record players. A fully functioning pinball machine feels like the natural next step.

And while genuine pinball tables can cost thousands of pounds and require a dedicated room to house them, this version is considerably easier on both your wallet and your floor space.

The build is aimed at adults aged 18 and over, meaning it's likely to appeal just as much to arcade enthusiasts as it will to long-time LEGO collectors. The addition of working gameplay mechanics also gives it a novelty factor that many display-only sets simply don't have.

Whether you're a lifelong pinball fanatic, a nostalgic arcade obsessive or just someone who enjoys a LEGO set with a bit more interactivity, this feels like one of the more inventive launches the company has produced in recent memory.

The LEGO Icons Arcade Pinball Machine costs £189.99 and contains 2,274 pieces. It will be available through LEGO Insiders early access from the 1st of July, before going on general sale from the 4th of July via LEGO stores and online.

• 5 things you need to know about the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses

The Meta Ray-Ban Scriber Optics Gen 2 might be the first smart glasses that you’ll want to wear all day, every day.

For a gadget category that’s knocked around for a few years now, that's an important distinction. Despite the sci-fi concept, connected eyewear has felt like technology on the fringes. Most looked awkward, did too little, or demanded too many compromises. Meta’s latest releases, the Scriber Optics Gen 2 and Blayzer Optics Gen 2, change that equation by starting with something many people already wear every day: prescription glasses.

Instead of pushing users towards a futuristic gadget, Meta has instead embedded cameras, speakers, microphones and AI features into a frame that wouldn't look out of place in an optician's showroom. The result is a product that feels less like wearable technology and more like, well, a standard pair of glasses.

Priced starting at £429 for the Scriber Optics prescription models (dependant on lens options and prescription requirements), they sit firmly in premium territory. But unlike many tech products, their value isn't measured solely by specifications. It's measured by how seamlessly those techy features sit inside an item you’d otherwise take for granted.

I’ve been living with the Scriber Optics Gen 2 for about a month now, and while there’s still a social hurdle Meta needs to clear for the spectacles to become truly mainstream, I think I’m finally ready to pop smart glasses onto my head 7 days a week.

Meta Ray-Ban Scriber Optics Gen 2: In short…

• Prescription glasses with useful AI features
• Excellent hands-free photo and video capture
• Open-ear audio works surprisingly well
• Stylish enough for everyday wear
• Solid battery life you don’t need to worry about

1. They're smart glasses that actually look like glasses

The biggest achievement of the Scriber Optics Gen 2 isn't technological. It's aesthetic.

Previous generations of smart eyewear often announced themselves from across the room (by being bulky and tech-forward) and on your noggin' (by being too heavy to wear comfortably all day long). The Scriber, with its rounded frame shape and prescription-first design, simply looks like a premium pair of spectacles. The technology is largely hidden away inside slightly thicker temples and discreet camera modules.

That matters because wearable technology only works when people are willing to wear it. Unlike a smartwatch, glasses sit directly on your face. If they're uncomfortable or attention-grabbing, they'll spend most of their life in a drawer.

Meta's partnership with Ray-Ban and EssilorLuxottica continues to pay dividends here. The frames feel like proper eyewear rather than miniature computers, while the prescription-focused Scriber design adds practical fit improvements including adjustable nose pads and enhanced flexibility at the temples with spring-loaded arms.

For anyone who already wears glasses daily, the Scriber feels less like adopting a new gadget and more like upgrading a trusty old one.

2. The camera captures moments your phone never will

The headline hardware feature remains the integrated 12MP camera.

On paper, that specification doesn't sound particularly exciting in a world where smartphones routinely boast 50MP sensors. In practice, however, the appeal isn't image quality. It's perspective.

Being able to capture photos and videos hands-free (there’s also a capture button on the right arm) fundamentally changes the type of content you record. Walking through a city, cycling, travelling, cooking or spending time with family is made effortless to document. There is no fumbling for a phone, no interrupting a moment and no need to decide whether something is worth recording. You can even set snaps and videos to auto-populate on your Instagram feeds, including live streams.

Video quality has improved significantly over earlier models, with support for up to 3K recording and stabilisation features helping footage remain usable even while moving. The upgrade is especially noticeable in daylight conditions, where footage feels immersive and natural.

The trade-off is predictably low-light performance. Tiny sensors remain tiny sensors. Your flagship smartphone will still outperform these glasses after dark.

But that's missing the point. The best camera remains the one that's already there when something happens, and these will do in a pinch if you've nothing else to capture with. In fact, when placed against shots from a mid-range smartphone, the Meta Ray-Ban snaps held their own respectably.

The elephant in the room remains privacy. With glasses that look like regular no-tech spectacles, there’s a genuine and reasonable fear of bad-faith wearers taking ‘creepy’, non-consensual photos.

It’s a tough call — Meta has done well to signpost any recording actions with LED lights that flash on the front exterior of the glasses when a photo or video is being captured, along with a 'shutter' sound. That’s actually more visible than a sly smartphone snap someone can take while pretending to read their social feeds. But the different form factor, linked to a lingering human stare, will still make some people uncomfortable. I think Meta has done enough to allay fears here — but it’s going to take time for the general public to catch up.

3. The open-ear audio is more useful than you'd expect

One of the most underrated features of the whole Meta Ray-Ban line, and the one I find myself missing the most when popping back on my dumb glasses, is the built-in speaker system.

Integrated into the arms of the glasses, the open-ear speakers allow you to listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks and phone calls without blocking out the world around you. Tiny speakers sit just by your ears, loud enough for you to hear comfortably, but not so noticeable to annoy those sitting next to you at anything but the loudest of volume settings.

It's a surprisingly liberating experience. Unlike earbuds, there's no pressure inside your ears and no feeling of isolation from your surroundings. You remain aware of traffic, conversations and environmental sounds while still enjoying private audio. Audio quality can't compare, of course, to dedicated buds — it's tinny and lacking depth or bass. But the comfort of the form factor, and convenience, may still win out in many situations.

For commuters, walkers and anyone who spends long periods wearing glasses, this will quickly become one of the most-used features. Wearing the glasses on a hot Croatian beach holiday, after a few days I found myself leaving my regular earbuds back in the hotel room — having my ears open to the sound of waves and birds was not only more relaxing alongside my tunes, but felt physically, literally cooler as well. I can't say if it's anything more than a placebo effect, but when the summer sun ramps up, I'll be reaching for these rather than my regular buds.

Call quality is impressive, too, thanks to the six-microphone array — this new design places one closer to your nose, which helps isolate voices even in busy environments. Those on the other end of a call didn't realise I was speaking through glasses rather than headphones until I pointed it out to them.

4. Meta AI gets a practical home

AI features can feel bolted onto products because they're fashionable rather than useful.

There's still room for improvement with Meta's AI, but within the Scriber Optics Gen 2, it's one of the few use cases where conversational AI feels genuinely at home.

Using voice commands, wearers can ask questions about practically any topic or point of interest around them — landmarks, objects, signs and surroundings. Paired with the camera system, which effectively becomes a set of eyes for Meta AI, the glasses can provide contextual information about what you're looking at.

Need to identify a building while travelling? Translate a road sign? Remember where you've parked? Or simply can't remember who won the last World Cup? You can ask a quick question without reaching for your phone, and, between what the camera sees and Meta's AI knows, an answer can be read out over the built-in speakers. You can even ask follow up questions and carry on the conversation.

These are small conveniences rather than revolutionary breakthroughs, but they're precisely the kind of friction-free interactions that suit wearable technology.

These AI conversations are all stored in the Meta AI app, which also houses your camera captures, glasses pairing details and other useful settings. If you're AI-curious, you can also generate AI images and videos from prompts and your own imagery here (and browse a rather cringe 'Vibes' section where other people's AI creations live).

Importantly, the AI remains optional. The glasses continue functioning perfectly well as audio devices, cameras and prescription eyewear even if you never utter the trigger words "Hey Meta." That's a welcome contrast to many AI-first products that become considerably less useful once the novelty wears off.

But mileage will vary! Some specifics can be lost on the AI: I asked for 20 facts about a location to help me plan a day trip, but I only got five, and a reminder that 'you can now have a more natural conversation with [Meta's AI]', where it'll be 'more expressive, listen longer after you speak and won't play a chime after responding'. Show, don't tell, Meta, show, don't tell...

5. Battery life to see you through a day

Battery anxiety has haunted smart glasses for years — it's simply really difficult to put a battery of any great size into frames that you wan't to keep slim and lightweight.

But Meta appears to have made meaningful progress here.

The latest generation promises up to eight hours of use, while the included charging case extends that dramatically by providing multiple additional charges throughout the day. Meta claims up to 48 hours of total use with the case available.

Real-world performance naturally varies depending on how heavily you use the camera and AI functions. Record lots of video and you'll see endurance drop considerably.

But I found the glasses are now capable of lasting through most working days with mixed usage, representing a significant improvement over earlier generations. And a quick charge function will bring you back from 0% to 50% after just twenty minutes back in the USB-C charging case.

Crucially, the case (attractive in its own right with a faux-leather textured finish and charging LED where the lid magnetically snaps shut) is compact enough to throw into a bag and forget about. That removes much of the stress associated with managing another battery-powered device. Keep in mind though that, while a cleaning cloth is included in the case, a USB-C charging cable is not.

Verdict

The Scriber Optics Gen 2 succeeds because it solves a simple problem: if you're trying to coax the millions of people who wear prescription glasses every day to the smart headwear fold, they don't want to have to carry a second pair around to simply see clearly.

By combining eyewear, headphones, a camera and an AI assistant into a single product, Meta has created something that feels genuinely additive rather than experimental.

They're not perfect. The camera can't compete with a top-tier smartphone, privacy concerns will remain a discussion point, and the £429-plus price is a substantial investment. But for prescription-glasses wearers in particular, the Scriber Optics Gen 2 offers perhaps the clearest argument yet for why smart glasses deserve a place in everyday life. I won't be leaving home without them.

• 5 things you need to know about the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses

Marcel Wanders, the acclaimed Amsterdam-based product designer, doesn’t really get the enduring trend for modernism, in all its stripped back, plain functionality.

For him, it says nothing. It’s “outmoded”; even, like so much modern design, rather boring. Not so the London showroom of Moooi, the hugely influential design collective (of which Wanders is creative director) which marks its 25th anniversary this year.

But then what would anyone expect from the man who modelled a vessel on a spectacularly explosive nasal emittance, and then called it the Snotty Vase; or who worked out a way of effectively suspending rope in aspic, making it hard and forming it into his Knotty Chair; or a way of covering inflated party balloons with carbon fibre to produce, appropriately, the world’s lightest chair?

Here Wanders gives his off-the-top-of-his-head guide to appreciating design. Just not the boring stuff.

1. DESIGN IS NOT SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO OWN

People go to the theatre and like to discuss it. They don’t feel the need to own the play. They can see a lot of beautiful architecture and yet live in none of these buildings. That doesn’t mean you can only appreciate the home you live in.

And yet there is this idea that design has to be affordable, that it has to be owned to be enjoyed. It doesn’t. A painter painted for someone to own the painting but that’s never been the role of art for most normal people. The great thing about culture - of which design is a part - that we can step into that realm and recognise others in it. Ownership is irrelevant.

I find it tends to be people who complain about the prices of design who tend to be least appreciative of it. You can even hate design for free too.

2. THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO APPRECIATE A PIECE OF DESIGN

We all experience the world in different ways, some more visually, some through sound. And a piece of design can be liked for different reasons too. It might be how its made - the craft of it. Or on an intellectual level - what it might now about. Or It might be as simple as the fact that it makes a cool sound when you close it.

The task of the designer is to make sure that there’s something for everyone - and it makes me a better designer for trying. The task for you is to find what you do like in a piece of design - to make the same effort.

3. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN - GOOD DESGN IS EVERYWHERE

Not everything is well-designed Some things are just put together without care, maybe just to copy what others already make but do it cheaper. And people will buy it because it’s cheaper. Other people will only notice design when something doesn’t work.

Yet there is great design all around us even if most people just don’t see it. The railing in the Metro in Milan, for example is so beautiful but most people just see a railing. In short, pay attention.

4. A CHAIR IS NOT JUST A CHAIR

People think they understand chairs because they sit on them. But a chair is more than something to sit on. There’s a reason why designers love chairs. A chair is connected to the world of culture, to manufacturing and engineering. The more you understand the big picture behind what makes a chair, the more you’ll appreciate it, in the way that knowing the full complexity of the Milan Metro and so understanding what the railing does as part of that makes your sense of the entire design that much more amazing.

How to understand a chair better? Get active. Read about your subject. Talk to designers if you get the opportunity. I’m not going to argue with a dentist if he wants to put a hole in my tooth. I just trust him. But I can know more about dentistry with study. And I find it’s hard to get them to shut up about centrists if you ask them about it.

5. THE IDEA OF BAD DESIGN IS A BAD IDEA…

If I design chairs in Europe, or I teach design in San Francisco, the gods in each place are very different, because the cultures are different, and so ideas of what makes for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are different. That’s why I think there are no set rules for design.

I’m not saying there aren’t stupid designs, because there are: they make no sense, or break easily. And yes designers are allowed to make stupid designs sometimes, maybe one every other year - though not if they design pacemakers.

But I think most of us know more than we think we know - and that means we can sometimes just know if a design piece works. And by work I don’t just mean function. You can buy a functional chair for €11 and if you pay more than that you’re not paying for function anymore. Obviously a €500 chair isn’t about function. For me the whole principle of design is that that it says new things. It has ideas, a sense of fantasy.

6. ...BUT KEEP HOLD OF THE GOOD STUFF

It’s fact that nobody finds a Marcel Breuer chair just sitting on a skip, unless maybe it’s a copy. People just know that it’s worth keeping. But that’s more than because it’s just useful. It speaks to them.

I’ve always liked the idea of making things that last forever, but not necessarily in the sense of being unbreakable — more psychologically. Most people throw stuff away not because it’s broken but because their relationship with that object is broken. I remember a fellow design student created this textile and as it wore away with use it revealed a pattern underneath. And I just loved that. It made me think about how poor we are at accepting things that get old, especially since design is fixated on the shiny, clean and new. Nothing has a patina, nothing can have a crack.

But nothing grows old faster than the new, so I like to make designs that are old to start with. They have the cracks already, so to speak. It makes for pieces that the people who like them are connected to for longer. That’s durability.

7. GIVE THE MODERNISM A REST

I think modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design. It doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are. When I was young even to think about decoration was so not what designers did.

I went to Giulio Cappellini with this idea of 'new antiques', which is what I wanted to make, and the company was subsequently excluded from a design fair because it was no longer seen as being 'modern'. It was crazy. But why shouldn't we make connections with old or traditional products? They're beautiful and can be made relevant.

• The best exhibitions in London this summer: From Escher to Bowie to Marilyn Monroe

For more than a decade, reMarkable has been chasing a simple idea: recreate the feeling of writing on paper without sacrificing the modern conveniences of digital storage and sharing.

The new reMarkable Paper Pure is arguably the company’s, ahem, purest expression of that philosophy yet. Replacing the ageing reMarkable 2 as the brand’s entry-level black-and-white tablet, it strips away colour screens, app stores and endless notifications in favour of a singular focus: helping you think, write, sketch and read.

Starting at £359 with the standard Marker stylus, the Paper Pure arrives with a faster processor, improved display technology, three-week battery life and deeper integration with workplace tools such as Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack and Miro. It also introduces a more repairable, sustainable design, with 38% recycled materials and a carbon footprint reportedly 45% lower than its predecessor.

In a world where every device seems determined to grab your attention, the Paper Pure’s biggest strength may be its refusal to do so.

reMarkable Paper Pure: In Short…

• Outstanding paper-like writing feel
• Brilliantly distraction-free workspace
• Three-week battery life reduces charging anxiety
• Excellent note organisation and search tools
• Lightweight, repairable and sustainably designed

1. It delivers one of the best writing experiences in tech

The first thing that stands out is how convincing the writing experience feels.

reMarkable has borrowed the textured writing surface from its premium Paper Pro, pairing it with a third-generation monochrome Canvas display that feels remarkably close to pen and paper. Digital ink appears with just 21ms of latency, creating an experience that feels immediate and natural during note-taking, sketching and document annotation. How ever fast you scribble away at the screen, it’ll keep up, with no visible delay between stroke and resulting lines.

More importantly, the sensation has texture. Unlike writing on an iPad or conventional tablet, there’s resistance beneath the pen tip. It feels less like gliding across glass and more like working through a notebook page. The marker here is built with that added friction in mind — it’ll degrade over time, and you’ll need to replace the nib. And while that introduces a bit of long-term maintenance and investment, it’s well worth it given the feeling in the hand.

In my experience (and, notably, without trying this year’s rival Kindle Scribe Colorsoft for myself yet) it’s the most authentic digital writing device currently available. Opt for the premium Marker Plus add-on, which we tested here, and the stylus gets the added feature of an ‘eraser’ on its other end, like a traditional pencil. Neat.

Just note that there’s no colour screen here, and no backlight — if you like working on colour illustrations or colour-coded note-taking and… like doing so in the dark… you'll need to check out the pricier reMarkable devices and rivals. But if your primary goal is simply replacing thousands of notebook pages rather than owning another multipurpose tablet, the Paper Pure feels purpose-built for the task.

2. It helps you focus when every other device is competing for attention

The Paper Pure’s minimalist approach won’t appeal to everyone, but that’s exactly the point.

There are no social media feeds. No notification banners. No app marketplace tempting you away from the task at hand. Instead, you’re presented with a blank page and the freedom to fill it.

For journalists, students, writers and anyone who spends their days in meetings, that simplicity can be surprisingly liberating. The absence of distractions encourages deeper thinking and longer periods of concentration in a way that few modern devices manage.

This philosophy has always been reMarkable’s calling card, but it arguably makes more sense now than ever. The company isn’t trying to compete with the iPad or Galaxy Tab. It’s building a digital notebook for people who miss the focus that physical notebooks naturally provide.

3. Its software finally bridges the gap between paper and digital

Traditional notebooks are wonderful until you need to find something you wrote three months ago.

This is where the Paper Pure starts to justify its digital credentials.

Through reMarkable’s Connect service, handwritten notes become searchable, shareable and easier to integrate into everyday workflows. Meeting notes can be automatically generated from Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook events. Documents imported from Word, OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive can be converted into reMarkable-native notebooks for annotation and review.

The standout feature is arguably handwriting conversion. Notes can be transformed into editable text and easily shared to other services and devices, meaning your scribbled notes can easily be refined in word processors elsewhere. I was shocked at how well my messy scrawl was translated into typed text with rarely a readability hiccup. I was a bit disappointed though, that handwritten notes couldn’t be converted in batches onto a page — each scribbled note becomes its own separate typed page, so you’ll want to compile all your handwritten notes for a task in one go before exporting into a typed format.

The reMarkable platform also has a tonne of worksheet templates and notebooks to work from. If you’re a musician, there are stave sheets to work in and tablature pages. Architects get fixed-perspective sheets. There are lined pages of all major standards, and even templates for storyboarding and calendar tracking. Community-submitted ‘Methods’ let you grab community-approved templates from key reMarkable creators too, from journaling books to problem-solving flow sheets. And don't forget the man digital marker types you can use too, from calligraphy pens to technical pencils and ballpoints, each with an authentic grading to their strokes.

All your work can also be synced online with the Connect subscription and apps, priced at £3.99 a month. With apps for desktop, mobile and tablet, it lets you easily edit and share your work on over devices, get AI summaries and suggestions on what you’re working on, and even screen share from your Paper Pure during meetings.

None of these features feels revolutionary individually. Together, however, they solve one of paper’s biggest weaknesses: information becoming trapped on a page.

The result is a device that retains the freedom of handwriting while offering many of the benefits of digital productivity tools.

The only significant issue I had on the software side of things was how bare-bones the reMarkable is as an eReader. It’s fine that there’s no library store app — that’d be a distraction, and it’s easy enough to drag and drop your own eBooks onto the device over a cabled connection or through the Connect cloud platform. But beyond marker-powered annotations, there’s not much else here — no bookmarks, no key passage highlight collections, not even a dictionary tool. The dictionary especially feels like a simple addition that’d elevate a crucial secondary function most will expect of the device.

4. The battery life is refreshingly solid

Perhaps the highest compliment you can pay the Paper Pure is that you’ll rarely think about charging it.

reMarkable claims up to three weeks of battery life from a single charge. That figure will vary depending on usage, of course, but even half that stated figure will be more than enough for the average student or office-bound scribbler.

Part of that comes from the monochrome E Ink display, which consumes far less power than traditional LCD or OLED panels. Part comes from the company’s efficient internal hardware. Regardless, the result feels reassuringly analogue. You throw it into a bag, take it to meetings, scribble notes throughout the week, and only occasionally remember it has a battery at all.

For commuters, travellers and anyone tired of carrying multiple chargers, that’s a genuinely useful advantage.

5. It feels thoughtfully designed, inside and out

The Paper Pure is so, so easy to live with. At 360g and just 6mm thick, it’s lighter than many tablets and slips easily into a backpack or tote bag. But it won’t slip when you’re writing on it, thanks to some subtly-raised rubber feet on the back. The stylus snaps satisfyingly to the edge of the device for storage and charging, and an attractive (sold-separately) slipcase, in a range of pastel colours, keeps everything safe when on the go, too.

More impressively, reMarkable has made sustainability and repairability central to the design. The device uses 38% recycled materials, including recycled lithium, cobalt, magnesium and plastics. It is also assembled using screws and clips rather than excessive adhesive, making repairs easier for professionals.

That’s a welcome contrast to much of the consumer electronics industry, where slimness often comes at the expense of longevity.

Verdict

The reMarkable Paper Pure succeeds because it knows exactly what it wants to be.

It isn’t a replacement for an iPad. It doesn’t offer colour, entertainment apps or endless customisation. In fact, some prospective buyers may be disappointed by the continued absence of a front light and the bare-bones eReader offering. On that last front, I’d count myself among them.

Yet judged on its own terms, the Paper Pure is one of the most compelling digital notebooks available today.

Its writing experience is exceptional, its software is increasingly useful, and its distraction-free approach feels more valuable with every passing year. For writers, students, journalists, creatives and anyone else who still does their best thinking with a pen in hand, the reMarkable Paper Pure offers a persuasive blend of analogue freedom and digital convenience.

Not everyone needs one. But if you’ve ever found yourself reaching for a notebook before opening a laptop, there’s a good chance you’ll understand exactly why this device exists.

• iPad Mini review: 5 things you need to know about the latest model

If you've spent the last year gripping your phone like it's the Crown Jewels every time a scooter whizzes past, there's finally some encouraging news.

Apple has struck a new agreement with the Metropolitan Police aimed at making stolen iPhones dramatically less valuable to criminals, in what could be a significant blow to London's booming phone-snatching trade.

The move comes as phone theft continues to plague the capital. Around 80,000 devices were stolen in London last year alone, prompting us to put together a guide on how to protect your data and what to do if your phone gets nicked. As that piece explains, the real prize for thieves often isn't the handset itself, but the access it gives them to your bank accounts, emails and digital life.

Now Apple and the Met are trying to make the phones themselves far less useful.

• Had your phone nicked in London? Here's how to protect your data — and what to do to stay safe from thieves next time

Under the new partnership, device identifiers such as IMEI numbers will be shared between Apple and police, helping track stolen handsets and monitor whether they're being reactivated, exported overseas or broken down for parts.

The ultimate goal is simple: if a stolen iPhone can't be reused, resold or reactivated, there's far less incentive to steal it in the first place.

Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has been pushing tech firms for months to do more to tackle phone theft, previously warning that if manufacturers didn't act voluntarily, he would push for legislation forcing them to.

The Met says improvements to phone security are already having an impact. Thefts and robberies involving stolen phones fell by 18 per cent across London in the year to May 2026, while Westminster, one of the capital's worst hotspots for phone crime, has seen a 45.8 per cent drop so far this year.

Apple recently switched on its Stolen Device Protection feature by default for users, adding extra barriers that prevent thieves from changing passwords or disabling security settings, even if they've seen your passcode.

It's the sort of feature cyber security experts have been urging people to activate for months. In our guide to surviving a phone theft, experts warned that criminals often move fast, attempting to access banking apps, email accounts and social media profiles within minutes of stealing a handset.

The new data-sharing arrangement is designed to tackle the problem further up the chain by targeting the criminal networks that profit from moving thousands of stolen devices around the world.

Recent Met investigations uncovered one operation that allegedly trafficked up to 40,000 stolen phones to China, accounting for around 40 per cent of all devices stolen in London during a two-year period.

For anyone who's ever watched their phone disappear into the distance on the back of an e-bike, this gives you peace of mind that the portal to your life is worthless.

• These are the loudest spots on London’s tube: Here's how to protect your ears, according to an expert

For most people, wandering through central London on a weekday involves headphones in, head down, and a fairly committed relationship with your phone screen.

Sam Thompson had other ideas. As part of the LEGO Group’s World Play Day celebrations, the Made in Chelsea TV star, I'm A Celebrity winner, and radio presenter took to the streets of the capital armed with LEGO bricks, inviting strangers to stop, talk and, crucially, play. The idea behind it is simple but increasingly urgent. New research from the LEGO Group suggests that half of UK parents say work or long hours are stopping them from playing with their families as much as they would like, despite evidence that just five hours of play a week can significantly boost wellbeing.

For Sam, though, the issue goes beyond schedules. It is about something more fundamental. Somewhere along the way, he thinks, adults stopped feeling allowed to play at all.

“I find it a real shame that adults almost feel embarrassed to play now,” he says. “As a child and a teenager, you are taught it is good for you, good for your mind, good for your development, and then suddenly we decide as adults that it is not the way to go anymore. I do not understand the science behind it at all.”

It is not just a campaign talking point for him, either. He circles back to it repeatedly, almost surprised at how normal it has become to lose that side of yourself, especially in the big city where life can become so serious.

“Play for me has been so important and has got me through loads of times in my life,” he says. “I think it is something that should stay with you forever.”

Why play never really leaves you

Spend any time with Sam, and it does not take long for the conversation to drift towards childhood energy, imagination and chaos. The man has more energy than you thought was possible without consuming your own body weight in sugar, and it's immediately endearing.

In his case, fun often involves his nephew, whom he credits with helping him reconnect with the kind of unfiltered creativity most adults quietly abandon.

“I’ve got a nephew and one of my favourite things is to play with him,” he says. “What I thought I would love about it and what I actually love are two very different things. I love seeing his reaction to things I used to do when I was a kid. You can see the wonder in his eyes, like his imagination is just going.”

That sense of wonder, he says, is infectious. It is not about the LEGO sets or the finished product, but what happens in the process. “You can see his brain thinking, like this is an actual castle I have made or this is a car zooming around. It is like he is in a sort of flow state. I just love that so much.”

He pauses on that idea, that adults are the ones who have forgotten something, rather than children being the ones who need to learn it.

“I really hope I do not lose that at any point,” he adds.

London, parks and never really growing up

For someone who has spent much of his life in London, Sam is clear about where his own sense of play still lives. Not in nightlife or big city landmarks, but in something far simpler.

“The parks”, he says without hesitation. “There is something magical about a city park. You have got all these buildings everywhere, and then suddenly greenery. I have spent so much of my childhood in parks, playing football with my mates, pretending I was a wizard, building things, doing all sorts.”

Even now, that feeling has not really left him. “That magic as an adult is still there,” he says. “I wonder if it would be the same for someone who did not grow up in a city. For me, a park is everything.”

It is also where his idea of “proper play” still exists in full force. Not curated experiences or structured activities, but the kind of messy, improvised afternoons that tend to run on far longer than anyone planned.

“I love sports days,” he says. “Getting a group of friends together, playing rounders in the park, doing sack races, egg and spoon races. In the summer, that is my idea of heaven.”

With his nephew, it is even simpler.

“Swings,” he says. “I know it sounds boring, but to him it is a rocket ship. He thinks he is flying. You push him, and he is on the moon. That is my play as well, not just his”.

Why adults should stop overthinking play

The point Sam keeps coming back to is not that adults need to behave like children, but that they need to stop putting so much distance between themselves and the idea of play. “You do not have to play like a young child,” he says. “But if you have a kid or a nephew, just join in their world. If he is going to space, I am the rocket fuel. I am in his world.”

That mindset, he believes, changes more than just the moment itself. “It genuinely makes you more peaceful,” he says. “It calms your mind. If you can release that barrier of ‘I am an adult, and I need to think about everything all the time’, you can have so much fun.”

He also points to the broader importance of play in development, something he has become more aware of through his work.

“I did not realise how important it was until I saw the science behind it,” he says. “We have a responsibility to play with our kids because it is incredibly good for their brain development. We should be doing it, not just for them but for us too.”

An ideal London would be built out of LEGO bricks

Away from the parks and football pitches, Sam’s imagination still drifts back into the city itself, especially after a recent visit to the LEGO store in Piccadilly Circus.

“I was in the LEGO store last week, and they’ve got this amazing city build,” he says. “It’d be a bit like that for me. I’d have water, rivers flowing through the city, clean, fresh rivers, loads of greenery everywhere, futuristic buildings.”

It is a very Sam Thompson version of London. Less grey commuter belt, more living, shifting playground.

“I’ve got a pretty decent idea of what I’d build with my LEGO bricks,” he adds. “It all comes from what you can see in your head. That’s the fun of it.”

Sam Thompson’s World Cup predictions

Before heading back out into the streets of London, off the back of a strong Soccer Aid and the spirit of fun, we asked Sam about the upcoming summer of football and who he thought would take home the trophy.

He didn’t hesitate for long before stating “England.” Sam went on to add, “I wouldn’t normally say it, but I think this could be the time.”

His reasoning is rooted in manager Thomas Tuchel’s approach and what he sees as a more structured, decisive England side.

“I think he has picked a team he believes can win the tournament. There is no space for egos. It is about structure, and I like that.”

• Winner: England (Thanks to Tuchel’s cup management experience)
• Runner-up: Portugal
• Dark horses: Norway
• Player of the tournament: "Hopefully some kind of unknown like a James Rodriguez from 2014"
• Top scorer: Harry Kane. "Maybe Kai Havertz as a rogue choice. Especially after that header against the USA"

• 10 places to watch the 2026 World Cup in London (even if you’re not an England fan...)

Marshall has unveiled the Stockwell III, the first major update to its portable Bluetooth speaker range since 2019 and a speaker that looks determined to become the soundtrack to summer.

The new model arrives as part of the brand's 40th anniversary celebrations and builds on everything that made the previous Stockwell a favourite among music fans. The headline upgrade is battery life, with Marshall claiming more than 40 hours of wireless playback from a single charge. That's double what the previous generation offered and puts it among the longest-lasting portable speakers in its class.

Despite the focus on portability, Marshall says sound quality remains the priority. Stockwell III uses the company's True Stereophonic technology, delivering 360-degree audio that fills a room from every angle rather than relying on a traditional sweet spot. Dynamic Loudness technology is also onboard, automatically adjusting bass, mids and treble depending on volume levels to ensure music retains its detail whether you're listening quietly at home or cranking things up at a barbecue.

Visually, it sticks closely to the formula Marshall fans know and love. There's the familiar amp-inspired design language, complete with a textured exterior, solid metal grilles, tactile brass controls and the iconic Marshall logo front and centre. A guitar-inspired carry strap reinforces its rock-and-roll credentials, while a redesigned control panel introduces quicker access to presets and easier track navigation.

Marshall has also improved the speaker's durability. Stockwell III now carries an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance, making it better suited to life outdoors. Whether it's a festival, park gathering or a British summer garden party that unexpectedly turns wet, the speaker should be able to handle it.

One of the more interesting additions is a renewed focus on longevity. Rather than treating the speaker as a disposable piece of tech, Marshall has designed Stockwell III with modular and replaceable parts, including the battery, carry strap, silicone sleeve and front and rear grilles. It's a move that should help owners keep the speaker going for years rather than replacing it entirely when components wear out.

The speaker also doubles as a power bank thanks to its USB-C charging functionality, allowing users to top up a phone while listening on the move.

According to Marshall Product Manager Simona Berbec, advances in technology since the launch of Stockwell II have allowed the company to make significant improvements across the board, from battery life and acoustics to durability and usability.

Available in Black and Brass or Cream, the Marshall Stockwell III will be available to order online from the 18th of August, with retail availability following on the 25th of August. It is priced at £199.99, with sign-ups for updates opening on the 9th of June.

• Every Steven Spielberg movie ever… ranked!

As part of its 25th birthday celebrations, Xbox has unveiled a new limited-edition Series X console and controller inspired by the look and feel of the machine that launched the brand back in 2001.

Dubbed the Xbox Series X25 Limited Edition, the console takes the modern Series X and wraps it in a translucent OG Green finish that immediately recalls the chunky black-and-green aesthetic of the original Xbox.

It's the first time Microsoft has brought a translucent design to the Series X, and the nostalgia doesn't stop there. The console features a glowing green Xbox logo, special 25th anniversary branding and a number of hidden details designed as nods to the platform's history and the players who helped build it over the last quarter of a century.

The matching Xbox Wireless Controller X25 Special Edition follows a similar approach. Finished in the same translucent green, it features the original Xbox ABXY button colours, transparent rear housing and references to the infamous Duke controller, including shoulder buttons inspired by the original controller's black and white face buttons.

The announcement came during the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, where Microsoft used the occasion to celebrate both its future and its past. Alongside a slate of new game announcements, the company also confirmed that both Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will launch as Xbox console exclusives, underlining its renewed focus on the platform's hardware ecosystem.

For longtime fans, though, the anniversary collection will no doubt be the standout reveal. The original Xbox launched on the 15th of November 2001 and helped establish franchises including Halo, Fable and Forza, while laying the foundations for what would become one of gaming's biggest brands.

The Xbox Series X25 Limited Edition and Xbox Wireless Controller X25 Special Edition will launch in select markets this November. The controller will also be sold separately, with pricing and pre-order details expected to be announced closer to release.

• The 6 most exciting announcements from PlayStation's June State of Play

As streaming continues to dominate how most people listen to music, British audio brand Ruark is making a compelling argument for keeping your CDs and vinyl records close at hand.

Launching as part of the company's 40th anniversary celebrations, the new R710 is the most powerful addition yet to Ruark's acclaimed 100 Series range. Designed as an all-in-one music hub, it combines seemingly every modern listening option imaginable with a design language that feels lifted straight from the golden age of hi-fi.

At first glance, the R710 looks every bit the premium piece of furniture. Available in either Fused Walnut or Satin Charcoal finishes, it leans heavily into the seventies-inspired styling Ruark has become known for, pairing tactile physical controls with a large 6.8-inch colour display.

Underneath that retro-inspired exterior sits a very accomplished bit of kit. Streaming support includes Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, Google Cast and internet radio, while Bluetooth arrives courtesy of aptX HD. The system also supports high-resolution audio files and can access music stored on local network drives or USB devices.

Where the R710 really stands out, though, is its refusal to abandon physical media. At a time when many manufacturers have quietly ditched disc drives altogether, Ruark has doubled down with an integrated CD player and built-in phono stage for turntables. It's a move that feels increasingly sensible as both formats continue to enjoy a resurgence among younger listeners and collectors alike.

There's also a practical side to the R710's ambitions. HDMI eARC connectivity means it can double as a powerful TV sound system, while multiroom support through AirPlay 2 and Google Cast allows it to slot seamlessly into a wider home audio setup.

Power comes from a newly developed Class-D amplification system capable of delivering up to 200 watts per channel. That's a considerable amount of muscle for a product of this size and should provide enough headroom to make everything from delicate jazz recordings to blockbuster movie soundtracks sound suitably expansive.

The all-in-one audio market has become increasingly crowded in recent years, but Ruark has carved out a reputation for building products that strike a rare balance between lifestyle appeal and genuine hi-fi credentials. The R710 looks set to continue that tradition.

The Ruark R710 is available now in Fused Walnut and Satin Charcoal finishes, for £2,199.

• Paul McCartney is heading to an intimate London music venue for a special In Conversation Evening to celebrate his new album

Robotaxis have been one of those "coming soon" technologies for what feels like forever, but Londoners are now one step closer to actually hailing one.

Uber has opened an interest list for its upcoming partnership with autonomous driving company Wayve, giving users in the capital the chance to register ahead of the public launch of self-driving rides in London.

From the 8th of June (today), users can opt into Uber's autonomous vehicle preference through the app, increasing their chances of being matched with a Wayve-powered vehicle once the service launches. The rollout marks a major milestone not just for Uber, but for the UK tech sector too, with Wayve's self-driving technology having been developed and trained on British roads.

Unlike many autonomous vehicle companies that rely heavily on pre-mapped routes and tightly controlled operating areas, Wayve has taken a different approach. The "AV2.0" system uses AI that learns from real-world driving experience in a way that more closely resembles human drivers, allowing it to adapt to unfamiliar roads, changing weather conditions and new environments without relying on detailed HD maps.

That flexibility has already seen the technology tested across more than 500 cities worldwide, but London remains its spiritual home. The company has been navigating the capital's famously chaotic streets since 2018, arguably one of the toughest environments on the planet for autonomous driving technology. If a self-driving car can survive a busy afternoon around Soho or negotiate a delivery van parked across half a lane in Camden, it can probably handle most things.

At launch, riders will be transported in all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles fitted with an array of cameras and radar systems that provide full 360-degree awareness of the world around them. The experience inside the vehicle has been designed specifically for autonomous journeys, with interactive displays allowing passengers to view routes, manage their ride and access support if needed.

Importantly, despite the autonomous technology, the first phase of the rollout won't be fully driverless. A licensed operator will remain behind the wheel — even if they're not touching it — while the service is introduced, with totally driver-free operations expected further down the line as regulations and public confidence continue to develop.

The move is part of a much bigger plan. Uber first invested in Wayve back in 2024, with ambitions to deploy self-driving vehicles across multiple global markets. Since then, the partnership has expanded significantly, including a recent collaboration with Nissan and plans to launch autonomous services in more than ten cities worldwide.

For London, though, it feels like another sign that autonomous vehicles are edging out of the realm of tech demos and sci-fi clicks into everyday life. Whether you're excited about the future or simply curious to see what a driverless Uber feels like, the opportunity to find out may not be far away.

To join the interest list, users simply need to update the Uber app and head to Account > Settings > Ride Preferences > Autonomous Vehicles. Once live, autonomous rides will be offered at the same price as standard UberX, Uber Comfort and Uber Electric journeys, with passengers free to opt out if they'd prefer a human driver.

• LEGO's new Pokémon sets are exactly what SMART Play needs

Brand collaborations in tech often end with disappointing results. You might get an extra name plastered over a phone camera or a PC’s speakers, with little substance to show for it — and no doubt a good few quid added to the price.

The HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC is not one of these. It’s possibly the least half-assed laptop brand collab we’ve seen to date and is the fruit of a two-year project between PC masters HP and the Ferrari Design Studio.

Granted, most of us can’t afford one. At $5599, the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC is one of the most exclusive, or at least most expensive, ultraportable laptops in the world.

But there is more going on here than in the average portable PC. We had a closer look at the Ferrari Flagship Store London the other week for a closer look. Here are the five bits the Ferrari obsessive should take note of.

That shiny-but-invisible touchpad

Your first reaction to the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC may well be: where’s the touchpad? There is one here, but it blends seamlessly with the shiny, reactive red glass that extends across the entire bottom of the laptop’s inner area.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a pad style like this, and it’s made possible thanks to haptic touchpad tech. A trad laptop pad has a mechanical clicker that actually moves under your finger as you press. This one emulates that kind of mechanism using haptic motors — as used in Apple MacBook pads.

Some folks don’t like the idea of a purely non-visible pad, but HP also guides you with a subtle LED strip, which shows where the pad ends.

A true limited run

Part of the Ferrari concept is in not making quite enough cars to satisfy demand. The cheeky devils. It’s trying to pull off the same trick with the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC, which is strictly limited to 4999 units worldwide.

You can see which number in the run yours sits at because it’s printed on the heat pipes visible on the underside of the thing. And that takes us to the most eye-catching part of the laptop of all...

Hole-y window inspired by an engine bay

The part of your laptop you see most is the inside. The lid is what passers-by see most. But it’s arguably the bottom of the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC that’s actually the most exotic area.

The lower half is a carbon fibre panel, used in cars like the Ferrari Le Mans 499P to keep weight low. Up top is a transparent section inspired by Ferrari engine bays, one that lets you get an eyeful of some of the key components, including the cooling system.

And because that cooling system needs fresh air, the Ferrari x HP team had to work out how to carefully drill 2000 holes into the panel, which is a piece of Corning Gorilla Glass. Not, as you might see in a cheaper laptop, plastic.

You can even see a little map of the Ferrari private test track printed on the inside. This laptop is absolutely packed with Ferrari touches.

Ferrari keyboard with a gamer twist

One of the worries with a laptop like this is it will be made all for style and impact, with not enough attention paid to what it’s like to actually use. That hasn’t happened here. Case in point: the keyboard.

The HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC has keys with far more substance than expected. It’s not the wafer-thin, ultra-light style that for years has been fashionable in the style-driven end of the PC space.

The key font used here is Ferrari’s own, while the keyboard also has per-key lighting we usually only see in the higher-end tiers of gaming laptops. This is a true hybrid keyboard style, and we’re here for it.

Maxed-out specs

A big chunk of the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC’s cost comes from its lavish materials and, yes, the Ferrari brand involvement. But it is also a high-spec PC.

You get the latest third-generation Intel X7 Ultra chipset, with a 1TB SSD and 64GB RAM. To spec up a MacBook Pro to this level, you’re looking at spending £3000. Does that mean the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC is good value? Absolutely not, but “value” isn’t the point here. And as that Intel chipset is brand new, you are getting about as future-proof a laptop as you could ask for at this point.

Worth it? We’ll leave that one to you. But if you’re already a Ferrari owner, perhaps $5599 for a limited-edition Ferrari laptop sounds like a steal — its new Ferrari Luce electric car costs more than a hundred times that at $640,000.

The HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari PC will be available in a handful of countries, including the UK, from 12th June.

• Pac-Man, kart racing and alien battles are coming to London’s Southbank

Sony officially kicked off this year's summer gaming showcase season with a packed June State of Play that leaned heavily on big first-party projects, long-awaited updates and a handful of genuine surprises.

While there weren't quite as many announcements as some fans had hoped for, the show still delivered plenty to get excited about, including the reveal of an entirely new God of War game, a substantial gameplay showcase for Marvel's Wolverine and the unexpected return of Until Dawn.

Throw in some impressive-looking action RPGs, a cult classic revival and one of the most unsettling horror games we've seen in a while, and PlayStation has given players plenty to talk about ahead of what's shaping up to be a busy few years for PS5 owners.

1. God of War: Laufey

The biggest announcement of the night came right at the end, with Santa Monica Studio unveiling God of War: Laufey.

Rather than putting players back in control of Kratos or Atreus, the new game stars Faye, Kratos' late wife and Atreus' mother, who fans have only previously encountered through flashbacks and stories. The extended gameplay demo opens with Kratos seemingly cremating Faye's body, before she awakens in a strange afterlife populated by creatures, gods and mythological threats from multiple worlds.

Deborah Ann Woll reprises her role as Faye, and the footage showcases the same brutal, cinematic combat the series is known for, albeit with a much faster and more agile protagonist. There was also, somewhat unexpectedly, a talking gelatinous cube voiced by Jack Quaid.

No release date has been announced yet, but it's already shaping up to be PlayStation's next major blockbuster.

2. Marvel's Wolverine

After a period of relative silence, Insomniac finally gave fans a substantial new look at Marvel's Wolverine.

The gameplay reveal showed Logan tracking down a group of kidnapped mutants, carving through enemies in gloriously bloody fashion while proving this is very much not another Spider-Man game. The combat looks heavier, nastier and significantly more violent than anything Insomniac has tackled before.

There was also a surprise appearance from Jean Grey, hinting that Wolverine's adventure could have wider X-Men implications than previously expected.

Most importantly, the showcase confirmed a release date. Marvel's Wolverine launches on the 15th of September 2026.

3. Until Dawn 2

One of the night's biggest shocks came with the reveal of Until Dawn 2.

The sequel swaps snowy mountains for a seemingly idyllic tropical island, where a group of ghost hunters quickly discover they've made a terrible mistake. Judging by the trailer, players can expect masked killers, supernatural horrors and plenty of opportunities to accidentally get everyone killed.

The original Until Dawn became a cult hit thanks to its branching storylines and choice-driven gameplay, and it looks like the sequel will be doubling down on that formula.

Until Dawn 2 is currently scheduled for release in 2027.

4. Phantom Blade Zero

We've seen Phantom Blade Zero before, but every new trailer somehow manages to make it look even more impressive.

The latest footage showcased its lightning-fast sword combat, acrobatic martial arts and horrifying supernatural enemies, blending wuxia action cinema with dark fantasy horror. It remains one of the most visually striking games currently in development and could become a serious contender among action RPG fans.

Following the showcase, developer S-Game confirmed Phantom Blade Zero will launch on the 29th of October 2026 for PlayStation 5 and PC.

5. Stuntman Hollywood

Perhaps the most surprising reveal of the entire showcase was the return of Stuntman.

The cult driving franchise, which first launched back in the PS2 era, is being revived with a new entry that appears to recreate iconic moments from famous films and television shows. Footage shown during the presentation included sequences clearly inspired by Back to the Future and Knight Rider.

It's a niche revival, but exactly the kind of unexpected announcement that State of Play showcases often do best.

6. ILL might be the most disturbing game Sony showed

If Resident Evil and body horror movies are your thing, ILL is worth keeping an eye on.

The trailer was packed with grotesque creatures, disturbing transformations and some genuinely stomach-turning imagery. Set in a world overrun by horrifying monsters, the game appears to lean heavily into realistic physics and graphic dismemberment, creating some of the most unsettling enemy encounters shown during the event.

There's still plenty we don't know, but based on this latest footage, ILL could end up being one of the most talked-about horror games of 2027 and makes the list because the trailer is absolutely minging.

State of Play didn't have quite the volume of announcements some fans were hoping for, but between God of War: Laufey, Marvel's Wolverine finally getting a release date, and the surprise reveal of Until Dawn 2, Sony certainly delivered a few major talking points. The biggest winner, though, was arguably God of War. We've been waiting for some time to find out where we will be going next after Ragnarok, and Laufey looks like a good evolution for the series. You can check out the full showcase below:

• Pac-Man, kart racing and alien battles are coming to London’s Southbank

The LEGO Group and The Pokémon Company International have unveiled 12 new LEGO Pokémon sets, and they feel like the clearest sign yet of where LEGO wants its SMART Play technology to go.

Launching later this year, the range introduces fan favourites including Pikachu, Charizard, Squirtle, Eevee, Gengar and Mewtwo into LEGO's growing SMART Play ecosystem. Using the new LEGO SMART Brick, the sets respond to movement, touch and play with lights, sounds and interactive reactions, allowing children to train, nurture and battle their Pokémon without needing a screen.

It's a particularly clean fit for the technology. Pokémon has always revolved around collecting creatures, caring for them, training them and sending them into battle, all concepts that translate naturally into LEGO's new interactive play system. Children can feed Pikachu a sandwich, tickle Charizard to hear it laugh and build up relationships with their Pokémon through repeated play sessions.

More importantly, this feels like the kind of licence that could put SMART Bricks into far more homes than before. While themes such as Star Wars remain hugely popular, much of their audience now skews towards older builders and collectors. Pokémon continues to dominate with younger audiences, making it arguably the perfect vehicle for introducing LEGO's latest technology to a new generation of fans.

It also marks a shift from LEGO Pokémon's earlier releases. The first wave largely consisted of display-focused builds aimed at collectors and older fans. These new releases feel much closer to what LEGO is supposed to be: toys designed to be played with, rebuilt, experimented with and enjoyed by kids.

The full LEGO Pokémon SMART Play line-up

All-in-One sets

• Training House with Pikachu
• Charizard vs. Jolteon Ultimate Battle

Compatible expansion sets

• Berry Bash with Bulbasaur and Bidoof
• Trainer's Buggy Adventure with Squirtle
• Charmander and Geodude's Cavern Clash
• Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly Battle
• Jigglypuff Concert
• Drone Search for Mythical Mew
• Eevee and Lapras's Treasure Hunt
• Mewtwo's Lab Break
• Umbreon vs. Garchomp Championship Battle
• Cubone and Gengar's Spooky Showdown

If you purchase selected sets, you'll also be able to get a special Ditto as Squirtle: Movie Night gift-with-purchase while stocks last. The sets are available to pre-order now ahead of an August release.

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Televisions are becoming gloriously complicated again.

Just when you thought you’d nailed all the acronyms (OLED, HDR, QLED, etc), there’s a bunch of new jargon to master as a fresh wave of screen TV tech heads to the high street. But don’t fret if you don’t know your True RGB from your Freely - we’re here to help you through what’s hot to watch in 2026.

It’s actually a great time to buy a new telly. The latest display innovations mean better-than-ever picture quality, while screen sizes are getting bigger than ever.

And with a summer of sport on the way, led by the FIFA World Cup, who doesn’t want a shiny new screen to catch all the action on?

We’ve taken an early look at the latest models and the best of the rest, so you can upgrade your viewing with confidence. Whether you want a picture-perfect OLED, massive Micro RGB, or simply the best value gogglebox around, we’ve got you covered…

Best TV for Picture Quality

• Samsung R95H Micro RGB
• Price: £3,299 (65-inch)
• Screen sizes available: 65-, 75-, 85-inches
• Size: 1442.9 x 831.2 x 52 mm (wxhxd)
• Display Technology: Micro RGB
• HDMI: Yes, x 4
• HDR: YesOperating System: Tizen
• Price: £3,299
• Weight: 19.1kg

Samsung’s latest flagship TV, the R95H, uses ground-breaking Micro RGB display technology for a truly scintillating picture. Micro-sized red, green, and blue LED backlights offer breathtaking brightness and colour richness. Powered by Samsung’s Micro RGB AI Engine, the R95H delivers exceptional colour accuracy, along with deep blacks and pristine detail. Not only is the R95H exceptionally bright, it sports a Glare Free screen coating that keeps unwanted room reflections and lights at bay. All this makes it ideal for bright room viewing.

Sound isn’t too shabby either, thanks to an 8-channel Dolby Atmos audio system. And if you need more reasons to buy, there’s also Tizen, Samsung’s highly polished smart platform, which comes with all the key streaming services, alongside Samsung TV Plus, a collection of free-to-watch linear channels.

The price tag may be toppy, but if you want the next-gen image quality, it’s definitely worth paying.

Best TV for Sports

• Sony BRAVIA 7 II True RGB
• Price £1,999 (55-inch)
• Screen sizes available: 50-, 55-, 65-, 75-, 85-, 98-inches
• Size: 1228 x 784 x 80mm (wxhxd)
• Display Technology: True RGB
• HDMI: Yes, x 4
• HDR: YesOperating System: Google TV
• Price: £1,999
• Weight: 18.4kg

Sony has been turning heads with its own take on Micro RGB technology, dubbed True RGB. The BRAVIA 7 II is the more affordable of its two debut launches (positioned under the all-singing and dancing BRAVIA 9 II), and we reckon it's the sweeter buy. Prices range from £1,899 for the 50-inch, up to £6,999 for the 98-incher.

Image quality is exceptionally good, with superb colours, punchy HDR and pronounced contrast. It looks great when you want to hunker down in the dark and watch a movie (it boasts Dolby Vision and IMAX Enhanced certification), but what’ll win you over is its bright room performance, colour fidelity and motion handling.

Long a strong suit for BRAVIA screens, frame interpolation is top-notch, with minimal blur and exceptional clarity, perfect for watching fast-moving sports.

Best TV for games

• LG OLED Evo C6
• Price: £2,599 (65-inch)
• Screen sizes available: 42-, 48-, 55-, 65-, 77- 83-inches
• Size: 1441 x 826 x 45.1mm (wxhxd)
• Display Technology: OLED
• HDMI: Yes, x 4
• HDR: YesOperating System: web OS
• Price: £2,599
• Weight: 16.6kg

The C series from LG is one of the world’s best-selling OLED TVs for good reason. Combining superb 4K picture quality with a feature-rich webOS smart TV platform, it’s a premium all-rounder and an irresistible option for gamers - and this year’s C6 OLED Evo may be its best yet.

All four HDMI inputs offer 4K/120Hz support, and there’s a host of PC friendly features, including a 165Hz refresh rate for PC gamers, low input lag Game mode, and NVIDIA G-Sync / AMD FreeSync Premium support.

OLED picture performance, as you’d expect, is gorgeous. Powered by LG’s latest Alpha 11 Gen 3 processor, HDR highlights are the brightest we’ve seen on a C series model, while black levels remain deep and inky. Whether you’re playing Overwatch or binging The Boroughs, the C6 looks detailed, vibrant and highly cinematic.

Best TV for value

• Hisense E7Q
• Price: £319 (50-inch)
• Screen sizes available: 43-, 50-, 55-, 65-, 75-, 85-, 98-inches
• Size (Dimensions without stand): 1119 x 649 x 80 mm (wxhxd)
• Display Technology: QLED
• HDMI: Yes, x 4
• HDR: YesOperating System: VIDAA
• Price: £319
• Weight: 9.4kg

Flagship flatscreens are all well and good, but when your purse demands you rein in your expectations, there are still exceptional buys to be had. This 50-inch Hisense E7Q will set you back just £319, while the monster 98-inch Pro version is a mere £1,199 (from AO.com).

There’s no skimping on features either. The E7Q is built around the VIDAA smart TV, so it comes with all the usual streaming apps and offers bright, colour-rich pictures courtesy of its QLED panel. Home cinema niceties include Dolby Vision HDR support and Filmmaker Mode, but there are also dedicated Game and Sport Modes, making it ideal for the footie.

But what really sells this affordable Hisense to us is the provision of Freely, the Internet delivered stablemate of Freeview. With Freely, you don’t need a traditional TV aerial to watch all your mainstream TV channels (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 and so on), just Wi-Fi and an internet connection. This means you can park your new screen in any room, anywhere you like, without having to run cables. Hurrah!

Best TV for Pay channels

• Sky Glass Air
• Price: From £17 monthly + channel package (65-inch)
• Screen sizes available: 43-, 55-, 65-inches
• Size (Dimensions without stand): 1446 x 829 x 34 mm (wxhxd)
• Display Technology: QLED
• HDMI: Yes, x 3
• HDR: YesOperating System: Sky Entertainment OS
• Price: £17 monthly + channel package
• Weight: 24.2kg

So what if you fancy a snazzy new 4K TV, but would rather pay for one on a contract, like a smartphone? Sky Glass Air is for you. This smart-looking LED model comes with Sky’s premium pay TV services baked in, with no external set-top box or dish required. The entire Sky channel enchilada is delivered over Wi-Fi.

Slimmer and some might say sexier, than the step-up Sky Glass Gen 2, Sky Glass Air is available in three screen sizes (43-, 55- and 65- inches) and comes in a choice of colours - Sea Green, Carbon Grey or Cotton White.

There’s HDMI with eARC, Wi-Fi 6 for ultra stable connectivity, and Dolby Vision HDR. Gamers might want to give the Air a swerve though, as it’s a 60Hz screen with noticeably high input lag.

Picture quality is bright and punchy. An Auto picture mode works in the background, optimising picture quality based on what you’re watching.

Obviously, the real attraction here is the broader Sky experience. The Sky OS neatly unifies live TV, streaming apps and cloud recording into one easy-to-use interface. Obviously what you can watch depends on your subscription package, but there’s no doubting the sheer variety on offer when it comes to entertainment, movies and sports. We’d suggest the best deal is the recently announced Sky Ultimate TV bundle (£24 a month), which includes Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and Hayu, along with all the Sky general entertainment channels.

Sky Glass Air prices start at £6 a month (for the 43-inch model ) for a 48 month contract, plus your chosen monthly channels bundle.

• London’s 10 best experience bars: From time-travelling cocktails to prison break games

Arcade Arena, a brand-new gaming attraction opening on the Southbank, London, this September, is promising real-world versions of iconic video game experiences complete with live-action gameplay, interactive environments and enough flashing lights to make you feel like you’ve accidentally wandered into the future.

Created by the team behind The Crystal Maze Experience, the new venue will combine multiple large-scale gaming experiences under one roof, with visitors able to bounce between life-sized Pac-Man, chaotic kart racing, and alien invasion battles.

The headline attraction is probably PAC-MAN LIVE, which turns the iconic arcade game into a fully immersive physical challenge. Players wear high-tech “PAC-Vests” before running through a full-scale interactive maze collecting pellets, dodging ghosts and trying not to embarrass themselves in front of their pals immediately. It’s the childhood fantasy of climbing inside an arcade machine finally becoming reality.

Alongside that will be Chaos Karts, a karting experience and Alien Invasion, a sci-fi combat experience involving themed missions and live-action gameplay.

The wider idea behind Arcade Arena seems to be turning gaming into a full social night out rather than something people do silently on Discord while eating crisps in the dark. There’ll be food, drinks and multi-game packages available, with tickets starting from £30 for a single experience and rising to £50 for access to all three.

While London is hardly short on immersive experiences these days, this one does feel slightly different. Most attractions still stop short of making you physically become the player character. Arcade Arena seems fully committed to the bit. This isn’t watching actors pretend you’re in a video game. This is you getting sweaty inside one.

It also makes complete sense that this is coming from Little Lion Entertainment, the people behind The Crystal Maze Experience, which has somehow spent the last decade convincing Londoners to willingly crawl through inflatable tunnels and scream at each other over oversized puzzle cubes.

Most importantly, though, it sounds fun. Not “networking event fun” or “team-building fun”. Genuine fun. The sort where your competitive instincts immediately take over and friendships are burdened with fragility.

Arcade Arena opens on London’s Southbank this September, with tickets on sale now.

• Two London hotels have been named among the best in the world in a new prestigious list

London doesn’t really do anything by halves: Arsenal celebrations, nights out, and, as shown by the upcoming weather forecast, summer. Or more specifically, heatwaves. After some disappointing weather in June so far, the UK is headed for a full on climate-change-special whopping heatwave. Cue Londoners sprawled like scattered shrimps across every conceivable inch of green space, and every single corner store completely stripped of Factor 50, aloe, and disposable barbecues.

With temperatures in London set to surge to north of 37 degrees people are already prepping. If you thought working from home was the solution to keeping cool (namely: able to work in trunks, on a balcony, with an ice cream, and have a cheeky lido swim at lunch) only to realise you have zero air conditioning, a broken fan, and three housemates who thought the same, then this new interactive map showing Londoners where they can best cool off might be your new wingman.

Catchily named Where’s Cool, the new app has created a map that shows which cafes, bars, and restaurants near you have air con. Consider your prayers literally answered. According to the team behind the app, when the UK gets caught in a heatwave, where do you go? Well, they couldn’t find a map of those places, so they built one.

As the map points out, there are over 280,000 pubs, cafes, restaurants and bars in England and Wales - only around 8,000 (3%) of them are confirmed to have air conditioning, so your odds of striking the frozen jackpot are rather slim if you roll the dice and just wander in somewhere.

Thanks to the sheer volume of pubs, cafes, restaurants and other public spots, a lot of the places on the map have ‘unconfirmed AC status’, where the map needs punters to help close the gaps and confirm if there’s AC or not. Luckily, though, there’s a useful toggle which you can set so you only see nearby locations with confirmed AC.

In terms of how they actually collected the data, it consisted of a fair bit of sleuthing from the self-confessed data nerds at Sabot, the engineers behind the app. Every food business in England and Wales is legally required to register with the FSA's Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, so to confirm the AC status, they cross-referenced this with the public MHCLG Energy Performance Certificate dataset. Where a venue's EPC said it had cooling, they marked it confirmed. For everything else, it’s the trusty - if slightly overheated - public who are helping to solve that riddle, inputting data to the app to let them know if a venue has AC or not. If a couple of people agree, the map is updated.

Thomas Chivers, Where's Cool creator said:

“As a ginger man, the heatwave this week has been the undoing of me. Unfortunately, working out of my sweatbox flat wasn't an option and finding a reliable cafe with AC wasn't as straightforward as I thought it was.

When doing the research, I managed to find a data source that shows confirmed venues that actually have air con. When I told this to some remote working friends they asked if I could create a map so they could benefit as well. It made too much sense not to share it around!”

You can find the app at wherescool.uk.

• Midnight Matinees at Shakespeare's Globe are officially back for summer – and there are still £5 tickets up for grabs

More than a decade after it was first released, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is officially getting brand new DLC.

Because apparently one of the greatest RPGs ever made still isn’t done with us yet.

Developer CD Projekt has announced a third expansion for The Witcher 3 called Songs of the Past, with the new DLC set to launch in 2027 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Which means Geralt of Rivia is somehow returning for another adventure 12 years after the original game launched back in 2015.

The expansion is being co-developed alongside Fool's Theory, a Polish studio made up of several former Witcher developers who previously worked on the original game. The team is also currently handling the remake of the very first Witcher game, so CD Projekt is clearly keeping things in the family here.

Details on Songs of the Past are still pretty thin for now, although CD Projekt confirmed players will once again step into the boots of Geralt for a completely new storyline. More information is expected later this summer.

The announcement doesn’t come entirely out of nowhere, either. Rumours about secret Witcher 3 DLC have been floating around online for months, with leaks suggesting a brand new region to explore and speculation that the expansion could help bridge the gap between The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4.

The Witcher 4 is expected to shift focus towards Ciri as the series’ new lead protagonist, so Songs of the Past could end up acting as one final swansong for Geralt before CD Projekt fully moves on to the next era of the franchise.

And considering how beloved expansions like Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine already are, expectations are understandably sky high.

Blood and Wine, in particular, is still regularly spoken about like it was basically an entire extra Witcher game disguised as DLC, so announcing another expansion this late into the game’s lifespan feels massive.

CD Projekt actually planned to reveal the expansion during an anniversary livestream celebrating Blood and Wine this week, but according to the studio, an accidental launcher leak forced them to announce it early instead.

Which feels very on-brand for the modern games industry at this point.

The studio also confirmed the new DLC will only launch on current-gen hardware, meaning PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch players are being left behind this time around. CD Projekt says upcoming updates will also overhaul the game’s technical requirements on PC, with SSDs becoming mandatory going forward as the studio continues modernising the game for newer hardware.

It’s a hugely busy period for CD Projekt overall, too. Alongside Songs of the Past, the studio is currently developing The Witcher 4, future Witcher sequels, a Witcher multiplayer project and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season two.

Still, despite everything else on the horizon, it’s pretty exciting seeing The Witcher 3 continue to grow this far after release.

Most games are lucky to survive a few months before disappearing into the backlog abyss forever. Meanwhile, Geralt is out here casually getting fresh expansions 12 years later like none of us ever emotionally left Novigrad in the first place.

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Just a few weeks ago Ferrari opened a flagship store in Central London. But at first glance, the place may not have all that much for the petrolhead Ferrari fan.

It is predominantly a fashion store, Ferrari’s first in the UK. From it you can buy £6,000-plus women’s leather coats, or £750 sweatshirts.

The construction of this space, at 45 Old Bond Street, is absolutely mad — more on that later — but if the whole concept sounds like a turn off, you just need to head down to the lower ground floor.

Behind a massive leather curtain, made using the same leather seen in Ferrari cockpits, lives a mini Ferrari museum. But in this museum you can buy all the exhibits. We are in Old Bond Street, not South Kensington, after all.

The concept of this area of the Ferrari Store is it’s the brand’s Collectables Collection. But because this is Ferrari, most of these are actual fragments of automotive history.

You’ve have to be quick to see it before it’s shipped off to the buyer — we were told it was heading out within days — but one wall was taken up by the shoes and suit worn by Sebastian Vettel during his final season with Ferrari in 2020.

It’s not a replica. It’s the real thing.

We weren’t told quite how much the suit cost in the end, but we’re undoubtedly talking about some factor of fortune here. There are other pieces of automotive art you can pick up at slightly more palatable prices, though.

Along the rear wall of the Ferrari Store’s collectibles exhibit are pieces of actual historically important Ferrari cars. For example, you can pick up a conrod from a 2003 F1 series car for £1,850, or an engine valve from a 2000 season F1 car for £950.

These are all parts from real F1 cars, broken down into their constituent parts like pieces of the Holy Grail — except real.

They are arranged like beautiful museum pieces, which they could very well be. But the best bit is they haven’t been polished and ground down to look new. You can see the use they’ve had on their surface, like automotive laughter lines. And it’s kinda fascinating to see, even if you don’t have the knowledge to point out exactly where inside a car each of these bits would go.

Ferrari’s Colleactables collection goes far further too. When we visited, there were two F1 crankshafts on show, which when separated from their fellow components look like something that could actually be dropped right into the Tate Modern as a sculptural exhibit.

No price tags on these but, well, they’re not going to be cheap are they? For the richest and most obsessed of Ferrari fans, you can even pick up an entire motor, as a “collectable” the Ferrari rep told us would likely end up between some car collectors’ various actual, complete Ferrari cars.

And for the rest of us? Ferrari also offers some absolutely amazing scale model recreations of classic Ferrari cars. But before you get too excited, these are also not remotely cheap.

They start at £13,500, rising a good chunk higher for the limited run designs. During our visit cars on display included the Ferrari 499P and Ferrari 12Clinindri Spider, once again arranged like museum exhibits in acrylic cases.

These aren’t actually Ferrari models. They are 1:8 scale replicas made by Amalgam Collection, whose works we’ve written about before.

The aim is always for the greatest possible fidelity, the claim being they are “almost impossible to discern from a real car in photographs.”

You can browse through these cars online. Amalgam Collection has, somehow, made hundreds of them in 1:8 scale alone. However, actually getting to see these models in person is a rarity — Mr Porter also lists them, but is an online-only retailer, while Amalgam Collection is based in Bristol and does not have an actual showroom.

They are fantastically detailed not-that-little works of art in their own right.

Ferrari’s fashion store probably isn’t hoping to attract petrolhead model obsessives, but that crowd really should take note.

The Ferrari fashion store is also notable — some might even say deranged — in its commitment to bringing about that Ferrari sense of luxury and attention to detail. Across the three floors are giant curtains made using the same leather used to upholster Ferrari interiors. As are the leather-handrails that adorn the massive single-piece stair cases so large the front of the shop had to be removed to fit them in, closing off nearby Piccadilly in the process.

By the entrance, the shiny red mannequins have been sprayed using the same process used to paint Ferrari cars — which we are informed was a bit of a nightmare.

Even the metallic decoration of the Ferrari fashion store’s walls is designed to evoke that of Ferrari workshops. And no, not all of Ferrari’s clothing is the marque’s signature red. Just a lot of it.

Ferrari’s first UK fashion store is found at 45 Old Bond Street, a site formerly home to jeweller De Beers, and is open seven days a week.

• Cars, clobber and countryside: How to do the Cotswolds properly

Sony’s flagship noise-cancelling headphones have long been hard to beat, offering the ultimate over-ear noise cancelling performance against some incredibly stiff competition. And they’ve also occupied a rare position in the audio sphere — mainstream enough to dominate airport lounges and commuter trains, yet serious enough to tempt audiophiles who would normally avoid wireless cans altogether.

With the all-new, long-rumoured 1000X THE COLLEXION headphones, Sony wants to make sure those most discerning of listeners are fully catered for.

While it’d be easy to think of THE COLLEXION as a ‘WH-1000XM6 Pro’ upgrade to last year’s world beating over-ears, that’d be slightly missing the point. This is not simply another yearly upgrade focused on cancelling more engine rumble or squeezing in another AI feature (even if it’s also attempting to do both). Instead, THE COLLEXION feels like Sony asking what happens when its most-loved headphone line is given the spared-no-expense treatment — something designed to be worn and admired as much as getting down to the nitty-gritty of making your tunes sound great.

Want some luxury to accompany your playlists? Here’s five reasons why the Sony 1000X THE COLLEXION might be the headphones for you.

Sony 1000X THE COLLEXION: In short…

• Luxury stainless steel and matte faux leather design feels genuinely premium
• Comfort-focused fit reduces pressure during long listening sessions
• Refined audio tuning prioritises clarity and immersive sound quality
• AI upscaling and spatial modes personalise music, movies and gaming
• Advanced microphones improve calls, adaptive noise cancelling and daily usability
• Available from May 2026 in Platinum (white) and Black shades
• Priced at £550

1. The Design Feels As Premium As The Price Tag

Sony says the design philosophy behind its 1000X THE COLLEXION headphones (right, from here on in, to save our fingers, we’re just going to call ‘em the ‘COLLEXION’) is “Resonate” — the idea that you should hear, feel and experience premium sound and texture at the same time. Marketing language aside, there is a noticeable shift in approach here.

Every visible surface uses just two materials: hand-polished stainless steel and a newly developed faux leather finish. That faux leather alone reportedly took two years to develop, and it shows in the details. Rather than the glossy synthetic textures that can make premium headphones feel oddly plastic, Sony has opted for a matte finish that looks restrained and feels high-end to the touch — important, as you’ll be swiping and tapping the cups regularly to control playback.

The result is cleaner and more architectural than previous over-ear models. In black, the headphones look understated and expensive. In ‘Platinum’ white, they feel closer to luxury fashion tech than your usual over-ears. But they’re not flashy, either — these aren’t the diamond-encrusted nonsense that often tempts the higher-end of the tech market. It’s classic Sony minimalism.

That extends to the accompanying carry case too, which manages to do something even Apple’s equally-luxurious AirPods Pro Max couldn’t — being stylish and functional. Like the Apple competition, Sony’s case opts for a carry handle style. But, with the headphone cups rotating flat rather than folding inwards, the case wraps around the headband to create that carry handle. Fastening closed with a magnetic snap, the entirety of the headphone is enclosed and protected. Apple, take note.

Sony has also made the earcups slimmer than the WH-1000XM6, reducing the depth to 40.1mm from 45.4mm. That sounds minor on paper, but visually it creates a more refined silhouette on the head, giving the illusion of a softer, slightly curvier can.

2. Comfort Has Been Given Real Attention

Premium headphones live or die by comfort. Nobody cares how advanced the internals are if they’re clamping to your noggin’ like a vice.

The COLLEXION however is supremely comfortable. Designed with long listening sessions in mind, using a wider headband, and with softer earpads to reduce side pressure, you can wear them for hours without any fatigue. The internal earcup space is also notably generous, meaning the pads sit around the ear rather than pressing directly onto it. As a glasses wearer, that clamping force was just right in all the right places too — tight enough to keep them from slipping, but not so squeezed as to push my specs’ arms into my skull.

Even the internal battery layout has been reconsidered. Sony split the battery into two separate components to improve weight distribution and maximise acoustic space inside the cups. Again, it is the sort of engineering decision that users may never consciously notice, but they will feel the benefits over several hours of wear.

There is no official IP rating here, which may disappoint gym users or anyone regularly caught in the customary surprise UK downpour. But these are clearly intended as luxury listening headphones first, and all-day comfort seems to have been prioritised above ruggedness.

3. The Sound Is The Real Star

Sony’s flagship headphones have always balanced sound quality against noise cancelling. With COLLEXION, the balance appears to tilt slightly more toward the audio side. The aim here is to get closer to an artist’s intention in the studio, trimming back some of the bass-heavy moments of the WH-1000XM6, and promoting clarity over sheer noise-cancelling grunt.

The redeveloped driver unit uses a unidirectional carbon layered core composite material in the diaphragm dome section (intended to deliver natural tones from the most delicate high-frequency moments), alongside Sony’s HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN3 and an entirely new integrated V3 processor.

That V3 processor delivers some of the COLLEXION’s smartest audio tricks. Support for Hi-Res Wireless audio and LDAC is onboard, but the headline addition may actually be DSEE Ultimate. Available in Sony headphones for the first time in this form, the AI-powered upscaling system attempts to restore detail lost in compressed music files.

Sony claims it can effectively upscale 44kHz audio to 96kHz and increase 16-bit audio to 24-bit equivalents, very useful when using streaming services over a mobile connection. Whether listeners hear every technical improvement will vary, but the intention is clear: these are headphones built for people who genuinely care about music quality, not simply background listening.

Equally interesting is how much Sony has borrowed from its dedicated Walkman audio division. COLLEXION includes technologies such as a low-phase-noise crystal oscillator, advanced solder containing gold and optimised circuitry components — details normally associated with specialist hi-fi gear rather than wireless travel headphones.

The proof, as ever, is in the listening, and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time with the COLLEXION headphones. Note: from our experience, you’re going to get the most from the headphones with a Hi-Res playback source, as you’d expect. But the COLLEXION is pretty agnostic when it comes to genre.

With the glacial ‘Computer Love’ of electro pioneers Kraftwerk, the COLLEXION shows off its precision and clarity — tight bass tones, snappy drum clicks and crystal clear high-end synths.

For something a little more earthy, Love’s ‘You Set The Scene’ from the masterful Forever Changes album is a great work out for the COLLEXION’s claimed wide soundstage and instrumental separation. The headphones do a great job, bringing a warmth and immediacy to the presentation, and ably pulling out the individual orchestral qualities of strings, horns and guitars as the three all battle in the song’s final third.

At the other end of the spectrum, Nine Inch Nail’s brutal ‘March Of The Pigs’ hits like a hammer blow. Guitars have bite and power, while the complex industrial underpinnings of the song feel thick and full, without Trent Reznor’s raspy vocal being lost.

There’s a feeling that the most demanding of audiophiles will be looking for a little more dynamism in the mid-range, but that’s nitpicking, and when paired with the rest of the feature set offered here, the COLLEXION is a great package.

4. The Features Feel More Personal And Flexible

Wireless headphones increasingly succeed or fail based on how adaptable they are to everyday life, but Sony’s had a handle on that right from the start with its 1000X series. Each successive model has brought new smarts to the table — and the COLLEXION might be the smartest of them all.

The V3 processor introduces several new upmix modes, including dedicated 360-degree settings for music, movies and gaming. These modes attempt to create a more immersive spatial presentation depending on what you are listening to.

I usually avoid additional processing modes on audio devices — they tend to move the music too far away from the original intention of a mix. But I had a lot of fun with Sony’s music upmix mode. It gives an almost ‘live’ quality to a recording, widening the soundstage and putting you closer to the centre of a performance. It’s lively and an interesting way to get a new perspective on tracks you’re well versed in, if not necessarily the most faithful reproduction. The gaming mode was enjoyable and explosive too, adding a level of immersive bombast to proceedings — but I was disappointed by relatively high latency when gaming over Bluetooth, meaning some audio cues felt just a beat behind the action.

There is also a surprisingly intriguing “background music” mode (returning from the WH-1000XM6) designed to make songs feel as though they are playing slightly away from you, like music drifting through a café rather than directly into your ears. It sounds gimmicky initially, but it could prove genuinely useful for people who dislike the intense isolation that noise-cancelling headphones can create.

A customisable physical button on the headset lets users quickly switch between modes without diving into menus or apps, which is exactly the kind of practical touch premium products should include.

Sony also includes a 10-band EQ for users who want more detailed control over tuning. Casual listeners can leave everything alone, while enthusiasts can fine-tune the presentation to suit different genres.

It all adds up to a product that feels less rigidly one-size-fits-all than many rivals, and makes the accompanying Sound Connect app less of an optional add-on and more an essential tweak station.

5. They Still Deliver Serious Everyday Practicality

Even with the more luxurious positioning, Sony has not abandoned the practical strengths that made its over-ear line successful in the first place.

COLLEXION uses 12 onboard microphones for adaptive noise-cancelling optimisation, allowing the headphones to constantly adjust to changing environments. Sony is not pushing noise cancelling as aggressively as before — the messaging here is more about sound refinement — but the capability is still substantial. Aggressive pre-release secrecy around the headphones mean I’ve not been able to test them against the rigours of public transport yet, but I was able to mimic the hum of a flight quite effectively, thanks to the whirring of my gaming PC’s fan in my hotbox of a flat. While not quite a match for the total isolation of the WH-1000XM6 cans, the noise cancelling here is still better than the majority of Sony’s competitors.

Sony also has the advantage of its smart adaptive noise cancelling features. Let the Sound Connect app access your location, and the headphones will adapt their noise-blocking features according to the situation. Walking down the road, you can set them to let in a little more exterior sound so as to better hear an oncoming Uber Eats bike, and then seamlessly switch to zen-like full noise cancellation once you reach the office.

Call quality has also received serious attention. Six beamforming microphones help isolate the speaker’s voice while reducing wind interference, and Bluetooth LE Audio support enables Super Wide Band speech transmission for clearer calls. The audio mode selecting button can also be configured to act as a physical mic mute switch, something that feels particularly relevant in the hybrid-working era where headphones double as office equipment as often as entertainment devices.

I’d say, however, that the decision to leave a USB-C cable out of the package feels a little bit stingy, though. Yes, e-waste needs to be taken into consideration. But grab these at an airport shop before boarding your flight, and you’re going to have a long, noisy journey ahead of you unless you come prepared with a charging cable. Battery life shouldn’t be much of a concern though — 24 hours with ANC switched on will see you around the world, even if it’s a few hours short of the battery life managed by the WH-1000XM6. And there is a 3.5mm jack cable in the box.

Final Verdict

Sony’s 1000X THE COLLEXION headphones admirably merge luxury looks, audiophile ambition and daily practicality into one sumptuous package. It’s a complex balancing act, but COLLEXION feels like Sony recognising that premium headphones are no longer just tech accessories, but fashion objects, productivity tools and personal audio systems all at once.

That versatility comes with a hefty price tag, but for listeners who want one pair of headphones capable of handling all three roles with a little more elegance than usual, they’ll be confidently covered.

The toss up between the older WH-1000XM6 and the COLLEXION model will be a difficult one to make — if cream-of-the-crop noise cancelling is your primary concern, the former will probably still win out. But for a taste of the high life, 1000X THE COLLEXION is among the best headphones Sony’s ever made.

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Marshall has never struggled with aesthetic cool. Its iconic amplifiers have been stage staples for the biggest rock bands of all time, since the days when all Bluetooth meant was that someone had drunk one too many gnasher-dyeing Slush Puppies. Away from the mosh pit, its headphones have spent the last decade translating that rock-and-roll heritage into commuter-friendly tech. And with its latest release, the Marshall Milton A.N.C. headphones, it's ready to power your playlists for a non-stop weekend or longer.

Priced at £179.99, these new wireless on-ear headphones arrive with adaptive noise cancelling, spatial audio and a frankly outrageous battery life figure. More importantly, they appear designed for people who actually live in their headphones — commuters, travellers, office workers and anyone who can’t function without their own personal soundtrack on at all times.

For those about to rock, here’s five reasons the Marshall Milton A.N.C might be the headphones for you.

Marshall Milton A.N.C.: In short…

• Adaptive ANC reacts automatically to surroundings
• Up to 80 hours battery life, 50+ with noise cancelling
• Foldable design built for constant travel
• Spatial audio adds depth to everyday listening
• Repairable design with replaceable battery
• Available now, priced £179.99

1. Battery life that borders on barmy

Most wireless headphones promise enough battery to survive a few work sessions. Marshall laughs at that paltry goal. There’s battery life so good here you might forget you ever needed to charge them in the first place.

The Milton A.N.C. delivers up to 80 hours of wireless playtime without active noise cancelling switched on, or more than 50 hours with ANC enabled. That is several long-haul flights, countless Tube journeys and probably an entire festival weekend without desperately hunting for a USB-C cable.

For people tired of battery anxiety, this is arguably the headline feature. Marshall is essentially removing charging from the daily routine. Two hours gets the headphones fully recharged, and then you’re back into musical bliss for another solid couple of days.

2. Adaptive ANC that works with on-ear headphones

Over-ear headphones have dominated the premium ANC market for years largely because on-ear alternatives often leaked sound and struggled with isolation. And though the ANC of the Milton isn’t quite as all-encompassing as over-ear alternatives, those that prefer the on-ear form factor will thankfully still be able to block out the majority of surrounding annoyances with these new cans.

The Milton A.N.C. uses adaptive active noise cancelling that continuously analyses surroundings and adjusts in real time. Six microphones work together to reduce environmental noise while also improving call quality. Crucially, Marshall has enlarged the ear cushions and added softer memory foam to improve passive isolation before the electronics even get involved.

That ‘adaptive’ feature means that, instead of aggressively silencing the world, the headphones react to it. In a quiet library? It’ll dial back the intensity of noise-cancellation, but on a train, in an open-plan office or during a flight, they adapt automatically to the din and work harder to block out distractions. And when situational awareness matters, Transparency mode lets outside sound back in instantly with a single press of a button.

3. Portable — but still pretty

At just over 200 grams, the Milton A.N.C is light and portable, with a foldable design intended to survive constant packing, commuting and travel. But Marshall hasn’t stripped back any of those stage-ready good looks.

The textured leather finish, brass logo detailing and powder-coated metal arms all lean into the company’s vintage rock aesthetic. Importantly, they still feel grown-up. These are headphones designed to look as comfortable beside a MacBook in Soho as they would backstage at a venue.

The durability angle matters too. Marshall says the headphones are repairable and include a replaceable battery — you’ll have to get Marshall’s own engineers to do the job, though.

And they’re comfortable on your head, too. On-ear headphones can feel quite clampy, pushing on the squishy bits of your ears uncomfortably over longer stretches of time. But the Milton A.N.C is light and breezy, with well-padded cans and a forgiving clamping force that means they don’t cause fatigue over longer periods of time.

4. Sound improvements

Marshall headphones tend to lean warmer and more energetic rather than neutral in their tuning, and the Milton A.N.C follows suit.

A redesigned driver system promises improved bass and treble alongside Hi-Res audio support. Bluetooth 6.0 compatibility and support for SBC, AAC, LC3 and LDAC codecs show Marshall is taking wireless audio quality seriously, even at a mid-range price.

Though they’re not going to tempt audiophiles away from their studio-tuned favourites, the Marshall Milton A.N.C is an exciting listen. They’re bass and mid forward in a way that suits crunchier rock music and big beat pop best, and can go ear-splittingly loud when pushed to max volume.

An intriguing feature is Soundstage spatial audio, Marshall’s in-house spatialisation system that adds depth and width to stereo tracks. It’s not a true-to-source sound, but can be fun for giving a more live-performance-feel to your tracks.

There’s also Adaptive Loudness, which subtly adjusts tonal balance depending on listening volume and background noise. In practice, that means late-night listening should still sound rich rather than thin and anaemic — though it can flatten highs in some circumstances.

5. Convenient design

One of the smartest details is the customisable M-button. Instead of burying features inside endless app menus, Marshall lets users assign shortcuts for ANC, Transparency mode, EQ presets, Spotify access, spatial audio or voice assistant controls.

We’ll take a physical control over a touch-pad swipe any day.

It’s a winning combo of solid sound, smart features, convenience and style. If you like your headphones as rocking as your tunes, the Milton A.N.C are ready to hit the road with you.

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Was Nintendo’s movement-based Wii a blip on the gaming cultural radar? The modern games console is usually designed around one thing: sitting still. Whether it’s sprawling online adventures or endless YouTube rabbit holes, most screen time now happens sprawled across the sofa with little movement.

Nex Playground wants to change that.

Launching in the UK and Ireland this summer after selling close to a million units in North America (it outsold the Xbox overseas last year), the motion-controlled console has quickly built a reputation as a different kind of gaming machine — one aimed squarely at families who want children to be active, social and safely entertained in the same space.

A tiny cube that sits in front of your TV and ditches traditional controllers for hands-free movement, the camera-equipped console tracks your frantic waves and weaves, and is designed to be as simple to use as possible. And it’s mighty good fun for all the family, from toddlers right up to nan and grandad.

Here are five reasons why it might become one of the most interesting family tech launches of 2026.

Nex Playground: In Short…

• A controller-free family games console that uses motion tracking
• Launches in the UK in late June 2026, with pre-orders opening from May 18th through retailers including Amazon UK, Argos and Smyths Toys
• Pricing starts at £269 in the UK, which includes the console and five starter games
• Play Pass subscription costs £90 annually or £45 quarterly, unlocking a library of more than 60 games
• Family-friendly franchises and games, with titles tied to Bluey, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sesame Street and more
• Focussed around child safety and privacy — with no ads, no in-app purchases, no open internet access

1. It Turns Screen Time Into Active Play

Perhaps the biggest selling point of Nex Playground is that it gets players moving.

Unlike traditional consoles that rely on controllers, Nex uses motion tracking to turn players’ bodies into the controller itself. A small camera on the front of the cube is able to see into your room, picking up the players in front of it, and translating the movements of their arms and legs into controls for the games. With Nex Playground games, you’ll be jumping, stretching, dancing, running on the spot and mimicking actions on-screen, making it feel closer to offline play than your standard game session.

That approach has already drawn comparisons with the golden era of Nintendo Wii-style gaming, but Nex is arguably simpler and more intuitive, seeing as no controller is needed — a remote control is included just for navigating menus.

For parents increasingly concerned about their kids being glued to screens, that physical element is a major draw. Nex is positioning the console as an antidote to endless scrolling and sedentary entertainment, and the timing is notable. In both Britain and Ireland, conversations around children’s screen time and online wellbeing have intensified over the past year, creating demand for devices that feel healthier and more purposeful.

2. It’s Built Specifically With Families in Mind

Games consoles from the big three manufacturers — Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s Switch — try to be all things to all people. Hardcore shooters sit next to cosy farming sims, horror games sit next to cutesy platformers. They are not especially tailored to children, meaning ensuring a child is playing an appropriate title can take a fair bit of preparation.

It’s here where Nex feels it can win, where previous motion-based consoles (like Microsoft’s mega-selling Kinect, which eventually fell from favour with core gamers who demanded more complex experiences) failed. Nex Playground feels different because families are clearly the priority from the outset.

The system is designed as a closed ecosystem, meaning there are no ads, no web browsing functions and no mature content unexpectedly surfacing through recommendations or online interactions. Every game on the platform is published directly by Nex, giving the company tighter control over quality and age suitability.

That safety-first philosophy has become a major part of the brand’s identity. Nex Playground aligns with GDPR requirements, carries PEGI 3 ratings on its starter bundle and maintains kidSAFE+ certification alongside COPPA compliance in the United States.

Importantly, the console also addresses privacy concerns in ways many larger tech brands have been criticised for ignoring. Motion-tracking data is processed locally on the device rather than uploaded externally, and every console includes a physical camera cover.

In a market where many parents remain uneasy about connected devices listening, recording or collecting data, that straightforward emphasis on trust feels refreshingly direct.

The same goes for hidden fees — while there’s a subscription cost to access the vast majority of games available on Nex Playground (a service which feels essential to get the most out of the console, and should be factored into any purchase price), the team has vowed to never allow in-app purchases in its apps. Pay that subscription fee, and that’s all — little Jimmy won’t be running up a thousand-pound bill for Dora the Explorer skins.

3. The Games Library Is Surprisingly Broad

A motion-controlled family console only works if the games are good enough to sustain attention beyond the first week. That appears to be where Nex has quietly exceeded expectations.

The platform now includes more than 60 games covering sports, dance, fitness and educational experiences, with recognisable children’s brands helping broaden its appeal. Bluey is there. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are there. Elmo and Cookie Monster make an appearance. You don’t even have to have kids to recognise the characters fronting games here.

That variety matters because it prevents the console from feeling like a novelty fitness gadget, and having access to all of them under one subscription lets you flit between them all without a major commitment.

Kids in the US that have been playing with Nex over the past couple of years have been seen to play a wide variety of games, Nex tells us, swapping between energetic party games, educational activities and collaborative family challenges. The ease of play encourages cross-generational appeal too — even those not interested in gaming can get involved immediately.

4. It Encourages Co-operative Play Rather Than Solo Gaming

Online multiplayer has never been more popular, but Nex Playground harks back to the lost-art of local multiplayer experiences. There’s still nothing quite like staring into the whites of the eyes of your competitor, or hi-fiving a game-playing comrade. And with Nex focused around living room play, practically every title on the machine offers multiplayer fun.

Most of its experiences are designed around people sharing the same room, taking turns, competing side-by-side or cooperating physically together. Instead of children disappearing into bedrooms with headphones on, the console encourages communal play in the living room. Parents are more likely to participate, younger siblings can watch and join in, and gaming becomes a visible household activity rather than a solitary one.

I can see it being a particularly big hit come those major family gatherings like Christmas — there’s no complicated setup or gaming knowledge required to get involved. Nex Playground doesn’t demand existing gaming literacy, meaning grandparents, younger children and casual players can all take part almost immediately.

5. It Feels Like a Fresh Alternative to Current Consoles

At £269 with five starter games included, Nex Playground is not necessarily a budget purchase. Yet compared with the escalating costs associated with mainstream gaming consoles, subscriptions and accessories, it occupies an intriguing middle ground.

More importantly, it offers something genuinely different.

Rather than competing directly with PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo on graphical power or blockbuster franchises, Nex has carved out a niche centred around movement, simplicity and family interaction.

And, it's a minor point, but boy, is it cute. With colour-matched cabling and a colourful construction, it's attractive but subtle, its playfulness expressed in the device itself in a way that more serious consoles don't match.

For families looking to make screen time feel more active — and safe from the worries of other digital experiences — Nex Playground may arrive at exactly the right moment.

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JBL is prepped for a party. It has just announced a whole new range of absolutely massive wireless speakers and an absolutely tiny microphone that uses AI to revolutionise your karaoke game.

No, the JBL EasyClip Mic Mini is not going to auto-tune your vocals on the fly, which is basically the equivalent of shamelessly using your phone to cheat at a pub quiz. But it can remove the central vocal channel of songs you feed it — yep, using good old artificial intelligence.

Any track can become a backing track, and this all happens on-the-fly like magic. We got to hear it working in action and the results were frankly mind-blowingly good. It was pretty much as if the JBL EasyClip Mic Mini had access to the producer’s multi-track version of the song and just deleted the central vocal.

It's tech we've encountered before in JBL's cracking BandBox Solo guitar speaker.

Will it work for death metal as well as cleanly produced pop? We have our doubts, and even the JBL bod we talked to noted it’s not going to work the same for backing vocals too — it’s just not how this tech works. But, damn, it can’t half do a good job when the track suits the tech.

You control the voice zapping using the button on the JBL EasyClip Mic Mini’s front, and can also simply turn down the lead vocal line instead of getting rid of it entirely. This can be useful for those somewhat overconfident folks who choose to karaoke a song they only really know the chorus of.

Here’s how it works. The JBL EasyClip Mic Mini’s main microphone part is just a little rounded capsule of a thing, but it also slots into a grip handle.

This is because, if you haven't noticed, content creators these days hold up mics like they're a brooch they just found on the floor, not like a rock singer holding a trusty Shure SM58. And this mic is for content creators as well as karaoke fans, letting them adopt the correct viral mannerisms or... y'know, clip the thing to their clothing.

The other half of the JBL EasyClip Mic Mini is a USB dongle, and this is actually the brains of the operation. You plug it into a compatible JBL speaker, and not only does it turn that unit into a karaoke machine, it’s this USB dongle that apparently does the AI vocal removal. We’re told there’s just a slight delay of a couple of seconds, to let the software smarts do their thing.

JBL’s EasyClip Mic Mini costs £129.99 and is available to order now.

But what can you plug it into? We’ve had a go with some of these too.

Among the contenders are JBL’s new PartyBox models. These are not for everyone, but are apparently the market leaders in the massive-LED-laden-party-speaker category. You basically get the accessibility of a Bluetooth speaker, combined with the size and power of a PA or busker speaker. Oh, and a whole loads of LED light show pizzazz on top.

This range is long-standing, but the new models are called the JBL PartyBox 130 and 330.

JBL’s more affordable PartyBox 130 only costs as much as a higher-end wireless speaker at £349.99, but is seriously powerful. It has a 5.25-inch woofer and two 25mm tweeters, and a chunky fold-out handle to help you shift around its sold 11-plus kilo frame.

Not serious enough? The PartyBox 330 upgrades the driver to a 6.5-inch whopper, while JBL says the two tweeters are the same units it puts into some of its pro-grade speakers. It’s not just rubbish drivers for the beer-chugging idiot crowd here.

This larger, 16-plus-kilo contender is also designed a bit like a piece of holiday luggage, with a telescopic handle and built-in wheels. No doing your back in just to move it around a bit.

I got to hear the PartyBox 330, and then a quartet from this family playing together, using one of the family’s more up-to-date features, Bluetooth Auracast. This lets a bunch of headphones or speakers stream from the one source — a party mode that doesn’t require a bespoke, proprietary system.

First impressions suggest the JBL PartyBox duo are fantastic for projection and punch, which is going to be a massive benefit if you want to play music outdoors as well as inside. Loud looks matched with loud audio, these speakers also have highly customisable LED light rings that snake around the main drivers.

But if you mostly want to listen in a more casual way, I’d strongly suggesting considering something like the JBL Xtreme 5 instead, which also works with the JBL’s EasyClip Mic Mini. This speaker also looks pretty loud, but it’s also a surprisingly sweet-sounding and insightful wireless option that is fantastic for casual listening and social gatherings, or picnics. It’s going to be far more suitable for bedroom listening than a PartyBox.

I should know, because there’s one in my bedroom right now.

These aren’t the only new JBL bits of kit out either. JBL has also announced these goodies:

JBL Live 780NC and 680NC: Two pairs of premium wireless headphones with active noise cancellation. They come in a range of colours, including iPhone-matching orange. What’s the difference? The Live 780NC are over-ear headphones, the 680NC are on-ear.

JBL Live 4 TWS: True wireless earphones with a charging case that has its own little screen. This shows you the battery level of both the earbuds and the case itself. They, of course, have active noise cancellation too.

Technology has gone a bit too far, don’t you think? The Gen Z backlash is real, continuing the millennial’s vinyl revival with a rejection of social media and embrace of good old cabled headphones. We’re here for it, but maybe it’s time for the classic Hi-Fi to make a reappearance too.

OK, so most Gen Z may not have the space for a massive Hi-Fi system with gigantic floorstander speakers. And if you live in a flat, cranking them is probably risking a noise order or eviction.

We had a chance to see what the Hi-Fi of decades past was actually like to live with as part of JBL’s 80th birthday celebrations, though, and test drive some absolute classics from the past. Are old Hi-Fis really that much better than a Sonos or a Bluetooth speaker? Of course they are, but it’s not quite as simple as all that.

Let’s start by digging into a design from all the way back in the 1950s...

JBL Paragon D44000 - A piece of history

This is the JBL Paragon D44000, first produced in 1957. It originally cost $1830, equivalent to more than $21,500, or £16,000-plus today.

It’s much more than just a speaker system. It is a piece of furniture, and a proper centrepiece. The Paragon is almost nine feet wide, weighs 390kg and is a bit of a masterpiece from a visual perspective alone.

You can only really see two of the six speaker drivers here, but their extreme angling tells you a lot about the intention here. They’re pointed towards a single, central, ideal listener position. And even though it’s coming up to its 70th birthday, you still get a pretty awesome experience when you sit in that spot.

Sweet and detailed vocals have the kind of imaging today’s modern, basically mono, wireless speaker couldn’t hope to achieve. But there is a problem.

Despite having a pair of absolutely massive 15-inch drivers inside the enclosure, the JBL Paragon D44000 doesn’t really have anything approaching deep bass. A modern 15-inch woofer could shake the plaster off your walls, but these old designs? They have such slight movement when vibrating to produce sound, true deep bass just isn’t possible.

But, hey, let’s not be too harsh when this was apparently the “first stereo loudspeaker for the home,” JBL claims.

JBL L100 - The 1970s classic

Stepping ahead a couple of decades, the JBL L100 came out in 1970 and are an undeniable design classic if you ask us. We would love a pair of these, while their iconic orange foam speaker grilles feel like they inspired the orange Apple uses today in its iPhones.

These speakers had “West coast sound” tuning that helped make them comfortably JBL’s best-selling speaker of the era. And even though the pair we heard were legit decades old — not one of the re-releases JBL has made in the last few years, including one in January 2026 — they sound great.

They’re sweet and engaging, not boomy or brash. And by now JBL had firmly solved the whole “no bass” issue it had back in the 1950s.

The one problem is most will find they sound best with the grilles removed. But to our eyes they look far better with that orange foam face in place.

You can pick up the remade version of them, the JBL L100 Mk2, for around £3999 online.

JBL 250Ti - Because more is more in the 1980s

These eye-catching slanted JBL floor standers were introduced in 1985, but they were setup to represent the 90s era. The Titanic VHS and Friends boxset present tell you everything you need to know.

In person these speakers do take on some of the more provocative character their visual design brings. Compared to the L100, you can hear the 250Ti have significantly more of the low-bass punch you might otherwise buy a subwoofer to get.

The sound is chunkier, larger. It’s the kind of room-filling stuff larger wireless speakers try to achieve these days, but with a bunch of massive speaker drivers rather than audio tricks.

Another decade of development has let JBL fill in even more of the lower audio frequency range. They occasionally pop up on eBay too. But, you've been warned, these beasts weigh 68kg each.

One odd part is we reckon some folks will see the JBL 250TI as the most obviously “dated” design of these three, even though it’s easily the newest. But given baggy trousers are back in fashion, maybe weird slanted floorstanders are next.

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Anyone who’s spent even five minutes on the Central line in August knows the London summer commute can feel less like public transport and more like being slowly steamed alive in a metal tunnel. Sony apparently knows this too, because it’s back with another attempt to stop Londoners melting through their work shirts on the morning tube ride.

The tech giant has just unveiled the REON POCKET PRO Plus, the newest version of its wearable personal cooling device, and it’s a tiny portable air-con unit designed to sit discreetly on the back of your neck. Yes, it sounds slightly ridiculous. Yes, it also sounds quite useful once temperatures start pushing past 30 degrees and the Victoria line turns into a sauna on rails.

The REON POCKET PRO Plus is Sony’s new flagship model in the REON series, arriving with upgraded cooling power, smarter sensors and a redesigned neckband that promises a more secure fit while walking around the city.

According to Sony, cooling performance has increased by up to 20 per cent compared to the previous version, while SMART COOL mode drops the cooling plate temperature by an additional 2°C for what the company describes as the most powerful cooling experience in the line’s history.

The idea is simple. The wearable device sits against the back of your neck and uses thermal technology to cool your skin directly, while built-in sensors monitor temperature in real time to adjust performance automatically. It’s less “portable fan from Boots” and more “cyberpunk commuter gadget from five years in the future”.

Sony has also redesigned the neckband entirely with what it calls an “Adaptive Hold Design”, which sounds like corporate jargon but essentially means it grips more securely without feeling uncomfortable. The airflow vents can also be adjusted depending on what you’re wearing, so whether you’re in a T-shirt, a collared shirt, or a light jacket, it should still dissipate heat properly without sticking out too obviously.

Alongside the main unit, Sony is also releasing the REON POCKET TAG 2, a smaller wearable sensor that tracks ambient temperature and humidity around you. The new version is around 18 per cent smaller than before and can now clip onto bags or belt loops using a carabiner attachment.

The REON series first launched back in 2019 and has quietly built up a following among commuters, office workers and anyone who’s ever had to survive summer in a city where most buildings still seem philosophically opposed to air conditioning.

The REON POCKET PRO Plus is already out via the Sony Store, priced at £199.

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While there has been a bit of a “return to the office” push in the last year or so, most of us are still splitting our work between our homes and the office. And, in many cases, that means a pokey London flat that was never designed for work in the first place. It’s not ideal.

So, whether you’re working from a desk that you need to fold away at the end of the day or trying to make the most of a small space, I’ve got some tips on the products and habits you’ll need that’ll make a big difference to your comfort.

Firstly, though, it’s worth dwelling on just why this is all so important.

“People often ignore the early warning signs, which present as aches and discomfort,” Graham Ashton, Ergonomist at Posturite, told me.

“If ignored, these can progress into persistent musculoskeletal pain, nerve irritation – like tingling in fingers – chronic fatigue and reduced concentration.”

If you don’t yet have back pain or RSI, now’s the time to make sure you don’t get it. Make sure you’re keeping an eye out for any neck and shoulder pain – as a result of looking down at a laptop – lower back discomfort (from a lack of lumbar support), wrist or forearm pain, eye strain, fatigue or headaches.

For elevating your posture

Working while hunched over can lead to pain quite quickly, and while there’s no such thing as perfect posture, staying static and reinforcing an uncomfortable sitting position can leave you hurting.

“If you’re working from a dining table or kitchen island, the goal is neutral posture with minimal kit,” Ashton said.

“My non-negotiables are a laptop riser, so the screen can be set to eye level to avoid neck flexion, and a separate keyboard and mouse… essential once the screen is elevated, otherwise you trade neck strain for shoulder/wrist strain – the key is function over furniture as its about creating alignment, not a perfect office.”

So, to recap: at the very least, you need to elevate your screen to your eye level (with a quality laptop stand or monitor) and get a portable keyboard and mouse.

My all-time favourite laptop stand is the Nexstand K2 (£24.99). It’s light, adjustable and collapses flat for travel. Hybrid workers will love it. If you need something weightier and destined to stay at home, though, I would pick the Twelve South Curve Flex (£79.99) instead. It also has a variety of heights and a very robust base that feels secure.

For typing and clicking

I’m big on accessories that won’t take up loads of space in your bag, so you can bring an ergonomic desk setup with you wherever you go. My mouse of choice would be the Logitech MX Anywhere 3S (£65), which is tiny and excellent, but you can save a little cash by going for the Logitech Pop Mouse (£24.99), which is even lighter, albeit less premium.

When it comes to light keyboards, little has impressed me more than the portable Keychron B1 Pro (£45.99); it’s slim, affordable and has months-long battery life. If the lack of backlighting is a dealbreaker for you, though, Logitech’s MX Keys Mini (£79.99) is a worthy, if pricey, alternative.

I asked Ashton about whether there were any potential pitfalls with small devices, and he mentioned that there could be.

“Compact devices can be helpful in tight spaces and easy to store, but they become problematic when they create poor working postures,” Ashton said.

“Those who use the numbers frequently can find separate number pads to maintain productivity. A general rule of thumb would be that ‘compact’ is fine, however ‘cramped’ is not.”

For charging and connecting

If you’re working with a small desk space, maximising that space is essential. These days, you can charge multiple devices with a single adapter, and as a charging nerd, I of course have a favourite plug. I’d opt for Anker’s Prime 160W charger with three USB-C slots (£129.99). It’ll charge three devices – like a MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone – at top speed, and tell you how fast it’s going with its screen. Overkill for a charger? Sure. But it’s excellent.

I’d also suggest connecting everything to a dock or USB-C hub. A basic USB-C hub should only set you back a tenner or so, but I’ve been highly impressed by the Anker 13-in-1 Docking Station (£129.99), as it handles every essential connection and has a tiny detachable hub for use on the go. Once again, pricey, but worth it.

For spreadsheets and YouTube

Unless you’re using a screen for gaming, you really don’t need to overspend on your monitor. 27 inches is the ideal size, and the BenQ GW2790E (£99.99) offers everything you need at a sensible price, while having features that reduce eye strain and an anti-reflective finish. I bought this monitor myself, and got around the lack of height adjustment by mounting it on the surprisingly great Amazon Basics Monitor Arm (£22.93).

If you do need to step up to a smarter monitor for productivity, pick the HP E27m G4 (£307.47), which has a built-in webcam, speakers and height adjustment.

For taking calls

Taking calls in a room where you’re constantly hearing the outside world or dealing with loud flatmates? Invest in the Jabra Evolve3 85s (£449). They’re the most impressive work headset that I’ve ever tried, and I love that they now come without the unsightly boom mic that makes them look like a headset.

I’ve taken calls on these in the middle of Oxford Street, with the radio playing at home and in the middle of Pret. Every time, the person on the other end said they heard my voice clearly and, on my end, powerful noise-cancelling kept my environment from distracting me.

Prefer earbuds? I’ve had great experiences making calls using the AirPods Pro 3 (£189) in the middle of busy Canary Wharf, and I haven’t been let down by Bose’s second-gen QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (£249) either.

For a high-quality dedicated webcam, I’d go with the Logitech MX Brio (£140.91), which makes it much easier for others to see you on calls, even in a darker room.

For comfort and cleanliness

The furniture can be the part that matters most.

If you’re genuinely so short on space that you can’t have a permanent desk, look for a fold-flat desk that you can store behind a door when not in use. If you have space for a desk, try to get one that you can raise up and down, allowing you to stand while working – the KOJI from Posturite (£599.94) is impressively compact.

Want to sit comfortably? The £681 Herman Miller Sayl is hardly cheap, but it may make sense as a long-term investment and as a way to avoid physio bills. Plus, it has a ridiculous 12-year warranty.

Keeping your desk tidy isn’t essential, but it helps! I’d recommend picking up some of Harber London’s excellent leather or felt desk mats, laptop pads or mouse pads. This can be the investment that makes a small corner of your home actually feel like a proper workspace.

Lastly, while it may seem a small thing, Dyson’s Pencil Vac (£429.99) is genuinely useful for keeping a tidy office without hauling out your big hoover. It’s the world's slimmest vacuum and smart, too, cleaning into edges, illuminating your space and running for 30 minutes of cleaning. Surprisingly fun to use (Editor Gerald Lynch swears by it), and one that may end up feeling essential pretty quickly.

Working smarter, not harder

Overall, though, the most important thing to take away from this piece is that you should never just “make do” with a poor setup and hunching over a laptop all day.

“So many people accept the poor working position of just opening a laptop,” Ashton said when I asked about the one biggest mistake we’re making.

“Taking that one minute to set up a laptop stand, keyboard and mouse is so effective in reducing the risk of developing aches and pains.”

It won’t surprise you that it’s important to stretch to avoid getting hurt, too. Ashton recommends you try to move around, and you don’t need loads of space! Aim to “reset” your posture every 20 to 30 minutes, try shoulder rolls, neck rotations, ankle pumps and sit-to-stand transitions (even without a standing desk). And, of course, get up and have a little walk. Use this to justify getting up on your feet and making your much-needed cup of tea.

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There are few objects more deeply tied to rock mythology than a Marshall amp. Stick one behind someone holding a guitar, and they instantly look about 40 per cent cooler. Stick six behind Jimi Hendrix, and you get the sort of images that end up printed on pub walls, band tees and uni bedroom posters for the next half century.

So this new collaboration between Marshall and the Hendrix estate feels less like a random merch drop and more like something that probably should have happened years ago. To mark 60 years since Hendrix first plugged into a Marshall amp in 1966, the company has unveiled a limited-edition collection inspired by both the guitarist’s sound and his famously chaotic sense of style.

The standout piece is a special edition Acton III Bluetooth speaker, which swaps Marshall’s usual understated rock aesthetic for something far more psychedelic. The whole thing is wrapped in crushed purple velvet, finished with cosmic graphics, glowing purple controls and a giant all-seeing eye on the side panel. Even the startup sounds have been lifted from rare Hendrix recordings.

It looks less like a speaker and more like an artefact recovered from a 1969 recording studio after several days without sleep.

Underneath all the flamboyance, though, there’s some genuinely serious gear. Marshall has also produced a limited-edition version of its 1959HW 100-watt amplifier and matching 1960AHW cabinet, complete with Celestion speakers and handmade construction from the company’s Bletchley factory.

The setup recreates the towering half-stack rigs Hendrix became synonymous with during the late 60s, back when louder apparently meant better and tinnitus was barely considered a medical issue.

There’s also a custom Hendrix-inspired version of the legendary Fuzz Face pedal, the snarling little stompbox that helped define some of the most recognisable guitar tones ever recorded. Hendrix used the effect constantly, pushing its fuzzy analogue distortion into something that sounded less like a guitar and more like the amp itself was about to physically disintegrate.

The collaboration lands at an interesting time for Marshall. While the brand still makes amps, it has spent the past decade transforming itself into something closer to a lifestyle audio company, branching into headphones, Bluetooth speakers and home sound systems. Guitar culture itself is also having another moment, with younger artists dragging old-school pedals, analogue setups and vintage rock gear back into fashion.

Which makes this collection feel surprisingly well timed. Nostalgia is booming, guitar music is creeping back into the mainstream, and apparently, people are once again interested in owning speakers covered in purple velvet.

The Acton III is priced at £259.99, while the full Marshall x Hendrix 60th Anniversary amp comes in at a considerably louder £3,799.99.

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For guitarists raised on bedroom amps and clunky practice rigs, the idea of a compact speaker that can also isolate tracks in real time sounds almost too good to be true. Like many a 30-something indie kid, I’d spend hours playing along to songs with my trusty axe, but was always frustrated by how difficult it was to rip out just the bits I wanted to play along with — if only not to have to compare my rudimentary playing to the guitar god trinity of Hendrix, Page and Marr.

If the JBL BandBox Solo had been around in my guitar playing glory years, perhaps I too could have joined that hallowed pantheon. Part Bluetooth speaker, part smart practice amp and part songwriting tool, it’s designed for modern musicians who learn from streaming platforms rather than dusty tab books.

More importantly, it makes practice genuinely addictive again, with some of the smartest use of AI I’ve seen so far in off-the-shelf music gear. Here are five reasons this clever little box deserves a place in your setup.

JBL BandBox Solo: In short...

• Clever AI stem separation isolates tracks from streaming in real time
• Includes a full practice studio: looper, tuner, drum machine, effects
• Sound is punchy and bigger than its small, compact size
• Designed for streaming practice; portable with six-hour battery life
• Surprisingly affordable, offering great flexibility for the £230 price

1. The AI stem separation is genuinely good

The headline feature is JBL’s Stem AI technology, which can isolate or remove vocals, guitar and drums from streamed tracks in real time. In practice, that means you can jam along with Spotify playlists and effectively create your own backing tracks without touching a laptop.

Unlike many gimmicky “smart” music products, this solves a real problem. Want to learn a solo? Strip out the original guitar. Want to practise rhythm? Remove the drums and become the timekeeper yourself. The fact that it’s doing it from a stream in real time (well, almost real-time — there’s a miniscule delay as you fire up each track) is crazy, the sort of feat once reserved for meticulously deconstructed tape reels.

It’s not perfect — every now and then the opening of a guitar line will pop through, or a cymbal crash will be needlessly dimmed. But the speed and ease with which this can be done with the accompanying JBL One app is incredible.

2. It packs an entire practice studio into one box

The BandBox Solo may be small (weighing about half a kilo and measuring 210x106x76mm), but it’s packed full of features beyond even that clever stem-removing tool. JBL has loaded it with a looper, tuner, metronome, drum machine, USB recording interface and multiple effects and amp models. There’s even a pinhole mic for vocals to go along with the ¼” guitar jack input.

And that’s before checking out a surprisingly-robust range of guitar tone ‘pedal’ presets, letting you add just the right amount of crunch or reverb to your playback.

That means fewer cables, fewer pedals and far less clutter. For newer players especially, it removes the intimidation factor of building a complicated home setup. You plug in, connect the app via Bluetooth with your phone and start playing within minutes.

3. It sounds far bigger than it looks

Compact practice amps often sound thin, fizzy or lifeless. But the BandBox Solo manages to sound much bigger than its diminutive size. JBL’s full-range speaker design (there’s a 2.25” full range speaker capable of 30W output in here) proves surprisingly punchy.

It has to serve several instrumental functions of course, and low-end frequencies for bass practice will suffer. But it’s still impressive considering the tiny size.

4. It’s built for the streaming generation — and on the road play

JBL understands how budding musicians actually consume music in 2026. The BandBox solo works directly with streamed audio over Bluetooth and integrates with the JBL One app for tone editing and control. That might sound like a small detail, but it fundamentally changes how convenient practice becomes. Instead of downloading tracks or hunting for backing versions on YouTube, you can simply stream a song and start interacting with it immediately.

For younger players especially, this feels intuitive in the same way older generations once found plugging into a cassette deck intuitive.

It feels like it’s built to last, too. Though the outer casing is plastic, rubberised corner padding will see that the BandBox Solo can survive a tumble or too. And despite the techy-innards, it’s very tactile to use. Menu buttons are clicky, the dial knob has notched feedback to make dialling in settings easier, and the small LED text indicator will be useful for making changes to settings in low-lit rooms.

The rechargeable battery (offering a respectable six-hour’s play per USB-C charge) is good for the size, and small dimensions make it easy to carry from the sofa to a backpack to a rehearsal space, which encourages more spontaneous playing. And that usually means more improvement when practicing over time.

The one drawback is one that will hopefully be easy to fix with an app update — there’s no master volume slider for all your different settings and playback tracks, making fine tuning the overall audio mix a bit of a pain.

5. It’s surprisingly affordable

This might be the biggest selling point of all. At just a £229.99 RRP (and already hitting storefronts for below the £200 mark) the JBL BandBox Solo is pretty darn good value.

Sure, there are simpler, cheaper, louder practice amps out there. But the sheer amount of flexibility the different features of the BandBox Solo offers for the price makes it really attractive. As a portable practice tool for a pro it’s a space-saving on-the-road replacement for loads of gear — and for a total beginner there’s loads of cool sounds to play with without breaking the bank on individual units.

Final verdict

The JBL BandBox Solo is the sort of gadget that would have seemed impossible just a few short years ago. Surprisingly intuitive, it opens up a world of practice options for the budding axe-master, and does so with sonic punch at a good price point.

For beginners it’s approachable, for experienced players it’s inspiring, and for anyone bored of traditional practice routines, it might be the most enjoyable guitar gadget you can throw in a bag.

Transport for London has upgraded its TfL Go app, with added intel on your spending, and for bus travel.

The big change to the freebie TfL Go app is you’ll now be informed when you’ve hit the daily or weekly travel cap, meaning you’re pretty much free to go wild on the Tube without incurring any additional fees.

This will of course apply when you use contactless “pay as you go” payments rather than a random Oyster card that’s been in your wallet for years. You can setup contactless payments from within the TfL Go app.

TfL also claims to have improved bus intel for those using the iPhone and iPhone versions of the app.

You’ll be able to see the location of the next bus you need in real-time, which is always handy when the minute count-down doesn’t seem to tally with reality. You can usually blame traffic lights.

We’ve checked out the Android version of the app, but it doesn’t appear to have this bus upgrade just yet.

“Android users can expect these features in the coming months,” says TfL.

Other new features include the ability to save locations, which does appear to be in the Android version already.

Better journey planning

TfL Go is of course not the only option you have for getting around London, but it’s a handy way to avoid being tempted to snag an Uber or other taxi brand when there’s a wait for the next train.

The app also offers journey planning across Tube, trains and buses, and an easy-access visual map of the transport network across London.

“We are always looking to improve our free TfL Go app and these latest improvements aim to make it easier for people to see when they have reached the daily or weekly cap,” says Emma Strain, TfL Customer Director.

“We have a range of further improvements planned to the app in the coming months to further make travelling in London by public transport as simple as possible.”

TfL Go has been around since 2020, and — sorry Android fans — its features often debut on Apple devices before they land on Androids. But we hopefully won’t have too long to wait for these new additions to arrive outside of iPhones and iPads.

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There’s a fine line between “retro-inspired” and just flogging you a grey box with a red button on it. This, thankfully, leans more toward the former.

Game Outlet Europe has announced that the 8BitDo Retro Cube 2 Speaker - N Edition is landing across Europe today (the 27th of April), and it’s about as subtle as a nostalgia hit to the face. Think chunky, cubic, and unapologetically throwback, clearly riffing on the design language of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which, slightly terrifyingly, is now pushing 40.

It’s tiny, too. Under 90mm on each side, which basically means it’ll sit happily on a cluttered desk, disappear into a backpack, or get dragged along to a park hang without much thought. At 450g, it’s not exactly weightless, but you’re not going to resent carrying it either.

Where it earns its keep is versatility. You’ve got three ways to hook it up: Bluetooth, 2.4GHz wireless, or good old wired USB, so it’ll play nice whether you’re pairing it with a phone, a laptop, or something a bit more niche in your gaming setup. There’s even a wireless charging dock bundled in, which doubles as a signal extender, so you’re not dealing with dropouts when you wander off mid-playlist.

The controls are pure fan service: a chunky D-pad up top handling volume, playback and pairing. It’s the kind of detail that could’ve felt gimmicky but actually makes sense once you’re using it.

Sound-wise, it’s doing more than just coasting on looks. Dual speakers push proper stereo audio, and there’s a built-in mic if you end up taking calls through it. Battery life clocks in at up to 30 hours, which is comfortably in “charge it and forget about it for the weekend” territory.

There’s also a toggle to flip between music and gaming modes, which is a nice touch if you’re bouncing between Spotify and whatever you’re currently rinsing.

At £39.99, it’s not trying to be your main speaker setup, and it doesn’t need to be. This is more about having something portable, functional, and just a bit fun to look at. A desk toy that actually does something useful, rather than just collecting dust.

If you’ve got even a passing soft spot for that old-school red-and-grey aesthetic, it’s going to be a tough one to ignore.

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For Star Wars fans across the globe May the 4th is an exciting time of year, but no doubt a terrifying one for their bank accounts.

With The Mandalorian and everyone’s favourite chaos gremlin Grogu still riding high as the franchise’s most bankable duo, brands have properly gone in on the May the 4th celebrations.

From slick toys, LEGO and even desk companions, this year’s drops lean hard into that Mando-and-Grogu sweet spot. The bounty hunter and his tiny, soup-sipping sidekick are doing what they do best: quietly stealing the spotlight… and your money. Here are our favourites.

LEGO Razor Crest

Big ship. Big nostalgia hit. Big dent in your wallet.

This 930-piece build gives The Mandalorian’s iconic Razor Crest a proper refresh, with opening panels, a detailed interior and just enough play features to justify actually taking it off the shelf now and then.

You’ve got Grogu in there too, obviously, alongside a few extras to pad out the scene. It’s not the most hardcore collector set LEGO’s ever done, but that’s kind of the appeal. It’s solid, good-looking, and doesn’t feel like homework to build.

Klang Talking Action Figure

The Klang talking figure leans fully into the interactive side of things, packing in a bunch of phrases, sound effects and little reactive touches. And look at that eyebrow and tache combo, how could you not love him?

It’s not trying to be a pristine collector’s item. This is more about instant, slightly chaotic fun, the kind of thing you pick up for a quick play and then realise you’ve been pressing the same button for five minutes straight.

LEGO Grogu

This is very much LEGO’s “let’s make Grogu into a centrepiece object again” strategy, and honestly, it works better than it should.

The set turns Grogu into a fully buildable display model, complete with beskar armour, his satchel, and a selection of poseable joints so you can tweak the expression and stance until it feels just smug enough for your shelf. There’s even a little display plaque if you want to lean fully into collector territory.

It’s less toy, more desk statue with a bit of personality, which feels very on-brand for May the 4th. The kind of thing you don’t necessarily “play” with, but you definitely adjust every time you walk past it.

The Mandalorian Voice-Changing Helmet

Full-size Mandalorian helmet with voice-changing effects and pre-recorded phrases

This is the closest you’ll get to actually becoming The Mandalorian without committing to full bounty hunter career training.

It’s a full-size adult helmet with built-in voice-changing tech and a set of pre-recorded lines, so you can finally say “This is the Way” in a slightly more intimidating tone than you would in real life. The interior is adjustable for fit, and the whole thing is built for proper roleplay rather than just display, even if most people will absolutely end up wearing it around the house for ten minutes and then putting it on a shelf.

It sits in that sweet spot between cosplay and collector piece, which basically means it’s designed to be both mildly ridiculous and completely irresistible.

Grogu Phone Stand

Grogu is doing what Grogu does best: sitting there, looking cute, and now physically supporting your tech lifestyle.

It’s a desktop phone holder shaped around Grogu, designed to cradle your phone (or controller) while he sits in his little Force-sensitive calm pose. It’s officially licensed, which means it’s just about polished enough to live on your desk without looking like a knock-off impulse buy, but still playful enough that it clearly knows exactly what it is.

It’s not trying to be clever or complicated. You put your phone on it, Grogu holds it, and that’s the entire pitch.

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Assassin’s Creed Black Flag has been doing the rounds for over a decade now, so Ubisoft could’ve easily got away with a quick polish and called it a day. Instead, it’s gone back in properly, remaking what is historically considered one of the franchise's best entries.

Black Flag Resynced, landing on the 9th of July is a full remake rather than a lazy remaster, keeping the pirate swagger intact but reworking enough of the systems to make it feel fresh again.

It’s still Edward Kenway, still the Caribbean, still the Jackdaw cutting through the waves, but quite a bit has changed under the surface. Here are the five biggest differences you’ll actually notice when you jump back in.

A full visual overhaul

Resynced is rebuilt in Ubisoft’s latest Anvil engine, bringing in ray-traced lighting, improved reflections and massively upgraded water simulation. The sea alone looks like a completely different game, which is kind of important when you spend half your time sailing it. Cities like Havana and Nassau feel denser and more alive, with more detail packed into every corner.

Character models have had a big upgrade too, with more expressive faces and sharper animations. It does make everyone look a bit cleaner than you might expect from a bunch of 18th-century pirates, but the trade-off is performances that land better in cutscenes. It’s less about nostalgia, more about making the world feel properly lived-in.

Combat is faster, sharper and less of a cakewalk

If you remember tearing through entire groups of enemies without breaking a sweat, that’s getting toned down. Combat in Resynced leans more into timing and precision, with a bigger focus on parries and counter-attacks. Edward moves faster, enemies hit harder and there’s a bit more thought required if you don’t want to get overwhelmed.

There are also new enemy types and additional weapons to mix things up, which should stop fights from feeling too samey. It still looks like Black Flag at its core, just with a bit more bite and less button-mashing your way through every encounter.

Parkour gets an upgrade

Movement was always fun in Black Flag, but it could feel a bit limited compared to later entries. Resynced fixes that by adding more advanced parkour mechanics, including manual jumps, side ejects and back ejects that let you control exactly where Edward goes.

It means freerunning is less automated and more skill-based, giving you more freedom to chain together routes and actually express how you move through the world. It might sound like a small tweak, but it makes a big difference once you’re darting across rooftops or escaping guards.

A stealthy improvement

One of the strangest omissions in the original game was the lack of a proper crouch button. That’s been sorted here, with Edward now able to lower his profile anywhere, not just when hiding in bushes. It instantly makes sneaking around feel more natural.

There’s more to it than that though. A new observe mode enhances Eagle Vision, letting you plan routes more effectively, while lighting and shadows now affect how visible you are. You can also approach targets from the sea more freely, adding a few extra options when you’re trying to stay unseen.

Those painful tailing missions are finally fixed

Ask anyone what they hated most about the original Black Flag, and this will come up. The game had loads of tailing missions, and failing them meant starting all over again. It was frustrating then, and it hasn’t aged well.

Resynced dials that back in a big way. If you get spotted or lose your target, the mission doesn’t just end. Instead, you’re given a chance to recover and carry on, whether that means tracking the target down again or dealing with things in a more direct way. It’s a small change on paper, but easily one of the most welcome.

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IKEA has unveiled the first pieces from its PS 2026 collection, which includes an inflatable chair and a rocking bench.

As part of its Milan Design Week activities, IKEA has shown off three eye-catching designs that you’ll be able to order from May 14th.

One is an inflatable chair. The second is a wooden rocking bench, the third an unusual and funky-looking bending lamp.

The inflatable chair is perhaps the most eye-catching of the lot, if not the one we’d necessarily stick at the top of our own shopping list. After all, IKEA has published the story of its failed past attempts at inflatable furniture.

This new stab comes from designer, Mikael Axelsson, and it features two large inflatable elements held within a shiny carbon steel frame. It’s apparently inspired by tyres.

“My initial idea was to create a metal frame with a balloon trapped inside. It not only makes it firmer and sturdier, but also gives it a more playful expression, like a balloon bulging out,” says Axelsson.

It uses a manual foot pump, and is designed to fit into pretty much flatpack-format packaging once deconstructed.

Next up is the rocking bench, from designer Marta Krupińska. It’s a clean and minimalist design, apparently inspired by the kind of bench you might sit on while at an event like Oktoberfest.

As IKEA explains, the difficult part with this one was making the bench strong enough to withstand the pressures of movement. Early iterations fell apart under the stress of having multiple people rocking on the thing.

The third PS 2026 item is something we can picture all sort of folks actually picking up. It’s a lamp that bends at two points of articulation, letting it shift from an upright light to a spotlight.

This is a design from Lex Pott, and it comes in three colours: yellow, blue and a rich red.

“I chose a warm, light yellow, which really lights up a space and adds a subtle touch of colour, then cobalt blue, because it's timeless, with a lot of history. Finally, I chose a dark Bordeaux red because it's a more classical, warm tone that is versatile enough to fit with many different ambiences,” says Pott.

The lamp’s frame is steel, which is cut at 45 degrees at the two twist points. “This simple form is no less than an uplighter, spotlight and reading lamp all in one,” is the pitch here.

As these are preview teasers, IKEA hasn’t announced pricing yet, but the whole concept of the PS series is it offers clever design at a “low price.”

The entire 35-strong PS 2026 range will get a full unveil on May 13th, ahead of their release on May 14th.

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If you’ve been eyeing up Xbox Game Pass but couldn’t quite justify the monthly hit, there’s some decent news. Microsoft has just dropped the price of its top tiers in the UK, bringing Game Pass Ultimate down from £22.99 to £16.99 a month, and PC Game Pass from £13.49 to £10.99.

That’s a pretty chunky saving, especially considering the service still gives you access to hundreds of games, cloud streaming and day-one releases for first-party titles. But before you start mentally reallocating your subscription budget, there is a bit of a trade-off here. And it’s a big one if you’re into shooters.

Going forward, new entries in the Call of Duty series will no longer launch on Game Pass on day one. Instead, they’ll be added around a year later, usually during the following holiday season. Existing Call of Duty titles already on the service aren’t going anywhere, but that headline perk of getting the latest release instantly has now been pulled back.

It marks a fairly significant shift in strategy. Microsoft spent years pushing Game Pass as the place to play major titles the moment they drop, and that approach even extended to Call of Duty after its massive acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Now, it looks like the cost of that model is starting to show.

Part of the reasoning comes from the new Xbox leadership. CEO Asha Sharma has reportedly described Game Pass as becoming “too expensive for players”, with a need to rebalance the value of the service. Cutting the monthly price is the first step in that, but removing day-one access to one of the biggest franchises in gaming suggests there’s a wider rethink going on behind the scenes.

It’s not hard to see why; while Game Pass has been a big success in terms of engagement, it has also raised questions about how it impacts game sales, especially for blockbuster releases. Dialling back the biggest perk while lowering the price feels like Microsoft trying to find a middle ground that keeps both players and publishers on side.

For now, though, the takeaway is fairly simple. Game Pass is cheaper than it was last week, which is great if you’ve been holding off. Just don’t expect to jump straight into the next Call of Duty the day it lands.

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It's long been rumoured, and now it's been confirmed: Apple's next CEO will be John Ternus.

The Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering will take over from current CEO Tim Cook from September 1st, 2026, with Cook moving into an executive chairman role.

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” said Ternus, who has spent half his life working at Apple, following the news.

“Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another."

What better time than now then to re-visit our exclusive chat with Ternus? We spoke with the soon-to-be Apple head honcho in London following the release of the iPhone Air, during which he gave some insight into what may be the future of the company under his stewardship.

The full interview continues below...

Even if you're not fully clued up on all the latest tech, you'll probably have heard that there's a new iPhone in town. Well, there are a few actually. You might not know about the latest Apple Watches or the new AirPods Pro 3 with a heart rate sensor built in, but we would hazard a guess you've caught wind of the new iPhone Air and maybe even the redesigned iPhone 17 Pro models and heavily improved iPhone 17 too, if you've been paying attention.

If, like us, you have been wowed by the new iPhone Air, impressed by the new health features on Apple Watch, or disappointed there is still no folding iPhone, then you should hear what the person at Apple who oversees all new products had to say when we caught up with him.

John Ternus, Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, gave Shortlist a glimpse into the design philosophy behind the new super slim iPhone Air, a glimmer of hope that a folding iPhone wasn't off the cards — and a great book he reckon's everyone needs to read, too.

A new 'wow' moment

For John Ternus, the last thing that made him go "wow" was easy to identify.

"It was the first time I got to pick up an iPhone Air model," he told us before adding that he'd enjoyed watching other people pick up the device for the first time too. He said he'd witnessed a "universal reaction" where "people pick it up, they turn, and go, 'oh wow'," and while it all sounds very cheesy, we have to admit we were one of those people.

As you might expect (these things never happen overnight), the creation of the iPhone Air was the culmination of years of technological development.

"We wanted to do a product like this for a long time," Ternus told us, but to make it a "great iPhone with great battery life, performance and camera, we needed to develop a lot of technologies that have been in the works and we've been getting better at over the years."

He highlighted the significance of Apple Silicon (the company's own chips), explaining, "for the first time on an iPhone, we have A19 Pro, the SOC is Apple Silicon; we have C1X, the cellular modem; and now N1 which is our Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip. Having all of that allowed us to have incredible efficiency, which means we can have great battery life on such a thin phone."

And thin it most definitely is. At 5.6mm, it's thinner than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge — and it looks as good as half our friends on Mounjaro.

Beyond looking after all the new products Apple announces, it might surprise you to learn Ternus still has a little spare time for hobbies. We asked him what the coolest thing he'd shot on iPhone was and he told us he likes to scuba dive.

"I shoot film and video and photos underwater with an iPhone in a case and it's really, really good for that," he said. On a professional level, he thought the movie 28 Days Later, much of which was shot on iPhone, was "absolutely amazing".

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When it came to the latest iPhone feature that will have the biggest impact on everyday people, Ternus highlighted one that we're big fans of too – the new Center Stage front camera, which is available on all the new models from the standard iPhone 17 to the iPhone 17 Pro.

"I think that the new Centre Stage front camera is going to be really exciting because people love taking selfies," he told us. He also mentioned the staggering 500 billion selfies that have been taken on iPhone in the past year, suggesting this feature "completely changes that experience" by automatically shifting the view if another person enters the frame and allowing you to switch between portrait and landscape without rotating the phone. It's such a good feature, it's a surprise it's taken this long for someone to think of it, to be honest.

A folding iPhone isn't off the cards (it's just not confirmed yet either)

When asked about the future of Apple and if a folding iPhone is on the horizon, Ternus was, as expected, elusive. He was never going to tell us outright, of course — but don't ask, don't get, as the saying goes. He did give a little tease, saying "the future is the future ,and it's always going to be exciting," and when pressed on a folding iPhone, he simply replied, "who's to say..."

For those that love a deep dive, he did give us a little more insight into Apple's design philosophy, suggesting that technologies developed for one product often find their way into others.

"I think what's exciting is when we develop new technologies and new capabilities that enable a product like iPhone Air... we apply those things in different places," he told us. He used the example of the miniaturisation of technology developed for the Apple Watch and AirPods, noting that now Apple has got "good at certain things and materials, they'll start to show up in other places as well."

To us, the iPhone Air looks exactly what we would expect half a folding iPhone to look like so we're hoping that what Apple learned in making the Air does exactly what Ternus says and shows up in new places, including new formats, in the future.

For those of you deciding between the new iPhone models (it's a tough choice this year after all), Ternus compared it to Apple Mac.

"I think the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is a good analogy for it," he said. The iPhone Air was built for customers who love a "premium 'pro' iPhone experience" but are excited by a new form factor.

By creating it though, it allowed Apple to push the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max to be "even more pro", with "more performance, more battery life, better cameras, all of those things". Like with MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, Ternus said "you kind of choose based on what matters the most to you", in this case slim form factor with good performance and battery, or top performance, camera and battery.

Health, wellness, and personal streaks

Ternus also gave us a little insight into Apple’s vision for health and wellness during our chat.

"I think what's amazing with products like Apple Watch and AirPods, we want to help empower people to have the tools they need to take care of their own health," he said.

He highlighted features like Sleep Apnea detection and Hypertension Notifications as ways to "inform people of what's going on in their body and so that they can go and talk to a doctor," before concluding that he thought it was "all about empowerment and providing great information".

When we asked him about his Apple Watch Ring streak though, we think we might beat him with our 565 days.

"I'm travelling, so I always struggle with my streaks when I'm travelling, but I guess we'll start a new one when I get home," he said. Time to put those wearables to good use!

This article was originally published on September 26, 2025.

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Sam Altman is one of the key figures of the apparent upcoming AI-dismantling-of-society-as-we-know-it race, but his start-up Tools for Humanity has come up with a solution for an actual problem you may have faced — gig ticket scalpers.

Tools for Humanity has announced something called Concert Kit, sold as an antidote to bots who buy up massive numbers of gig tickets to be sold on the resale market at a massive markup.

The concept is a ticket allocation will be reserved for folks who have already had their ID verified using the company’s World ID tech.

“Use World ID to prove you are a unique human, without revealing anything else about you,” claims the service’s website.

The idea is this system proves you are a real, legit person, not a bot or some sort of AI creation. And it’s also intended for use in app-based dating and video chat services like Zoom, where you can no longer be 100 per cent sure you’re actually talking to a real person. Because that’s the world we live in nowadays.

Meet The Orb

But here’s where it all gets a bit 1990s sci fi Hollywood dystopia again — Tools for Humanity’s ID tech uses a camera blob called The Orb, which scans your eyes and face to create, and check, your unique ID. And it does look a bit like it could have been lifted straight out of the dystopian video game Half-Life 2.

Of course, the real-world implementation of this is more likely to mean getting a face scan using your phone’s selfie camera most of the time, rather than one of those cute-slash-ominous The Orb things.

But if Tools for Humanity gets its way, we’ll be seeing more The Orbs about the place in public before too long.

Zoom has also announced an integration with the company’s World ID tech, the headline goal of which is "real-time human verification to confirm participants are real people.”

Deep Face is the core tech here, which looks for signs a person in a video call might be a deep fake, with “the option to request an on-demand check of any participant during a call.” Yikes.

Is this a case of the AI tech bros trying to sell us a solution to problems they’ve largely created? Sure is. But when acts like Harry Styles can somehow sell out 12-night runs at the 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium, measures that tip the odds in real fans’ favour are welcome.

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Nintendo has quietly dropped a new pop-up store in London, and it’s hiding in plain sight. The “Nintendo Experience Zone” has opened inside the Argos Tottenham Court Road, turning part of the shop into a surprisingly well-stocked corner of all things Mario, Zelda and beyond.

The discovery didn’t come via a big announcement, either. It was first spotted on TikTok by creator BadxGurlCosplay, with the find later picked up by VGC, which explains why it feels like one of those blink-and-you-miss-it setups rather than a full-blown launch.

At first glance, it’s just a regular Argos. Head inside, and you’ll find shelves stacked with Nintendo merch that’s usually a bit of a nightmare to track down in the UK. Plushies, action figures, and, most importantly for collectors, a solid run of amiibo are all on offer.

If you’ve ever tried to get hold of certain amiibo without paying resale prices, you’ll know that’s a pretty big deal. These things have a habit of disappearing quickly, and not always reappearing at retail.

There’s also the expected lineup of games and consoles, so if you’re after a new Switch title or picking up hardware, you’re covered.

Realistically, it’s the merch that makes this worth a visit, especially if you’re after something a bit more niche than what you’d find in your average high street shop.

It also taps into something Nintendo fans in the UK don’t get all that often: physical retail experiences. Outside of Japan and a handful of flagship stores in places like New York and San Fran, most of Nintendo’s more interesting products tend to live online.

London did briefly get a taste of that last year with a pop-up in Westfield, which pulled in exclusive items from those global stores, everything from apparel to homeware. That one only lasted a few weeks, though, and once it was gone, so was the stock.

This new Tottenham Court Road setup isn’t quite on that level in terms of exclusivity, but it still fills a similar gap. Reports suggest there are items here that aren’t widely available elsewhere in the UK, even if they’re not strictly “Tokyo store” exclusives.

It’s not huge, and it’s not trying to be a full destination store. Think of it more as a well-stocked pit stop, somewhere you dip into rather than plan a whole day around. But for fans, collectors or anyone after a slightly more interesting gift, it’s an easy win.

The Nintendo Experience Zone is set to stick around for the next couple of months, so there’s no immediate rush. That said, if past pop-ups are anything to go by, the more desirable bits won’t hang around forever.

So if you find yourself near Tottenham Court Road and fancy a quick nostalgia hit, or just want to see what’s actually on the shelves, it’s probably worth a look before it quietly disappears again.

• Wes Anderson collaborator turns 5 coffee machines into stunning city scenes

Wish kitchen gadgets didn’t look so boring? De’Longhi wants a word.

It has created a quintet of coffee machines that are actual works of art, made in collaboration with a man responsible for the look of Wes Anderson movies — among others.

Simon Weisse has worked with Wes Anderson on models for films like Grand Budapest Hotel, The Phoenician Scheme and Asteroid City, and he and his team are behind these radically customised coffee machines.

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Five models — the De'Longhi Rivelia, Magnifica Evo Next, Eletta Ultra, Eletta Explore, and Primadonna Aromatic — just like those you might buy yourself, were each transformed into a coffee shop scene inspired by the coffee culture a great city.

The designs are based on Milan, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen.

Yes, London has been brutally snubbed, perhaps because Simon and his team didn’t fancy recreating a slightly tired-looking Pret a Manger to properly depict the average Londoner’s coffee experience.

The results are gorgeous, with the fine detail of the Tokyo and Paris scenes standing out as real highlights, from a distance. But if you want to see these creations in person, you’ll have to head over to Milan Design Week where they will be shown as part of a The World’s Smallest Coffee Shop display.

The bad news: we don’t think you’ll be able to buy your own version of these any time soon.

Weisse and team spent a collective 1500 hours making the fronts for the machines, including hand-making accessories like chairs and micro coffee machines, and hand painting the building texture. Other parts were 3D-printed.

“When De’Longhi approached the studio, the opportunity to apply the same cinematic ‘forced perspective’ used in film to a real-world ritual was immediate,” says Weisse.

“In my work for the screen, miniatures are used to create a sense of wonder and precision that feels more ‘real’ than a computer-generated image.”

Some of Weisse’s movie work you may well be able to recall without trying includes the miniature of The Grand Budapest Hotel itself, the world of The City of Lost Children and the sets for Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. He even worked on The Neverending Story sequels back in the 1990s.

The obvious question: why do this at all? This creative little De’Longhi campaign is intended to highlight that you can create a coffee shop-grade cup of coffee at home. All of the models used are bean-to-cup machines, starting at — based on today’s Amazon pricing — around £450.

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With modern technology being what it is (i.e. more advanced than the average person) it’s not surprising that there is a daily slew of updates ranging from useful to impressive. Also, thanks to the sheer volume of developments across everything from tech to streaming, it’s not surprising that a recent Google Maps update went slightly under the radar.

The crux of the update is that it shows you the real-time location of each bus on your local area map, nationwide. Amongst the minutiae of the update, we’ve pulled out three of the main things you need to know about the change.

1. It’s a very basic upgrade

Yeah, so not to throw shade, but there’s probably a reason this update has flown pretty much under the radar so far. Aside from a line in a press release from the UK Government (more on that later), there hasn’t been a lot of shouting about it. The main reason for this is likely because the upgrade itself, whilst definitely a step in the right direction, is fairly rudimentary. The official app shows you the real-time location of each bus on the map of the local area, with updates happening every 10 seconds or so, showing delays, diversions, and how far away they actually are.

2. It’s in partnership with the UK Government

So the update itself is a partnership between the UK Government and Google, as part of its 'Better Connected: tap-and-go travel across trains, trams and buses' transport strategy. The service will be especially useful for passengers in rural areas where bus services are less frequent. Google Maps' new update is similar to "ride-hailing" apps, and allows you to see the actual bus moving along the map in real-time, rather than just seeing a countdown timer.

3. It’s not using original data

Like most maps that pop up showing you the real-time location of buses, tubes, and other traffic, the data used isn’t a unique tracked set of stats. It seems to be coming from the Bus Open Data Service (BODS), which features detailed information about buses across England. This includes vehicle location, fares, data and timetabling, and essentially does all the hard work for services like Google and any other interested parties – think City Mapper, Waze, the list goes on. Given the scale of Google as a company and its penchant for pioneering, it wouldn’t be surprising if they start to develop their own in-house metrics to analyse and progress the data.

You may be wondering what makes it different from other apps, as some other services like Apple Maps already have a similar live-map feature for most buses in London, showing the last known location of the bus you’re attempting to take and an estimation of how far away it is in minutes. Apple also shows bus delay information, although Google Maps’ new update should show delays as well as where the buses are across England.

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If you like your tech a bit less polished, and a lot more interesting, this might be one to keep an eye on.

The 'hOMMEMADE Game Console' is a custom-built retro machine that looks like it’s been pulled from an alternate-universe Nintendo lab. It runs on RetroPie, packs a flip-up LCD screen, and comes wrapped in a clean cream-and-blue shell that leans hard into that late-90s aesthetic.

It’s got all the right bits, too. Dual red analogue sticks, a bright blue d-pad, classic four-button layout, plus Select and Start where you’d expect them. Round the back, there’s USB support and a power toggle, nothing flashy, just properly thought-through. You also get two SNES-style wireless controllers in the box, which tells you exactly how this thing’s meant to be used: on a sofa, arguing over split-screen.

What’s pushed it onto people’s radar, though, is who’s already been spotted using it. A$AP Rocky himself has been seen trying it out on Instagram, giving the console a bit of early hype before it’s officially on sale. And that should come as no surprise, given that hOMMEMADE is backed by AWGE — A$AP Rocky's own creative agency.

That low-key rollout fits with the brand behind it. hOMMEMADE isn’t your typical tech company chasing mass production, it sits somewhere between design studio, streetwear label and hardware tinkerer.

The focus is on small-batch, design-led pieces that feel more like collectibles than off-the-shelf gadgets, often blending nostalgia with modern functionality. Which explains why buying one isn’t straightforward...

There’s no listed price and no standard checkout, if you want the console, you’ll need to enquire directly through the website. That suggests limited quantities, custom builds, or at the very least something that’s not being churned out at scale.

The appeal here isn’t just playing retro games, it’s owning something that feels deliberately made, slightly rare and a bit different from the usual identikit tech. We still don't know anything about software or how the console runs, but its certainly one to keep an eye on.

In a world of identical consoles and endless digital downloads, this is the opposite: tactile, niche and built with actual personality. Whether that’s worth the mystery price tag is another question, but it’s definitely got people paying attention.

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If you’re staring down the London Marathon and starting to wobble slightly, this might help. Paula Radcliffe, still the UK’s most iconic marathon runner, is hosting a free live event in London the day before the 2026 race, offering up a final dose of wisdom before 26.2 miles of reality hits.

The former world-record holder will be at Apple Brompton Road, London, on Saturday, the 25th of April, recording a live episode of her Paula’s Run Club podcast alongside two-time Olympian Chris Thompson. It’s part of Apple’s wider takeover of marathon week, but this is the one that’ll likely fill up quickest.

Thanks to her experience, you’ll no doubt get some savvy advice you actually want to hear, with her talk set to touch on topics like: how not to blow up halfway round, how to deal with the inevitable bad patch, and what’s going through your head when you hit the later miles and everything starts hurting. In other words, less glossy inspiration, more survival tactics.

They’ll also get into the role tech plays in modern running, pacing, tracking, staying locked in, with Apple, unsurprisingly, front and centre. The session is hosted by Apple Fitness+ trainer Cory Wharton-Malcolm, a key figure in London’s running scene, so it shouldn’t feel too corporate.

It’s free to attend, but space is limited, so you’ll need to be quick to get your name down. The event sits within a bigger push from Apple around the TCS London Marathon, which now pulls in over a million ballot applicants, a slightly absurd number that tells you how big this thing has become.

Earlier in the week, Joe Wicks is leading a 5K shakeout run from the same store, joined by a mix of trainers and athletes to help runners loosen up (and probably overthink everything a bit more). Then on race day itself, Apple Music will be dotted along the course with DJs and playlists aimed at dragging people through the tougher stretches.

All of which means marathon week is starting to feel less like a single event and more like a full-blown festival, just one where everyone’s slightly tired and obsessing over their pace. Still, if you’re going to take advice from anyone before doing something this daft, Radcliffe’s not a bad place to start. You can sign up here.

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Fallen foul to doorstep parcel theft? Think your home needs a smart tech upgrade? There’s a new option from a name you probably wouldn’t guess: Sky.

That’s right, the Sky that offers TV and entertainment subscriptions, and broadband, also now provides smart home tech as part of Sky Smart Home.

There’s a doorbell with a built-in camera, and companion chime, plus a smart indoor camera. And while this stuff isn’t brand new, this is the first time you’ve been able to get it as part of a simple standalone subscription.

You don’t just hop on to Amazon to get this tech. It’s bought as part of either a Smart Home Plan or Smart Home Plan+ subscription.

If you just want the smart doorbell (and chime ringer) you’ll pay £15 up front, and then £5 a month for the on-going service. So effectively it’s £20 for month one, then a fiver a month after that.

Smart Home Plan+ is £20 up front, plus £8 a month, and that gets you the smart doorbell plus an Indoor Camera.

Each plan comes with a 24-month commitment, although there’s a 31-day “cooling off” period to start should you really not get on with what’s on offer here.

These plans get you 30-day cloud storage for recordings, motion notifications on your phone and two-way talk through the smart doorbell. Its camera also has a night vision mode, and it’s a 1080p resolution cam.

The Indoor Camera has a speaker and mic too, for two-way talk.

“Sky Smart Home is about making high‑quality smart tech more accessible. We’ve taken the features customers value most and made them easy to use, simple to manage and affordable, so staying connected to home feels effortless rather than complicated,” says Paul Sweeney, Sky Smart Home’s MD.

This tech was originally introduced as part of Sky’s Smart Home Insurance, which arrived back in 2023.

There are upgrades too. You can get additional Indoor Cameras for £50, a motion sensor pack for £35 and a Leak Pack for £40. This looks for water leaks, and keeps track of the humidity and temperature level.

You’re not short of other options in this field, of course, including Ring, Blink, Tapo, Google, Eufy and others. But if you’re already a Sky Diamond VIP customer you also may be eligible for a 30 per cent reduction on one of these Sky Smart Home plans. One to check out.

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After years of false starts, delays and near-misses, a live-action Metal Gear Solid movie is finally moving forward, and it’s coming together quickly.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein have been tapped to helm the project for Sony Pictures, as part of a major first-look deal with the studio.

If those names sound familiar, it’s because the duo are coming off the back of Final Destination: Bloodline, a revival of the long-running horror franchise that ended up being both a box office hit and one of the best-reviewed entries in the series. That success has effectively fast-tracked them into one of the more in-demand directing teams in Hollywood right now.

Under the new deal, their production company Wonderlab will develop and produce projects across Sony’s various film labels, with a focus on big, commercial, character-driven genre films. The Metal Gear Solid adaptation is one of the headline projects to come out of that agreement.

For anyone who’s been following this one, it’s been a long time coming. A film adaptation of the franchise, created by Hideo Kojima, has been stuck in development since 2012, with various directors, ideas and casting rumours coming and going over the years.

At one point, Jordan Vogt-Roberts (best known for Kong: Skull Island) was attached to direct, and Oscar Isaac had been lined up to play protagonist Solid Snake. There’s no confirmation yet on whether any of those earlier plans will carry over into this new version.

What is clear is the scale of the ambition. The original Metal Gear Solid games blended stealth gameplay with dense, cinematic storytelling, mixing military espionage with sci-fi elements in a way that was pretty groundbreaking at the time. Translating that to film has always been the challenge, and the reason it’s taken this long to get off the ground.

Lipovsky and Stein seem fully aware of that legacy. In a statement, they described the game as “a groundbreaking cinematic masterpiece” and said they’re aiming to bring its “iconic characters and unforgettable world” to life on screen.

There’s no release date or casting confirmed just yet, so it’s still early days. But after more than a decade of development limbo, the fact that it’s now locked in with a studio, directors and a broader production deal suggests this might finally be the version that sticks.

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Along with the welcome return of the sunshine comes the less-welcome return of itchy hayfever eyes, speedo-wearing sunbathers on the Common, and of course the volcanic temperatures of the tube.

Come summer, and the tube turns into a mini tech convention, with commuters showing off their nifty cooling devices from the old-school paper fans to whizzy battery-powered Amazon finds. Now, engineering titan Dyson is getting in on the action, with the new HushJet Mini Cool Fan.

Bringing breeze to the Bakerloo line and beyond, this fan is like the F1 of fans, whilst everything that's come before it is more like the equivalent of being stuck in traffic in a second-hand Ford Fiesta on the motorway. Promising powerful cooling projection, this is Dyson's first foray into portable, handheld fan mastery, engineered for all on-the-go antics.

It's pretty compact too, measuring just 38mm and weighing 212g, with a nice elongated cylindrical shape, which means it will fit easily in your work bag without being so compact you'll be scrabbling around trying to find it.

Multifunctional, the fan is designed to be used as a wearable, on your desk, or handheld with a decent six-hour battery, so you won’t suddenly wilt as it dies mid-sweat. If you’re into technicals, it achieves airflow speeds of up to 25m/s, powered by a brushless DC motor spinning at up to 65,000 RPM. It has five airflow speeds plus a Boost mode for extra turbocharged power.

As expected, anything from Dyson will come with a pretty steep price tag – quality n’ all that. Currently, the HushJet Mini Cool Fan comes in three colourways, Ink / Colbalt, Carnelian/Sky, and Stone/Blush, all retailing for £99.99.

The HushJet in the title isn’t just a bit of fancy jargon, but is actually a pretty groundbreaking bit of engineering from Dyson. Ever switched on an electronic device and briefly wondered if the Earth’s core is shaking thanks to the noise and buzzing said devices emit? A frequent occurrence, especially with heavy fans. However, the HushJet nozzle is the result of Dyson’s obsession with acoustics, meaning they’ve managed to lower the frequencies, eliminating high-pitched whirring, and silenced the sound of whining motors, so you get all the cooling with none of the buzzing.

The fans are launching in late April, available directly from Dyson's website.

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If you’ve been quietly losing hours to Pokémon Pokopia, there’s now a way to log off and still stay in that world. A real-life Pokémon garden has landed in London, and it’s completely free to visit.

Called Pokopia Gardens, the pop-up has taken over The Mount in Acton, first opening on the 31st of March and running through to the end of September. It’s open 24/7, costs nothing to enter, and sits just a short walk from Acton Town station, meaning you can swing by whenever, whether that’s a quick wander after work or a slightly more intentional weekend detour.

The whole thing is part of a wider push from The Pokémon Company, which is also rolling out similar gardens across Paris and Berlin. The idea is to take the core concept of Pokopia, rebuilding a soft, nature-filled world designed to bring Pokémon back into it, and recreate that feeling in real-world public spaces.

In practice, that means a curated mix of plants and greenery designed to mirror the game’s gentle, slightly dreamlike aesthetic. There are “living walls”, Pokémon-inspired terrariums, and little visual touches that make the space feel like it’s been lifted straight out of a Nintendo screen without going full theme park.

It’s not trying to be loud or overly interactive. Instead, it leans into the same slower, more relaxed rhythm that makes Pokopia work in the first place, somewhere between a garden, an art installation and a low-stakes spot to chill out

There’s a bit more going on if you’re playing Pokémon GO, too. The site includes themed Gyms and PokéStops, meaning you can spin for items, collect gifts and send them on while you’re wandering around. It’s a small detail, but it ties the physical space back into the wider Pokémon ecosystem in a way that actually makes sense.

Pokopia has quickly become a daily ritual for players, the kind of game you dip into for a bit of calm, and this feels like a natural extension of that. A way of turning a digital experience into something you can walk through.

While it’s easy to roll your eyes at branded pop-ups, this one’s at least doing something a bit different. No tickets, no queues, no pressure to buy anything, merely a free, open space that happens to be themed around one of the biggest franchises in the world.

If nothing else, it’s a solid excuse to get outside, slow down a bit, and pretend, even briefly, that your walk through Acton is part of a much nicer, more carefully designed world.

You can visit the Pokopia garden at The Mount, Acton, London W3 9NW

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With NASA’s Artemis II mission carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen around the Moon, attention is drifting back to the idea of humans pushing further into space than they have in over half a century.

Riding that wave of renewed interest is a smartwatch that’s trying to turn that inspiration into something a bit more hands-on.

The Artemis Watch 2.0, made by CircuitMess, is a $129 programmable smartwatch designed less as a gadget you wear and more as something you can digitally rebuild into your own creation.

Out of the box, it looks and behaves like a fairly standard smartwatch. It connects to iOS and Android devices over Bluetooth, handles notifications and activity tracking, and comes with a colour display, sensors and a rechargeable battery.

Powered by a dual-core ESP32 microcontroller, the watch is fully open-source and reprogrammable using Python, Arduino IDE or CircuitMess’s own block-based coding environment, CircuitBlocks. That means users aren’t stuck with preset watch faces or locked features; they can design their own, build mini apps, and start experimenting with how the device actually works.

For younger users (it’s recommended for ages 9 and up), the entry point is deliberately accessible. CircuitBlocks offers a visual way to learn the basics, while more advanced users can move into Python and start writing proper code without hitting a ceiling. It’s a rare example of a smartwatch that doesn’t quietly shut the door once you’ve outgrown the beginner stage.

The hardware helps with that flexibility as well. Alongside the processor, the watch includes an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and temperature sensor, all of which can be accessed and programmed. That opens the door to projects that go beyond step counting or simple notifications: tracking movement patterns, building custom alerts based on direction, or logging environmental data over time.

Because the firmware is open-source and hosted publicly, there’s no proprietary lock-in. In theory, everything from the interface to the behaviour of the sensors can be modified if you’ve got the know-how or the patience to learn.

CircuitMess has also packaged the watch into bundles, including a larger kit alongside its Perseverance rover build, positioning the smartwatch as part of a broader push into STEM-focused toys that feel more like tools than novelties.

It’s not trying to compete with mainstream smartwatches on polish or premium features. Instead, it leans into the idea that a wearable can be something you learn from, not just something you use.

In a week where space exploration is back in the headlines, that feels like a neat fit, a small, wrist-sized reminder that curiosity, coding and a bit of experimentation can still take you quite a long way.

• New Meta Ray-Ban AI glasses are made specifically with prescription specs wearers in mind

Meta has just announced a couple of new additions to its Ray-Ban AI powered glasses range — and this time they’re aimed specifically at those who already wear prescription glasses.

Meta’s new “optical-forward” glasses will support “nearly” all prescriptions, and have been designed with every day, daily use in mind. Sure, you can pop clear and prescription lenses in Meta’s existing AI glasses line-up, but those frames are essentially Ray-Ban sunglass styles, and might look a little odd if worn inside on a dreary day.

The new “optical styles” are not only a touch more subtle, but are built with comfort in mind, including features such as overextension hinges, interchangeable nose pads and optician-adjustable temple tips.

Ray-Ban Meta Optics Styles will launch in two frameshapes: a rectangular “Blayzer Optics” design available in two sizes (Standard and Large), and a softer, rounder “Scriber Optics”. Slimmer and lighter than the regular Meta Ray-Bans, they’ll come in a bunch of different colours too, including Matte Black, Transparent Black, and Transparent Dark Olive, as well as seasonal shades like Transparent Matte Ice Grey and Transparent Stone Beige. Each comes with a Dark Brown carry-and-charge case.

Available from April 14th, prices start at £429.

As for what the Meta Ray-Bans actually do? For the uninitiated, Meta’s glasses include onboard cameras and speakers, letting you take photos and videos hands-free, answer calls and listen to audio, and call upon Meta’s AI helper to answer questions, translate questions on the fly, and act as a visual aid — say, identifying plants you may be looking at. All this info is fed back via a voice assistant — but Meta also makes Ray-Ban Display spectacles that uses augmented reality to display digital information via its lenses overlaid onto the real world around you.

Other styles, more updates

If you’re not bothered about prescription needs, Meta’s also refreshed its Oakley Meta Vanguard and HSTN sunglasses with optional transition lenses and shades tinted for golf play, as well as new seasonal colourways for the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) shades.

The underlying AI brains of all Meta’s glasses are getting some improvements in the coming weeks and months too, with improvements to nutrition tracking (letting you log what you’re eating just by looking at your plate, with AI offering dietary recommendations), deeper interactions and understanding of your WhatsApp conversations, and ever-more natural conversation understanding from the AI helper itself.

• Hands-on: Next-gen Meta Ray-Ban AI smartglasses offer same slick style, better battery and camera