The OnePlus 12 is a little bit in limbo right now, because it's been officially announced but it's not yet available outside of China – and a new rumor fills in some of the details for those who are eagerly awaiting its international release.
According to well-known tipster @ishanagarwal24 (via Android Police), the OnePlus 12 spec configurations that will be made available outside of China will be 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, and 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
If that's correct, that means the very top spec configuration – 24GB of RAM and 1TB of internal storage – will be exclusive to China. That's going to be something of a disappointment to power users who were planning to spend big on this handset.
We're expecting both the OnePlus 12 and the cheaper OnePlus 12R to be launched globally on January 23, 2024, at which point we should get all the details about the spec options and the regional pricing for these handsets.
Exclusive: OnePlus 12R will again start with 8GB RAM + 128GB variant in 🇮🇳 India to keep the prices in check. Other variant is 16/256GB. Blue & Gray colors.OnePlus 12 is getting an upgrade, now starts at 12/256GB in India & other is 16/512GB. Green & Black. Article below. pic.twitter.com/B1JgaiT7vJDecember 29, 2023
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What we know so far
We're assuming that the rest of the OnePlus 12 specs are going to be the same no matter which country you buy it in. Those specs start with a 6.82-inch AMOLED display running at a resolution of 3168 x 1440, and with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz.
Under the hood there's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor from Qualcomm running everything, and the phone is also fitted with a 5,400mAh battery offering 100W wired and 50W wireless charging (up from 5,000mAh on the OnePlus 11).
The cameras on the back are a 50MP primary camera, a 48MP ultrawide camera, and a 64MP telephoto camera that offers 3x optical zoom. On the front we've got a 32MP camera for taking selfies and making video calls.
We know much less about the OnePlus 12R, but it's rumored to be running the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, and will be more affordable as a result. We will of course bring you all the announcements as they happen on January 23.
No-one really wants to make a New Year's resolution, so this year we recommend committing to a tech resolution instead. These friendlier commitments aren't about self-improvement, giving up indulgences or hitting gyms – instead, they're little projects to help fortify you against the looming threat of January. And best of all, they all involve tech.
We polled the TechRadar team and our many contributors to find out what tech resolutions they'll be making for 2024 – and the results are below. The ideas vary wildly, from an in-depth plan to get back into Blu-rays to another writer's vow to restore their family's old photos using Photoshop.
For every laudable commitment to rediscovering comics on tablets or becoming a board games super-nerd, there are more sensible resolutions too – including one writer's explanation of how they're finally sorting out their passwords nightmare, plus another's plan to save money in 2024 with some nifty Chrome extensions.
Whichever part of your tech life needs some attention or a shot of new year's enthusiasm, you'll find some valuable advice and ideas on how to fix it below. And if it all goes wrong, you can always blame the gadgets...
Yes, the best streaming services are convenient, user-friendly and offer impressive image quality at times. But they still have notable weaknesses – and we're not just talking about movies vanishing from catalogues or downloads disappearing from your account.
Read about why TechRadar's Matt Bolton (Managing Editor, Entertainment) has decided to bring 4K Blu-Rays back into his life in 2024 – and why you should consider doing the same, particularly given how easy it is to find second-hand bargains.
Passwords aren't fun – in fact, they're now positively infuriating if you don't have them under control.
TechRadar contributor Darren Allen has finally snapped and made a grand plan to tame them in 2024. You can benefit from his wisdom and research in this round-up, covering everything from his pick of the best password managers to his plan to embrace biometrics.
Photo editing software has become ridiculously good in the age of generative AI – and one of the benefits is how easy it now is to restore old photos that are either low-resolution, damaged, lacking in color, or a combination of the above.
TechRadar contributor Chris Rowlands gives you a step-by-step tour to restoring those old family photos in this guide, covering everything from scanning them with your phone to retouching those blemishes. If you don't subscribe to Photoshop, there are also some tips on how to do it for free with online tools, too.
Sometimes it feels like you're trapped in a feedback loop of the same movie, TV and music recommendations, all unimaginatively served up by an apparently all-knowing algorithm. How do you break free and go off piste?
TechRadar contributor David Nield has been wondering the same thing and has made this plan to discover the untrodden streaming worlds that Netflix and Spotify tend to ignore. Read about the podcasts, newsletters, subreddits, iPad magazines and more that could help you join him in 2024.
The internet loves nothing more than telling you how far you're falling behind by not using ChatGPT. But what if you've been really busy doing other stuff in 2023?
Don't worry – if your New Year's resolution is to get up to speed with AI chatbots, we've made the perfect place for you to start. Our beginner's guide to ChatGPT will tell you how to write more effective prompts, make custom instructions and much more.
TechRadar contributor, and former What Hi Fi? staffer, Verity Burns has been a loyal Spotify subscriber for nearly 15 years. So why is her tech resolution to switch to Tidal in 2024?
As with any long-term relationship, it's complicated – but you can find out why Tidal now holds such allure for music fans, and why it could make sense for you to switch, in this helpful breakdown of music streaming in 2024.
After an eight-year break from his X-Men and Spider-Man addiction, TechRadar's Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector is reinvigorating his long-held love for comics in 2024 – with the help of a cheap, trusty Lenovo tablet.
Read about how Marvel Unlimited is going to fuel his comic book needs in 2024 and why the broader lesson of his project is that tech doesn’t need to be perfect, just perfect for you.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that only that new piece of impossibly expensive mirrorless glass can take your photography to new heights. But these days, second-hand lenses offer incredible value – and in this guide we show you how to navigate the minefield to land some bargains.
Whether you prefer wide-angle, telephoto or zoom lenses, our guide takes you through the best places to buy used lenses, the important things to check, and which lenses are offering particularly good value right now for Canon, Nikon and Sony fans.
It's shaping up to be another financially-trying year for many of us. But rather than staring dolefully at mushrooming bills, TechRadar contributor Darren Allen has resolved to find ways to claw back a little cash – and one of those things is harnessing the power of Chrome extensions.
Sure, they may not make you a millionaire, but the many shopping assistants, voucher finders and price-watching tools available now can certainly help you make some decent savings – and this guide rounds up some of the best Chrome extensions for doing just that.
The Apple Watch is probably best-known for its fitness tracking, but did you know about its impressive range of other life-helping skills?
TechRadar contributor and Apple expert Lloyd Coombes does – and he's written about the ones he'll be using maintain maintain good habits and keep his life running smoothly 2024. If you got an Apple Watch for Christmas, this is a fine primer on some of the smartwatch's lesser-known talents.
In our book, a new year's resolution can be as simple as finding a way to get through the harsh realities of January – and there are few better ways of doing that than by pretending the Christmas holidays haven't ended with some brilliant board games.
Some call it denial, others a wholly necessary response to the least fun month of the year – and TechRadar's Hamish Hector (our resident board game fanatic) is firmly in the latter camp. Join him as he takes you on an uplifting tour around the finest board games you can buy right now.
If board games aren't up your street, there are other emergency ways to help you survive January. TechRadar contributor and author Becca Caddy, who's literally written the book on how to live peacefully with your tech (see Screen Time), explains how she'll be using gadgets to 'romanticize' her life in 2024.
Whether you fancy starting a digital journal, experimenting with soundscapes or basking in finely-tuned smart lights, put aside some time to leaf through her ideas – before heading out for a phone-free walk through a forest.
Sometimes, a new year's resolution is best spent on your favorite piece of tech. So if your own life is perfectly calibrated and singing beautifully (if so, please tell us how) it's time to make sure your home theater is doing the same in 2024 with these handy tips.
TechRadar contributor and former What Hi Fi? staffer Verity Burns tells you how to do everything from perfecting your TV settings (including which modes to avoid), fine-tuning your speaker placement, and arranging your room for the best audio and visual experience. What a way to see in the new year.
While some TechRadar writers are ditching Spotify for Tidal, others are going in the other direction and fully embracing Spotify's music discovery powers. Rowan Davies, TechRadar's Editorial Associate and Apprentice Writer, is doing just that and has revealed his seven-stage plan for escaping musical echo chambers and finding hidden gems in 2024.
Rowan has the Spotify Wrapped stats to back up his credentials – 48,650 minutes of listening in 2023, including 1,633 artists across 71 genres. We're also talking about a Beyonce top 0.01%-er and a former music editor here – so if you're looking to become a Spotify power user in 2024, this is the place to start.
We’re almost done with 2023, and as ever at TechRadar, it’s time to look back at how the various tech giants performed over the past year. In AMD’s case, we saw some inspiring new products introduced for its consumer processor and GPU ranges, and renewed gusto in its pursuit of AI.
There were also shakier times for Team Red, though, notably a string of blunders – the vapor chamber cooling debacle is one that springs immediately to mind, but there were other incidents, and a few too many of them. Join us as we explore the ups and downs of AMD’s 2023, weighing everything up at the end.
(Image credit: Future/John Loeffler)
Zen 4 gets 3D V-Cache
One of AMD’s big moves this year was the introduction of 3D V-Cache for AMD’s Ryzen 7000 desktop processors.
There were a trio of X3D models introduced, with the higher-end Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D hitting the shelves first in February. These were good CPUs and we liked them, particularly the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which is a sterling processor, albeit very pricey (similarly, we felt the price of the 7900X3D held it back somewhat).
What everyone was really waiting for, though, was the more affordable mid-range 3D V-Cache chip, and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D turned up in April. We praised the 7800X3D’s outstanding gaming performance and it’s the best choice for a gaming PC as we conclude in our roundup of the best processors. This was a definite highlight in AMD’s releases this year.
We were also treated to an interesting diversion in the form of a new last-gen X3D processor which AMD chose a very different tactic for. The Ryzen 5 5600X3D arrived in July as a cheap CPU that’s great for an affordable gaming PC, the catch being that it only went on sale through Micro Center stores in the US. For those who couldn’t get that, though, there was always the old Ryzen 5800X3D which dipped to some really low price tags at various points throughout the year. For gamers, AMD had some tempting pricing, that’s for sure.
Away from the world of 3D V-Cache, AMD also pushed out a few vanilla Ryzen 7000 CPUs right at the start of the year, namely the Ryzen 9 7900, Ryzen 7 7700, and Ryzen 5 7600, the siblings of the already released ‘X’ versions of these processors. They were useful choices to be thrown into the mix offering a bit more affordability for the Zen 4 range.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
RDNA 3 arrives for real
AMD unleashed its RDNA 3 graphics cards right at the close of 2022, but only the top-tier models, the Radeon RX 7900 series. And the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT were all we had until 2023 was surprisingly far along – it wasn’t until May that the RX 7600 pitched up at the other end of the GPU spectrum.
The RX 7600 very much did its job as a wallet-friendly graphics card, mind you, and this GPU seriously impressed us with its outstanding performance at 1080p and excellent value proposition overall. Indeed, the RX 7600 claimed the title of our best cheap graphics card for this year, quite an achievement, beating out Nvidia’s RTX 4060.
Then we had another sizeable pause – which witnessed gamers getting rather impatient – for the gap, or rather gulf, to be filled in between the RX 7600 and RX 7900 models. Enter stage left the RX 7800 XT and the 7700 XT as mid-range contenders in September, one of which really punched its weight.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
That was the RX 7800 XT and even though it only marginally outdid its predecessor for pure performance, this new RDNA 3 mid-ranger did so well in terms of its price/performance ratio versus its RTX 4070 rival that the AMD GPU scooped the coveted top spot in our best graphics card roundup. (Deposing the RTX 4070, in fact, which had held the number one position since its release six months prior).
As for the RX 7700 XT, that was rather overshadowed by its bigger mid-range sibling here, not making as much sense value-wise as the 7800 XT.
Still, the long and short of it is that AMD bagged both the title of the best GPU for this year, as well as the best budget offering – not too shabby indeed.
From what we saw of sales reports – anecdotally and via the rumor mill – these new desktop graphics cards pepped up AMD’s sales a good deal. While the RX 7900 series GPUs were struggling against Nvidia early in 2023, towards the end of the year, the 7800 XT in particular was really shifting a lot of units (more than the RTX 4070).
While Nvidia is still the dominant desktop GPU power by far, it’s a sure bet AMD regained some turf with these popular RDNA 3 launches in 2023.
(Image credit: AMD)
FSR 3 finally turns up
We did a fair bit of waiting for stuff from AMD this year as already observed, and another item to add to the list where patience was definitely required was FSR 3.
FSR is, of course, AMD’s rival to DLSS for boosting frame rates in games, and more specifically, FSR 3 was Team Red’s response to DLSS 3 that uses frame generation technology (inserting extra frames into the game to artificially boost the frame rate).
FSR 3 was actually announced in November 2022 – as we covered in our roundup of AMD’s highlights for last year – and we predicted back then that it wouldn’t turn up for ages.
However, it wasn’t a simple case of that’s that and AMD was level-pegging with Nvidia suddenly. For starters, Nvidia went ahead and pushed out DLSS 3.5 (featuring ray reconstruction), and frankly, AMD’s frame generation feature was quite some way behind Team Green’s in its initial incarnation. It was also not nearly as widely supported – and remains so – with adoption moving at a sluggish pace, and only four games available that make use of FSR 3 so far.
But at least it’s here, and AMD made another important move in December, as the year drew to a close, releasing an improved version of FSR 3. We saw with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – the third game to introduce support – that the new version of FSR (3.0.3) runs a good deal more slickly, at least according to some reports.
(Image credit: AMD / Ubisoft)
On top of this, AMD also made FSR 3 open source. That means more games should be supported soon enough (and modders can, and already have, started introducing FSR 3 to some titles, but unofficial support will never be quite the same as the developer implementing the tech).
Furthermore, in terms of better support for games, Team Red did make another move at the same time as FSR 3. We’re talking about AMD’s Fluid Motion Frame (AFMF) tech which as well as being part of FSR 3 is integrated separately at a driver level.
This allows for frame generation boosts to be applied to all games – via the driver, with no need for the game to be coded to support it – with the caveat being that it only works with RX 7000 and 6000 GPUs. Now that’s great, but note that what you’re getting here is a ‘lite’ version of the frame generation process applied in FSR.
As 2023 now comes to a close, AFMF is still in preview (testing) and somewhat wonky, though Team Red has improved the tech a fair bit since launch, much like FSR 3.
In short, it looks like AMD is getting there, and also ushering in innovations such as anti-lag+ (for reducing input latency, with RX 7000 and supported games only, although this has had its own issues). Not to mention the company is wrapping up all this tech in HYPR-RX, an easy-to-use one-click tuning mode that’ll apply relevant (supported) features to make a given game perform optimally (hopefully).
But there’s still that inevitable feeling of following in Nvidia’s wake when it comes to FSR and related features, with AMD rather struggling to keep up with the good ship Jensen.
Still, AMD appears to have an overarching vision it’s making solid, if somewhat slow, progress towards, but we certainly need to see more games that (officially) support FSR 3 – with an implementation impressive enough to equal DLSS 3 (or get close to it).
(Image credit: Future)
Portable goodness
This year saw some interesting launches from AMD on the portable device front, not the least of which was the Ryzen Z1 APU. Built on Zen 4, this mobile processor emerged in April to be the engine that several gaming handhelds were built around, notably the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go.
There were two versions of the Z1, the 6-core vanilla chip, and a Z1 Extreme variant which was an 8-core CPU but crucially had a lot more graphics grunt (12 RDNA 3 CUs, rather than just 4 CUs for the baseline processor). The Z1 Extreme proved to be an immense boon to these Windows-powered gaming handhelds, driving the Legion Go to become what we called the true Steam Deck rival in our review.
The weakness of those Windows-toting Steam Deck rivals is, of course, the battery life trade-off (particularly when driving demanding games at more taxing settings). AMD was on hand to help here, too, introducing HYPR-RX Eco profiles to its graphics driver late in the year, which should offer a convenient way to tap into considerable power-savings (without too much performance trade-off – we hope).
Away from handhelds, in December we were also treated to the launch of a range of Ryzen 8000 CPUs for laptops. These ‘Hawk Point’ chips aren’t out yet, but will debut in notebooks in early 2024, although note that they’re Zen 4-based (the same as Ryzen 7000 silicon).
The line-up is led by the flagship Ryzen 9 8945HS, an 8-core processor with integrated graphics (Radeon 780M) that’ll be great for 1080p gaming (with some details toned down, mind). These chips will also benefit from AMD’s XDNA NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for accelerating AI tasks, and Team Red asserted that Hawk Point chips will be 1.4x faster than the Ryzen 7040 series in generative AI workloads – a pretty tasty upgrade.
(Image credit: AMD)
AI bandwagon
Those Hawk Point mobile CPUs showed AMD’s growing focus on AI, and this was a broader push for Team Red throughout the year, which comes as no surprise – everyone who was anyone in tech, after all, was investing in artificial intelligence. Moreover, Nvidia made an absolute fortune in the AI space this year, and obviously that didn’t go unnoticed at AMD towers.
As well as incorporating heftier NPUs in its processors, in May AMD tapped Microsoft for resources and cash to help develop AI chips (for the gain of both companies). But the real power move for Team Red came late in the year, when in December AMD revealed a Zen 4 APU for AI applications (the largest chip it has ever made, in fact, bristling with 153 billion transistors).
The Instinct MI300A is loaded with 24 CPU cores plus a GPU with 228 CDNA 3 CUs and eight stacks of HBM3 memory, posing a genuine threat to Nvidia’s AI dominance. AMD’s testing indicates that the MI300A is about on par with Nvidia’s mighty H100 for AI performance, and as the year ended, we heard that firms like Microsoft and Meta are interested in adopting the tech.
AMD said that the Instinct MI300A will be priced competitively to poach customers from Nvidia, as you might expect, while acknowledging that Team Green will of course remain dominant in this space in the near future. However, Lisa Su intends for her firm to take a “nice piece” of a huge AI market going forward, and if the MI300A is anything to go by, we don’t doubt it.
(Image credit: Reshetnikov_art / Shutterstock)
Year of the gremlins
While AMD had plenty of success stories in 2023, as we’ve seen, there were also lots of things that went wrong. Little things, medium-sized things, and great hulking gremlins crawling around in the works and making life difficult – or even miserable – for the owners of some AMD products who got unlucky.
Indeed, AMD was dogged by lots of issues early in the year, most notably a serious misstep with the cooling (vapor chamber) for RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. Although the flaw only affected a small percentage of reference boards, it’s absolutely one of the biggest GPU blunders we can recall in recent years. (Nvidia’s melting cables with the RTX 4090 being another obvious one).
Not to mention RX 7000 graphics cards consuming far too much power when idling in some PC setups (multiple monitors, or high refresh rate screens – a problem not resolved until near the end of the year, in fact).
There were other hitches besides, but you get the idea – 2023 was a less than ideal time for AMD in terms of gaffes and failures of various natures.
(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)
Concluding thoughts
Clearly, AMD tried the patience of gamers in some respects this year. First of all with those glaring assorted blunders which doubtless proved a source of frustration for some owners of their products. And secondly, purely due to making gamers wait an excessively lengthy time for features like FSR 3 – which seemed to take an age to come through – and ditto for filling out the rest of the RDNA 3 range, as those graphics cards took quite some time to arrive.
However, the latter were very much worth the wait. The double whammy for GPUs was a real coup for AMD, releasing the top budget graphics card in the RX 7600, and our favorite GPU of them all, the reigning RX 7800 XT that sits atop our ranking of the top boards available right now.
There were plenty of other highlights, such as releasing the best gaming CPU ever made – in the form of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D – which was a pretty sharp move this year. We also received a top-notch mobile APU for handhelds in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme.
AMD’s GPU sales were appropriately stoked as 2023 rolled on, and FSR – plus other related game boosting tech – seems to be coming together finally, albeit in an overly slow but steady manner as mentioned. In the field of AI, Team Red is suitably ramping up its CPUs, and with the Instinct MI300A accelerator it’s providing a meaningful challenge to Nvidia’s dominance.
In short, despite some worrying wobbles, 2023 was a good year for AMD. The future looks pretty rosy, too, certainly with next-gen Zen 5 processors that look set to get the drop on Intel’s Arrow Lake silicon next year. And some even more tantalizing Zen 5 laptop chips (‘Strix Point’ – sitting above Hawk Point, and sporting XDNA 2 and RDNA 3.5) are inbound for 2024.
Next-gen Radeon GPUs are a little sketchier – RDNA 4 is coming next year, but the range may top out at mid-tier products, as AMD refocuses more on AI graphics cards (as expected in terms of going where the profits are). Those RDNA 4 cards could still pack a value punch, though, and looking at the current mid-range champ, the RX 7800 XT, we’d be shocked if they didn’t.
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The Roomba j9+ from iRobot is back down to its best-ever price at Amazon right now, so if you’re looking for a smart buddy to help you clea...
The Roomba j9+ robot vacuum is back to its Black Friday price, and it’s a must-buy
The Roomba j9+ from iRobot is back down to its best-ever price at Amazon right now, so if you’re looking for a smart buddy to help you clean in 2024 this is the best time to buy one since Black Friday.
Instead of its usual $899 price the Roomba j9+ self-emptying robot vacuum is down to $599 at Amazon – saving you $300, or a third off. As we’ve said already this is the cheapest this vacuum has ever been, and that’s especially good when you consider it only launched a couple of months ago.
If you don’t just want a self-emptying vacuum but one with a mop too then the Roomba Combo j9+ is $999 instead of $1,399 at Amazon. This $400 saving is also the biggest discount we’ve seen since the same deal appeared during Black Friday.
Today's best Roomba j9+ deals
iRobot Roomba j9+:was $899 now $599 at Amazon
This robot vacuum may have only launched a couple of months ago, but it's currently a third off at Amazon (its lowest-ever price) and it's a must-buy. The self-emptying dock is a super helpful upgrade, and while this model doesn't have a mop it's still a very handy cleaning gadget.View Deal
iRobot Roomba Combo j9+:was $1,399 now $999 at Amazon
The Combo j9+ is an excellent Roomba with impressive cleaning abilities, dirt detection so it can prioritize your dirtiest rooms, and smart scrub so that its mop can tackle hardy stains. Best of all, it has a self-emptying dock so that it can empty itself, and the dock can store up to 60 days' worth of debris and 30 days' worth of clean liquid.View Deal
We’ve been testing the Roomba Combo j9+ from iRobot (look out for our review in the new year) and we’ve been thoroughly impressed by its cleaning abilities.
While it’s not a complete replacement for a more traditional vacuum – it’s not perfect at getting dirt from in corners, and it can't clean upholstery or stairs – it still does an excellent job of picking up or mopping up the vast majority of dirt. The dock is a really handy tool too as it only needs to be emptied or topped up every 60 and 30 days respectively. This is a lot less frequent than the robot vacuum on its own would need to be emptied.
It’s mapping and obstruction detection is also pretty solid. It can cleverly tell the difference between objects it should go around and similarly sized dirt piles it needs to pick up, it can detect which rooms typically get messiest and tidy them first, and it can scrub at tough stains to keep your hard floors looking cleaner than regular robot mops.
We think it’s a nifty gadget, and at this price, it’s a must-buy.
Didn't get the VR headset you were hoping to get this Christmas? Or decided you want to start 2024 off right by going on some VR adventures? Well, you're in luck as the Oculus Quest 2 – Meta’s excellent standalone VR device – is $50/£50-off right now as part of this year's after-Christmas sales.
This means that you can get the 128GB model for $249.99 at Target – instead of $299.99 – or, for those of you in the UK, you can get the same Quest 2 version from Currys for £249.99. The same deal is also live at other retailers like Amazon and Walmart.
Unfortunately, these savings aren’t quite as good as the best deals from Black Friday – which also net you cash back or a gift card worth $50/£50 – but it’s nevertheless a great saving.
Today's best Oculus Quest 2 deals
Oculus Quest 2 (128GB):was $299 now $249 at Target Meta's Oculus Quest 2 was, until recently, our favorite VR headset and right now it's down to just $249.99. That's a whole $50-off. We've seen better deals during Black Friday, but this is still a great price. With this gadget, you'll be able to jump into an incredible selection of VR games and apps available on the Quest platform and finally see how much fun VR can be without breaking the bank.View Deal
Oculus Quest 2 (128GB):was £299.99 now £249.99 at Currys
Meta's Oculus Quest 2 is currently £50 off at Currys making this an excellent time to buy the VR headset for an even more budget-friendly price. We have seen better deals on this VR gadget before (Very's best Black Friday deal gave you this saving plus £50 cash back) but this is still a big saving that you might not want to miss out on.View Deal
The Oculus Quest 2 is a solid VR gadget but honestly, I think you should get a Meta Quest 3 instead. Even if it isn't discounted right now.
There are reasons to still go for the Oculus Quest 2. It's a lot cheaper which is excellent for people on a tight budget, for those who aren't sure they'll use VR all that much, or if you're getting the headset for someone who's rough with their toys. But in general the Quest 3 is just better. A lot better.
The graphics are a massive leap forward, the Quest 3's mixed reality is great, and the gadget feels comfier to wear too. You'll even get a free copy of one of the best VR games ever: Asgard's Wrath 2. If you can afford it get the Quest 3 (and use our Quest 3 guide for newbies to get off to a great start).
Meta Quest 3:$499 & get a free game at Amazon
The Meta Quest 3 isn’t currently discounted, but you can get a free digital copy of Asgard's Wrath 2 when you buy the headset before January 27, 2024.
If you’d rather not shop at Amazon the same offer is available from Walmart, Best Buy, and Target as well as others. View Deal
Meta Quest 3:£479.99 & get a free game at Amazon
The Meta Quest 3 only just launched so discounts are practically non-existent. There is still a deal on though; if you order the headset before January 27, 2024, and activate it before February 9, 2024, you’ll get Asgard’s Wrath 2 for free.
If you’d rather shop elsewhere the same deal is available at Very, Currys, and Game among others. View Deal
If I had to sum up 2023 in one word it would be AI. Okay, technically that’s two initials, but let’s not quibble – because there’s no doubt that it provided the year in tech with its main story arc.
Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year, as every company in the world gawped at the massive impact of ChatGPT, and decided they wanted to jump aboard that bandwagon. You could barely move for new chatbots, new image generators, and new AI-enhanced features in every device released in 2023. And there’s no sign of that changing in 2024; in fact, we expect it to be an even bigger deal.
Elsewhere, phones and laptops did much the same as they had the previous year – well, except where they had new AI-enhanced features – so it was in the virtual reality space where bigger changes were afoot. If the Meta Quest 3 was impressive then the Apple Vision Pro looks to be genuinely game-changing, and we can’t wait to see what impact it has in the next 12 months.
Of course we also saw plenty of exciting developments in the TV, audio, wearables, camera, and entertainment worlds this year, and you can read all about them below.
Have a happy new year!
Marc McLaren, UK Editor-in-Chief
The year in AI
AI: our new bestie, or the biggest threat we’ve ever faced?
The AI revolution that began in 2023 is set to gain pace in 2024(Image credit: Sdecoret via Shutterstock)
2023 was the year AI grew up and scared the heck out of us, writes Lance Ulanoff, US Editor-in-Chief. At the tail end of 2022 it was barely a toddler – we’d been introduced to OpenAI’s astonishing ChatGPT, but we had no idea of the extent to which that single chatbot, and the large language model behind it (GPT), would define the coming 12 months.
As people pressed the generative AI to understand what it could and couldn’t do, we encountered a whole new kind of tech entity. It was both prescient and incredibly fallible. The term AI hallucinations became a topic of conversation, and a cause for concern. Rarely have we had an innovation that we simultaneously believed would change the world, and also potentially ruin it.
ChatGPT’s stunning success quickly sparked a land rush among competitors and partners. Surprisingly, it was Microsoft that next dove head-first into the generative AI waters, revitalizing its moribund search platform Bing with a deep-tissue infusion of GPT, the LLM behind ChatGPT. As a favored partner of Open AI, Microsoft not only had the latest LLM, it also had a bespoke version.
AI wasn’t all about chatbots and words. A collection of image-generation tools arrived on Discord (MidJourney), from OpenAI (DALL-E 2), and in one of the world’s most popular image-editing tools (Adobe Photoshop Firefly).
The takeaway around AI in 2023 was not just its power but its accessibility. Virtually anyone at any skill level can use it, but in 2024, as the technology becomes integrated into consumer electronics, we may finally get an answer to the question of exactly how we’ll use it – or how it'll use us.
THE YEAR IN PHONES
An infusion of new foldables, and an AI revolution beckons
The OnePlus Open was one of the year's most impressive launches(Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)
This was an exciting year in phones, but you wouldn’t know it if you only pay attention to the biggest-name brands, writes Philip Berne, US Mobiles Editor. While the year's best phones again came from Apple and Samsung, upstart brands like OnePlus and good old Motorola swooped in to show off some of the most exciting new phones we’ve seen in a while.
I'm talking about the OnePlus Open and the Motorola Razr Plus, both foldable phones – and if you hadn’t considered a foldable before, now might be the time. Of course, you may be waiting for a foldable iPhone, and rumors this year pushed that phone closer to reality, but it may not be part of Apple’s 2024 vision.
Even if phones didn’t get much better in 2023, at least they should last us longer. Google announced plans to support its latest Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones for seven years with major Android updates. Apple has always offered five years of support for its best iPhones, so it’s nice to see Android finally move ahead here. Even the bargain-priced Samsung Galaxy S23 FE will get four years of updates, and hopefully Samsung’s Galaxy S24, which we're expecting to see early in the new year, will get even better long-term support.
The new year is always a time to think about 'what's next', and what’s next in smartphones is AI, even if nobody knows exactly what AI on a phone looks like. Qualcomm showed off its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is coming to the best Android phones in 2024, and which is optimized to handle AI tasks; but those tasks haven’t really been defined. Samsung is set to bring AI to its next fleet of phones, so we should soon see what AI on a phone means in everyday terms.
THE YEAR IN COMPUTING
M3 MacBook Pros impress as laptop sales take a hit
Space Black was a new color option for this year's MacBook Pros (Image credit: Future)
It’s been a bit of a tough year for laptop and computer makers, though this shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, writes Matt Hanson, Managing Editor, Core Tech. Sales exploded during the Covid lockdowns, as millions of us around the world started working from home and invested in new tech.
Thankfully we’re now a couple of years on from those lockdowns, and life has returned to some degree of normality for most of us – and all those new laptops and PCs we bought are still going strong.
Combine that with a cost-of-living crisis that's affecting many of us, and it makes sense that in 2023 a lot of people held off on upgrading their computers. That’s not great news for laptop makers of course, and most saw sales fall throughout the year. Towards the end of this year we saw companies such as Apple and Intel making moves in a bid to reverse that trend, and those moves are set to continue into 2024.
In Apple's case, it meant launching new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips in October, which at the time felt like a bit of a panicked move by the usually-unflappable company. It had never launched three chips at the same time before, and the new MacBook Pros that launched alongside the chips made the previous M2 MacBook Pros, which had only been launched only at the beginning of 2023, look already outdated.
Meanwhile, Intel and Microsoft doubled down on one of the major computing success stories of 2023: artificial intelligence. Intel has just unveiled its new Core Ultra processors, which come with a neural processing unit (NPU) for handling AI tasks, while Microsoft continues to add AI features, notably Copilot, to Windows 11. In 2024, laptop makers using Intel hardware and Microsoft software will be hoping that the AI hype translates to greater sales as people finally start upgrading again.
THE YEAR IN TVS
Samsung knocks LG off the OLED throne
The Samsung S90C was the hot TV of 2023 (Image credit: Samsung)
Last year we got a rare thing in the world of TVs: a new kind of screen technology, writes Matthew Bolton, Managing Editor, Entertainment. QD-OLED arrived in 2022, but it made only a minor splash; the first TVs with it either had issues, or were extremely expensive. But that changed in 2023 – so much so that Samsung dethroned the long-reigning king of OLED TVs, LG.
The Samsung S90C was the key player in this coup, taking home our TV of the Year award in recognition of how completely it changed the game in the best-selling mid-range OLED TV space. The LG C3 was its main competition, and might have been expected to be our pick as the best OLED TV for most people, just as the LG C2 was last year. But the Samsung S90C was significantly brighter than the LG model, with better sound, and just as good image quality and features – and for the same price.
Samsung didn’t have everything its own way this year, though. Hisense and TCL put real pressure on the company’s more mid-range TVs by making astoundingly affordable mini-LED models that took contrast to new levels for the price. The Hisense U8K and TCL QM8 were the standouts, and both also pack the latest gaming tech.
It all means that things should get especially interesting next year. LG will want its OLED crown back, so we hope it’ll bring its high-end MLA OLED tech from the LG G3 to more affordable models. Meanwhile, TCL and Hisense both plan to push the boundaries of mini-LED tech (and good taste) with TVs that are more than twice as bright as current high-end models. We can’t wait to see them all at CES 2024 in January!
THE YEAR IN AUDIO
Sony's crown slips, and earbuds go solid-state
This tiny, solid-state audio chip is set to revolutionize earbuds (Image credit: xMEMS Labs)
In a year that saw the launch of the world's first-ever lossless Wi-Fi headphones (a feat we thought Sonos might achieve, but didn't), it might seem perverse of me to lead with a rare loss of form from Sony in the headphones space, writes Becky Scarrott, Senior Staff Writer, Audio.
The thing is, the company's flagship WF-1000XM earbuds lineup has been sitting pretty at the top of the pile for so long now (since 2019 with the Sony WF-1000XM3, to be precise) that when the Sony WF-1000XM5 arrived in July to supersede the five-star Sony WF-1000XM4, the fact that they were only good, rather than excellent, was huge. And the passing of the best earbuds crown to Technics, rather than to Bose, was perhaps even more of a surprise.
Any tangible, physical music formats seeing a resurgence this year? Why yes – the CD. Take a gander at the Yamaha 5-disc CD changer, which launched in November, and the high-end Hegel Viking and Arcam's new CD5 (part of a quintet of hi-fi launches), both of which arrived in October.
Oh, and if you remember nothing else from this missive, note the names xMEMS Labs and Creative Technologies. This year the two companies altered wireless audio for good by announcing the first ever solid-state driver earbuds. Back in April, xMEMS Labs unveiled the world’s first solid-state speakers; teeny tiny little devices meant to replace voice coils and magnets, aka the beating heart of our sound systems since loudspeakers were invented over a hundred years ago. And, thanks to Creative Technologies, the tech is coming to a set of earbuds near you, soon…
THE YEAR IN CAMERAS
Hate it or embrace it, AI imaging is here to stay
This AI-generated image of surfers on a beach at sunset fooled photography contest judges(Image credit: Absolutely AI)
Wherever you stand on the influence AI has had, and is having, on photography – Leica took an anti-AI step by introducing content credentials in the Leica M11-P, and Sony is set to follow suit – it’s here to stay, and it's transforming how our cameras work. Life behind a camera will become ever easier, with future models incorporating improved autofocus algorithms, better noise reduction, and smarter lens corrections.
On the hardware side we’ve seen some cracking cameras, including the Nikon Z8 and the Panasonic S5 II, although arguably nothing groundbreaking – other than Sony sneaking in at the end of the year with the Sony A9 III. The A9 III is the first camera of its kind to use a global shutter, and we’ll be putting it through our in-depth review process in the new year to find out if it really will revolutionize high-speed and flash photography.
DJI has had a spectacular year, launching the best consumer drones ever. We recognized the improvement in camera hardware by awarding the triple-camera DJI Mavic 3 Pro the top prize as Best Camera Device in the 2023 TechRadar Choice Awards – the first time a drone has won this award.
I think next year could bring some fantastic new cameras, such as the long-rumored Fujifilm X100V successor. It’s also not completely unrealistic that DJI could enter the mirrorless camera space, trickling Ronin 4D tech into a handheld interchangeable lens camera. Expect some new pro sports camera tech too, what with the Paris Olympics taking place in the summer.
THE YEAR IN FITNESS
Ringing the changes as we close in on peak fitness watch
Smart rings like the Circular Ring will continue to drive wearables innovation in 2024 (Image credit: Circular)
In many ways 2023 felt like a bridge year of sorts for my fitness beat, writes Matt Evans, Fitness and Wearables Editor. The smartwatch industry, by far the topic I write about the most, seems to be running out of room for growth. Once you’ve put a credit card and an iPod on your wrist, and you're able to monitor every wellness metric under the sun, where else is there for watches to go?
Garmin now monitors your naps, and Wear OS 4 incrementally improves battery life, but it’s Apple that has led the innovation this year with Double Tap, the first on-wrist, gesture-led controls, and we’re expecting to see similar functionality introduced on more devices in 2024. Apple also made a big push around its new watches being its first ‘carbon neutral’ wearables, although we took a good hard look at the validity of those claims.
While smartwatch growth appears to have slowed, smart rings are just getting started. Many people who are interested in wellness tech conversely also want less connectivity, and smart rings offer the convenience of fitness tracking and NFC payments without emails and notifications. Search volume for terms including ‘smart ring’ doubled in the last 12 months, and with the Ultrahuman Ring Air and Circular Ring disrupting the Oura Generation 3’s hold on the market, and Samsung and Apple both experimenting with the technology, the wearables industry will continue to push in this exciting new direction.
It’s much the same story with e-scooters, e-bikes and running shoes as it is with smartwatches – innovation continues to be incremental. The Cowboy Cruiser e-bike, which I tried this year, is like an iPhone on wheels, a lovely software-driven road-cycling experience, but the tech inside it hasn’t filtered down to more affordable bikes just yet – hopefully that changes next year.
If you’re looking to invest a little more in your health in 2024, make an appointment with TechRadar during the first week of January, as we’ll be running Get Fit For '24, featuring a raft of content to help you use tech to get, or keep, active this year.
THE YEAR IN VR
Meta Quest 3 delivers as Apple’s VR vision becomes clear
The Meta Quest 3 became our new favorite VR headset in 2023 (Image credit: Meta)
For the past few years VR has felt almost stagnant, writes Hamish Hector, Senior Staff Writer, News. Meta had dominated the space with its Oculus Quest 2 since October 2020, and all who challenged it failed to generate enough buzz to slow down this seemingly unstoppable force of affordability and standalone VR performance. That changed in 2023.
Admittedly, the Quest 2 killer was Meta’s own Quest 3 – we awarded it five stars in our review – but this new headset is more than just an upgrade. It’s a revolution in the VR space that dramatically improves on the Quest 2’s performance, and adds full-color mixed reality – making a feature I’ve previously called niche and worthless something I now can’t get enough of.
But Meta would be wise not to rest on its laurels. After years of rumors, we finally saw the Apple Vision Pro in all its glory in 2023. The gadget hasn't gone on sale yet – with rumors pointing to a release date any time between January 1 and March 31 – but when it does arrive, by all accounts it’ll be a gamechanger. Developers are excited for the unique opportunities this souped-up XR headset brings, and our own Lance Ulanoff was blown away by the ability to shoot spatial video on an iPhone and view it on the headset. The only downside is that it costs a (virtual) arm and a leg – the cheapest Vision Pro will be $3,499 (around £2,800), where the Meta Quest 3 is just $499.99 / £479.99.
2024 also saw the debut of the PlayStation VR 2. While it proved a hit with reviewers – including our colleagues at TRG – the Sony headset has fallen into the same trap as its predecessor. Yes, the tech is great, but it's pricier than the competition, and it doesn’t have enough software to keep people engaged. Apple should pay attention – we don’t want to be saying the same thing about the Vision Pro this time next year.
THE YEAR IN ENTERTAINMENT
Netflix cracks down on sharing amid hikes and strikes
Barbie was a bright (pink) spot in an often difficult year for the movie industry(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)
It’s a huge understatement to say that 2023 has been eventful for the entertainment industry, writes Tom Power, Senior Entertainment Reporter. The past 12 months have been full of ups and downs – mostly the latter, mind you – for studios, the world’s best streaming services, those who work in the sector, and anyone who enjoys watching good (or bad, I’m not judging!) movies and TV shows.
The news cycle was dominated by the longest-ever actors and writers strikes, with production on multiple movies and shows affected for months. Movies-wise we experienced the cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer, which saw fans flock to cinemas to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer back-to-back in the summer, while The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights at Freddy’s proved that films adapted from video games can be wildly successful.
It wasn’t all good news at the box office, though, with several Warner Bros. Pictures and Disney films failing to capture viewers’ attention (but there were plenty more fantastic flicks that made it onto our best movies of 2023 list). Oh, and let’s not forget the headache-inducing year Marvel had, with multiple MCU movies delayed, uncharacteristic box office bombs, condemnation of its treatment of visual effect artists, and the firing of Kang actor Jonathan Majors after he was convicted of domestic abuse charges.
Here’s hoping for a calmer 2024 for the entertainment sector, with plenty of top-tier new movies and shows to watch.
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