PC Buying Guides, Fix Guides and Tech News
Hardware advice from a UK retailer’s bench: what to buy at every budget, step-by-step fixes, and early coverage of upcoming CPU and GPU launches.
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Buying Guides
RTX 40 Super in 2026: Why We Stopped Selling Them
Read morePeripherals
Best Mouse for Work: Two Cost Under £20
Read morePC Help
What Is a Motherboard? The Full Map
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Best Noise Cancelling Headphones in 2026
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Best Webcams in 2026, For Every Budget
Read morePC Help
Blue Screen of Death: The Complete Fix Guide
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All articles
How to Fix Stick Drift PS5, Xbox and Switch: Test It Before You Replace Anything
Stick drift is almost always mechanical wear inside the stick, not dirt on it. Test before you clean, clean before you buy, and check whether a free repair is already available to you.
Black Lines on a Laptop Screen or Monitor: One Test Tells You If the Panel Is Dead
Lines on a screen are the cable, the graphics side, or the panel. Restart and look before Windows loads, and you know which. The full diagnostic ladder for laptops and monitors, what the colour of the line tells you, and whether a repair is worth paying for.
Can You Take a Power Bank on a Plane? 2026 Rules, mAh Limits and What Airlines Allow
You can take a power bank on a plane in your hand luggage. How big, how many, where it sits and whether you can use it now depends on your airline. The 2026 rules, a mAh to Wh table and seven airlines side by side.
How to Connect a Printer to WiFi, and Why It Says Offline: HP, Canon, Brother and Epson
A printer that will not join WiFi is often on the wrong band, and one that keeps saying offline has often lost its address. Step by step for HP, Canon, Epson and Brother, plus Windows 11, Mac and iPhone.
Best Printer for Home Use: Laser vs Inkjet, Ink Tanks and the Cheapest Ink Over 3 Years
Which printer is cheapest depends on how often you print. We costed three years of ink and toner for seven home printers from the makers' own UK prices, and the answer changes at 20, 50 and 150 pages a month.
Monitor Arms Have a Minimum Weight, Not Just a Maximum: VESA Sizes, Desk and Wall Mounts
Arms are sold on their maximum weight. The number that stops people is the minimum. What VESA size you need, what your desk can take, and how to match an arm to the screen you already own.
iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro: the Variable Aperture Buys You Half a Stop
Apple's variable aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro is being sold as a low-light feature. On Apple's own f-numbers it is worth 0.53 of a stop against an iPhone 17 Pro. The bigger change is that the lens can now close down to f/4.0.
PoE vs PoE+ vs PoE++: What’s the Difference, and the Watts You Actually Get
PoE, PoE+ and PoE++ differ by watts, not speed. The figures on the box are what the port sends; the IEEE guarantees less at your device. Here is the table that matters.
What Is an ONT Box? The Openreach FTTP Box on Your Wall, and How Full Fibre Broadband Gets There
The white box on your wall is an ONT. What it does, the five Openreach models, what every light means, and how full fibre reaches it from the exchange.
How to Know if Your Phone Is Hacked, and Why Those Dial Codes Do Not Tell You
The codes people tell you to dial are call forwarding controls, defined that way in the telecoms spec. Here is what actually tells you, on iPhone and Android, and who to report it to in the UK.
ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude vs Copilot: UK Prices, and the Alternative You Already Pay For
What ChatGPT Plus, Google AI Pro, Claude Pro and Microsoft Copilot actually cost in the UK, read off each company own page, plus the one you may already be paying for.
How to Set Up Dual Monitors: Ports, Extend vs Duplicate, and Getting the Heights Right
Plug the second screen into a spare video output, press Windows + P and choose Extend. The two things that go wrong are having only one output, which no splitter fixes, and buying a screen of a different size so the two sit at different heights.