Stuff UK

Hello and welcome to our productivity issue, where you’ll find the best tech to achieve more – whether that’s being creative through recording a podcast or editing video, or just doing your job better. Before that, though, you’ll find a full preview of the latest gear in Hot Stuff, including Google’s latest Pixel releases. We’ve also got a great lineup of reviews, including the latest Copilot+ laptops that use smartphone chips for mega-efficiency and long battery life. Then we’ve looked at Samsung’s latest foldable, the Z Fold6, spent an extended period with the Asus ROG Ally X handheld (one of the best portable gaming machines we’ve yet seen) and checked out LG’s wonderful 32in UltraGear monitor. We’ve also looked at the OnePlus Pad 2 – undoubtedly one of the top…

In the holy trinity of annual phone launches, Google gets a bit drowned out by the sheer noise created around Apple and Samsung… but it seems happy to let its products do most of the talking. The Pixel 9 Pro has a lot to say for itself – and that’s not all down to the new AI-powered Gemini Live voice assistant. As well as sounding more lifelike, it now gives you daily weather summaries, automatically creates to-do lists, and can even transcribe calls for you. But while Google’s Tensor G4 chipset was designed with AI acceleration in mind, most people buy a Pixel with photography in mind – so there are 50MP main, 48MP ultrawide and 48MP telephoto (good for 5x optical zoom) cameras on the back, plus a 42MP…

Back in medieval times, when musicians Maestro Piero, John Hothby and Guillaume de Machaut were battling it out to win a year’s supply of turnips on Ye Olde X Factor, the citole, gittern and clappers were the sort of instruments that would get the dancefloor in your local tavern jumping like it was infested with lice. But these days you need something more… chocolatey? Teenage Engineering, the Swedish brand known for offbeat audio kit, has cooked up its wildest gadget yet: a medieval-themed music-maker that would have had you dunked in the nearest pond to check for signs of witchcraft back in the middle ages. Packed with old-time sounds including the hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes and frame drums, it can be played using the pads on the front or with a MIDI…

Hedley & Bennett might sound like an estate agent, or a brand new geriatric detective duo coming soon to a daytime slot on ITV2, but if you’ve watched The Bear you’ll already be familiar with the American kitchen brand’s work without realising it. H&B supplies aprons to some of the best chefs in the world, including Jeremy Allen White in the Disney+ series; but if just wearing the same clobber as Carmy doesn’t make you feel like a culinary genius, one of these compact pizza ovens should. Available in three new colours – sunrise, sunset and this limited-edition mash-up of the two – the Arc XL will have you churning out restaurant-worthy 16in cheese discs in no time. The lateral gas burner replicates the rolling flame of a traditional wood-fired…

While vinyl records are now coveted enough to be considered decorative items in their own right, there are millions of CDs across the country that have been banished to attics and cupboards – their millennial owners not committed enough to own a hi-fi system to play them, but still too attached to get rid of the physical manifestation of their youth. But it doesn’t have to be this way. FiiO’s DM13 is like a Sony Discman for the Spotify era. Barely bigger than a CD case, it has aptX HD Bluetooth so you can connect headphones or active speakers wirelessly. Or you can use one of the various outputs: analogue line-out, SPDIF digital and USB audio on the back, and 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone ports on the front. It can…

In ancient China, large earlobes used to be considered a sign that somebody would be lucky in life – but there’s no indication as to whether that luck extended to finding a pair of perfect-fitting earphones. You see, despite all ears doing the same job, they’re the snowflakes of the human head: no two sets are identical, which is a problem for in-ear design. B&W clearly believes that ears of all shapes and sizes deserve snug-fitting buds, so lugs from around the world were analysed and 150 prototypes built during the development of the Pi8s to ensure maximum comfort and stability. And they should sound pretty tasty too: inside each one is a single 12mm dynamic driver that uses the same sort of carbon cone as the PX8 over-ears, while…