ALL THE BIGGEST STORIES FROM PLANET TECH
HOT FIVE #1
MSI Claw
It might look innocent but your smartphone has many deaths on its digital conscience. Ever since those magical rectangles appeared in our hands back in the early 2000s we’ve gradually seen aslew of other gadgets –compact cameras, MP3 players, sat-navs –join fax machines and pagers in the big Blockbuster in the sky… but reports of handheld gaming’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. MSI’s Claw is the latest portable PC to join the revolution –but unlike most of the others, which use AMD processors, this Windows-powered device has Intel’s new Core Ultra silicon inside. Combine that with Intel Arc graphics and 16GB of RAM, and that should mean it has enough grunt to run even the most demanding AAA games without complaint… although you’ll only get 2hrs out of the 53Whr battery if you push it to its limits.
To prevent it from doubling as apersonal barbecue for your sausage fingers, MSI’s HyperFlow system uses dual fans and heat pipes to keep it cool, with arear grille to let the air flow through. If it were slim enough to slip into apocket and had a camera, we’d be warning our phones to watch their backs.
As hot as… ahandheld fax machine from $700 /msi.com
HOT FIVE #2
Honor Magic V2
Jarmila Kratochvilova has held the world record for the women’s 800m since 1983 –at over 40 years, that’s arecord of its own. Honor’s Magic V2 isn’t likely to hang on to its status as the thinnest folding phone for that long, but in the six months since it was released in China nobody’s managed to beat it –and now it’s finally available over here. Open it up to show off the 7.9in flexible OLED on the inside and the V2 is just 4.7mm thick. This unrivalled skinniness means that, when folded, it’ll still slip into your pocket just as easily as ahinge-less handset. The outer screen is a 6.4in job and they both refresh at anippy 120Hz, with a 5000mAh battery to keep all those extra pixels glowing.
There’s also atempting trio of rear cameras: a 50MP main snapper with OIS, a 50MP ultrawide, and a 20MP telephoto good for 2.5x optical zoom. The slimline chassis houses last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2CPU, so it won’t break any records for raw power, but at £1700 it might just break the bank.
As hot as… Jarmila’s pre-race coffee £1700 /hihonor.com
HOT FIVE #3
Razer Blade 16 (2024)
There’s no point having the reflexes of an over-stimulated cat if your gaming rig can’t keep up with your mouse hand –but Razer’s latest Blade 16 has ascreen so fast it’ll make other laptops look like they’re showing scratchy Kinetoscope films from the 1890s. The 240Hz refresh rate offered by its OLED display is usually only found on standalone gaming monitors, so squeezing that into a 16in package sh
