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A new iPad Pro was revealed last Wednesday. I’ve been using the 12.9in model non-stop since hours after. Here’s everything you need to know.

Update March 24: New details have been added describing extra trackpad benefits.

It’s the best iPad yet. Obviously.

From the front, this iPad Pro looks identical to the previous model, released in November 2018. This isn’t a bad thing – that newly redesigned machine was a great-looking upgrade with Face ID, no notch in the screen and gently curved corners on the display that perfectly matched the tablet’s shape. The display is the same as before, too.

Flip the iPad Pro over, though, and there’s one big difference. The single camera and flash unit has been replaced by the familiar square camera unit found on the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. Here, there are two cameras – wide and ultra-wide. But the right hand side of the square has a circular detail, though it’s not a camera. Where the two lenses gently protrude from the raised square, the other item sits flush. It’s a scanner.

LiDAR? Well, la-di-da.

We’ve seen time-of-flight cameras on other smartphones, though not yet an iPhone. These are designed to grab depth information in great detail, at high speed. Time-of-flight means it works by projecting light onto objects which is reflected back and, based on the time it takes, gives a near-instant depth map of the surroundings.

On the iPad, the scanner uses LiDAR, which stands for Light Direction And Ranging. The difference between this and other time-of-flight systems is that works indoors and out, and can reach further, up to 5 metres away.

This will make for great portrait mode effects, potentially, though that’s not its main purpose here. After all, as I’ve said before, the iPad is not ergonomically the best shape to suit photography, apart from having a dreamily big monitor on which to frame your shots.

LiDAR is mostly for Augmented Reality (AR) apps, and some of the ones in the works look great. Shapr3D is great for creating 2D and then 3D floor plans. IKEA Place also helps you plan your home environment, with the IKEA app recognizing your couch or coffee table and making suggestions accordingly, plonking a realistic version of a new light or cushion or whatever into the room. Then there’s Complete Anatomy, which measures a patient’s movements in three dimensions and compares the real-life subject to a database of 3D muscle animations. The popular Apple Arcade game, Hot Lava, is also getting a LiDAR makeover, allowing the familiar characters to appear in an even more familiar situation: your living room.

Right now, the first manifestation of the AR capabilities LiDAR permits is an updated version of the Measure app. This was already a useful way of measuring stuff without a tape and now, thanks to LiDAR and Apple’s neural engine, it’s more detailed. It can automatically spot when the virtual line you’re drawing reaches the end of the table, say and as you walk closer to the object, the line suddenly adds increments to become a more effective tape measure substitute.

Trackpad capabilities – and not just for iPad Pro

The new iPad Pro works with a mouse or trackpad. In fact, so does the current iPad Pro, and any other iPad, as soon as it’s been updated to iPadOS 13.4, available today.

I’ve been using mine with an Apple Magic Trackpad and it’s sublimely easy to set up – just pair it using the Bluetooth menu in settings and you’re done. Then, you have an extra way to interact with the tablet. Touch the trackpad and a cursor appears on the iPad Pro screen just as it would if you were using the trackpad with a Mac laptop.

Actually, that’s not quite true because here the cursor is especially versatile and changes shape according to context. So, when you first tap the trackpad, a grey circle appears, mimicking the shape of your fingertip, of course. Place it in the text of a document, for instance, and it becomes a blue vertical cursor. Tap twice to highlight a word, or press more firmly to move the cursor within a word. It’s easy to highlight text, by highlighting a word and then placing the cursor, now circular again, on top one of the end bars and dragging.

As you change context, the cursor shape as other tricks up its sleeve, including when it touches the dock, it highlights and wiggles the app icons. When you’re in the Calendar app, it transforms again so that if you’re moving between Day and Week and Month indicators, it matches the shape of the item it’s on. The coloring here is subtle and is easier to see in Day mode than Night mode, I’d say.

Tapping the trackpad even wakes the iPad Pro screen. There are also shortcuts which are useful and convenient, meaning you can raise the dock or swipe between apps easily.

So, is it a real alternative to using a laptop? Well, it’ll take a lot for me to want to move on from my Mac, which remains the ultimate in intuitive and appealing interfaces, but it’s certainly getting very close.

The Magic Keyboard isn’t here yet, though the updated Smart Keyboard Folio works well, with a pleasing amount of travel to the keys and a comfortable typing experience.

Update: The more I use the trackpad, the more I’m convinced that the Apple execution of the mouse and cursor on the iPad Pro is not just as good as it gets, it’s something so well-crafted that it offers a new way of doing things and Apple and other manufacturers should consider the lessons learned here for regular laptop interfaces. Sure, there are some elements like text highlighting which take some getting used to. For instance, when you pick the cursor up by resting your thumb on the trackpad and dragging it to a new position with your finger, you might have thought that this would highlight text. No, that’s done by double-clicking to highlight a word and then clicking on the grabber bar at the end of the word and dragging it. So, there is definitely a learning curve to get on top of this new system. But on the whole, it’s sublime.

And there are the iPad specials, such as the three-finger swipe up to go home and the three-finger swipe to switch apps. Then there are the curiosities: as you swipe down on the trackpad you reach the bottom of the cursor movement on the iPad Pro display. But just keep going: as your finger moves further south something else happens and the dock springs into view. It really takes a bit of time to accustom yourself to this, but it works well.

Performance and battery life

Both are excellent. The new chip, called A12Z Bionic, is the most powerful chip Apple has ever made – yes, more powerful even than the A13 Bionic found in the Apple iPhone 11 series. Well, the gorgeous display means there’s a lot more pixels to move around here, for a start. Apple says the architecture of this chip is different from anything found on a PC. It’s designed so even advanced apps like Photoshop CC will work perfectly, assisted by the trackpad capabilities and, of course, the Apple Pencil. In practice, the iPad Pro works fast and smoothly. And at length, as usual. Like previous iPad Pros, this one has 10 hours battery life claimed, and it seems to live up to this.

iPad Pro: do you need one?

Some will be disappointed that there’s not another radical redesign as there was last time. Others will have wanted 5G connectivity, as had been rumored. In practice, the reason the new iPad Pro is so desirable is that the upgrades have been the ones that matter: improved performance, an extra camera and the cool new features that LiDAR promises to deliver. And then there’s that very cool upgrade which is coming to other iPad models – trackpad support. This is a significant change which will add powerful functionality to all compatible iPads and will make a lot of people make the move to iPadOS instead of another laptop.

This is a slick, effective and highly desirable tablet – easily the most attractive and accomplished one out there – that is suddenly even more powerful. And the keyboard, Pencil and trackpad capabilities now qualify it as a solid laptop alternative.

Adobe has issued a patch for a critical flaw that can be exploited to delete files from Windows computers running the Creative Cloud client.

Dubbed CVE-2020-3808, the vulnerability is a classic time-of-check-to-time-of-use flaw where, by exploiting a race condition, a miscreant could potentially trick the system into deleting work-in-progress files and other data-destroying shenanigans.

“Successful exploitation could lead to arbitrary File Deletion in the context of the current user,” Adobe said in its bulletin today.

If there is one saving grace here, it’s that Adobe told The Register a scumbag would have to convince a mark to download and open a poisoned document to trigger exploitation.

In other words, so long as you don’t go around opening random Creative Cloud projects, this shouldn’t be a massive problem, but, let’s face it, everyone gets sloppy occasionally.

If you do slip up, a hacker can delete files you’ve spent a long and hard time working on. The fact Adobe is releasing this now, rather than on a Patch Tuesday, suggests the Silicon Valley biz gets the potential ramifications. Adobe, for its part, described the vulnerability as being a “critical” risk, though only assigned the update a ‘2’ priority rating (a ‘1’ being the highest priority and generally reserved for arbitrary code execution bugs that are under active or imminent attack).

Still, it’s never a good idea to put off patching. Users and admins should update Creative Cloud for Windows to version 5.1 or later to make sure their machines are guarded from the flaw.

No other operating systems are believed to be at risk.

While you’re at it, it would also be a good idea to make sure machines are mitigated against the under-exploit code execution bug described yesterday by Microsoft. The attack, which has not yet been patched, relies on a font-parsing bug to gain malicious code execution. Microsoft has not yet said when it plans to fix that flaw. The next scheduled round of security fixes is due April 14. 

Five years ago, it seemed unlikely AMD would leapfrog rival Intel to take a process lead, but that is precisely what happened—not with its original Zen architecture, but with the shift to 7 nanometers with the introduction of Zen 2 last year. How long AMD can hold onto the lead remains to be seen, but looking ahead, there is reason to be optimistic—excited, even—about AMD’s eventual shift to 5nm.

There’s a bit of a rabbit hole to traverse, but for anyone interested in the manufacturing side of the equation, WikiChips (via Hardware.Info) posted an interesting article on where TSMC is headed. TSMC, by the way, is AMD’s primary manufacturing partner. And soon (if not already), AMD is reportedly set to become TSMC’s largest customer of 7nm silicon.

As it’s relevant here, the extremely short version of how this all works is AMD designs its processors and TSMC (mainly) builds them. There was a time when AMD made its own silicon, as Intel does (mostly), but those days are firmly in the rear view mirror.

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With regards to 5nm manufacturing, TSMC is already at the beginning stages and will ramp up early production later this year. These are basically prototype designs. Which brings us to the bit that’s interesting.

“At IEDM, TSMC reported 1.84x density improvement over the company’s own N7 node. Our estimates land at 1.87x which is reasonably close. A ramp in April will mark exactly two years since TSMC ramped its 7-nanometer node,” WikiChips says.

An 84-87 percent increase in transistor density compared to current 7nm designs is significant. Transistor density has traditionally been an indicator of overall performance, and while it’s more complicated than that—this is where the rabbit hole runs deep, if you care to dig around the web—AMD could potentially see major gains in both compute performance and power efficiency with Zen 4.

I say Zen 4 because AMD already confirmed it will be the company’s first CPU architecture to make the leap to 5nm, whereas Zen 3 (due out later this year) will be built on a refined 7nm node.

What does this mean for Intel? Sustained competition, in short. During a recent webcast, Intel CFO George Davis acknowledged AMD’s lead in nodes, saying Intel had to “accelerate the overlap” between its 10nm and 7nm nodes, and then 7nm and 5nm, in order to “regain processor leadership.” Or put more plainly, Intel does not anticipate taking the lead again until its 7nm and/or 5nm parts arrive.

As for Intel’s 10nm manufacturing, we’ve seen some parts on the mobile side (Ice Lake), but are still waiting for 10nm desktop CPUs. However, Davis also said 10nm “isn’t going to be as strong a node as people would expect from 14nm or what they’ll see in 7nm,” in terms of yields.

Bottom line is this—AMD is great shape, both now and for at least the next couple of years, it seems.

The updates to Microsoft’s Surface hardware continue. Following on from the Surface Book 3 details revealed last week, the latest leak around the new Surface Go show it too will be picking up a refresh.

Update 24 March: The leaked specs for the upcoming Surface Go 2 have caught the attention of many, and the consensus is that the Surface Go is going into a head to head contest with the iPad Air.

Jesus Diaz for Tom’s Guide: “A new iPad vs Surface war is brewing… A new leaked spec list shows that the upcoming machine is ready to crush Apple’s slim tablet with some Windows 10-powered gut upgrades.”

Adrian Diaconescu for Phone Arena: “…as long as Microsoft gets the price right, this versatile new mid-ranger should prove to be a mighty adversary for Apple’s iPad Air (2019).”

Daniel Piper for Creative Bloq: “…A leaked spec list for the update to the Surface Go, Microsoft’s cheapest tablet, suggests we might have serious rival to the iPad Air on our hands.”

It’s going to be an interesting competition when the two meet. Which is the better approach, to upscale the iPhone to a tablet, or to downscale Windows 10 from a desktop? It’s going to be fun to find out.

The details on the presumptively named Surface Go 2 highlight two main configurations. The first comes with Intel’s m3-8100Y CPI, the second with a Pentium 4425Y. Both have been spotted on web-based benchmarking site 3DMark.

The Pentium chip represents a small step up from the current Pentium 4415Y in the Surface Go. The Intel Core m3 is a chip that has been available for nearly two years. Backed up with 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD in the former and a 256 GB SSD in the latter, the Surface Go 2 is not going to win any awards for high-end performance.

But it doesn’t have to meet that challenge, there are other Surface devices that can offer that (the Surface Pro being the obvious example in tablet form). The Surface Go (and presumably the Surface Go 2) address the needs of two groups.

The first is consumers looking for a lightweight and relatively inexpensive tablet running Windows. It might to have the power to run the last 3D action game, but for social media work, browsing, and creating documents and spreadsheets, the Surface Go was a solid choice. The Surface Go 2 is going to be an almost direct replacement, albeit with comparatively less power than the competition.

The second area is in enterprise. Here the Surface Go has proven to be useful in many areas, not least as a point of sale terminal, front-line hospitality needs, on the floor of warehouses for activities, and more. The Go does not need to be cutting edge, it just needs to have just enough power and be solid enough to be relied on.

This is where I think the Surface Go 2 will make a difference. Not in the specs (part of me wonders if the slight tweak in the CPU is down to the availability of parts over the next two years), but in increasing the uptime.

Although the Surface Go is one of the most robust Surface devices (the original design had increased protection against falls, a bonded screen, and waterproofing) any broken unit is going to go out of service and have an impact on workflow and costs.

If the Surface Go 2 can bring the modular repair design from the Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro X to this front-line enterprise device, allowing IT departments the ability to quickly switch out significant parts and reduce the downtime. 

There’s no indication yet that this will happen, but if it does then the Surface Go 2 becomes an attractive upgrade for enterprise.

If you’re having trouble concentrating on your work during self-quarantine, a set of quality noise-canceling headphones might be a good solution. You’ll likely get a lot of use out of them in the coming weeks (possibly months) at home. Best Buy is offering a $150 discount on Microsoft’s Surface Headphones, which are over-ear, noise-canceling wireless headphones. These usually cost $350, but now they’re $200.

This model stacks up well compared to Sony’s popular WH-1000XM3, even going beyond them with their ability to simultaneously pair to two Bluetooth devices. More expensive headphones have this feature, like the $400 Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, but it’s nice to have it with this discounted set.

Best Buy is also offering a nice discount on the Beats Studio 3 noise-canceling headphones, which usually cost $349. The sale price is $200, and if you’re picking between these and the Surface Headphones above, these are easier to pair with Apple products, like the Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro, thanks to their W1 wireless chip.

It’s understandable if $200 to spend on headphones isn’t in the budget right now. Anker’s Soundcore Life 2 over-ear, noise-canceling wireless headphones are just $40 at Newegg (via Skimlinks). These offer 30-hour battery life, optional wired mode with the included 3.5mm headphone cable, and they can easily fold up in their included hard case. Use the offer code ANKR25 to save.

Borderlands 3 is down to just $20 for the Xbox One and PS4 at Amazon. This game regularly costs $60, and at this price, you’ll get the physical version. If you’d rather have the digital code for Xbox One, it costs $30. This game could suit you well if you want an open-world FPS that lets you team up with friends to face off against waves of enemies and collect loot.

If you recently got a Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons and now find yourself amassing more games than the console’s 32GB of onboard storage can handle, pick up a micro SD card. SanDisk’s 400GB model is down to $52.99, which is less than the cost of a new game. With a storage card this big, you probably won’t have to think about upgrading it ever again — at least, not for a while. This isn’t a huge deal, but it always pays to have storage when you need it. And around this time last year, these cost about $30 more.

The Kindle Paperwhite is back on sale for $95 (usually $130). Amazon had this sale just a few weeks ago, but it’s here again in case you missed out the last time. This isn’t the most affordable e-reader you can buy, but it’s one of the best, thanks to its waterproofing and great backlit display.

T-Mobile is gifting its customers with two months of complimentary YouTube Premium service as a thanks for staying inside during the novel coronavirus pandemic. This service eliminates advertisements, enables background play, and allows you to download videos to your phone. T-Mobile customers using Android can access the offer starting tomorrow in the T-Mobile Tuesdays app, and iOS users can find it on t-mobiletuesdays.com. The fine print states that you have to redeem this offer by May 1st, and if you forget to unsubscribe, you’ll be charged once your two months of service are up.

We all said RIP to the AirPower wireless charging mat when Apple officially killed the product last year. At the time, Apple said whatever prototypes it had been working on simply hadn’t met the company’s high standards. That said, it would appear that Apple has revived the project from the dead.

Leaker Jon Prosser took to Twitter over the weekend to cryptically claim that Apple’s trying to re-engineer the project from the ground up, focusing on wireless coils that would “displace heat more effectively” and that prototypes were being made. In the thread, he noted that none of the current prototypes support the Apple Watch, which presents the biggest hurdle as the company refuses to release a wireless charging mat that can’t work with its popular smartwatch.

According to MacRumors, Prosser has a decent record when it comes to Google leaks but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo did say a smaller wireless charging mat would be on deck as a major new hardware product for the first half of 2020. Prosser’s tweets do seem to address some of the rumoured issues that eventually led to Apple pulling the plug on the AirPower in the first place – namely poor heat management. Trying to cram 20 some odd coils into a sleek, tiny charging mat led to devices getting too hot and bugs with accurate battery level reporting.

But the revived AirPower mat isn’t the only Apple rumour coming from Prosser. Last week, he also tweeted that Apple has begun mass production on the iPhone 9. While the naming is not yet official, there’s been plenty of rumours that Apple is working on a successor to the popular iPhone SE. Basically, it’s understood to be the same form factor as the iPhone 8, but with updated guts and a markedly cheaper price point of roughly $400/£400. A recent report also noted that it’s likely we’ll also get an iPhone 9 Plus as well.

Prosser claims that Apple is currently working with China’s BYD to speed up production, but there’s been no official word from Apple. That’s possibly because Apple was forced to cancel a planned March event due to concerns surrounding the novel coronavirus. That hasn’t stopped Apple from releasing new products, however. Last week, it announced a new iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and the Powerbeats 4. As for a 5G iPhone 12? Prosser claims it’s still happening, but it’s likely to face significant delays, possibly until November.

In a nutshell: Intel’s first-generation Lakefield processors are not due out until Q4 2020, but some have been getting their hands on early silicon providing us with a glimpse of what kind of performance to expect. The latest leak shows an SoC designated “Core i5-L15G7” that Geekbench rated better than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835.

Benchmarks have leaked for another Intel Lakefield SoC. A tweet from InstLatX64 on Saturday revealed Geekbench tests on a Core i5-L15G7. It appears to be a lower-spec version of the Core 15-L16G7 that was spotted in UserBenchmark tests back in January.

It will be a five-core x86 hybrid similar to a Lakefield SoC that leaked last September. It will have one “big” Sunny Cove core on a 10nm process, and four “little” Tremont cores on a 22nm Foveros base die. Foveros is an Intel technology that allows the stacking of different chips on one another. The SoC should have a TDP from between five and seven watts. The Geekbench report also indicated the the Core i5-L15G7 has 1.5MB of L2 cache and 4MB of L3 cache.

The 3DMark scores posted for the Lakefield spotted in September indicated a boosted frequency of around 3.1GHz. The Geekbench tests on the Core i5-L15G7 showed a base clock speed of around 1.38GHz, with the Lakefield part hitting as high as 2.95GHz. So it appears that it might be a different chipset, but that’s just an educated guess.

In any event, the processor seems to be a bit more powerful than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 SoC. In single-core tests, the Core i5-L15G7 scored 725, an increase of more than 104 percent over the Snapdragon 835. However, in multi-core workloads, Intel’s chip only boasted a small advantage against Qualcomm’s — 1,566 points versus 1,533 points, respectively — a gain of just over two percent.

Keep in mind, these tests are on unreleased hardware. First-generation Lakefield chips are not due out until this holiday season. Although, Tom’s Hardware reports seeing the Core i5-L16G7 in a teardown of a Lenovo X1 Fold, which is due out mid-year. Even still, Intel could have already made performance improvements to the i5-L15G7 in question. Keep your eye out for TechSpot’s benchmarks when we get our hands on the new silicon.

HP today announced it is building a new VR headset, called Reverb G2, in collaboration with Valve and Microsoft.

There’s very little to go on, as the only thing available right now is a single teaser video. Here it is, in all its ambiguous glory:

HP also left us with this statement, which may give us at least one clue as to what we’re seeing here:

“Through this collaboration, Valve, Microsoft and HP are bringing a more immersive, comfortable and compatible VR experience,” an HP spokesperson told Road to VR. 

Healthy speculation: by the looks of it, the Reverb G2 may make use of Microsoft’s Windows MR optical inside-out tracking, which is available on a host of Windows MR headsets dating back to the first generation of devices in 2017, including the original HP Reverb.

Launched just last summer and aimed at enterprise users, the HP Reverb was an impressive piece of kit despite the compromises on its generally tepid Windows tracking quality and aging WMR controllers. It includes 2,160 × 2,160 per-display resolution, which is a big step up over the next highest resolution headsets in the same class—the Valve Index, showcasing a resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 per display, and HTC Vive Pro’s dual 1,440 × 1,600 AMOLEDs, making the OG Reverb an impressively pixel-dense headset.

The “more compatible” part of the statement however might just point to the inclusion of SteamVR tracking as a secondary standard, embedded within the headset’s exterior. Windows MR headsets are already compatible with SteamVR by default, and their controllers have a standard input layout, so making it “more compatible” from a software perspective seems like a moot point.

Here’s a better look, brightened for clarity.

If it includes SteamVR tracking, where are the dimples then? Although HTC Vive and more recently Vive Cosmos Elite contain characteristically dimpled faceplates for SteamVR tracking, Valve’s Index has them invisibly embedded, so there’s no telling what lurks underneath that front portion of the headset.

Another bit of speculation: the headset’s integrated audio looks strikingly similar to Valve Index’s, which might suggest an off-ear headphone design. Should that be the case, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they’ve also borrowed some of Valve’s optics as well.

What definitely isn’t clear is whether Reverb G2 will come with the aging Windows MR controllers, or whether that reveal will come later with a prospective Windows MR/SteamVR tracking combo. We’ll have our eyes peeled for more info on Reverb G2, which symbolizes Valve’s first headset collab outside of the original HTC Vive from 2016.

– – — – –

Is HP pushing out another enterprise headset, or heading HTC off at the pass with an impressively speced headset which could potentially trump the Vive Cosmos’ modularity? We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled in the coming weeks for more info on Reverb G2, so make sure to check back soon.

A new Half-Life game, eh? I never thought I’d see the day, but quite a few of us here at PC Gamer have spent the past week battling back The Combine’s invasion of City 17. For impressions of the game itself, check out our full Half-Life: Alyx review.

My job? To get you into this ambitious headset experience with a minimum of hassle. You’ll know by now that Alyx is a VR exclusive. If this game is your entry point into VR, that might leave you with some questions. How powerful a PC do you need? And what headset should you choose? 

The short version: Less powerful than you think, and whichever headset you can find. Read on for more details, though.

VR performance

Half-Life: Alyx is one of the prettiest VR games I’ve ever played. It’s breathtaking from the first moment you look out over City 17, see the Citadel on the horizon, and think “Wow, I’m here. I’m in it.” And given how good it looks, my time in the City has been surprisingly smooth—but then, I’ve played most of the game on an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti. What about people with normal PC setups? 

I’d say as long as you have an AMD RX 5600 or an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti, you’ll be more than fine, with some caveats.

How did I come to that conclusion? Benchmarking VR games is a bit different than a standard monitor-bound game. You can’t just uncap the framerate and see what happens. VR games are locked to the same refresh rate as the headset, so they’re either running full-speed (90Hz on the Index) or half-speed (45Hz). Nothing in between. To make matters worse, Valve dynamically adjusts the render resolution depending on what card you’re running. There really is no “fair” way to benchmark Alyx.

I settled on a two-pronged approach. SteamVR can display a graph of frametimes, which is how long it takes the GPU to serve each frame to the headset. Generally, anything under 11.1 milliseconds is good. Above that? You’ll notice jittering, as the headset tries to compensate for the delayed frames. Without getting too technical: It’s bad when this happens. Like, potentially vomiting-on-your-floor bad.

I also used FCAT VR, a tool Nvidia released in 2017. This measures frametimes over a 60-second interval and then uses this data to calculate how many frames per second you would get if you weren’t locked to the headset’s refresh rate—though again, since Alyx adjusts the render resolution on a per-card basis, you don’t get the whole story.

I did what I could though, and used three short sections of Alyx to run my tests—one at the very beginning of the game as a Combine Strider walked in front of City 17’s Citadel, another particle-heavy section later on involving a well-meaning Vortigaunt, and a third in the pitch-dark (and headcrab infested) sewers.

Generally I found Valve’s presets a bit conservative. They really don’t want people to get sick. A 2080 Ti defaults to “High” and not “Ultra,” but having run the game maxed out I couldn’t tell you why. The situation is even weirder on the AMD side, where an RX 5700 XT defaults to “Medium,” despite the equivalent RTX 2070 defaulting to “High.” You can definitely bump the RX 5700 XT higher, in my experience.

That said, there is a bottom. At the risk of vomiting on my own bedroom floor, I tried running Alyx on a GTX 1650. The takeaway? Yes, you can do it—but you probably shouldn’t. Even on the lowest settings, I experienced massive amounts of tearing and dropped frames. 

Our recommendations: 

Low/Medium: A GTX 1660 or 1660 Ti, or an RX 5600 XT, or equivalent.

High: An RTX 2070 or 2080, an RX 5700 XT, or equivalent.

Ultra: An RTX 2080 Ti, or some future equivalent.

These aren’t perfect recommendations, as all headsets are different. The original Vive, for instance, renders at 2160×1200 instead of the Index’s 2880×1600. That means you could maybe get away with the GTX 1650 on low, at the cost of a lower fidelity experience.

Regardless, I found Alyx to look pretty decent across all presets. Maintaining a steady 90 frames per second is actually more important—at least in my opinion—than the graphics settings. I didn’t notice a huge difference between “Low” and “Ultra” besides fewer wrinkles on a Vortigaunt, or a less vibrant flashlight beam, but there’s a definite difference between a smooth and responsive 90Hz and a janky 90Hz with dropped frames. It’s the difference between really “being there,” and being all-too-aware that you’re in a videogame.

How Alyx feels on different VR headsets

Designed around Valve’s premium Index headset and controllers, Alyx is nevertheless compatible with a whole host of hardware, from the original Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to the new Oculus Quest and Rift S, and even Windows Mixed Reality. Which should you choose?

If you’re reading this in March 2020, the answer is probably not the best VR headset but rather, “whatever you can get your hands on.” VR headset stock has been mostly sold out ever since Valve announced Alyx. But assuming you have options, my recommendations are as follows:

Valve Index: Yeah, this one’s easy. If you’ve got a solid gaming PC and $500 to spare (or $999 for the full kit, including controllers and base stations), you should buy Valve’s headset. It’s the best one on the market. Best resolution, best refresh rate, best audio, best comfort, best tracking, best FOV—basically, the best of everything.

The 2880×1600 resolution means you can easily read all the text on Alyx’s various cans of food and posters and floppy disks, while the default 90Hz refresh rate is smooth enough to mitigate motion sickness (to an extent). The Index also offers 120Hz and 144Hz modes for an even smoother experience, though this is more demanding and results in Alyx running at a lower resolution. I’ve generally found 90Hz to be more than suitable.

Performance aside, it’s the less quantifiable features that make the Index stand out. Two speakers hang near your ears, with an audio field so realistic I could usually target most headcrabs before I’d even seen them. And the Index is incredibly comfortable, which is important when you’re spending two to three hours inside. Nobody likes foggy lenses or skull pressure, especially when fending off headcrabs.

Lastly, the Index is one of the few modern systems that still relies on base stations for tracking. It’s cumbersome to set up, either mounting the two laser-powered Lighthouses to the wall or finding suitable shelves. Taking the time guarantees ultra-precise tracking, though. The Index’s second-gen base stations are even harder to fool than the original Vive’s, so you’ll likely never see Alyx’s hand suddenly disappear or fly into space, as occasionally happens with Oculus’s tracking.

Oculus Quest: Oculus’s all-in-one headset isn’t ideal for Half-Life: Alyx, but it’s probably your best choice for investing in VR’s future. Why? Because it’s a mobile headset, entirely untethered from your PC. Wireless VR is a game changer, and if a game runs on Quest then that’s how I’m playing it these days, be it Beat Saber or Vader Immortal.

Alyx doesn’t run natively on Quest unfortunately, but luckily a single USB-C cable turns Quest into a PC-based headset. The official Oculus Link cable ($80) is your best bet, thanks to its five-meter length and flexible casing.

Quest isn’t as comfortable as the Index, nor is its 2560×1440 resolution as sharp, nor is its 72Hz refresh rate as smooth. On raw numbers alone, the Quest can’t compete. But you know what? It’s good enough, especially if this is your first foray into VR, and at around $500 total (with a Link cable purchase) it’s half the price of Valve’s system as well. Not bad for a system this flexible.

HTC Vive Pro: Chris Livingston, our reviewer, used this headset for his full playthrough (he’s played a few hours with a Valve Index as well). The Pro’s 2880×1600 resolution is the same as the Index, which makes it easy to read text on posters, the warning label on a pack of cigarettes, the printing on a tiny tube of glue, and other fine details in Half-Life: Alyx.

Chris also found the Vive Pro far more comfortable and well-balanced than the original Vive, and it fit extremely well over his glasses. He even preferred the comfort of the Vive Pro headset over the Index, which felt a bit tight over his glasses. The main drawback is that the Vive Pro headset (by itself) still costs $600, a full $100 more than the Index—and the refresh rate tops out at 90Hz as opposed to 144 for the Index. That shouldn’t matter much overall, but still, you’re paying more for a less capable headset.

The Vive Pro also uses AMOLED displays, which help shadows pop, but make the so-called screen door effect a bit more pronounced than the Index’s RGB LCD panels. 

The rest: Other headsets are perfectly decent options for an Alyx fix, but be aware of the compromises. The Rift S is barely better specs-wise than the Quest, but is always tethered to your PC. Thus it’s hard to recommend buying that when Quest is twice as capable and retails for the exact same $400 price.

The original Rift and Vive are harder to come by these days, but are still perfectly serviceable headsets. Of the two, the Vive is less comfortable (unless you purchase the Deluxe Audio Strap) but better performing. It uses the first generation of Valve’s tracking solution, and is rock-solid. The original Rift’s base station cameras are more limited, and you’ll need one USB port per camera—or four total, to power a good three-camera setup and the headset itself. Either way, just know you’re getting last-gen hardware limited to a 2160×1200 resolution, which can make it difficult to read text and notice other fine details. The original Rift struggles with high-contrast environments as well, often resulting in “god rays” slightly obscuring your vision.

As for Windows Mixed Reality, I’d generally recommend against it. The HP Reverb is theoretically the “best,” but all Windows MR headsets fall prey to the same problem: They only track the position of the controllers through two cameras on the front of headset. If you put your hand behind your head—which you do a lot in Alyx, to grab ammo from your backpack—it can lose tracking entirely and send your hand flying off into space. The Quest and Rift S are so cheap nowadays that there’s no reason to settle for less.

Controllers

You’ll generally choose controllers based on the headset. The Quest and Rift S both use Oculus’s second-generation Touch controllers, while the Index uses Valve’s finger-tracking “Knuckles” controllers (or the old Vive wands, but they’re not what I’d recommend unless you already own them). You can technically hack your way around the platform limitation and use the Index controllers with the Rift, but… why? Don’t do that.

In any case, both the Touch and Index controllers have advantages. The Touch controllers are incredibly comfortable, and feel natural when holding the pistol or picking up a can. Your hand is subdivided into three zones—thumb, index finger, and grip—which allows you to execute most standard motions, i.e. pointing, pressing, grabbing, giving a thumbs up, and so on.

The Index controllers are more advanced, designed to track all ten fingers independently and provide more granular haptic feedback. The controllers also strap in place, allowing you to fully open your hand without dropping the controller. This gives you an even larger pool of actions, and I’ll say this: The Index controllers are the only ones that let you flip the ol’ middle finger at The Combine. Essential. That said, they also take a lot of getting used to, and can be finicky about finger tracking.

Chris used the Vive Pro wand controllers, which aren’t as well designed as the Index controllers. They’re large and long, the palm triggers are a bit awkward to activate by squeezing, and the thumbpads aren’t as responsive as the Index’s thumbsticks. However, Chris found some of the buttons on the Index controllers a little tricky to reach, while the buttons on the top of the Vive controllers can be found easily by moving your thumb. Still, you really can’t beat the Index for being able to track the location of each of your fingers, compared to the Vive wands where you have to extend your index finger by squeezing the trigger.

I’ve personally played most of Alyx with the Index controllers, but that’s only because I played most of Alyx on the Index headset. The Touch controllers work perfectly fine, and despite Valve theoretically designing Alyx around the Index’s hardware capabilities, I haven’t noticed any scenarios where I thought “Hmm, you definitely couldn’t do that with Touch” except for crushing cans with the Index’s strength-sensitive grips.

Most of the time, it’s a matter of elegance. Healing, for instance, requires laying your hand flat on a panel. That’s easily done on the Index but a bit weird with the Touch controllers, which you still “hold” even when the game shows your hand open. Still, I doubt it’s enough to make Oculus owners envious.

What’s a minimum-viable GPU for Half-Life: Alyx?

Valve’s minimum spec for Alyx lists a GTX 970 or AMD RX480, but I wouldn’t want to play the game on either those cards. From my testing, running Alyx on a GTX 1660 or RX 580 is the lowest I’d tolerate playing the game on, and probably the true bare minimum you could get away with, assuming you’re playing on an old HTC Vive or first-generation Oculus Rift. 

Laptop pick: I wouldn’t recommend running VR games from a laptop. It’s a matter of practicality, as one tangled cable or quick movement could yank your laptop off its perch and onto the floor. That said, if you’re going to try, the MSI GP65 Leopard and its RTX 2070 is probably your best bet. That’s decent horsepower, and at five pounds it also has a decent chance of staying put on your desk. 

Footnotes

Before we go, a few closing comments:

As I said, the presets on AMD cards seem pretty conservative. I reached out to Valve for an explanation but so far haven’t received one. I’ll let you know if that changes.

After spending nearly a year playing primarily wireless VR games on Quest, it sure is annoying dealing with a cable underfoot again.

The laser sights are absolutely essential weapon upgrades in Alyx. Save up for them. Otherwise you’ll be squinting down the iron/reflex sights until your eyes go crossed.

Headcrabs are larger than I expected.

I played most of the game with the continuous motion setting (as opposed to teleporting-based movement). It was tough. I recommend Dramamine.

Our testing regimen

Best Settings is our guide to getting the best experience out of popular, hardware-demanding games. This iteration has proved quite a bit different from our usual work, given the unique constraints of virtual reality. We focused primarily on testing the Valve Index on GPUs spanning the high, mid, and budget ranges, and spent some time with the Oculus Quest, Rift S, and original Rift, as well as the HTC Vive and Vive Pro. All of these variables were plugged into a test bed containing an Intel Core i7-8700K with an NZXT Kraken cooler, 16GB of RAM, and a 500GB Samsung 960 EVO m.2 SSD.

We ran our tests on the latest drivers available (Nvidia 442.74 and AMD 20.3.1) and used FCAT VR and fpsVR to do some basic benchmarking, though the focus of this piece is more on the minimum hardware you’ll need for Alyx and less on optimizing, as Valve’s already (to some extent) handled that aspect for you.

Biostar recently announced the A10N-9630E mini-ITX motherboard, and now it’s adding the FX9830M micro-ATX board to its arsenal for those seeking an alternative with a bit more punch.

As spotted by Hermitage Akihabara, the FX9830M features a black design. AMD’s FX-9830P (codename Bristol Ridge) APU is the heart of the motherboard. The APU’s based on the Excavator microarchitecture and dates back to 2016. It also comes with an included factory CPU cooler, so you don’t have to spend extra money to get an aftermarket one.

The FX-9830P has four CPU cores and four threads that ticks with a 3 GHz base clock and 3.7 GHz boost clock. The 28nm chip comes with a configurable TDP (thermal design power) that ranges between 25W and 45W. However, the FX-9830P typically operates within a 35W envelope. On the graphics side, the FX-9830P is equipped with the Radeon R7 integrated GPU, which consists of 512 shader units at 900 MHz.

The FX9830M has two DDR4 RAM slots and can hold up to 32GB with a maximum speed of 2,400 MHz. For storage, the motherboard provides four SATA III connectors, and a single M.2 PCIe 3.0 x2 port that accepts both PCIe-and SATA-based drives.

The FX9830M’s Realtek RTL8111H controller provides internet connectivity, but there’s only one Gigabit Ethernet port. The ALC887 audio codec is also from Realtek and supports 7.1-channel audio. Additionally, the motherboard supplies three 3.5mm audio jacks for connecting audio devices.

The FX9830M’s rear panel also contains two PS/2 ports, one HDMI port, one VGA port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. In the event that you need more USB ports, the motherboard sports one USB 3.2 Gen 1 header and one USB 2.0 header, which are good for two ports each.

The FX9830M isn’t listed anywhere, so the motherboard’s pricing is a mystery for now. For context, an Athlon 3000G APU and A320 motherboard combo will set you back about $110. For the FX9830M to really appeal to budget seekers, Biostar will need to sell it for below that price point.