Rage against the Dying Light

Hack, slash and parkour your way through the zombie hoards of harran

1. Regularly check your weapon stats to make sure you’re using the best ones you have available. You want as high a damage value as possible, but the handling stat is also important as it shows how difficult it is to wield – the lower the number, the slower you’ll swing it and the more stamina you’ll use up in the process. Be aware of how many hits your current weapon has left before it needs repairing, and make sure you have a backup available to quickly switch to, as you’re unlikely to have time to fix it in the middle of a fight with a horde of undead shufflers. Weapon upgrades can significantly improve your stats but they are single use items, so choose carefully when you apply them.

Booq Ta ipan Shock

All laptops deserve to travel in luxury, according to Booq

I’ve reviewed Booq equipment before, so the real surprise in its Taipan Shock was the price, as it’s less than £100.

For those not familiar with Booq, it makes a selection of high-quality cases, sleeves, backpacks and bags, all designed to protect your precious IT hardware in transit.

It markets mostly to Apple users, so the Taipan Shock is made specifically to fit a Mac Book, though not exclusively. My Dell Ultrabook fit just as snugly into it, even if the backpack secretly felt abused at the drop in standards it was enduring.

Hannspree Micro PC

The future of tiny PC technology is here, and we love it!

The Intel Compute Stick got everyone excited at this year’s CES, but while all that was going on, Hannspree launched its own version of the PC on a stick, the Micro PC.

This is an extraordinary palmsized device, complete with a quad-core 1.83GHz Intel Atom Z3735F, 2GB of DDR RAM, Intel HD Bay Trail graphics and 32GB of Samsung eMMC NAND storage. Furthermore, there’s Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 b/g/n wi-fi, a micro-USB port for power, a full-sized USB 2.0 port, and a micro-SD card reader to further expand the storage. Ingeniously, all this manages to fit into a shell measuring just 110 x 38 x 9.8mm and weighing 38 grams.

XMG P705 17.3 Pro Gaming Laptop

XMG brings the latest GeForce 900 series GPUs to its gaming laptops

Gaming laptops are generally something of a compromise, because if they weren’t, then there wouldn’t be a market for desktop PCs.

It all comes down to how much making them easily transportable undermines their gaming capability. In respect of the XMG P705, that’s remarkably little.

Schenker, the company behind the XMG brand cherry picks good mobile PC technology and repackages them. The P705 was therefore a Clevo P670SA, though it exhibits some subtle changes from that core design.

Divoom Airbeat-10

Divoom widens the choice for those who like their music broadcasted

Like London Buses, once a Bluetooth speaker appears, another half dozen seem to follow in quick succession.

The Airbeat-10 slots into the well-populated category of battery-powered speakers designed to be taken on holiday or at least down to the local beach.

It carries an IPX44 water resistance rating that doesn’t protect it from full submersion, but it can handle water spray from all directions.

Edifier Prisma Encore

Michael sits back to listen to his music delivered by an Edifier speaker system

The Prisma Encore is a 2.1 speaker system from Edifier. As you would expect, it consists of a subwoofer and a pair of satellite speakers. Not surprisingly, as this is an Edifier speaker system, the appearance of the subwoofer and satellite speakers show a degree of imagination. In the case of the Prisma Encore subwoofer, Edifier has come up with a design based on a battle helmet as used many centuries ago. In complete contrast, the satellite speakers are modelled on a triangular tower such as Cleopatra’s Needle.

Epson Expression Photo XP-950

It won TIPA’s award for best photo printer last year – and it can print up to A3 size – but this is only one aspect of the XP-950, which is also designed to be a generalpurpose office/home printer. Trevern Dawes was keen to see if this unusual combination of capabilities actually works. By Trevern Dawes

Although multifunctional inkjet printers are capable of producing acceptable prints with their four-colour ink systems, they are not regarded as serious printers for photographic work. However, the Epson Expression Photo XP-950 takes A3 printing with multi-functional facilities to a new level using a six-colour inkset. It’s a curious combination so we were keen to see how its photo printing features stacked up.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera

It’s designed in Australia and it combines the dimensions of a compact system camera with the ability to record cinema-quality Full HD video. Meet the remarkable Pocket Cinema Camera. By Paul Burrows

Video is the new photography. Thanks to its availability on everything from a smartphone to Pentax’s digital medium format 645Z, video is quickly becoming an integral part of today’s imaging landscape. Many snapshooters now fire off a quick video clip rather than taking a still, and there’s a growing band of enthusiast-level users who are trying their hand at everything from D-I-Y documentaries to short films. And, of course, the numerous variations on the ‘action cam’ theme are allowing video shooting to be taken to extremes.

Fujifilm X100T

If you’ve resisted the charms of Fujifilm’s retrostyled X100 up until now, the latest version may win you over with its updated hybrid viewfinder, revised ergonomics and a host of new features. By Paul Burrows

When Fujifilm launched the original X100 back at Photokina 2010, the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera was a still an unknown quantity and the smartphone was yet to reshape the fixed-lens compact market as dramatically as it has subsequently done. So, heading towards five years on, the camera world has changed a lot. Of course, the X100 started its own revolution, legitimising the return to more traditional, dial-based control layouts which has since been taken up by the designers of both CSCs and D-SLRs, as well as other fixed-lens compacts. Fujifilm itself has expanded its line-up of X Series cameras to include lots of other goodies, including the brilliant X-T1 and its rangefinderstyled cousin, the X-E2. So… where does all this leave the venerable X100, updated in early 2013 as the X100S and again, now, as the X100T? After all, there are now a few tasty alternatives, including some offering the extra versatility of interchangeable lenses.