Ricoh SP C250DN

The cheapest colour laser printer

Colour laser printers, on the whole, don’t really float our boat. They’re fine for plonking in the middle of an open-plan office so people can print their PowerPoint presentations over the network while shouting ‘Giles, bring that to me in the boardroom in four minutes with an obscenely overpriced coffee!’ At least, that’s what we imagine people do with them. For the rest of us, they’re just bigger, more expensive inkjet printers that emit a funny smell and make your photos look like GIFs off the internet.

PlayZX

David Hayward finds another excuse to play on his Spectrum (not that he needs one)

It's no secret that I'm somewhat fond of the ZX Spectrum, as I'm sure many of you reading this are. It was, after all, a huge part of my childhood and the beginning of my obsession with all things technological.

Remembering... Fighting Fantasy

Turn to page 25 to fight David Hayward, or continue reading for great treasure

At the same time that gaming on a computer was beginning to form, at least in the shape or the ZX81 and Atari console, another genre of gaming was experiencing something of a renaissance: roleplay gamebooks. It's a form of entertainment that can be traced back as far as 1941, with Jorge Luis Borges' Examen de la о bra de Herbert Qua in, a three part story that contained several different endings, prompting the reader to determine their path.

AC Worldwide Star Wars Bluetooth Speaker

The Force is definitely strong with this one

With the release of the most recent Star Wars film, the Disney driven merchandising engine has gone into overdrive. Even now, several months after the film was launched, it's difficult to escape Star Wars related stuff.

One of the better examples of the movie merchandising we've seen recently is from AC Worldwide, in the form of a set of Bluetooth speakers shaped as either a Stromtrooper or C-3PO. In this instance we have a near-bust plastic representation of a Stormtrooper to test, but is this just a gimmick for fans only or is this speaker worth looking more into?

Dell Venue 10 Pro 5056

A business-class Windows 10 tablet, with a very good display

The Venue 10 Pro 5056 series is the updated generation of Dell's business line of Windows 10 tablets. As the name suggests this is a 10" tablet built around the classic Dell Venue chassis, but with a slight improvement when it comes to what's going on inside.

Western Digital My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS Box 8TB

Western Digital enhances its small NAS box design for small business users

When Western Digital launched its 'EX' Expert Series NAS boxes, many wondered why most of the best features went exclusively to the four drive units. The answer, it would seem, is relatively simple: Western Digital's most important products are hard drives. Therefore, each NAS box sale is an indirect means to potentially selling more drives, either bundled with it or post-sale.

ScanJet 2500F1

Requiring a workspace reorganisation, Michael checks out a stand-alone scanner

Rather than forming part of a multifunction device, the HP ScanJet 2500F1 is that rarest of things these days: a stand-alone A4 flatbed scanner. You might expect a stand-alone device to require less space on your worktop but this is not the case with this HP product. This flatbed's dimensions of 450 x 150 x 120mm mean it has a larger footprint than many of the multifunction devices I have seen recently. With a colour scheme that combines light and dark grey, the ScanJet 2500F1 is not going to be mistaken for anything else, however. It has a top-mounted ADF (automatic document feeder) with a capacity for 50 sheets fed through the unit for either single or double sided scanning that's conducted in a single pass.

Asus VivoBook Pro N552VM

Who says you have to spend £1500 on a high-performance laptop?

The new Asus VivoBook Pro N552VW is a mid-range laptop with some pretty impressive high-end components going in its favour. Although it's not specifically seen as a top of the range gaming model, it could quite easily stand toe to toe with some of the heavy-weight examples currently available.

Inside you'll find an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor running at 2.6GHz with a turbo frequency of 3.5GHz. There's an impressive 16GB of DDR4 memory installed, along with a 128GB SSD with Windows 10 Home 64-bit preinstalled and a further 2TB mass storage hard drive.