For many, visiting family for Christmas means spending hours on the road. So you might want to think about coughing up for one of these before setting the sat-nav to go. Whether your loved ones enjoy gaming, binging on Christmas TV movies or curling up with a good book, here’s a varied selection of must-have gadgets that’ll easily while the time away. gets adorable in this brilliant educational toyCompatibility: Android and iOS | Camera: 30fps VGA | Display: 128 x 64 facial display | Programmabl

Earlier this year I finally bought a 4K TV, which inevitably means I need to upgrade all my streaming subscriptions. Oh, and you can go head-to-head with a friend or family member to see who can play God the best. Buy the Nintendo Switch hereView DealEmma Boyle, Staff WriterPS4 Pro: I know, talk about getting to the party late. Buy an Nvidia Shield TV hereView DealParrot Bebop 2 Power I’ve always wanted to fly. Nintendo Switch It feels as if everyone in the office has got one and now I really, r

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg wants to get a VR headset in every home, and while his Oculus ambitions there most likely set with the untethered Oculus Go, in the meantime its Oculus Rift paving the way for the company. Act fastYou’ll only have a short window within which to grab the headset at this price however, with the deal set to expire at 11.59pm (PT) on December 20. The deal is available through Oculus’s own website, but is also been offered through Amazon, Best Buy and Newegg too. It’s worth

With 2018 rapidly approaching, there’s been some sobering news from an analyst forecast, which predicts that the PC market will continue to decline as more people switch to using smartphones for tasks usually reserved for computers. The report, by credit rating house Moody’s, isn’t all doom and gloom, however, as it suggests that IT spending growth will actually rise in 2018, possibly by around 4% (following a 3% rise this year). Meanwhile, earlier in December analysts Evercore ISI predicted tha

Take a look behind door number 18 on our free downloads advent calendar to find Incomedia WebAnimator GO – an amazing tool that makes it easy for complete beginners to make stunning HTML5 animations ready to use online. Download Incomedia WebAnimator GO, click the ‘Register’ link on the bottom left and enter your name, email address and the license key WEBANIMATORGO-TECHRADAR-DEC17. You will receive an email with a verification link; click this to activate the full version of the software. With

If you’re hoping to see a set of Apple’s AirPods under the tree this year, you may find yourself reenacting the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Jingle All The Way. The Bluetooth earphones are selling out online and in stores. If you want to buy straight from the source, Apple is now shipping any new orders of AirPods in January. On the UK side, you don’t even get that far, with the site claiming the first delivery will be January 2. What’s more, third-party retailers are also selling out, with onl

BlackBerry has confirmed it will shut down its official app store in 2019, which has highlighted the fact the phone platform still has a marketplace to download apps. In fact, BlackBerry is set to start its software shut down process next year with BlackBerry Travel and Playbook video calling being discontinued from February next year. We do know for certain the whole BlackBerry World app store will be shutting down for good on December 31, 2019. Phones such as the BlackBerry Passport or even th

One of the biggest changes we’re expecting from the Sony Xperia XZ2 is a completely new design, and a leaked render may have just given us our first look at it. The design otherwise looks a bit like Xperia handsets of old. This could be the all-screen Xperia XZ2, but we’re not convinced. It also looks different to other recent renders, and while neither of those renders were specifically labeled as the Xperia XZ2 they did appear to be showing high-end Sony handsets. The XZ2 could be a major impr

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally getting an influx of leaks showing the likely design of the Samsung Galaxy S9, including two new renders, showing off the phone in black. This too matches other things we’ve seen and heard, with just the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus likely to get a dual-lens camera. Image 1 of 2 Other than the fingerprint scanner position the S9 might look a lot like the S8. Credit: @OnLeaksComing soon with an improved cameraIn short then it doesn’t look like much will b

Your internet speeds will drop, and although with some providers you’ll barely notice, other services may reduce your connection to a crawl. Finding a meaningful way to compare VPN performance isn’t straightforward as every network is different, and each user has his or her own needs and requirements. Maximum speedThe simplest measure of any VPN’s performance is its maximum speed, which is usually what you’ll get when connecting to the server in your own country. Asian servers were poor for ever

One person who does – and spends a lot of time thinking about them besides – is Samsung Mobile’s Senior Sound Designer, Myoung Woo Nam. Everyone can understand.”Samsung’s sound engineering team is responsible for creating the Audio User Interfaces for all of the technology company’s devices – not just smartphones. The sound team challenge themselves to create on and off sounds that you can understand without knowing which action was taken. Every sound [on the Gear S watch] is at 120bpm, that’s t

I’ve not idea who I’ve bought for, what I’ve bought and how far I am from emptying out my bank account. The tug-of-war of ‘good gift’ versus ‘no money’ pulls my brain apart at the seams. Ho ho hopefully this will helpThis year I decided I was going to finally be a grown-up and create a list. It’s free, and totally changed the way I did my Christmas shop. It’s still utterly horrendous seeing the amount of money going out of your account, but this is the first Christmas ever where I’ve actually fe

If you’ve been confused by the sudden appearance of a Looking Glass plug-in in your Firefox browser, you’re not alone – it’s actually part of a Mr. The extension doesn’t actually do anything until you opt into the Alternate Reality Game that Mozilla is developing with the creators of Mr. Robot – as is explained on the plug-in’s official support page – but it still spooked quite a few users, which is understandable. “Fun” and “unique”In response to the criticism around this unasked-for extension,

We runners love socks, and the more expensive they are, generally, the more we’ll love them. In fact, go nuts with all running gear – get the size right and we’re jubilant that it’s not slippers. But perhaps you want to be a little more targeted, feel like you’re getting them something they REALLY want. Or perhaps you’ve already forked out for their ‘big present’ and you’re looking for some decent stocking fillers – I’ve got you covered there too. THIS list, however, is made up of things I’ve te

Peek behind door number 17 on our free downloads advent calendar to discover Ashampoo Office Free – a complete suite of office software for creating and editing text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Ashampoo Office Free includes three programs:Ashampoo TextMaker for all kinds of word processing tasks – whether you’re writing reports, composing letters, creating flyers or writing a novel. Ashampoo PlanMaker for creating and working with spreadsheets. PlanMaker includes over 330 built-in

Reporting from a Huawei Christmas event in Germany, WinFuture’s Roland Quandt says that Huawei representatives have been hinting that we’ll see the new P11 flagship during the first quarter of 2018, which makes the end of February a very good bet. We’re also expecting to see the Samsung Galaxy S9 to show up at MWC 2018, something that Huawei has no doubt taken into its calculations – or at least that’s what the leaked reports are saying. Last year’s Galaxy S8 phones were launched at a separate e

On the other hand, actively interacting with other people on social media has been “linked to improvements in well-being” by researchers. Sharing messages and posts with close friends, and reminiscing about old times, can improve your mood, reports Facebook. Facebook points to the snooze option that it’s just introduced as one of the ways it’s looking to improve people’s social networking experience and make browsing the News Feed less of a drag on our mood. On top of that Facebook says it’s inv

The holidays are an expensive time, so we’re bringing you a special treat: a full, free Windows program to download every day until Christmas. Behind door 16 on our free downloads advent calendar you’ll find Ashampoo Zip 2017 – a brilliant file compression tool that creates and extracts compressed file archives in over 60 formats. Ashampoo Zip 2017’s integrated ZIP engine is the fastest on the market, with multi-core support for processing huge archives in seconds. You also get immediate access

And that’s a wrap – Google has officially pulled the shutters down on its Project Tango program, the initiative launched in 2014 for giving phones a better idea of their location in 3D space and providing augmented reality (AR) overlays through a smartphone’s scanner. The modern day smartphone is fitted with enough sensors and processing power to figure out all the necessary AR calculations without any specialist hardware, which makes Project Tango rather dead in the water. Continuing the journe

“I think that children [will still be] smart enough to tell the difference between robot dogs and real dogs,” says Tung. If they don’t treat the laptop nicely, that’s [just] the way they deal with tools. But if they don’t treat the robot dog nicely, I feel uncomfortable with that. The way they treat robot dogs [might] imply the way they treat other animals, or people. But until we can find what that ‘something’ is, and whether it’s more than just a bias from our own childhoods, the march (or slo