Every five years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) takes a snapshot of Australia through the Census. The last one was held in 2021, which means households across the country are being contacted again in 2026.

The information collected helps show how Australia's population and households are changing and is used to plan services and infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to transport and housing.

This guide answers the key questions about the 2026 Census, including when to complete it, who needs to be counted, what happens if you're late, fines, privacy and what to do if you're away from home.

The ABS also has a handy guide to doing the Census. It's a useful overview, but we've gone a little further below by answering some of the practical questions it doesn't cover.

If you're unsure how the Census rules apply to your situation, call the Census Contact Centre on 1800 181 227 for advice.

When is the 2026 Census in Australia?

Census night for the 2026 Census is Tuesday August 11 2026. Think of it as the snapshot date: questions about where you're staying and who's in your household should reflect Tuesday night.

You can complete the form earlier if you've received your instructions and already know where you'll be on August 11. If your plans are still up in the air, it's better to wait until you know where you'll be staying.

Can you complete the Census after Census night?

Census night isn't a hard submission deadline. If you haven't completed the form on Tuesday August 11, you can still submit it on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or later.

The ABS continues collecting forms and following up with households after Census night, so if you're late, complete it as soon as you can.

Is the 2026 Census compulsory in Australia?

Yes. Completing and submitting the 2026 Census is compulsory under the Census and Statistics Act 1905. But being late doesn't automatically mean you'll be fined.

The ABS first follows up with people who haven't completed their form. If someone still doesn't respond, they may be sent a written direction formally requiring them to provide the information. Ignoring that direction can lead to prosecution and a fine.

How much is the fine for not completing the Census?

If you've received a written direction and still don't comply, you can face a fine of up to AU$364 for each day you don't comply.

You can find more detail on the ABS's penalty provisions page.

Who needs to complete the 2026 Census?

The Census is designed to count everyone who's in Australia on Census night. That includes babies and children, international students, visitors and visa holders.

That doesn't mean everyone fills out their own form. In most homes, one person completes the household form for everyone staying there that night.

What if you don't have a fixed address?

You should still be included in the Census. If you're experiencing homelessness, the ABS provides Census field staff and other support to help you take part. If you're staying with someone on Census night, you can be included on their household form.

If you're travelling around Australia without a fixed or return address, such as camping, or in a caravan or boat, you still need to be included in the Census.

You'll generally be counted where you're staying on Census night. A caravan, tent or boat can be counted as your dwelling for the night, including at a caravan park, camping ground or marina.

If you don't have a usual address, the 2026 Census form lets you record that. For the usual-address question, the ABS says to select Elsewhere in Australia, choose Enter address manually and enter None in the suburb/locality box.

How do you complete the 2026 Census?

For most households, the process starts with instructions to complete the Census online. These include a Census number and temporary password you can use to access the form.

The ABS says the average household takes about 30 minutes to complete it.

What if you haven't received or have lost your Census letter?

You can still complete the Census. If you haven't received your instructions or no longer have them, you can get a Census number online or request a paper form.

Can you use a paper Census form?

Yes. Paper forms are available to anyone who wants one. Some households will receive a paper form automatically, while others can request one if they'd rather not complete the Census online.

If you need help completing the Census, the Census website has support options, including language and accessibility support. You can also contact the Census Contact Centre on 1800 181 227.

What if there are more than six people in your household?

A paper Census form can include up to six people. If more than six people are staying at your address on Census night, you can complete the Census online or request an extra paper form.

Can you complete your Census answers privately?

Yes. If you don't want other people in your household to see your answers, you can request a separate Census form and complete your information privately. The ABS explains how this works in its 2026 Census collection notice.

Can you change your Census answers after submitting the form?

Once a Census form has been submitted, the ABS says it can't be reopened or edited.

We couldn't find specific online guidance for what happens if you complete the Census early and your plans later change, so we called the ABS media line to clarify. The advice was to contact the Census Contact Centre on 1800 181 227. They'll talk you through the options if your plans have changed or you've realised you made a significant mistake.

Separately, the ABS has processes for dealing with multiple responses. If more than one Census form is submitted for the same person, it keeps the one containing the most complete information about that person.

What if you're away from home on Census night?

If you're away from your usual home on Census night, you'll generally be counted where you actually spend the night. Your usual address can record you as temporarily away.

That can include staying with friends or family or spending the night in a hotel, hospital or aged care home. The ABS also has arrangements for people travelling overnight by plane, train or bus.

If you're temporarily overseas on Census night, you won't be counted in the Census for that night.

What if you're working on Census night?

If you're working overnight but will return to your usual home on Wednesday August 12 and won't be included on a Census form elsewhere, the ABS says you can be included on the form for your usual home.

How are FIFO workers counted in the Census?

Fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers who are staying at a worksite or camp on Census night should generally be counted there. For example, if you normally live in Perth but you're at a mining camp in the Pilbara, you'd be counted at the camp and listed as temporarily away from your usual address in Perth.

Why might a Census field officer visit your home?

Census field officers may visit homes to deliver letters or forms, help people complete the Census or follow up after Census night where a completed form hasn't been received.

So a knock at the door doesn't automatically mean there's a problem. In some areas, field visits are simply part of how the Census is carried out.

How can you check if a Census worker is genuine?

If someone claiming to work for the Census contacts you and you're unsure whether they're genuine, verify them through official ABS channels rather than relying on the contact details they give you. Use the official Census website or call the Census Contact Centre on 1800 181 227.

How can you tell if a Census text, email or website is genuine?

The same caution applies to texts, emails and websites. The ABS says genuine Census text messages use the sender ID CENSUS, while texts about other ABS surveys use ABSGov. The official Census website uses a .gov.au address.

If a message doesn't look right, don't use the link it contains. Go directly to the official Census website. The ABS also has online safety guidance.

What questions are on the 2026 Census?

The 2026 Census contains 66 questions covering areas such as your household, age, cultural background, education, work and income, housing, religion and people who are away on Census night.

You can see the full breakdown in the ABS's 2026 Census topics and data release plan.

What's changed in the 2026 Census?

One of the biggest changes in 2026 is the addition of questions about gender and sexual orientation. Everyone is asked about their sex as recorded at birth, while people aged 16 and over are also asked about their gender and how they describe their sexual orientation.

The ABS says the change is intended to build a clearer picture of Australia's LGBTQ+ population and help inform health and community services. If you'd prefer not to answer, both the gender and sexual orientation questions include a prefer not to answer option.

People can also report up to four ancestries in the 2026 Census.

Do you have to answer every Census question?

No. The question about religion is explicitly marked as optional on the 2026 Census form.

The gender and sexual orientation questions for people aged 16 and over also include a "prefer not to answer" option. So, while taking part in the Census itself is compulsory, that doesn't mean every question requires you to provide a particular answer.

Is your 2026 Census information private?

Yes. Census information is protected by law, and the ABS says it doesn't share identifiable information from your Census form with other government departments or direct marketing companies.

That means your individual Census answers aren't handed to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to check your tax return or to Centrelink to check your eligibility for a payment.

You can read more in the ABS's 2026 Census Privacy Statement.

Is the Census anonymous?

No. The Census isn't anonymous because it asks for names and addresses. However, the ABS separates names and addresses from other Census information after processing.

When will the 2026 Census results be released?

The first 2026 Census results are due to be released in June 2027, with further data releases continuing into 2028.

Census data will be free to access through ABS tools including QuickStats, TableBuilder and ABS Data Maps.

Adding more fuel to the fire over which city is actually Australia’s best place to live, those residing in the all-seasons-in-a-day city of Melbourne have a new statistic on their side — and it all relates to fixed-line broadband speed.

Ookla, the company behind the hugely popular Speedtest tool that helps anyone diagnose their home internet speeds, has published its latest Global Index rankings, revealing median fixed-broadband download speeds by country and city.

As a country, Australia is slowly but surely moving up the table. There was a time we ranked as low as 86th, but we now sit at 50th, with a median fixed-broadband download speed of 162.34Mbps.

That improvement follows NBN Co’s September 2025 speed-tier shake-up, which introduced a 2Gbps wholesale option for eligible FTTP and HFC premises, alongside faster speeds on several existing higher-end tiers. Of course, not every Australian can access 2Gbps just yet — and, as we’ll see, the plan you choose is only one part of the equation.

For context, Singapore takes the crown with a median download speed of 447.75Mbps. One can only dream of a day when that becomes a reality Down Under.

Why the huge gap?

There are several reasons why Australia trails the pack so dramatically — although with 141 other countries clocking slower speeds, things could certainly be worse — and, in my mind, one of the most obvious is that many Australians are still connected to comparatively slow NBN plans.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission publishes a quarterly Wholesale Market Indicators Report that provides an overview of active NBN connections and their download data rates.

The most recent report, covering the March quarter of 2026 and published in July, revealed there were just over 2.665 million active 50Mbps NBN connections, out of a total of 8.839 million residential broadband services. That works out to around 30.2%.

A 50Mbps plan naturally puts a ceiling on the speed a customer can record in a Speedtest. If enough users on lower-speed tiers are represented in Ookla’s sample, that will bring the national median down.

One relatively straightforward way for Australia’s international standing to improve, then, is for more eligible households to take advantage of NBN Co’s free fibre upgrade. The program is open to millions of eligible FTTN and FTTC premises, allowing them to upgrade to FTTP if they take out an eligible high-speed service — such as one of the best NBN 500 plans.

A fixed-line civil war

Move the slider over to ‘City’ and the results become much more varied, with cities from North and South America, Asia and Europe all jostling for position. Valparaíso in Chile takes the crown with a huge 425.84Mbps, followed by Abu Dhabi with 399.92Mbps, for example.

Australian cities evidently have some work to do. Scroll down to position 64 and you hit Melbourne with a median download speed of 177.69Mbps — faster than Australia’s national median, it must be said — while Sydney trails behind in position 76 with a meagre 149.91Mbps.

A difference of 27.78Mbps might not sound like much, but Melbourne’s median result is around 18.5% faster than Sydney’s. When intercity tensions are already high, that’s a huge bragging right for the southerners.

Wait, we can (try to) explain

Nobody ever wants to be seen as the weaker of two, and while the reported figures are great news for people in Victoria, there is potentially a plethora of factors at play that pave the way for a Melbourne victory.

We’re not here to make excuses, of course, but there are plenty of unknowns.

Firstly, there could simply be a larger proportion of Melburnians connected via superior fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure. FTTP allows households to access the fastest NBN plans, including the newer multi-gigabit options where available.

While it’s not totally conclusive, there is some evidence to support this idea. That evidence is publicly available technology-mix figures, although they’re reported at a state level, rather than for Greater Melbourne and Greater Sydney specifically. Data compiled from NBN rollout information indicates Victoria has a higher share of premises using FTTP than NSW — roughly 66% versus 60% — while it also indicates there are more active connections on the inferior fibre to the node (FTTN) connection type in NSW too.

This doesn’t completely settle the argument. The figures not only include regional areas, but they also show the technology available to a property, as opposed to an active plan supplying an address.

All fixed-line connections are welcome

Furthermore, on the subject of NBN, Ookla’s Speedtest results don’t only capture NBN connections, but fixed-broadband tests from other fixed networks too, including private fibre operators. Both Melbourne and Sydney are home to several such networks, including Vocus, GigaComm and OptiComm, while Melbourne also has DGtek — a private FTTP network concentrated in the city’s CBD and inner south-east.

Exact figures for active connections on those networks are tricky to come by. But if Melbourne has a higher concentration of people connected to these kinds of high-speed private fibre services, they could be recording considerably quicker test results and helping push its city median upwards.

Not telling the complete story?

Another excuse potential explainer is the way Ookla collects its data. Whereas the ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Report — which published its final instalment in June 2026 — monitors a selected group of Australian homes across nine popular ISPs, Ookla receives data when people choose to run a Speedtest.

This doesn’t mean someone repeatedly checking their connection can single-handedly skew the data, as Ookla averages each unique user’s results into a single sample for the relevant time period and location. Still, the results are dependent on who chooses to test. Melbourne’s sample could contain a different mix of internet plans, connection technologies, devices and Wi-Fi setups than Sydney’s.

When did you last check your Wi-Fi router?

Home equipment can make a considerable difference too. A household with a Wi-Fi 5 router tucked away in a cupboard, a busy 2.4GHz network and a phone testing from the other end of the house could record a much slower result than the same connection tested over Ethernet.

On the flip side, a newer Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 router, a properly positioned mesh system and a compatible device can give a household a far better chance of getting close to the speeds it actually pays for. That doesn’t make the underlying internet plan any faster, of course — it simply means the home network is less likely to be the bottleneck.

If your own Speedtest result seems suspiciously low, it may be worth checking out our guide to the best mesh Wi-Fi systems to find out if your home could benefit from an upgrade.

And, trying to claw a point back for Sydney, it can be argued that people often run a speed test when their internet connection starts lagging. While Melbourne’s median tested speed is higher, that doesn’t necessarily mean every connection in the city is consistently faster or more reliable.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1660) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1660) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1660) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1660) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1660) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1660) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1660, are…

• ONSET
• BRAWL
• TEPID
• SLANG

Sometimes I like to look at the four Quordle words as a creative writing task and imagine a story, or the opening of a story based on them.

Most days, it’s impossible but today is a good one — an urban tale of young men who are quick with their fists but whose lack of streetwise vernacular is embarrassingly poor.

Daily Sequence today (game #1660) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1660, are…

• DONUT
• FLESH
• PLANK
• BIDDY

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1659, Monday, 10 August: GAVEL, CRUSH, SPEED, ETHOS
• Quordle #1658, Sunday, 9 August: KAPPA, WIDEN, FOLIO, STEEP
• Quordle #1657, Saturday, 8 August: FUROR, BUGLE, REUSE, SCOOP
• Quordle #1656, Friday, 7 August: AMISS, SHIRK, SALSA, RABBI
• Quordle #1655, Thursday, 6 August: AMUSE, BRAND, CEDAR, BLURB
• Quordle #1654, Wednesday, 5 August: MOUND, WRONG, STOOD, WEIRD
• Quordle #1653, Tuesday, 4 August: GOOEY, TARDY, HUMAN, CHALK
• Quordle #1652, Monday, 3 August: FUNGI, MUDDY, DEBUT, MANIA
• Quordle #1651, Sunday, 2 August: BOOTH, EASEL, REACH, MAKER
• Quordle #1650, Saturday, 1 August: OMEGA, BIRCH, SMOCK, EERIE
• Quordle #1649, Friday, 31 July: MANIA, SINGE, STOOL, LOFTY
• Quordle #1648, Thursday, 30 July: MODAL, IDLER, CHUMP, LUMPY
• Quordle #1647, Wednesday, 29 July: GAWKY, ALLOY, AUDIT, LATCH
• Quordle #1646, Tuesday, 28 July: SMITE, ROACH, RUDDY, GLOBE
• Quordle #1645, Monday, 27 July: TAFFY, FIGHT, GUILD, WAGER
• Quordle #1644, Sunday, 26 July: STOMP, LIMIT, FUNKY, STEAD
• Quordle #1643, Saturday, 25 July: SALON, SHEEN, BURST, GOURD
• Quordle #1642, Friday, 24 July: DOLLY, EDIFY, LAGER, PRANK
• Quordle #1641, Thursday, 23 July: LADEN, EVICT, WOVEN, SHIRE
• Quordle #1640, Wednesday, 22 July: COYLY, SINGE, AWASH, AWOKE

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #891) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #891) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• CHEEP
• HINTS
• CHIVE
• COME
• TRACE
• MANOR

NYT Strands today (game #891) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #891) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #891) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #891, are…

• TOMATO
• ZUCCHINI
• PEPPER
• MELON
• CORN
• CARROT
• SPANGRAM: SUMMERHARVEST

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

One for the veggie lovers among us.

ZUCCHINI took me a while to put together, in part because I come from a land where we call zucchini courgettes, but mainly because I can’t spell and missed the double C.

This misstep aside I sped through today’s game, finding it harder to find a decent crop of non-game words.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Monday, August 10, game #890)

• DATA
• FACTS
• FIGURES
• STATISTICS
• SPECIFICS
• SPANGRAM: PROOFPOSITIVE

• Microsoft has hiked the cost of a Windows 11 license for PC makers
• A new report claims that the annual price increase is 'significantly' more this year
• That's really not going to help the PC market, coming on top of all the pain with hardware price rises that we're already experiencing

PC prices are already facing various unfortunate pressures — thanks to the RAM crisis, and other increased component costs aside from memory –— but it appears that Microsoft is throwing fuel on the fire with hikes on the software side.

Wccftech spotted a report from Economic Daily News (EDN), a Taiwanese site, claiming that Microsoft has increased the price it charges PC makers for a Windows 11 license. Apparently the cost of installing Windows 11 on a pre-built desktop PC or a laptop has gone up by 7% to 10% as of last month.

Of course, bear in mind this is just a rumor (and the article is translated, so we need to be careful about any potentially lost meaning), but it's an alarming sounding prospect.

Microsoft puts up the price of a Windows 11 license every year, so this isn't new or unexpected, but normally Microsoft applies a single-digit increase, and this year the price hike has reportedly been a good deal more, possibly tipping into double-digits (10%). The (translated) article calls this a "significant increase" compared to past years, and the information comes from an executive at an (unnamed) PC maker.

Seemingly current product prices already reflect Microsoft's extra charge, with the bigger rises in fees having been given to PCs with faster processors, we're told.

EDN observes that the prices of PCs are expected to rise by 5% in the third quarter of 2026, at least for Acer and Asus systems in the Taiwanese market. Other regions and vendors may, of course, vary, but all OEMs (PC makers) must pay Microsoft for a Windows 11 license (if using the OS, of course).

Analysis: software salt

As noted, these cost increases are supposedly already priced into hardware on the shelves, and EDN observes that neither consumers nor businesses have really batted an eyelid.

That's mainly because the hardware-based pricing misery — for more expensive RAM, SSDs, GPUs (increasingly of late) and other components — is driving the nastier price rises, and the Windows 11 increase is relatively small fry in comparison. So, this software hike has purportedly flown under the radar, effectively eclipsed by the hardware pain.

If this report is true, and Microsoft has indeed put prices up a good deal more than normal, that's a distinctly unhelpful move. On the hardware side of the equation, we know prices to manufacture goods are going up — and that cost increases will inevitably be passed on to the end buyer. That's just business, but there's no obvious reason why software costs should be hiked more than normal, other than what the cynical might suggest appears to be opportunism from Microsoft (and maybe the growing cost of the AI side of the company).

This is effectively rubbing software salt into hardware wounds, and the PC market could really do without it. Although speaking of salt, all of this depends on whether this rumor is on the money, and I think it's worth remaining somewhat skeptical in that regard, albeit that EDN has proved a reliable source in the past.

Alienware 15 (2026) review: Two Minute Review

Alienware's going "entry-level" with this one. Or, at least sort of. The whole list of configurations of the new Alienware 15 (2026) is a little confusing. Officially it starts at £879 in the UK, but for that you get an RTX 3050 GPU instead of the 5050 that we have in this review unit. That's a five year old graphics card there hidden away in a 2026 laptop. So first thing's first, keep a bloody good eye on the spec you get. The last thing you want is to think you're snatching up a bargain, only to be caught out by a sub-par silicon mix-up crushing your frame-rates in the process.

The good news, though, is that on the whole the specs of the Alienware 15 (2026) we were sent (Ryzen 7 260, RTX 5050, 16GB DDR5, and 512GB SSD), is actually remarkably good value for money. Particularly in the US. You can pick one up for about $1,160 or so. It's a lot more expensive in the UK (£1,333) but Stateside, it's a healthy config that delivers some impressive performance as it just peeks over that $1,000 parapet.

Ultra graphical presets aren't off the table here, at 1920x1200, but medium-high on those AAA titles is really going to be the place that leverages that 165 Hz 1920x1200 panel most efficiently. It's not the best of screens, though, as Alienware's got this thing labelled as "IPS", and I'm just not sure about that, because to be frank, the color reminds me more of a TN panel from 2011, than a modern-day IPS, "IPS-like" maybe. Perhaps we've been spoiled with OLED displays of late. Perhaps.

It's not the only place that's been stripped back either; connectivity still touts Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 (yes, in 2026), the build quality is a little plasticky, and the bevelled edges and rounded corners everywhere feel a bit dated, even if it keeps in-line with the brand's style. Oh and then there's my personal pet peeve, the dreaded single-channel memory setup. So you (yes you) can spend more money and increase the capacity at a later date (I mean you could do that with a dual-channel setup as well, but what do I know?).

Fortunately, a lot of the usual laptop woes that crop up with single-channel memory are easily overlooked by that hefty RTX 5050 delivering the frame-rate goodness, but it's still worth bearing in mind, if you are fixated on using this thing for productivity over gaming.

Oh and the SSD is just sad. Sure it's a PCIe 4.0 drive, and the sequential speeds are good, but the random 4K writes are savagely low, and it's a 512GB model, leaving you with about 480GB to play with once Windows 11 is installed. Ouch.

Still, for the price, and those negatives aside, it's remarkably robust and a genuine bargain, particularly around deal time.

Alienware 15 (2026) review: Price & Availability

• Available for $1,159.99 / £1,333 (around AU$2,500)
• UK buyers pay a hefty premium compared to the US
• Base config still ships with RTX 3050 or 4050 era silicon

On the cost front, the Alienware 15 (2026), also known by its model number DA15265, is a curious thing. And its appeal is almost entirely dependent on where exactly your PC gaming escapades are based.

If you're in the US, it's a strikingly good deal. At $1,160 at time of writing, you get top-tier performance, delivering high frame-rates in modern titles, for a smidge over the $1K mark. If you're in the UK, though, this specific config will set you back £1,333.81. That's the equivalent of about $1,800. And yes, I know sales tax is a thing as well, but it's not $640 that's for sure. What a markup.

The more confusing element, however, is the broad range of SKUs available. It's not uncommon to see a single product and design offer many different configurations, especially graphics cards for gaming laptops, but the fact that the Alienware 15 (2026) is available with cards all the way down to an RTX 3050 does muddy the waters somewhat. Particularly if you're snapping up a quick deal around Black Friday, and don't take time to check the specs.

• Value score: 3.5 / 5

Alienware 15 (2026) review: specs

Alienware 15 (2026) review: Design

• Slimmer than you'd expect from Alienware
• Dated design leaves a lot to be desired
• Spongey keyboard and abrasive trackpad

Surprisingly for a 15-incher, the Alienware 15 (2026) is... well, not quite as bulky as you'd expect for an Alienware unit at the budget end of the spectrum.

It's not light at 2.2kg (4.85lbs), at least not in this configuration, but it's a far cry from what you'd usually expect for an affordable gaming laptop. Sadly, Alienware's still hanging onto that smooth-faced design somewhat here, and there's a lot of curvature. The panels, the chassis, the hinge, the edges, they all slowly curve downwards, into an almost egg-shaped design. Even the screen has a bevelled curved edge smoothly radiating outwards, which does feel a touch dated compared to some of the competition out there.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a laptop at this price, the materials aren't the best either; there's a lot of plastic here, and it's the single biggest indicator that, yeah, this might be on the cheaper end of the budget spectrum.

The keyboard too, is remarkably spongy. If you told me it was a membrane board, I'd believe you, and the trackpad has this weird cheap semi-abrasive finish to it that gives me the ick a little bit (thanks Gen Z). But you know, no gamer worth their salt is going to be using that over one of the best gaming mice anyway.

Port selection is fairly minimal too, and there's no Thunderbolt either (given it's an AMD platform), although you do get HDMI 2.1, and Gigabit Ethernet to cover the essentials.

• Design score: 3.5 / 5

Alienware 15 (2026) review: Design

• RTX 5050 and 1200p screen are a radical pairing
• Single-channel RAM is frustrating
• Rapid sequential SSD performance, but it struggles on large transfers

Alienware's paired Nvidia's RTX 5050 laptop chip with that (I'm still calling it an) "IPS-like" 1920x1200 display capable of driving 165 Hz refresh rates, with AMD FreeSync to back it all up (at least in this configuration), and the good news is that performance absolutely slaps at that resolution.

Cyberpunk 2077 on the medium preset averaged 90fps at 1080p with the lows sliding in at just 72, and not a drop of upscaling insight. Switch to DLSS on quality with frame generation, and that figure skyrockets to 157 fps on average. Total War: Warhammer 3, also managed an impressive 134 fps as well, and Final Fantasy XIV's Dawntrail benchmark clocked an impressive 102 fps on the High (laptop) preset. Ultra at native resolution isn't off the cards here, and it shows.

As for the CPU, that's one of AMD's Zen 4 Hawk Point Ryzen 7 260s, complete with eight cores and 16 threads, and it cuts just as neatly a line in professional activities as its RTX 5050 counterpart does in game. Cinebench 2024 managed 826 points in the multi-core test, and it savaged 3D Mark's CPU Profile benchmark with a juicy 7,558.

There are a few caveats worth mentioning. Namely, the SSD is a bit... underwhelming. For one, it's just a 512GB model, and although its sequential performance is solid (it's a PCIe 4.0 unit provided by Samsung), the figures that count for game load times, random 4K read and writes, were well under par.

And then there's the memory. I've banged on enough about how frustrating it is dealing with the memory crisis, and manufacturers continually turning to single channel setups for their off the shelf PCs and laptops, and it's unfortunately true here. If you do want to expand and chuck another 16GB stick in later, yeah you can, but there really ought to have been a default option for that from the get go. It's like we're going backwards in performance, not forwards.

• Performance score: 4/5

Alienware 15 (2026) review: Battery life

• Rapid charging
• 70 Whr battery can't compete against hungry silicon

Let's not beat around the bush here; this is a gaming notebook. It's not a Snapdragon-based Acer model with ridiculously impressive multi day battery life, nor is it one of Intel's hyper-efficient Panther Lake units like we saw in Dell's latest XPS, no sir.

You can throw all the Nvidia Optimus screen switching tricks you can at this thing, but at the end of it all, it's still going to chew through battery life faster than I get through cable ties. And chew through it it did.

The Alienware 15 managed just 89 minutes in PC Mark's gaming battery benchmark, before tapping out at 2%. The video test faired much better however, scoring 4 hours and 9 minutes, although again a far cry from the 14 hours Asus's Vivobook S 15 Copilot managed.

Should I buy the Alienware 15 (2026)?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Alienware 15 (2026) review: Also Consider

How I tested the Alienware 15 (2026)

• Tested at home, in the office and on the move
• Benchmarked and used across a wide variety of gaming and productivity tasks
• 11 years of expertise testing laptops, and three weeks with the Alienware 15

I put the Alienware 15 (2026) through its paces, testing it against my usual suite of gaming laptop benchmarks, covering everything from CPU performance, to gaming and everything else in between. I compared it against my database of similarly priced laptops, and used it as my daily driver for three weeks of thorough testing.

Every result was captured under identical, controlled conditions, on a clean Windows 11 install, with the latest updates and drivers. No programs or bloatware were removed, and no power profiles altered during testing, to better represent what an end-user might expect.

• First reviewed: August 2026

• Attackers stole IEH employee credentials via a fake Microsoft login page
• Inbox access exposed sensitive defense‑related communications and technical documentation
• Malicious mailbox rules were removed as IEH contained the unauthorized access

Criminals have broken into the email inboxes of IEH Corporation, a significant supplier for the US military and companies in the commercial aerospace and space industry.

In an 8-K report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), IEH said that unidentified threat actors reached out to one of its employees, pretending to be a “prospective business contact”.

The atatckers shared a link to what appeared to be a Microsoft document, prompting the victim to log in. Obviously, the login page was bogus, and the login credentials were relayed to the attackers instead.

Malicious mailbox rules

“The threat actor gained access to mailbox contents, including email messages, attachments, customer communications, purchase orders, engineering-related documentation, and potentially export-controlled technical information,” the 8-K reads.

The culprits, however, were not named and no threat actors have yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

IEH said it found no evidence that data had been exfiltrated from the compromised inbox. However, its defenders did discover and remove “malicious mailbox rules”. Usually, crooks set up such rules to automatically forward incoming emails to an inbox under their control, while deleting traces of the activity. This would allow them to continue receiving sensitive emails even after the initial compromise was remediated.

The company also said it completed a full audit of the inbox and done “corrective actions to contain any impact of the unauthorized access.”

IEH Corporation produces “specialized products used in military satellites, missiles and fighter jets,” meaning the information found in the inbox could be quite valuable, especially for nation-states such as Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran.

IEH does not publicly name its clients but it does say that its defense applications include Apache AH-64, V-280 Valor and SH-60 Seahawk programs, as well as Patriot, THAAD, AMRAAM and APKWS missile programs. It reported a revenue of almost $30 million for the 2026 fiscal year.

Via The Record

• Attackers stole extensive personal and medical data from 3.8 million individuals from Unlimited Technology Systems
• Breach source and methods remain unknown, with no group claiming responsibility
• Stolen data poses major fraud risks, prompting free identity monitoring from Kroll

US healthcare organization Unlimited Technology Systems has revealed it suffered a cyberattack in which it lost a treasure trove of sensitive information belonging to millions of people.

The company recently made the information public and shared details with the US Department of Health and Human Services, noting that someone broke in on October 5, 2025 and within five days exfiltrated valuable data belonging to just over 3.8 million people.

The attacker stole people’s full names, Social Security numbers (SSN), dates of birth, emails and mailing addresses, phone numbers, demographic information, scans of driver’s licenses and other government IDs, insurance cards, intake forms, health insurance policy numbers, claims and benefits information, medical record numbers, dates of service, and diagnosis data.

Supply chain woes

The company did not say who the threat actors were, or if they demanded any ransom in exchange for deleting the data.

No hackers have claimed responsibility just yet, and we also don’t know how they managed to break in, as different groups have different methods.

ShinyHunters, for example, prefer calling their victims on the phone, pretending to be IT support and convincing their victims to give them access via remote management tools. Other groups might try to exploit vulnerabilities in routers, firewalls, and other hardware.

Whoever it was, they have a valuable data set in their possession. This kind of information can be sold on the black market or used in identity theft and wire fraud. To mitigate these risks, Unlimited Technology Systems is offering free identity monitoring services to affected individuals through Kroll.

Unlimited Technology Systems is a software company that provides financial technology for healthcare organizations. It works with around 4,500 clinics and 6,500 specialty healthcare providers in the US, processing north of $70 billion in net healthcare charges every year.

According to BleepingComputer, the company processes information on behalf of its clients, which means that the victims of this attack have no direct relationship with Unlimited and have probably not even heard of it.

• Oversecured found 176 vulnerabilities across Samsung’s preinstalled mobile apps
• Flaws enabled account takeover, code execution, and traffic hijacking via bloatware
• Samsung patched all reported issues, affecting hundreds of millions of devices

Security researchers from Oversecured have given “bloatware” an entirely new meaning, revealing that they uncovered 176 vulnerabilities - including some rather worrying ones - in Samsung’s mobile apps.

For the last three years, the team analyzed Samsung’s preinstalled system applications and found vulnerabilities that could cause some serious harm. Some of the bugs granted camera and microphone access, while others allowed for remote Samsung Account takeover with nothing more than a single click.

Some flaws allowed for network traffic hijacking via DNS manipulation, and others granted arbitrary code execution via an image. In theory, a malicious actor could craft and send a JPEG image which, when the victim opens, copies and loads attacker-controlled native libraries from the SD card. Finally, Oversecured found path traversal vulnerabilities allowing writing arbitrary files to the file system without proper path validation.

Arbitrary code execution

The researchers disclosed their findings to Samsung which, according to their report, fixed all of the reported issues - the full list can be found on GitHub.

Most Android smartphone manufacturers preload their devices with proprietary apps - think Bixby, Samsung Free, or AR Zone. These apps - which cannot be uninstalled or removed from the devices - aren’t necessary to their operations and are often not wanted by the users in the first place.

This 'bloatware' is also one of the key selling propositions of Google Pixel devices, since these are considered “stock Android”, or bloatware-free.

Out of context, these bugs are nothing extraordinary. Single-click account takeover flaws and traffic hijacking bugs pop up every now and then and get fixed rather quickly. The context here is that these are Samsung’s proprietary apps that don’t fall under the protection of Google’s Play Protect. Users might think they’re safe because they’ve not downloaded apps from risky places, or enabled dangerous permissions, when in reality, they’re not safe at all:

“Preinstalled system applications run with extra privileges than normal apps, cannot be removed by users, and operate outside Google Play Protect,” the researchers warned. “A single vulnerability affects hundreds of millions of devices globally through one vendor's distribution channel.”

• Attackers used social engineering to access Levi’s network and steal corporate data
• Details on stolen information, methods, and perpetrators remain largely undisclosed
• Voice‑phishing extortion groups are suspected, though no one has claimed responsibility

Levi Strauss has revealed it recently suffered a cyberattack and lost corporate files - however some crucial details around the incident are missing.

The company filed a new report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), noting how hackers accessed its infrastructure through “social engineering” against three of its employees. We don’t know if that was via email, voice phishing, or some other technique.

After breaching the network, the crooks - who weren’t identified - “accessed and exfiltrated certain corporate information”. Again, we don’t know which information was accessed, or how much of it.

Was it UNC6671?

In response, Levi’s said it had “initiated response protocols, implemented containment measures, and launched an investigation” which remains ongoing. Again, we don’t know what these measures are, or how the crooks were ousted.

The company says the incident did not disrupt its business operations, or caused interruptions, in any way, and that it does not expect it to have any material impact whatsoever.

While Levi’s did not name the perpetrators, and while none have yet claimed responsibility on the dark web, some publications have hinted at UNC6671, a “financially motivated threat cluster that conducts data-theft extortion attacks through voice phishing”. The tactic seems to have been “borrowed” from ShinyHunters, arguably one of the largest data extortionists out there.

The group would call their targets on the phone (usually low-level employees with access to company SaaS solutions) and, while pretending to be from the IT department, convince the victims to either grant remote access, or to visit a malicious credential-grabbing landing page.

From there, the attackers would move in, map the infrastructure, exfiltrate valuable data, and then demand payment in cryptocurrency in exchange for deleting the data.

We have reached out to Levi’s with further questions and will update the article if we get an answer.

Via BleepingComputer

• Windows 11's Weather app uses a surprising amount of RAM
• It consumes over 1GB at times — and worse still, pushes adverts
• This is a lot of what's wrong with Windows 11 in a nutshell

If you want a neatly crystallized summary of some of the key remaining failings of Windows 11 — pain points Microsoft has yet to fix in its campaign to right the wrongs of the OS — you only need to look at the Weather app.

This is one of Microsoft's default apps with Windows 11, and as Windows Latest pointed out, the RAM that this software eats up is mind-boggling, frankly.

The tech site observed that the Weather app somehow used over 1.2GB of system memory, and that this isn't far off five times as much as the native Weather app on macOS (which uses something like 250MB of RAM).

On my Windows 11 machine I didn't see quite that level of resource usage, but the Weather app did consume around a peak of 1GB at times (although that did drop as low as 800MB, and that was the level I saw it running at in the main). That's still a lot of memory, though, and it's clear the app has a heavy system footprint.

On top of that, there's an additional downside here, which is that you get adverts displayed alongside your forecasts and weather details (in panels at the side). These are full-on adverts, too, for the likes of shoes or medical insurance, not just Microsoft's nudges to use its products like OneDrive or similar.

As Windows Latest observes, this is because this app is actually the MSN Weather app, with the adverts being pulled over from the MSN network.

Analysis: a shower of adverts

Granted, the app provides a lot of weather information, and it's pretty comprehensive — but at what cost? What should be a lightweight and streamlined app consumes an improbable amount of RAM. Why is that? Well, it's due to Weather being a web app, one that, when you peek behind the hood, is running eight separate Chromium processes.

That's a clunky way of working, and the high level of resource usage this causes is particularly unwelcome in the current climate of the RAM crisis, where 8GB laptops are being brought back to try and keep costs down as manufacturers struggle to keep a lid on prices.

Okay, so Microsoft is looking at performance improvements across the board for Windows 11, and it's specifically aiming to address the issue of the memory footprint for 8GB PCs. And hopefully the Weather app will get some attention as part of that streamlining, and sooner rather than later.

For now, though, even if you don't use Weather, it remains a clear reminder of what's wrong with some parts of Windows 11 in terms of unnecessary bloat, both in the way the app is programmed, and the addition of those adverts (which doubtless don't help performance, either). These ads are present in Windows 10's Weather app, too, in case you were wondering, and it's surely a simple enough job — and an easy win — for Microsoft to at least ditch these.

As you might imagine, there have been a fair few potshots fired at Microsoft over this on social media, and one Redditor echoes something I've said myself in the past: "It's honestly ridiculous that we pay for a premium operating system and still get served ads inside basic native apps like Weather."

This is a key point for me. You can either have a free operating system that pays for itself via promotional bits and pieces — you can't really argue with that if you've forked out nothing for the privilege of running an OS — or you have a paid one that has no promotions.

Microsoft has promised to chill on the upselling in Windows 11, and it looks like the Weather app would be a good place to revisit with that in mind.

• Kimsuky used local AI tools to evade monitoring and enhance operations
• Researchers observed extensive AI-driven capability building across the group’s infrastructure
• Defenders urged behavior-based detection to spot evolving AI-enabled threats

North Korean hackers have found a way to use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to supercharge their activities without tipping off the tool’s maintainers.

When people use AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude, their activities can be (at least to some extent) tracked and curbed - with OpenAI recently identifying and terminating multiple ChatGPT accounts used in phishing and human trafficking.

That is why Kimsuky - a known state-sponsored North Korean threat actor, used Ollama, GPT4All and Msty locally, allowing them to process documents without sending any sensitive information to outside AI services.

"Consistent process of capability development"

The attacks were spotted by security researchers Genians who “conducted months of tracking and log analysis on the infrastructure utilized as C2 in this campaign,” to identify the tools they used.

Aside from the three LLMs, they also used retrieval augmented generation (RAG) tools for document search, as well as AI agent development frameworks, text-to-speech software, and an AI-assisted coding tool called Cursor.

Using AI to write malicious code is not as simple as it sounds, due to various guardrails set up by the developers. As a result, AI in crime has been mostly limited to drafting phishing emails and crafting authentic-looking but malicious landing pages. However, Kimsuky has shown that AI in cybercrime continues to evolve and is becoming an ever-greater threat.

“What was observed in the threat actor's infrastructure was not merely evidence of several documents being created with AI, but a consistent process of capability development: establishing local LLM runtime environments, configuring RAG based on documents in the actor's possession, collecting AI agent development frameworks, and acquiring libraries for integration with external commercial AI services,” Genians concluded.

As a result, defenders must move from content-based assessment to behavior-based detection, the researchers warned, saying this should serve “as the fundamental premise of security recommendations.”

“In addition to indicator of compromise (IoC)-based detection, organizations should contextually correlate the sequence of anomalous activities following LNK execution, including PowerShell execution, persistence establishment, and external communications, to assess the overall threat level.”

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1659) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1659) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1659, are…

• GAVEL
• CRUSH
• SPEED
• ETHOS

I’m glad I held back from getting GAVEL until later in the game.

Before eliminating the letters there were dozens of possibilities, but as the letters vanished it reduced down to one.

Daily Sequence today (game #1659) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1659, are…

• PRISM
• SNAKE
• CRAMP
• SALON

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1658, Sunday, 9 August: KAPPA, WIDEN, FOLIO, STEEP
• Quordle #1657, Saturday, 8 August: FUROR, BUGLE, REUSE, SCOOP
• Quordle #1656, Friday, 7 August: AMISS, SHIRK, SALSA, RABBI
• Quordle #1655, Thursday, 6 August: AMUSE, BRAND, CEDAR, BLURB
• Quordle #1654, Wednesday, 5 August: MOUND, WRONG, STOOD, WEIRD
• Quordle #1653, Tuesday, 4 August: GOOEY, TARDY, HUMAN, CHALK
• Quordle #1652, Monday, 3 August: FUNGI, MUDDY, DEBUT, MANIA
• Quordle #1651, Sunday, 2 August: BOOTH, EASEL, REACH, MAKER
• Quordle #1650, Saturday, 1 August: OMEGA, BIRCH, SMOCK, EERIE
• Quordle #1649, Friday, 31 July: MANIA, SINGE, STOOL, LOFTY
• Quordle #1648, Thursday, 30 July: MODAL, IDLER, CHUMP, LUMPY
• Quordle #1647, Wednesday, 29 July: GAWKY, ALLOY, AUDIT, LATCH
• Quordle #1646, Tuesday, 28 July: SMITE, ROACH, RUDDY, GLOBE
• Quordle #1645, Monday, 27 July: TAFFY, FIGHT, GUILD, WAGER
• Quordle #1644, Sunday, 26 July: STOMP, LIMIT, FUNKY, STEAD
• Quordle #1643, Saturday, 25 July: SALON, SHEEN, BURST, GOURD
• Quordle #1642, Friday, 24 July: DOLLY, EDIFY, LAGER, PRANK
• Quordle #1641, Thursday, 23 July: LADEN, EVICT, WOVEN, SHIRE
• Quordle #1640, Wednesday, 22 July: COYLY, SINGE, AWASH, AWOKE
• Quordle #1639, Tuesday, 21 July: TRUSS, AXIAL, SWINE, THING

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #890) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #890) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• FAST
• CURE
• STARE
• FIST
• TROOP
• STIFF

NYT Strands today (game #890) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #890) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #890) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #890, are…

• DATA
• FACTS
• FIGURES
• STATISTICS
• SPECIFICS
• SPANGRAM: PROOFPOSITIVE

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: Perfect

I spotted “positive”, “proof” and “specific” as non-game words before seeing them as the spangram and adding an S to get to the SPECIFICS.

This, then, was a game of feeling around in the dark before gradually completing the board, rather than a smashing through — or maybe I was slower just because it’s a Monday?

Either way, it was a pleasure to complete a game celebrating the bedrock of good journalism, as opposed to the opinion and bluster that makes up most of the media landscape.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Sunday, August 9, game #889)

• LUXURY
• EXTRAVAGANCE
• TREAT
• INDULGENCE
• FRILLS
• SPANGRAM: IMWORTHIT

Letterboxd might just be my favorite app — I love tracking the media I consume and making lists, and Letterboxd is basically a perfect take on that for movies. And while I don’t love Goodreads quite as much, I find that it serves a similar purpose for books. But I’ve struggled to find an app like this for shows.

That’s not to say no such apps exist — of course they do. But for one reason or another, I’ve always bounced off them. Until, perhaps, now.

It’s early days, but so far, Bingers — a new app from the co-founder of TV Time — seems like it might mostly fit the bill, though it doesn’t quite address all of my issues with other TV show tracking apps.

Beautiful and customizable

One of the things I love about Letterboxd is just how much of a joy it is to interact with, and part of that comes down to it being aesthetically pleasing, with the same being true of Bingers.

Here you get big posters and backdrops for each show, along with the ability to swap them out for other options, and the interface beyond that feels polished and — for the most part — well laid out.

Adding shows to your watchlist can be done with a single tap, and marking episodes or whole seasons as watched is similarly speedy, so there’s minimal friction.

Switching over from another app is potentially easy too, as you can import your data from TV Time, TV Time Liberator, or Refract.

It’s not perfect; for example, while you can search through the filmography of cast and crew members, there’s no way that I can see to sort or filter those lists. But the core parts of the app at least are largely well laid out. And Bingers has only just launched, so it’s sure to improve over time.

Impressively full-featured

There’s also a lot here. You can add shows to your watch list and then get alerts when new episodes or seasons are out, so you never miss them. You can also rate and review shows and episodes, and even attach an emoji for how they made you feel.

There’s even an option to select your favorite character in an episode, and then see what percentage of people picked each option. I’d love to see more stats, which is something Letterboxd still has over Bingers, but that — along with a total watched time and number of episodes watched — is at least gesturing towards an interest in this sort of data.

Plus, you can mark shows as favorites, create lists, and follow other users — with that last point giving this app the community feel that things like Letterboxd and Goodreads also have.

You can also explore trending shows and genres if you’re looking for something new to watch, and you can log rewatches, so you can see how many times you’ve viewed something.

There are movies here too if you want all of your visual media in one place, though for now, at least, I’ll mostly be sticking with Letterboxd for those.

Keeps me coming back

Still, while I’ve only been using Bingers for a few days so far, that’s longer than I managed with most apps like this. I think all of the above contributes to that — the beautiful design, the lack of friction in logging, and the reminders and alerts for new episodes, plus a handy timeline view that shows what you haven’t yet watched, and what episodes are landing in the coming days.

I do wish there were a Bingers website, as sometimes I’d rather interact with these services from my computer, and it could still do with a few more features within the app — more stats, an overall average rating for each show, and the inclusion of trailers, for example.

But for a new release, Bingers is off to a very promising start, and as long as the app keeps evolving — and continues to find an audience — this could become the Letterboxd for TV.

I was fourteen or so when I went to the Gadget Show Live (once a big tech event in the UK which showed off the latest technology) in 2016 as a punter and overheard someone on a stand I'd visited mention they'd spent £1,000 on a custom gaming PC.

A thousand pounds. On a computer. I remember turning that figure over in my head (it's roughly $1,400) and not quite being able to make sense of it, not necessarily because I couldn't fathom how much money that was, but because at the time, it seemed like a lot of money to spend on a PC without any frame of reference as to what that price got you.

As it turned out, £1,000 would have bought you an upper mid-range system back then, and speccing a top-end system of the time would have added an awful lot more to my 'dream budget'. A properly specced 3XS system built around Intel's then-flagship Kaby Lake processor, the Core i7-7700K, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, would set you back around £1,700 including VAT.

Nvidia went one further with the venerable GTX 1080 Ti, which arrived in March 2017. It immediately became the card every serious PC gamer wanted, and pushed that high price even higher. Nonetheless, you still got an entire top-of-the-range PC for that price.

Here's what's strange about that number in 2026: it's roughly what you'd pay for a flagship graphics card alone. Nvidia's RTX 5090 should retail for roughly in line with what this entire PC cost, although the Asus ROG RTX 5090 Astral I've got for testing is over double the RRP of this PC, even taking inflation into account.

Intriguingly, the GPU that was the ceiling of consumer ambition in 2017 is now, in isolation, cheaper than a mid-range graphics card in 2026. Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti launched at £699 / $699 (about AU$930); the RTX 5090 launched at £1,799, at least for the Founder's Edition card.

That's not a like-for-like comparison — flagship GPU pricing has always been a law unto itself — but it does tell you something about the economic difference between these two moments in PC gaming history.

Now, Scan has sent me that exact system, and I've plonked the GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition inside, and I've been running it alongside my own high-spec rig, with an RTX 5090 added for good measure, to see how the decade-old dream holds up.

What £1,700 bought you nearly a decade ago

Here's the entire spec sheet of the 3XS PC that Scan sent my way with the GPU swapped out:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K
• Cooler: Corsair 240mm AIO
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance LED 16GB DDR4-3000
• SSD: Samsung 960 Evo 250GB SSD (supplemented with a further 1TB SSD for game storage in my case)
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z270F Gaming
• PSU: Corsair RM750x 750W White
• Case: Corsair Carbide 400C in white

On first impressions, I'm a fan of the Corsair Carbide 400C case, feeling it to be a quieter and more considered choice than a lot of the RGB-laden alternatives that were becoming increasingly common at the time. Coming in white adds a bit of style to proceedings, and it seems roomy enough for the build on offer here. The hinged door with glass window is a nice touch, too.

Inside, the Asus ROG Strix Z270F Gaming motherboard is decently feature-rich and adds a smattering of RGB in the top corner to sit alongside the white LEDs of the RAM and the stock case fan inside. The Samsung 960 Evo SSD would have been top spec at the time, but is the one component that feels particularly outdated. It's a fast, capable boot drive, but is easily filled up with a modern Windows 11 installation and a game or two. Back in 2017, you'd have definitely wanted a hard drive installed as well.

Then there's the GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition. Nvidia's reference cooler on the Ti was a meaningful step up from the blower-style designs of previous generations, with an open dual-fan layout that kept temperatures in check. It's a handsome card even by today's standards and feels more restrained than the AIB partner designs that surrounded it. Holding it in 2026 feels like handling something from a very specific and rather significant chapter in GPU history, given its legendary status.

The 1080 Ti has a reputation that outlasted the hardware cycle it was supposed to belong to. When Nvidia's RTX 2080 Ti arrived in 2018, it brought ray tracing and a steeper price — and offered only a slight bump in rasterisation performance that most 1080 Ti owners looked at the cost of upgrading and decided against it. Even now, folks are asking how good this card is today, which is testament to its performance - and indeed its reputation.

A modern point of reference

Of course, benchmark numbers are no good in isolation, so for comparison's sake, I'm putting the Scan system against my own personal gaming rig, with the added boost of the RTX 5090. Usually it'd be an RTX 4080 Super, but for a 'dream PC' angle, I needed to go with the modern dream. Here it is in terms of specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• Cooler: Noctua NH-D15
• GPU: Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL36
• SSD: Lexar NM790 4TB
• Motherboard: NZXT N7 B650E
• PSU: NZXT C1200 1200W 80+ Gold ATX 3.0
• Case: NZXT H9 Flow (2023)

That isn't too bad of a PC if I do say so myself, and yes, I could use faster RAM or a beefier AMD processor if I wanted to eke out as much performance as possible, but I haven't seen fit to upgrade just yet.

Benchmarking methodology

To see how this 2017-era PC performs in the big 2026, I thought it might be fun to run it through a range of games – both ones that are contemporaries of the system and some slightly more modern titles that might push it quite hard. I've also put it through a range of modern benchmark tests to gauge performance against the newer hardware.

To Scan's credit, the machine came running the latest version of Windows 11 25H2 and Nvidia's latest driver release for GTX 10-series desktop cards, driver 582.66, which was a security update released in June 2026.

I've also elected to run games hooked up to my 4K QD-OLED monitor to see how far we can really push this Scan system, running at 1080p, 1440p and 4K to give you a full picture. The RTX 5090 system has also been put through the same tests, as close as possible, to give some comparable results and a frame of reference.

Testing 2017-era games

Firstly, I thought it was correct to run the Scan system through some games that would be period-correct for the time this PC was released to give an idea of a baseline. All four titles were run at their maximum settings, for reference.

Far Cry 5 seemed an ideal first candidate, being from 2018, and at the Ultra preset with HD textures enabled, it managed a 113fps average at 1080p. Going up to 1440p pushed things to 95fps, proving some surprisingly playable results. It was only when I got up to 4K that things dipped immensely, with a 50fps average. For reference, the RTX 5090 system hit 186fps at 4K, which tells you something about how much the goalposts have moved.

I followed this up with the original Dirt Rally, a game that relies on a strong CPU to help alongside the 1080 Ti, so the Core i7-7700K has to do a fair bit of heavy lifting. At the Ultra preset, the 1080 Ti managed 127fps at 1080p and 126fps at 1440p — results so close together that the GPU clearly isn't the bottleneck at either resolution; the 7700K is setting the ceiling, and it's holding it pretty well. At 4K, the GPU gets more of a say, and results come in at a still-reasonable 79fps.

However, this revealed one of the bigger gulfs between the older system and my more modern option. The RTX 5090 system managed 304fps at 1080p, 267fps at 1440p, and 225fps at 4K — numbers so high they serve as a reminder of how differently the two machines interpret the same game.

The original Hitman, which uses DirectX 12 at maximum settings, returned 128fps at 1080p, 106fps at 1440p, and 59.5fps at 4K. The RTX 5090 system managed 203fps at 1080p, 191fps at 1440p, and 186fps at 4K — again, the gap narrowing considerably at lower resolutions before opening up at 4K.

I'd argue Rise of the Tomb Raider is the 1080 Ti's finest hour in this period-correct lineup. Running at the Very High preset in DirectX 12, it returned 144fps at 1080p and 110fps at 1440p. These are numbers that would have felt sky-high at the time and still feel impressive today. Even at 4K, the 59.7fps result is the most modern-feeling 4K figure of the four period titles, suggesting this is a game the 1080 Ti was particularly well-matched for, and a near-60fps average provides some very playable results even today.

That is, until you get the RTX 5090 involved – it posted 316fps, 302fps, and 281fps across the three resolutions in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Trying newer games

The older game results paint a flattering picture of the 1080 Ti. However, modern titles are much less kind, as you might expect.

My first port of call was Cyberpunk 2077, perhaps this generation's Crysis equivalent, as it can be quite a demanding title for a range of systems. For the 1080 Ti, at the Ultra preset without any upscaling, it managed 52fps at 1080p — passable, if not quite the experience the game deserves — while 1440p dropped to 32fps, and 4K delivered a deeply unimpressive 13.9fps. Enabling FSR 2.1 Quality improved things to 62fps, 41fps, and 20.5fps across the three resolutions respectively, which at least makes 1080p feel workable.

Beyond that, it's a significant compromise. Ray tracing isn't an option here at all — the 1080 Ti simply has not got the hardware for it, and that means for 2026's most demanding titles, including Indiana Jones & The Great Circle that require hardware-based ray-tracing to even run, you won't be able to play them at all.

The RTX 5090, by contrast, ran the Ultra preset at 173fps, 148fps, and 116fps natively. Plus, a more modern card supplements its raw power with Nvidia's DLSS upscaler and fully-fledged RT performance. With DLSS Transformer enabled, those numbers climbed to 183fps, 170fps, and 167fps. With a combination of Cyberpunk 2077 at its RT: Ultra preset with DLSS Transformer enabled, it managed 130fps, 129fps, and 125fps at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K respectively. The gap between these two machines in Cyberpunk 2077 is the widest in my entire test suite, and the most instructive.

This is especially true when you take the multi-frame-gen tech Nvidia has put into these new Blackwell cards, acting as a multiplier for 'fake frames' for a smoother feeling experience, as long as you're starting with a solid enough base frame rate so too much latency isn't introduced. With the RT: Ultra preset, and the MFG multiplier set to 4x, the RTX 5090 system managed 511fps at 1080p, 452fps at 1440p and 355fps at 4K, widening the gulf even further.

Returnal tells a similar story for this matchup. The Epic preset returned 57fps at 1080p, 45fps at 1440p, and 27fps at 4K — the 1080p result is playable, but Returnal's fast-paced action makes anything below 60fps feel like a handicap, and 27fps at 4K is below any reasonable threshold. The RTX 5090 managed 231fps, 207fps, and 147fps at the same resolutions. In a game built around sharp reactions and split-second timing, that headroom matters more than in most.

Moving over to Rainbow Six Extraction, I had higher hopes for a more modern eSports-type title. The default Ultra preset includes a Dynamic resolution of 25-100% of the selected one, which is how I left it, revealing 126fps at 1080p, 85fps at 1440p, and a genuinely solid 66fps at 4K. It's the most comfortable the 1080 Ti looks across this entire modern test suite, and a reminder that there are modern titles that aren't particularly demanding, which are still playable on older hardware.

Meanwhile the RTX 5090-equipped modern PC scored 461fps at 1080p, 405fps at 1440p, and 272fps at 4K, and prove the benefit of the bevvy of high refresh rate OLED screens we've begun to see in recent years when paired with such powerful hardware.

For one final test, I thought it'd be interesting to try a super up-to-date Unreal Engine 5-based title in Black Myth Wukong, as one of the few titles that doesn't need any hardware-based ray-tracing, unlike a lot of its contemporaries.

I elected to step down to the Very High preset, with FSR enabled (with a resolution scale of 33 for 4K, 49 for 1440p and 66 for 1080p) and frame-gen on. The result was 46fps at 1080p, 44fps at 1440p, and 40fps at 4K, which make for some remarkably consistent numbers across different resolutions that make it clear that frame-gen is doing some form of heavy lifting to keep the output FPS so stable. The RTX 5090 managed 120fps, 122fps, and 119fps with the same settings.

Synthetic benchmark time!

The synthetic benchmarks tell a predictable story. The 7700K holds up reasonably well in single-core workloads — the gap to the 7800X3D is meaningful but not embarrassing, and is somewhere in the region of 50% depending on which test you trust.

Multi-threaded performance is a different matter, though, where nearly a decade of core count increases and architectural progress make the comparison increasingly one-sided.

On the GPU side, the picture is more interesting. In 3DMark Fire Strike — a DirectX 11 test that's broadly representative of the conditions the 1080 Ti was designed around — the RTX 5090 leads by roughly three time. Push to Fire Strike Ultra at 4K, and that becomes nearly five times, and the Time Spy results, which move into DirectX 12 territory, tell the same story: a 4x gap at 1440p becoming 4.6x at the Extreme variant.

The 1080 Ti doesn't just lose ground to newer hardware — it loses it disproportionately as resolution and API demands increase, which is worth keeping in mind as we come to a judgement on this entire system.

Summing up

The comparisons made here make for a fascinating reminder of just how much the PC gaming landscape has changed over the past decade.

In 2017, £1,700 bought you an entire dream machine built around the best consumer graphics hardware money could buy. In 2026, that same sort of money barely gets you through the door for a flagship GPU alone. The economics are strange, but the performance gulf is telling: the RTX 5090 system is several times faster in many of the tests here, especially as resolutions rise and modern rendering technologies come into play.

However, the old Scan system isn't the write-off those numbers might suggest when you drill down. The GTX 1080 Ti and Core i7-7700K remain a remarkably capable pairing in the games they were designed around, with high-refresh-rate 1080p and 1440p gaming still very much within reach for those older titles. Even some newer titles remain playable with sensible settings, although the lack of dedicated ray-tracing hardware and modern AI-assisted upscaling means there are increasingly firm limits to what the system can do.

That perhaps says more about how well balanced the original machine was than anything else. The 1080 Ti earned its legendary reputation because it wasn't merely fast for its time, but rather remained relevant for years afterwards, and even now it can still provide a decent experience in the right games. There are still folks talking about how well it does today, which is a testament to its legacy.

Admittedly, the rest of the system has aged more unevenly, with the 16GB of DDR4 memory and tiny 250GB boot drive feeling particularly constrained in 2026, but there is still something satisfying about using a PC that once represented the absolute pinnacle of enthusiast gaming so far removed from the original situation.

The modern machine is undeniably better in almost every measurable sense. It's dramatically faster, more capable at 4K, and supported by technologies that simply didn't exist when the GTX 1080 Ti launched. Features such as DLSS, frame generation and hardware-accelerated ray tracing have changed what we expect from a high-end graphics card, while high-refresh-rate OLED displays, such as the one both systems have been hooked up to from Philips, give all that extra performance somewhere meaningful to go.

Still, there is a certain charm to the 2017 system in my book. It represents a point when a top-end gaming PC felt aspirational but not entirely unattainable — when spending £1,700 could buy the whole dream, rather than just the graphics card. The hardware may no longer be cutting-edge, but it hasn't become entirely obsolete either. If anything, testing it against a 2026 flagship proves just how exceptional the GTX 1080 Ti was, and how long a genuinely well-specced gaming PC can remain enjoyable.

The goalposts have moved enormously, but the old dream still has plenty of game left in it.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1658) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1658) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1658) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1658) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1658) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1658) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1658, are…

• KAPPA
• WIDEN
• FOLIO
• STEEP

I love it when the correct guess pops into your head after a period of blankness.

I got this today with my final word of FOLIO, where the key was thinking of a word that ended in I-O.

Daily Sequence today (game #1658) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1658, are…

• CHEAP
• MONTH
• BROOM
• SOLVE

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1657, Saturday, 8 August: FUROR, BUGLE, REUSE, SCOOP
• Quordle #1656, Friday, 7 August: AMISS, SHIRK, SALSA, RABBI
• Quordle #1655, Thursday, 6 August: AMUSE, BRAND, CEDAR, BLURB
• Quordle #1654, Wednesday, 5 August: MOUND, WRONG, STOOD, WEIRD
• Quordle #1653, Tuesday, 4 August: GOOEY, TARDY, HUMAN, CHALK
• Quordle #1652, Monday, 3 August: FUNGI, MUDDY, DEBUT, MANIA
• Quordle #1651, Sunday, 2 August: BOOTH, EASEL, REACH, MAKER
• Quordle #1650, Saturday, 1 August: OMEGA, BIRCH, SMOCK, EERIE
• Quordle #1649, Friday, 31 July: MANIA, SINGE, STOOL, LOFTY
• Quordle #1648, Thursday, 30 July: MODAL, IDLER, CHUMP, LUMPY
• Quordle #1647, Wednesday, 29 July: GAWKY, ALLOY, AUDIT, LATCH
• Quordle #1646, Tuesday, 28 July: SMITE, ROACH, RUDDY, GLOBE
• Quordle #1645, Monday, 27 July: TAFFY, FIGHT, GUILD, WAGER
• Quordle #1644, Sunday, 26 July: STOMP, LIMIT, FUNKY, STEAD
• Quordle #1643, Saturday, 25 July: SALON, SHEEN, BURST, GOURD
• Quordle #1642, Friday, 24 July: DOLLY, EDIFY, LAGER, PRANK
• Quordle #1641, Thursday, 23 July: LADEN, EVICT, WOVEN, SHIRE
• Quordle #1640, Wednesday, 22 July: COYLY, SINGE, AWASH, AWOKE
• Quordle #1639, Tuesday, 21 July: TRUSS, AXIAL, SWINE, THING
• Quordle #1638, Monday, 20 July: ICING, SLICK, GAILY, RISEN

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #889) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #889) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• RANG
• WRATH
• FRIED
• RULER
• FLIRTED
• THERE

NYT Strands today (game #889) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #889) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #889) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #889, are…

• LUXURY
• EXTRAVAGANCE
• TREAT
• INDULGENCE
• FRILLS
• SPANGRAM: IMWORTHIT

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 1 hint

It was hard to ignore the two Xs on the board, so that’s where I began first — spying LUXURY and then EXTRAVAGANCE, although I did manage to start the latter with the wrong letter E, quite a drag for a 12-letter word.

After this burst I ground to a halt and busied myself with finding some interesting non-game words. A hint gave me TREAT, but I had to spend a good couple of minutes staring at these five letters before I connected them in the right order.

After all this, I think I’m going to pamper myself with a scoop of vegan ice cream.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Saturday, August 8, game #888)

• TRACK
• DROP
• LOOP
• CUTBACK
• TUNNEL
• CORKSCREW
• SPANGRAM: ROLLERCOASTER

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the frisson of excitement around the launch of Gmail back in 2004. The idea of getting 1GB of storage space completely free of charge seemed wild — and all of your messages could be got at in a simple web browser tab.

As someone who had become accustomed to deleting emails to save space, and painstakingly moving over message archives manually every time I got a computer upgrade, this sounded fantastic. So did being able to get at my emails from any device I wanted, instantly (that seems less appealing these days, somehow).

Something else Gmail has done really well down the years is act as a hub for other email accounts, letting you import and send messages from other accounts inside the Gmail interface — with all the benefits of powerful search, filtering, and spam flagging tools. Now though, most of that functionality is going away.

These are features that I've relied on for decades inside Gmail, and it's going to make my email experience much more frustrating and fragmented.

What's changing

Charting the gradual dismantling of these features inside Gmail is tricky, because the updates have largely come through emails to users and updates to support documentation — there aren't really any official blog post announcements to point to (it's not surprising Google wants to keep all of this quiet).

The most recent news is that the ability to send emails from other accounts through Gmail is going away, and will be switched off completely from January 2027. If you currently send your Outlook or Yahoo messages through Gmail, as I do, you're going to have to find another solution from the start of next year.

A couple of other features are also being killed off in January 2027 as well, though these changes are ones we've known about for a while. You'll no longer be able to import messages from other accounts via the old POP protocol — something I've relied on for years to get emails from all of my various accounts into the same place — and you won't be able to use the Gmailify feature that essentially adds a few Gmail features (like spam protection) to your third-party accounts.

As someone who primarily uses Gmail on the web, and has several email accounts feeding into it, these are significant changes — and I'm not the only one upset about them. My current setup means I can have separate emails for work, app sign-ups, newsletters, and so on, and keep them all in Gmail for searching, filtering, and labeling, and it's been a simple and reliable setup.

Now I'm going to have to go back to jumping between three or four different email apps to check everything. Different rules, different storage limits, different interfaces. It's an annoying set of changes, which Google hasn't really explained — presumably the idea is to keep users focused on Gmail, and to cut costs.

What to do next

You do have a few options for trying to cling on to Gmail as a message hub, though none of them are ideal. You can get your third-party email account to auto-forward messages to Gmail — it means you'll have them in your Gmail archive for filtering and searching, though there's no 'send as' functionality.

This might cost you too: It's a paid-for extra for Yahoo Mail for example. That's particularly galling for me, because Yahoo is one of the accounts I feed into Gmail. I rely on it for newsletters, tickets, store accounts, general admin, and the like, and now I'm not going to be able to get at any of that inside Gmail.

Another option is to set up a desktop email client on Windows or macOS, which feels very old school. Gmail still supports the IMAP standard, and so do most other modern email services: all of your email will be together in one place, but you're only going to be able to access everything in one place from whatever desktop computer you set this up on.

Lastly, you can still add third-party accounts inside the Gmail app for Android or iOS. However, while this will let you view all your emails in one unified inbox, it won't actually move anything over to Gmail — if you open up the web app, your other accounts and all the messages inside them won't be there.

It's all a bit of a sorry mess, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do going forward. What's certain is that I'm not going to be able to carry on as I have been, and that Gmail is going to be a significantly less useful email hub for me in the future.

Logitech Mobi Fold review

The Logitech Mobi Fold is, without question, the weirdest mouse I have ever used in my life.

This tiny, foldable travel mouse is focused on one thing above all: portability. Just like a clamshell phone from the noughties, it can fold in half, allowing you to easily slip it into your pocket if you’re working on the go. But even though the Logitech Mobi Fold’s exceptional portability is its clear USP, I have to ask… is it actually that necessary?

After all, a lot of mice are already highly compact, and if you’re working on the go, you’ve probably got a bag to hold your laptop or tablet, right? I’d bet that your bag can fit a laptop and a mouse, so arguably, the thing that makes this mouse so special isn’t actually that game-changing.

Still, the Mobi Fold has a few interesting features to run through, and you’re surely curious as to how such a strange model feels in use. So, after using the Logitech Mobi Fold as my main mouse for a few days, here’s how I’d rate it — and whether I think it can compete with the best mice around.

First things first, the Mobi Fold is incredibly easy to get set up. There’s a sync button on it that makes linking up to a windows laptop, Mac, or Android device incredibly seamless. There’s also an easy switch feature, making it incredibly speedy to flick between a range of devices.

But after I got set up with the Mobi Fold, and started using it to get some work done I have to say… it wasn’t amazing.

The Mobi Fold exhibits a few key issues that make it feel inferior to a standard compact or productivity mouse. First of all, it has a slightly bizarre build. Its V-shape form makes it feel awkward to grip, and when using it for extended periods, this caused me to feel some discomfort in my hand. It lacks the ergonomics of my everyday mouse, the Razer Viper V3 Pro, and even lacked its fluidity, meaning moving it across my desk felt clunky.

In addition, the touch-controlled scrolling is a bit inconsistent. It doesn’t provide the same tight control of a traditional mechanical scroll wheel, and again feels a bit lacking in terms of fluidity. Don’t get me wrong: it’s totally functional, but if you want the smooth, precise scrolling of a traditional mouse, the Mobi Fold may leave you wanting more.

My final critique is on the feel of the left and right buttons. While these are serviceable, they felt more stiff than I expected them to, especially towards the back and middle of the model. I did appreciate the muted sound of clicking the left and right buttons, but I wish they felt a bit more sensitive.

Despite all of this, there are some clear positives worth pointing out. First of all, the mouse offers great battery life. It supplies about 22 hours of continuous use, which easily got me through the work week, meaning I didn’t need to charge it at all during the testing period. Having said that, Logitech says that you can get an extra three hours of use from just one minute of charging, making it exceptionally practical for someone like me who often forgets to juice up their devices.

In addition, the Mobi Fold features customizable button controls through the Logi Options+ app. This enables you to adapt pointer speed, set the central touch panel to different functions (like paste, volume controls, or a keyboard shortcut), and more.

In terms of design, I’m also a fan of the rubbery texture of the mouse, which is very pleasant to the touch. It’s also worth noting that 36% of the plastics used in the Graphite colorway of the mouse I used are made from recycled materials. It’s 29% for the Lilac and Off-White variants, which look pretty stylish in my opinion.

Look, the Logitech Mobi Fold does well to stand out from the crowd. Its lightweight and foldable design undoubtedly makes it easy to travel with — even though I’d argue that standard mice are probably portable enough as they are. In addition, the customizable buttons, long battery life, and satisfying feel of the mouse are clear positives.

But for $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129.95, the Mobi Fold ends up feeling like a relatively poor value for money option. Really, that comes down to one thing: its lackluster performance. With underwhelming ergonomics, as well as slightly stiff scrolling and buttons, the Mobi Fold feels like an idea that’s far more impressive in concept than it is in practice.

Logitech Mobi Fold review: price & release date

• $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129.95
• Released in June 2026
• Available in four colors

The Logitech Mobi Fold released in June 2026, carrying a list price of $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129.95. That price means it’s competing in the same price bracket as great models we’ve tested, such as the Keychron M6 8K, but a lot more than our favorite ultra-compact mouse, the Logitech Pop Mouse. It's available in four colors, including Graphite, Off-White, Lilac, and Sand.

Logitech Mobi Fold review: specs

Should I buy the Logitech Mobi Fold?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Logitech Mobi Fold review: also consider

How I tested the Logitech Mobi Fold

• Spent days using it as my main mouse
• Tried out its various features
• Took on the go to test its travel credentials

I spent multiple days testing the Logitech Mobi Fold, using it as my main mouse in the office and when working from home.

During my time with the Mobi Fold, I used it for general productivity, exhausted its various features, and even took it on the go to assess its on-the-go credentials. I typically had the mouse connected to my Windows PC, but I also tried it out with an Android phone.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing gadgets here at TechRadar, where I serve as an in-house Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve tried out a wide array of computing accessories, such as the Turtle Beach Command Series KB7 keyboard, as well as gaming gear, premium wireless headphones, power banks, and more.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: August 2026