I've been beta testing this beastly machine for around 2 weeks now, and I'm thoroughly impressed by its auto-alignment technology, premium design, and how it cuts acrylic like butter.

It's pretty chonky compared with some of the best laser cutters and engravers out there, but it packs serious power and works with a wide range of materials, including wood, clear acrylic, leather, paper, and fabric, and it can engrave glass, stone, and coated metals too.

This isn't a completely new direction from the company, considering that Bambu Lab has been blending modular laser cutting and engraving into its latest H series of 3D printers for a year now. The Bambu Lab H2S that I currently own has the option to laser cut, but also use a blade, a lot like one of the best Cricut machines.

Let's dive into my first impressions of the brand-new Bambu Lab R1, or you can check out the video I put together below for a more visual rundown.

To start with the highlights: In terms of price, the R1 sits at exactly what I'd expect for a laser of this size and power, priced at $2,499.00 / £2,249.00 / €2,499.00 / AU$3,849.00 for the laser alone (no add-ons included). In comparison to entry-level desktop laser units like the xTool P2S, which launched with an MSRP of around $4,299, this is actually pretty competitive.

The R1's best party trick is that it can automatically align its own optical path, thanks to the TriSense System. This means it can automatically detect where a material is placed, calculate how high the surface is, and map the tool head path in just one click. On other Co2 lasers, this is a painstaking manual process that involves taping thermal paper over a mirror mount, testing different burn marks, and turning each mirror by hand until the course is correct.

Bambu Lab also sent me a Vision Encoder (sold separately) to test with the R1, which is a handy calibration board that measures and corrects any mechanical drift that may occur after prolonged use. This ensures that the laser will last the test of time if maintained correctly.

Makers already familiar with Bambu Lab's ecosystem will get stuck in with this laser cutter quickly, as the R1 does not require you to learn a new method of working and fits into the ecosystem and interface you already know. The touch pad and UI feel almost identical to those of Bambu Lab 3D printers, and you can connect the R1 to Bambu Handy in a matter of minutes for easy app control.

The BirdsEye camera sits in the top of the laser lid and makes it easy to place your designs accurately, although there's no way to record or monitor the laser activity via the camera or app, so you'll need to be in close proximity to it at all times, as you should with any laser engraver in a home setting.

The machine utilises Bambu Suite software as opposed to Bambu Studio, which is 100% free with no hidden costs or AI credits needed. I believe it's only available as a desktop download, so keep this in mind if you only have access to a tablet or smartphone. It's easy to use, with basic tools to help you create, with background removal and tracing tools for turning images into SVGs in seconds.

There are some materials that the machine isn't compatible with at the time of testing, but this may change once Bambu rolls out a software update. I attempted to engrave on PLA anyway for the sake of testing, and it all worked fine. A word of caution: don't go against any of the product guidelines and safety measures.

The machine is Class 1 certified, which means you don't need goggles to operate it, and it's perfectly safe around children and pets. There's a big red safety button to shut down operation, an auto-stop feature when the lid is open, and it has flame detection too, which the Auto Fire Extinguishing System (sold separately) can put out on its own.

I won't lie, the Bambu Lab R1 is a super heavy and bulky machine (the unboxing and setup process is definitely a 2-person job). But according to the company, the R1 delivers the same working area as a typical CO2 laser while taking up about a third less space. Personally, I'm used to my slimmer xTool F2 Ultra laser, and this one certainly takes up more space in comparison.

The good thing is you can comfortably fit 2 sheets of Bambu Lab's basswood plywood in there side by side, with a working area of 600 × 300 mm. There's always the conveyor attachment (sold separately), which you can buy if you need to expand the working area for furniture-scale work up to 3,000 mm long.

I think for Bambu Lab's first-ever standalone laser, and non-3D printing product, this is a huge success. I haven't run into any hiccups or negative incidents yet but I'm still testing and looking for flaws each day.

Stay tuned for my full review of the Bambu Lab R1 coming soon. Pre-orders are live right now through the official Bambu Lab store, with shipping expected to roll out in October.

Then there's the Vanguard.

It's tricky when you get an absolute stinker in to review. After all, I don't want to make enemies in the small audiophile world. But the Vanguard is straight up a bad IEM.

• Buy the Noble Vanguard at Noble for $325

Of course, there will be people out there who'll like its odd tuning and unclear design. But at $325 I can't shake the feeling that it's a result of a series of mistakes rather than clear intent.

For context, every single IEM on my list of the best budget IEMs sounds and looks better than the Vanguard – some providing a modular cable too, despite costing a fraction of the Vanguard's price.

Let's dig into what went wrong.

Sound profile

Overall, the Vanguard's great sin is its imbalance. This is not a case of it not hitting my preferred tuning characteristics. I like all sorts of tunings, and I'll give a glowing review to an IEM that is well-balanced, even if its style of tuning isn't my bag (as with the Juzear Light Shuttle). Even a ridiculously coloured basshead set can be excellent, if balanced (Kiwi Ears x HBB Punch review in progress!).

But I believe that whoever tuned the Vanguard had an off day. The bass, midrange and treble all sing from completely different hymn sheets, and taken as a whole, it sounds boxy, bright, lean, dry, crispy, sharp and piercing.

The timbre is not what you would call realistic.

Bass: The first track that I play when reviewing an IEM is always the same: Erykah Badu's Other Side of the Game. It opens with a big fat bass note, swiftly followed by the thwack of a snare drum. It's a great way to know where you are with a set.

When played through the Vanguard, the bass note sounded like a trumpet, and the snare like a plate of wet jelly being thrown at a wall. I genuinely laughed out loud.

Now, I've not seen any graphs, but I don't think the problem is a lack of bass. There is some bass to be found here, it's just that in the context of the rest of the frequency response, that bass is being strangled of all its life. It lacks weight and body. It is weak sauce.

Midrange: This is the culprit!

Using a tonal sweep, there's a dip in 300-800Hz, followed by a peak around 2-4kHz – there's usually a mound, but this is a mountain. That translates into a thin lower midrange that makes vocals and instruments sound hollow, then a very pronounced upper midrange that brings a sharp, thin edge to everything.

If I'm being generous, I'd describe this approach as having attack and clarity.

I've come back to the Vanguard several times, each time wanting to 'get it'. Although negative reviews are fun to write, I know this IEM is the result of a team of people working hard, and I want to be fair. But after each session, I walked away thinking the same thing: this tuning is fundamentally misjudged.

To give Noble credit, this is an IEM that tries something new, which is to be applauded. But I cannot recommend the results.

Treble: Taken by itself, I can't find any problematic, sharp peaks here. But due to the shy bass and insane upper midrange, a little treble goes a long way.

With a balanced set, it's fairly easy to pinpoint what's going on in each area of the frequency response, but because the upper midrange looms so large, everything is in its shadow.

My treble-forward test tracks come across as piercing. The brightly mixed Lucinda Williams Sweet Old World is close to unlistenable – the tambourine, snare and cymbal crashes are too sharp to enjoy. But is this because of an excess of treble, or the sharp context that the upper midrange frames a modest treble? I can't be sure.

I don't think there's a shortage of air, but where that would usually add a dimension to the lower frequencies, with the already over-baked upper midrange, it aims a spotlight at the sun.

Price & value

The Noble Vanguard is $325, which is an incredibly competitive price point. If we put a pin in the tuning for now, and judge the Vanguard on its build, comfort, drivers and accessories, the Vanguard does OK.

This is a deep, long-style of IEM, and I personally don't find that style very comfortable, but I know that some people do, so we'll leave that in the 'too subjective to talk too much about' pile for now.

If driver configs are important to you, the Vanguard's three-driver setup is a slightly lower count than many competitors, but the individual transducer quality and component materials are good.

I personally don't worry too much about drivers, as it can quickly become a numbers game, and I'm unconvinced that more = better.

However, the aluminium and 3D resin build of the Vanguard is good, and the cable is also a nice thin, black number that doesn't tangle. It isn't modular, however, and it really should be, so that's definitely a point taken off for that.

Competition

When evaluating the Vanguard's value based on its tuning, it doesn't perform well. If you want a bright-leaning IEM around the same price, you can get the ZiiGaat Horizon ($330) or the Binary EP321 ($310), which are both excellent. If you want that slightly peaked pinna ear region, the Moondrop Blessing 3 ($360) is a great option (because it balances that peak with more bass!).

But for my main comparison, I'm not going with any of these sets. I think I can make my point comparing it to a $35 IEM instead...

Noble Vanguard vs Ooopus Op.22

You may think I'm being provocative by comparing the $325 Noble Vanguard with the $35 Op.22, but I'm really not. The truth is, the absurdly-named Ooopus Op.22 is a better-sounding IEM than the Vanguard, in both its sound settings (though admittedly, when it comes to build quality it's not in the same league).

That's right, the cheap IEM has two sound profiles: a neutral tuning, with a slight upper midrange elevation, and a bass-boosted setting. And I think the Op.22's upper-midrange-elevated tuning is a better version of the Vanguard.

That's because the Op.22's standard profile balances out a slightly elevated pinna region with a fuller, more linear bass-to-midrange. There's no dip in the lower midrange to reduce a sense of body, as with the Vanguard. The bass response is also well extended with the Op.22, and though subtle, like the Vanguard, it actually registers.

Bottom line: The Op.22 is just more balanced than the Vanguard.

And when you flick the bass boost on the Op.22, you get an unholy amount of bass that's really fun. As it's a different tuning approach, it doesn't make much sense to compare it to the Vanguard, so let's move on...

Should you buy it?

There are a couple of positive reviews of the Noble Vanguard online, so it's definitely worth having a listen for yourself to see who you agree with. Personally, I believe the team at Noble have made an uncharacteristic blunder here.

The build is good, but the cable isn't modular. There's a good number of ear tips, but the faceplate design of a cool-ass medieval sword-wielding warrior is basically unreadable. For every positive I can think of, there's an equal or greater negative. And that's before you get to the tuning.

If you have a hankering for a skyscraper peak in the pinna gain region (no shame, feel yourself), then give it a go. But be warned: a weak-ass bass and a troublesome treble accompany that absolute wad of upper midrange.

I find the Noble Vanguard impossible to recommend.

This week, the company launched Apple Music Hall, a brand new music venue in London. The intimate 600 capacity venue sits in Battersea Power Station, and promises to "close the gap between intimacy and production value".

The venue's website features a new take on the Apple Music wordmark, doing away with the clean and minimal San Francisco font in favour of a bold, lowercase design.

There's a decidedly retro look to the new design, with many claiming to be getting strong Y2K vibes. "Feels like the font from a music magazine cover or something you’d see on a cassette insert," one Redditor comments.

When Apple shifts away from a design trend, the world takes notice. Back in 2013, the brand arguably single-handedly killed skeuomorphism when iOS 7 introduced a sea of flat design. Then came Liquid Glass, which spawned countless imitations last year.

And so, this maximalist bold text could tell us a lot about the next few years of Apple design – and design in general. Maximalism has been in for a while, but with its colourful new laptops and Gen Z-baiting TikTok ads, Apple has been tentatively rediscovering its sense of fun. We're now seeing how that might translate into actual design systems for Apple. The future's bold.

With rival brands like Jaguar proving that a miscalculated logo can cost you public favour, it's never been a more nerve-wracking time for brands to evolve. But with a careful blend of heritage and modern refinement, it seems McLaren has nailed the contemporary car logo.

McLaren's new logo features a clean wordmark in a modern sans-serif. Inspired by the sign above the McLaren family service station in Remuera, Auckland, dating back to the 1920s, the design ties in the brand's rich history while giving the brand a slicker, modern appeal thanks to its lighter weight.

A subtle underscore beneath the lowercase 'c' brings a further polish to the design, giving it a luxury feel in line with some of the best fashion logos. The old logo's iconic speedmark is reintroduced for the brand's golf and racing subbrands, reflecting "the value of continuity and its enduring significance to fans around the world."

"It's a reflection of the journey we are on as a company," explains David Woodhouse, chief creative officer at McLaren Automotive. "It marks the beginning of a new chapter for McLaren, giving a physical expression to the ambition, creativity and forward momentum that is shaping our future."

"It celebrates the symbols and stories our fans, partners and team mates already know and love, while giving us a more connected expression of where we’re heading next. It feels unmistakeably McLaren," adds Lou McEwen, chief marketing officer at McLaren Racing.

As with all new brand identities, I suspect that McLaren's new look will certainly ruffle some feathers. The chunky, retrofuturistic look of the old design was iconic but slightly dated, and while it served a purpose, the new look feels far more in tune with McLaren's past and future.

For more car design, take a look at why the Ferrari Luce is so controversial or check out Tesla's mysterious new logo design that sparked some surprising theories.

Firstly because they tend to be refreshed year-on-year, and secondly because we're generally talking about people at the top of their industry, who both know what they're doing and are keen to impress their peers.

For that reason, I'm pretty sure I've never seen a bad conference identity. But inevitably, some are going to be better than others. And here's one that really hit all the right notes for me (for others, see our list of the best rebrands).

But first, some context. World Design Congress (WDC) is a global event run by the World Design Organization (WDO), an international non-governmental body that promotes the profession of industrial design.

Launched in 1959, it takes place in a different host city every two years, and the last one took place at the Barbican in London in 2025. The next, the 35th edition, will take place in Seoul, South Korea, from 22–25 September 2027. Its visual identity has just been released, and is in full effect on the World Design Congress website. And, well, it's quite a sight.

Clashing colours, scattered shapes, a logo that looks like a seesaw mid-wobble, all brought to life by motion graphics. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from a fun 'n' funky startup, not a prestigious body like the WDC.

But that doesn't mean I don't like it. In fact, I think they've actually nailed it. And that's especially pleasing in an era in which design festival mainly plays it safe. One typeface. One colour. A logo that could belong to a bank just as much as festival. I don't wish to name names, but we've all seen branding like this, right?

In contrast, for WDC 2027, Seoul studio Everyday Practice has gone in a very different direction. It's loud, chaotic and, frankly, a bit weird.

Which is very pleasing, because an organisation like WDO, marking its 70th anniversary, could have rested on its laurels and gone for something familiar and safe. And at a time when so much design feels focus-grouped into sameness, that feels like a risk, albeit it one that's paid for.

Underlying concept

It's not just different for different's sake, though: this is an identity built on something deep and real. Everyday Practice has taken the idea of Seoul as a city of contrasts – ancient palaces next to glass towers, humble villages a few streets from neon-soaked nightlife – and built that tension into the DNA of the identity.

The seven-colour palette does a real job, too. Green is for the city's parks, blue for the Han River, orange for its sunsets, magenta for its nights out. It all works together visually, subtly reflecting the idea of a city where different ideas can sit side by side without being in conflict.

I think the key takeaway here is that "bold and different" doesn't have to mean reckless or chaotic. Everyday Practice hasn't just thrown together clashing shapes and hoped for the best. Every colour ties back to something specific about Seoul, and the generative, scattering system behind the mark gives it a logic that holds up across the applications shown, the pastel-poster homepage, the greyscale variant, the bright orange one.

That's the discipline underneath what looks like chaos, and it's what stops this being a gimmick. And overall, this branding stands as proof that a reasoned, well-constructed piece of maximalism can still get approved by a serious institutional client; not despite being loud, but because the loudness is actually doing the work.

The Walmart Switch game hack appears to be an unintended workaround that allows the discount codes FAST30 or SAVE3X to be applied to game orders. While a Switch game meets the monetary threshold for the discount, it seems the codes may only be valid only for groceries. Some report that adding a single banana to a purchase appears to get around that restriction.

The loophole seems to have been first spotted by people shopping for Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, which was released last week. The physical edition launched at a standard price of $79.99, but Walmart has been selling it for less. Applying promo codes can slash the price further to around $60, according to some of the people posting on social media.

Bananas seem to be overwhelmingly the favourite choice for this checkout trickery – perhaps due to people's love of Donkey Kong, or perhaps because they only cost around 20 cents. If you're not a fan of bananas, any small grocery item should do, but it appears that you might not actually have to buy the fruit anyway: some report that the hack still works if you remove the banana after adding a Switch game or other non-qualifying product to your cart.

The SAVE3X code is intended for a customer's first three pickup or delivery orders from a local store, so you'll need to make sure that both the game and fruit you want are in stock. There does seem to be some inconsistency in how the codes work, though. Some people report being able to skip the banana workaround completely simply by switching from delivery to store pickup.

“If code doesn’t work, try switching to pickup. If that doesn’t work, add a banana,” one person writes on X.

Walmart has yet to issue any public alert about banana shortages, but some people claimed their local store now shows the fruit as "out of stock." If that's your case, you can always make do with the Nintendo sale deals below.

• Browse Nintendo Customer Appreciation Sale
• Shop Nintendo Switch games at Amazon

If you don't have a console yet and you're not sure which is right for you, read why the Switch 2 has become our digital art/3D editor's console of choice.

For a long time, however, I did not enjoy working in 3D, as I was mostly used to – and preferred – 2D workflows, which felt more natural to me since I already had some basic drawing and painting skills learned at architecture college. But after noticing the strengths that 3D could offer, I started trying to find an approach – one that suited me better, and one that felt less rigid, which was something I had previously associated with 3D.

Only after discovering 3DCoat, and finding it surprisingly fun to use, it quickly became my software of choice. Its voxel-based workflow allowed me to create more freely and intuitively in 3D. Since then I’ve become more open to other 3D softwares, using 3DCoat as my base (see our guide to the best 3D modelling software, and you might want one of the best laptops for 3D modelling).

In this tutorial, I will show you how I create a 3D scene of an overgrown robot, mixing those tools. Hopefully you will find it inspiring enough to try yourself. You can also check out our other Blender tutorials.

A complete 3D art process using 3DCoat, Quixel Mixer, Blender and Photoshop

This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.

Ever since the movie's release, there have been those who think Wish would have been better if Disney had stuck to its original, more romantic concept for the film. Now a group of independent artists is bringing that idea to life. They've just released the trailer for Asha & Starboy, their own hand-animated musical vision of what Wish could have been.

Early concept art for Wish depicted the character of Star as a shape-shifting young man with golden hair and a flowing cloak. As shown in the Reddit post below, he was conceived as a potential love interest for the film's main character, Asha. The movie's main song, At All Costs, was going to be a duet between them.

But in the end, Disney made Star a literal star: a cute but silent ball of wish-granting energy. There was no duet, and no romance. Instead, the movie became the story of Asha's personal journey. Many Disney fans felt that the original, more fairy tale-like idea had more personality and potential.

Directed by voice actor Griffin Puatu and animator Gabriele Camicioli, Asha & Starboy reimagines Wish as a musical romance with an original score, complete with that duet. It also makes Queen Amaya a villain alongside King Magnifico, again as she was originally imagined before she was turned into a supportive character in Disney's final film.

Instead of Disney's modern 3D CG style, the short film uses hand-drawn 2D animation. The excitement around the reveal of Disney's Oswald at D23 this year shows how much Disney fans have been clamouring for that. Sure enough, there are comments on the trailer from people who are already saying that it looks better than Disney's film.

"The irony is that fan fiction is actually better than the Disney version," one person writes. "Who knew a 57 second trailer could already be better than a 1 1/2 hour movie made by one of the largest, most successful filmmakers ever?" someone else writes.

After the success of Coyote Vs ACME, Asha & Starboy might be another chance for animation lovers to rejoice at the resolution of what they see as historic wrong committed by a behemoth of the industry, albeit on a very different scale. Will someone now do something similar for Hexed, which has faced its own controversy over changes made to the original story concept? If you're inspired, see our guide to the best laptops for animation.

There's been a lot of debate about the potential safety implications of a fully autonomous vehicle with no manual controls, but it seems there's also a more minor but fairly annoying oversight. You need to be careful about where you and any companions are standing when those automatic butterfly doors open.

The Cybercab's dramatic butterfly-style doors make it look more like a concept sports car than a taxi intended for mass production. Now it turns out that the striking design could also end up striking passengers physically.

Some had already questioned the practicality of the Cybercab's doors for tight urban environments and crowded pickup zones. In the video above, one person finds that there is indeed a potential issue with the automatic opening mechanism: the doors won't stop if you're standing in the way.

While the OP suspects that it's due to a blind spot in the car's camera and sensor system, it seems that the doors simply aren't designed to stop if someone's there. The OP stresses that it's "just a love tap". They see the doors as safe, but others suggest that they could be problematic for some people.

"The taps may be soft to you, but they may not be safe for the elderly, children, or people with several conditions. Imagine those doors knocking off a pricey phone off their hands!" one person writes.

"Sure it is safe but I feel like it would still be problematic for some people. Who wants a door to 'tap' them when they try to get in?," someone else comments.

Given that other Tesla vehicles have been involved in fatal accidents in self-driving mode, I'd be more worried about the Cybercab's fully autonomous driving than the doors giving "love taps", but it's another thing to be wary of.

The launch of the Cybertruck was mired with issues, including reports that the electric pickup struggled with snow, could fall apart at high speeds and, contrary to what Tesla CEO Elon Musk once promised, is definitely not a boat.

In this roundup, I've included some of the best art supplies, from delicate watercolours to rich oil paints and detailing pens for that final flourish. If you're starting your creative kit from scratch, check out our guide to the best art supplies to discover all you'll need for the perfect creative setup.

I braced for a brick when I tried out the Omen Max 16. Laptops with an RTX 5080 and a Core Ultra 9 275HX usually arrive with the heft of a paving slab. But the Omen Max 16 is lighter than it has any right to be, a machine you'll carry to a lecture, on a train or into a client meeting without resenting it. Okay, it’s not as light as less powerful laptops, but it’s not far off my usual MacBook Pro. That matters because a laptop this powerful is only useful if it goes places.

What surprised me more is how quickly it stops feeling like two machines in one chassis. Nvidia has spent years pitching RTX at two audiences at once. Gamers get DLSS 4 and the potential of DLSS 5 – frame generation and path-traced lighting. Creators get CUDA and OptiX, with the RTX cores doing the heavy lifting in Cycles. It's a neat pitch on a slide, something I’ve tried in demos, and I didn't expect it to work as a daily routine. Swapping between the two setups – Gamer Ready and Studio drivers – takes a few clicks, so you're deciding what the GPU is for that afternoon rather than struggling with what it can be.

Two worlds, one laptop

So I spent the morning in Blender, and it whizzes. The viewport stays fluid, Cycles chews through scenes that would have me making yet another cup of coffee on lesser hardware, and with 16GB of GDDR7 on the GPU, I wasn't worrying over textures and stalls. In the evening I played Control Resonant – an early review build – fully specced, ray tracing on, framerates zippy. Same lid, same desk, same bag, and all working incredibly smoothly and hassle-free – and coming from someone with a love/hate relationship with Windows, this is good, really good, in fact.

It's that blend of high-end work and play I keep thinking about, especially as back-to-school deals are all the rage and our default is to look down at cheaper offers instead of up at laptops like the Omen Max 16. Game artists are gamers; 3D artists and animators like to game on the side, and seeing how a shipped, ray-traced game runs on serious hardware is part of the education. Having the option to do both in one laptop, albeit with some caveats – it eats battery life, and lecturers may not love the LEDs as much as you – and never have to worry about performance seems a no-brainer. So why aren’t we all doing it? Ah, yes, the price.

Now the uncomfortable bit: HP's RRP for this top-end model – GeForce RTX 5080, Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD – is £2,999, and at the time of writing Very has it at £2,619, so that’s a £380 discount. That's a decent saving on a still frightening number. It's also the number that makes me hesitate, because at 18, as a student, borrowing is astonishingly easy. Loans arrive in your account, and overdrafts are offered like chocolate mints with a restaurant bill. Retailers will happily let you buy now and pay later, and the small print on that same Very page shows a representative APR of 44.9% if you miss the window, which is astonishing. The cost of this laptop feels oddly painless at exactly the moment you're least able to absorb it.

I used to make the easy argument here: a Chromebook or a MacBook Neo, which is essentially a large iPhone, won't open a Nanite-heavy Unreal Engine 5 scene without a wince. That's true, and it's also a straw man, because nobody serious is choosing between this and a Chromebook. The honest rival is the cheaper Omen. HP's OMEN 16 with an RTX 5060 is £1,299 right now, down from £1,600. It's a properly capable gaming laptop, and for plenty of first-years it would be plenty.

But look at what the extra £1,320 buys. That cheaper machine has 8GB of VRAM to the Max's 16GB, 16GB of RAM to 32GB, a 512GB drive to 1TB, and an eight-core Ryzen where this has 24 cores. You can upgrade storage and RAM later, but you can't improve VRAM. It's the ceiling on how dense a scene you can sculpt, how big a texture set you can bake and how much of a UE5 level you can light before things start to stutter, and you'll hit that ceiling in your final year, right when your showreel matters most.

Consider the lower specced Omen

So this is the real argument I think I’m coming around to: you're paying an extra £1,320 not to be stopped in your third year by the tech you avoided paying for years before. It won't make you talented, it won’t do all the hard graft for you, and it could tempt you to play another hour of Call of Duty when you really should be working on your Call of Duty killer.

But plenty of brilliant artists started on hardware that would make the 5060 look decadent, and if you're dabbling, you don't need the power of Omen Max 16 (RTX 5080), and the lower-end-spec Nvidia laptops (see below) can still handle both creative and gamer needs. Also, let's be real, if the only way to afford the premium Omen Max 16 is a 44.9% credit card, don't. Even then, the 1TB drive will fill faster than you think once UE5, a few projects and a Megascans library move in.

But if you already know the next four years are Blender, Unreal and games that make your GPU sweat and games you want to be inspired by to create your own worlds, this is the rare case where the indulgent option and the sensible one might be the same laptop. Now, I'm not entirely comfortable with how well that argument works on me, given the cost of things, and you’re taking advice from someone who spent their student loan on a Neo Geo AES, but there is a line of common sense in here – an Omen, or similar Nvidia RTX laptop (see below) will last you through your course and beyond if you’re serious about playing and making games.

In keeping with the best adverts, Converse clearly aimed for a stylised, editorial look for the new campaign. Unfortunately, the resulting design was painfully miscalculated, sparking cries for boycotts and all-out cancellation.

The advert in question stars K-Pop artist Karina holding a pair of Converse Chuck 70 X trainers. Lighting on her white skirt makes a sharp triangular shape thanks to a projection of the Chuck Taylor star logo, which critics claimed resembled hoods worn by the KKK.

To make matters worse, Karina's cut-off upper torso leaves the image slightly indistinct at a glance. The loose positioning of the shoes in her hand appeared to some like the dangling feet of a lynching victim, sparking internet-wide outrage.

"I cannot fathom why Converse would greenlight something so abhorrent. Lynchings of Black people in the US is NOT ancient history," one X user wrote. "'It’s just a shoe ad' is not a defence,' another added, while one critic wrote, "Even if the intent was unintentional, the tone deafness of the entire campaign is shocking."

Converse soon removed the ad, issuing the following statement to PEOPLE: “We’re sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognise that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and we will do better.”

The imagery of Converse's new campaign is jarring, to say the least, and it bewilders me that this imagery wasn't spotted before the campaign launch. With controversies like Sydney Sweeney's jeans ad bringing this issue to the forefront of the advertising world, it seems brands should be hyper-vigilant to ensure campaigns avoid controversy.

With burgundy, royal blue and butter yellow leading the colour trends for the season, I went hunting for the phone cases that will showcase these sumptuous shades. I've tried several of these cases myself so can vouch for the quality. After all, the performance of a case is as important as the looks. See some gorgeous options below, which will fit any iPhone, not just the new model.

AU26 has been dominated by Autodesk's argument that AI should help artists, not replace them, with Flow Studio as the flagship and tools like MotionMaker arriving inside Maya. The table is where I started.

AI's happy accident bonus

"AI is great at serendipitous content and is terrible at directed content," Patel says. He sorts it into tasks, shots and worlds. MotionMaker is a task: a small model trained to do one thing well, now covering locomotion for humans, dogs and horses, with cats on the way. The demo film is shots, which is where generative video sits today. Worlds that persist and understand physics are "the holy grail" and still far off, and he says the idea of prompting a whole movie is a myth.

The table problem is what shots look like at scale. Run the same prompt twice and "I'm probably going to get something slightly different." Change one thing, and the model can change others you liked; Patel says the models can also get stuck, reproducing the same result no matter how you rephrase, and when that happens, the only way out is back to the beginning.

So the aim is never to go back to the beginning. Use AI to make a 2D image, use that to make a 3D scene, use that to feed a clip, and you can return to any stage. Flow Studio's 3D Editor + Canvas works on a related principle, letting you block cameras, characters and performance in 3D before the AI generates the final look.

"We fundamentally believe that the future of AI is orchestration," Patel says. "We don't believe there's going to be one model to rule them all, even though that's what they might be trying to do", a slight dig at how some AI platforms view their place and goals. He expects real footage, CG and AI to be mixed, sometimes for efficiency alone. "Sometimes it's just quicker to shoot a fire and use that," he laughs, gesturing.

When the flaws are the point

Short clips are getting hard to tell from the real thing in AI film, showing where the tech sits right now in terms of quality and use. "We sometimes forget people used to do bad visual effects," Patel reflects, and AI tends to break down over longer stretches, suggesting that everything often starts from flawed beginnings.

But quality isn't always what an AI project is for, as in Patel's view, the Coca-Cola Christmas AI ad was "full of flaws" creatively, and its notoriety as AI helped sell it. He describes a credit card ad where the AI got the logo wrong, and the text was unreadable, something a VFX vendor would have rejected outright back in his day when he worked in visual effects. As he tells it, the fact that these ads were made with AI mattered more than the quality.

But sometimes AI in film can do things never before possible. Patel cites Dreams of Violets as a case where AI let a filmmaker tell a story he couldn't shoot, in this case in Iran, where director Ash Koosha would be arrested on arrival. He's sceptical of the roughly $2,000 price tag said to have been needed to make the film. He hasn't spoken to the director, but Koosha's an AI engineer, and Patel suspects the only way that budget works is free compute from his own company. Prompts on a feature-length project, he says, can run into the hundreds of thousands.

It's "a very real cost to this", admits Patel. If you don't care about the content, he says, you can do something quickly and cheaply and "you get AI slop, essentially."

The cost problem he cares about more is the industry's. Games that cost $15–20m to make now run to $200m, which he thinks pushes studios towards sequels and reboots – safe options that iron out any invention or gamble. He points to low-budget horror films from A24 and Blumhouse – Backrooms and Obsession – as proof audiences want something different, and hopes that lower costs mean more variety. It's close to what Diana Colella told me about AI bringing in more creators.

A million rabbits

For context, Patel's first job in the industry was training people in digital compositing using Avid, when computers were new. Roto artists and optical compositors had to learn their trade in a completely new way. Asked whether AI is replacing jobs or changing them, he doesn't pick one: "It's replacing jobs. It's changing jobs. It's allowing people to enter who would never have been able to enter before." Digital effects, he notes, turned a niche cottage industry into one employing hundreds of thousands of people.

What he says next comes from experience, not principle. "Everything I've experienced with AI, including doing the AI work for this [Robots of the Wild West]," he says, is that "you still need artists who have a vision, who drive this AI, because the AI itself is actually terrible." He means it as a description of steering a model toward something specific, not as a verdict on the technology. It's the same critique as the table in the demo film, from a man whose company makes the tools, because, as he says, we're so early in the AI journey, nothing is yet perfect.

He reflects on the animator's role specifically when it comes to AI use. "The art of an animator isn't knowing how to use animation curves," he says. "The art of an animator is understanding how to make the performance shine."

Cel tracing, curves and prompts are just ways of getting there. A model could train on a million rabbits, he says, and never produce Bugs Bunny, because nothing in the real world tells you Bugs should move like that, act like that; it's human imagination. It's "a pure artist thing," he says, reflecting that he doesn't expect this process to be autonomous anytime soon.

Is he enjoying any of it? "It's a love-hate thing," Patel admits. He was the CG expert once. Now, he says, he's "a newbie", and it's "scary, but it's also kind of fun."

I still love cartoons, although now as a fully grown man I call them "animations" or "anime" and tend towards stuff that's a little more cerebral than Wile. E. Coyote having an anvil fall on his head. But realistically, I am still a big kid at heart. And so you'd think the fact my dreams have come true – that I could theoretically now stream cartoons 24/7 – would make me very happy.

But like most things in life, the more you get of something, the more it all starts to feel the same. Even my beloved Pixar, these days, no longer excites me visually. Yes, it's all so astonishingly detailed these days, as I celebrated in my article Mind-boggling facts about the making of Toy Story 4. But it also feels like something is being lost. Everything looks slick. Everything looks incredible. And yet, increasingly, everything looks the same.

How Laika's different

Laika, the stop-motion studio behind Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings, though, is the shining exception. And its new film Wildwood, about a teenager called Prue who enters a magical, hidden forest to rescue her baby brother, is making me far more excited that anything coming out of Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks.

Based on Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis's 2011 novel, Wildwood has been in development for 15 years. And from a production standpoint, it's a huge step up from anything the studio has attempted before.

The movie has been crafted across 136 unique locations (more than twice Kubo's 60), with everything built as physical, tangible sets. That's more than even most live action films can boast these days, right?

And "craft" is exactly the word to use in this context. Because let's face it, stop-motion is not exactly the easiest way to make a film in 2026. Every gesture, every blink, every gust of wind through a puppet's hair has to be built and moved by hand, one frame at a time. It's slow, it's expensive, it's wildly inefficient.

Then again, what would be the exact opposite of that? AI animation, of course. Which absolutely makes me want to run into the street and shout: "Give me slower and inefficient, or give me death!"

Watch the Wildwood trailer and you can see this philosophy in action. There's a shot of Prue cycling, hair swaying in the breeze, and you can practically feel the individual strands being placed, frame by frame, by a real hand.

It's the same quality that made Coraline's Other Mother so unsettling: not the design of her buttoned eyes, but the tiny, imperfect flicker in how she moved, a flicker no algorithm would ever generate.

Why it works

Kubo's giant skeleton fight had the same effect: a colossal puppet lumbering across a beach, its joints catching the light in ways that felt weighty rather than simulated. Wildwood's crows, swarming down to snatch Prue's baby brother, evoke that same unnerving physicality. You believe they could actually grab him, because in a physical sense, something in that studio actually did.

It's not like Laika doesn't use digital technology to help make its films; it definitely does. But it's the manipulation of physical objects that lies at the heart of its process. So you're not just watching a story, you're watching thousands of individual creative decisions, made by actual people.

Screenwriter Chris Butler has said he hopes Wildwood becomes something of a rallying cry for the industry against AI. And I reckon it well might.

Because whether or not you're a creative yourself, we all have a deep-down craving for work that visibly bears the fingerprints of the people who made it. And Wildwood looks like being the perfect vehicle to remind us all of that.

Making your own? See our best laptops for animation guide.

This wasn't just as good as Adobe Illustrator, in some ways (such as their million-times zoom) it was better. And for a limited period, it was free! I wrote this news story for Creative Bloq, downloads erupted, and the rest is history.

The software went on to win awards and adherents up and down the industry. And although Serif did start charging for Affinity Designer – along with Affinity Photo and Publisher as they followed in its wake – it remained much cheaper than Adobe's ever-increasing Creative Cloud subscription.

Then in 2024, everything changed again, as Affinity was sold to Canva. And for a while, I was nervous. A social-media-friendly design app buying up a professional Adobe alternative felt like it could go horribly wrong.

But so far, things have actually gone pretty well. In October 2025, the Affinity suite became free once more. And if I had fears that these tools would be dumbed down and absorbed into Canva's main platform, the recent launch of Affinity 3.3 has put all those fears to bed.

What's new in 3.3

Version 3.3 is a huge step forward, featuring more than 60 new features spanning image editing, vector work, page layout and now scripting. And it all dovetails nicely with a newly branded Canva ProSuite, which also includes Cavalry, Leonardo.Ai and Flourish.

In truth, there's no one big standout feature here, but that's actually a good thing. Canva aren't just leaning on one or two headline-grabbing additions. Instead, they've gone long and deep into the unglamorous but actually-professionally-useful stuff instead.

Take the new Blend Tool, which creates live, editable transitions between vector shapes, complete with independent controls for position, rotation, shape and colour. Or the ability to visualise G2 curve energy on the Pen tool, a niche feature aimed squarely at font and logo designers who care about the precise mathematics of a curve.

Elsewhere, the RAW photography engine has been reworked, with hue-preserving curves, new saturation and hue adjustments, and global presets that finally behave the way photographers expect.

Best of all, everything remains free. No subscription, no watermark, no free vs paid for tier. Yes, you have to pay if you want Canva's AI models. But everything else – the Blend Tool, the new Astrophotography Studio, the ability to import InDesign and Publisher files directly – is available for absolutely no pennies at all.

None of this means Adobe's going anywhere. Creative Cloud still has deeper integration, a bigger plugin ecosystem and a decades-old professional reputation. To put it bluntly, if you want a job in a creative field, you need to know Adobe, and that won't change any time soon.

But increasingly, I don't think of these kinds of tools as in direct competition. For many designers, it's not a choice between them, but a choice to have both, and use each where appropriate. And if Canva can keep full-blooded Affinity free over the long time, I can't see that changing any time soon either.

This room belongs to a doctor who experiments on dreams. The goal was to create a space that felt like a blend of 18th century doctor’s infirmary, a cabinet of curiosities, and a Frankenstein-inspired laboratory. The pink dream-like palette evolved because I introduced a surreal stained glass dome above the whole room that symbolised a giant dreamcatcher.

Before an environment painting for a point-and-click game can be finalised, a significant amount of design work needs to align. The challenge is balancing the artwork with the practical needs of gameplay, ensuring everything interactive is readable and positioned to support environmental storytelling without making them too obvious. Achieving that balance requires a great deal of planning and iterating.

Pro game art tips

Detective Grimoire's latest murder mystery, The Mermaid Mask, is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2 and 1.

This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.

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It’s impressive how Silent Hill has made a comeback after years of obscurity following its long-standing dominance in the horror genre; Konami reached out to other developers for their own take. Bloober Team came back in full swing with the excellent Silent Hill 2 Remake, while Neobards took us to Japan with the fantastic Silent Hill f. Can the Scotland-bound Silent Hill: Townfall, developed by Screen Burn, continue the franchise’s annual win streak? It does, but not without some caveats.

The horror and tense atmosphere you’d expect from a Silent Hill game are here. It’s a horrifying experience trying to avoid or confront nightmarish monsters, and the puzzles can be challenging to figure out. However, annoying environmental design choices and a lack of enemy variety hamper the experience. Surprisingly, though, its combat feels the best that the series has had in recent memory.

Silent Hill's foggy mystery

Silent Hill: Townfall follows Simon Ordell, a middle-aged man who wanders around the fictional Scottish island of St. Amelia, following a woman’s voice. It’s currently unknown why he’s there, as even he doesn’t remember. As you navigate the island’s mysterious fog, you start to pick up on small hints about what happened to its inhabitants and the surrounding turmoil. The picket signs have phrases about workers' rights, and collectables about healthcare keep popping up. I found that Townfall’s story was much easier to follow than Silent Hill f’s, even if it lacks the mysticism and folklore wonder that the fantastical Japanese setting provided.

Townfall’s aesthetics are much more grounded than f’s, or at least as relatively grounded as a Silent Hill game could be. There’s no pretty boy with a fox mask or over-designed Soulslike bosses here. Just a normal dude with a beard and glasses. Made in Unreal Engine 5, there’s almost something remarkably plain about Townfall’s art direction that ironically works in its favour, giving it a sense of realism that some of the other dreamlike entries like Silent Hill f or Silent Hill: Shattered Memories didn’t.

One thing Townfall does well is mix up the different environments you’ll travel through. You won’t be walking through the outdoors of St. Amelia the entire time. Some levels have you sneak through a hospital, or even a multi-story office building. In other chapters, you’ll be transported to hellish otherworldly areas! This is the most bizarre you’ll see Townfall take its environments, and it's also where Townfall’s art direction shines the brightest. The bold use of red alarms to signal these diabolical levels really sells the sense of danger Simon is in. The rustic hues around the corners and pipes make the surroundings feel dilapidated, giving the area a more claustrophobic feeling.

Townfall's puzzling core

Townfall’s puzzles vary widely in difficulty. Most can be figured out without much trouble if you think hard enough, but some are pretty easy, and a few had me downright stumped. They often appear at the same level too. In one puzzle, I had to match different blood bags to IVs based on a patient’s injuries document. Ok, easy enough. The puzzle right after that had me figuring out blood types and initials, which took me way longer than I expected. The whiplash between the varying difficulty levels can feel odd, but they still offer plenty of satisfaction when you finally figure out the solution, no matter how long it takes.

Some visual inconsistencies in the environmental design kept me longer in certain areas than I wanted. A perfect example is that after I found a code that let me open a new room, I couldn’t figure out how to enter it. After a while, I realised that I not only had to scan the key card I found earlier, but also move my cursor to the number pad next to it and enter the door code. I was utterly confused as to why the scanner confirmed my key card but wouldn’t open the door, as every other door had before.

Turns out, this is the only instance in the game with this scanner-and-door-code combo, and the number pad looked completely different from every other one, which added to my initial confusion. Small visual discrepancies like these had me running around in circles, sometimes for up to an hour. Your mileage may vary with this kind of thing, but it’s easy to miss small details in Townfall.

A new-ish perspective

Townfall isn’t the first Silent Hill game to use a first-person perspective, as The Short Message and the cancelled P.T. (RIP) did. However, Townfall is the first big-budget experience to do so, and it works wonders. Like most other horror games, you’ll mostly want to sneak around monsters without getting caught. Townfall's biggest differentiator is Simon’s CRTV radio. Whereas other stealth and action games have a sort of “sonar” that lets players see enemy positions, you have to dial in the CRTV radio’s screen to “see” through walls. It’s a clever implementation of a common yet tired gameplay trope that gives Townfall more of a retro vibe.

After all, it takes place in 1996 on the verge of the technological explosion that was the internet. Additionally, Simon has to call a landline from a desktop phone or a phone booth to manually save progress. This aspect of Townfall’s art direction helps it stand out among other entries, especially those in similar time periods like Silent Hill 2 Remake, which is set in 1993. You don’t get a vintage feeling from Silent Hill 2 Remake, as it plays like a modern third-person shooter.

Simon starts with a wooden plank but can pick up stronger weapons along the way, including a metal pipe, pistol, shotgun, and flare gun. If you’re minimising your murder spree, there are bottles and rocks you can pick up to distract enemies while you run past them.

Townfall’s combat feels unexpectedly smooth, and the weapons have the right amount of kick and recoil. It’s leagues ahead of Silent Hill f’s combat, which was one of its worst aspects. Townfall balances survival horror and stealth horror well, so both feel like viable ways to get through the game.

That said, Townfall’s enemy variety is sorely lacking. Off the top of my head, there’s maybe like four different kinds of monsters. Seeing them over and over again gets repetitive after a while. There’s a skin monster, a skin monster with an axe head, and a bisected skin monster that rushes you really fast. Lastly, there’s also an aggravatingly designed large skin enemy with a bulbous back that appears during the hellish otherworldly levels. It can’t be killed, only distracted,, but will almost always OHKO you if it manages to catch you. I swear, this abomination knows your general vicinity no matter where you hide. It feels great to outmanoeuvre Mr X in Resident Evil 2 Remake, but this specific monstrosity in Townfall definitely feels like cheating.

Is Silent Hill: Townfall worth playing?

Developer Screen Burn has delivered a strong entry in the fabled horror series, with distinctive twists that set it apart. Simon’s introspective adventure stays engaging despite its more grounded backdrop. The gameplay strikes a compelling balance in both stealth and action, while its first-person perspective offers something fresh to veterans.

Although its puzzles can be maddening at times and the enemy variety could be better, Silent Hill: Townfall is tightly designed and worth at least one full playthrough. You can unlock five different endings based on your playstyle, so there’s plenty of replayability.

Even better, this offer comes on top of Joybuy's trade in scheme, which can get you a discount of up to £800 if you hand over an eligible old device. Those trading in an eligible iPhone 17 Pro/Pro Max get an additional £20 voucher. Joybuy's also offering super-fast delivery of under four hours in some parts of the UK.

While some people might want to wait to check out the iPhone Duo when it launches next month, the Phone 18 Pro is the one to go for if you want the best iPhone for photography.

For readers in the US, you can save up to $885 through trade in at Apple or up to $1,200 (the entire value of the base model!) with Verizon or AT&T via Best Buy.

iPhone 18 Pro deals in the UK

• Joybuy: up to £800 off with trade in + charger for £1
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• Vodafone: browse plans
• Amazon: preorder from £1,199

iPhone 18 Pro deals in the US

• Best Buy: Browse iPhone 18 Pro deals
• Apple: up to $885 off with trade in, or lease from $34.99/mo
• AT&T: up to $1,200 off with a trade-in
• Verizon: up to $1,200 off with a trade-in
• T-Mobile: iPhone 18 Pro free with switch or trade in
• Xfinity Mobile: 18 Pro Max free with trade in and line

The iPhone 18 Pro introduces a big upgrade for iphone photography with Apple's first camera with a mechanical aperture. The 48MP Fusion main camera h first-of-its-kind six-blade variable aperture system with steps ranging from ƒ/1.48 to ƒ/4.0.

This means you get a control over depth of field and light more like that on a traditional camera. You can widen the aperture to ƒ/1.48 for clean low-light shots and natural-looking bokeh, or narrow it to ƒ/4.0 to ensure more depth of field for group shots or landscapes.

Built on a 2nm architecture with a relocated DRAM layout and a triple-sized vapor chamber, the new iPhone Pro and Pro Max deliver sustained peak performance and double the neural engine cores for local AI processing and faster on-device Siri. Apple's also talking up the new iPhone's gaming prowess (interestingly, there are rumours that the first Apple gaming controllers are coming soon).

The enhanced processor efficiency also delivers the longest battery life ever in an iPhone: up to 36 hours of video playback on the 18 Pro and up to 45 hours on the 18 Pro Max. There's also a smaller, redesigned Dynamic Island and faster 5G capabilities via Apple's C2 modem.

Not for you? See the best current foldable phone deals and dumb phone deals.

So what happens when an IEM gives us bold and exciting and familiarly balanced? That's what Juzear and Super Review's Mark Ryan have done with the Light Shuttle, and I think all we can do is rejoice (and nit-pick).

• Buy the Juzear Little Shuttle at Amazon for $190

Let me be clear – the JM-1, New Meta, neutral with a bass boost is not my favourite tuning. I certainly prefer the aesthetics of most other Juzear IEMs over this weird organic metal and dull bling thing. But you might love it, and what's really important is how well the IEM implements the chosen sound profile. The Light Shuttle absolutely nails the JM-1-style, neutral-with-bass-boost brief, offering a balanced and exciting sound profile, that the majority of listeners should like, and all for under $200. That is really impressive, really rare, and should be celebrated.

At several times the price of the best budget IEMs out there, the Light Shuttle is also several times better, and it will definitely feature in my upcoming list of the best IEMs under $500.

Sound profile

Bass: The Light Shuttle is a bassy IEM, but it's well-controlled. It's warm with a sub-bass focus, and though I enjoy the punch that I get with it, compared to the bass profiles that I love, such as the $350 Xenns Tea Pro, it lacks a little attack and sense of grip.

There's always going to be pros and cons with the slight dip between 150-300Hz that the Light Shuttle offers. This recess creates a clean separation between bass and midrange, so the former doesn't bleed into the latter, and the mid-bass delivers more pronounced punch. But it also runs the risk of taking a touch of body out of the sound – in the worst cases, IEMs with this dip can sound lean.

However, it's done really well here, and that added sub and fuller midrange means things don't sound lean. Ultimately, for $200 I'm impressed with the level of punch and bass detail I get, though if you pay more, you will find punchier, grippier bass.

Midrange: The lower midrange is fairly dead-on neutral, offering more body to instruments than an IEM tuned to the Harman target.

The upper midrange is also fairly neutral, though it's a beat behind the JM-1 target, with that JM-1 target already being a little dipped when it comes to upper mids compared to Harman. Detractors of the JM-1 tuning might want a bit more presence or bite in vocals in the upper midrange, which would add more attack to guitars, snare drums, brass and woodwinds and of course vocals.

I think the Light Shuttle does a great balancing act here, and although it pulls things back a touch from 1-3kHz, instruments never sound lean or soulless. That's thanks to the warm upper bass, and a really well-executed treble, though this combination also means that the Light Shuttle isn't the most technical-sounding IEM on the block... but at $190, I'm really nit-picking there.

The treble of the Light Shuttle is really good. Unlike most other lower frequencies, when it comes to treble, you don't need to have too much or too little before it starts grating. Treble is often the part of the frequency response that's most divisive, and it's certainly the hardest to tune.

I think the treble of the Light Shuttle is carefully balanced and pulls off a great feat – it's crisp, clear and well extended with no dark patches, but is never overdone or sibilant. It contributes to a well-detailed, tonally correct overall sound, and I just can't imagine anyone finding any hot spots within it. Now, that's rare in some $500 IEMs, so it's super impressive in a sub-$200 set.

Price & value

The $200 price range of IEMs is super competitive, but often you'll get a set that does one or two things really well, but falls short elsewhere (usually the treble).

The one that springs to mind is the Kiwi Ears KE4. It was one of the first affordable IEMs to be tuned to the JM-1 curve, and had really impressive midrange for a set around $200. But, as I cover below in the in-depth comparison section, it just has too much bass.

Now, whether you like the JM-1 / neutral with bass-boost style of tuning – and plenty of people don't – the Light Shuttle is a very good implementation of it. And though it has a whopping big bass shelf, it's always balanced with the rest of the tuning.

An IEM this balanced – an all-rounder that's also exciting – is usually reserved for the $350-and-up sets. The Xenns Tea Pro, for example, although going for a slightly different sound profile, is equally balanced, with lower, mid and highs all working together to create something cohesive.

In short, the Juzear Light Shuttle definitely represents good value for $190. Great value, in fact.

Competition

I've chosen to compare the Juzear Light Shuttle with the Juzear Harrier ($330) and the Kiwi Ears KE4 ($199), because it's cheaper and better than the Harrier, even though they're both tuned by the same guy, and they're largely going for the same style. And because the KE4 is seen as one of the original JM-1/'New Meta'-tuned IEMs, and I want to see how the Light Shuttle compares to the OG.

Light Shuttle vs Juzear Harrier

The bass is very similar between these two, though I'd say the extra sizzle up top gives the edge to the mid-bass of the Light Shuttle – that, and the slight 250Hz mid-bass depression that separates the bass and mids better. The result is a slightly more satisfying bass to the Light Shuttle (though it's not massively different).

The lower midranges are very similar, again, with maybe a smidge more body to the Light Shuttle. It's when you get North of 1kHz that things start sounding noticeably different. The Harrier is more forward in the 1-3kHz region, giving more attention to vocals in comparison to the Light Shuttle. This is a style thing, so I don't think one is better than the other, though I will say that the extra information here on the Harrier ends up doing the heavy lifting of detail retrieval in lieu of a lacklustre treble.

When we get to the treble, the Light Shuttle steals the show. It has more attack to hi-hats, cymbals and brings a higher edge to vocals than the Harrier. But it stops short of sibilance, and just sounds more detailed, more decisive, yet – paired with that dip between 1.5-3kHz – also balanced, smooth even. The Harrier's treble in comparison sounds good... until it doesn't. Lucinda Williams' treble-feast track Sweet Old World, seems to sound both sharp and dark. It ends up sounding a little smeared in comparison to the assured Light Shuttle.

The Juzear Harrier costs $330, the Juzear Light Shuttle costs $190, but for me the Light Shuttle is twice the IEM that the Harrier is. They also share the exact same cable (which is pretty great). There's a clear winner here, and it doesn't rhyme with barrier!

Light Shuttle vs Kiwi Ears KE4

The Kiwi Ears KE4 takes a slightly warmer route to the JM-1-style tuning, but still has a whopping big bass boost, like the Light Shuttle. I found it really hard to find a clear winner out of these two, and think as good as the Light Shuttle is in 2026, the KE4 is still a strong consideration two years after its release.

Things are a little cleaner in the bass with the Light Shuttle, with the KE4 offering a bit more warmth in the mid-bass.

In the midrange, there's a smidge more incisiveness with the Light Shuttle, and the KE4 sounds a little more lush. Vocals are a foot or so closer to you with the Light Shuttle. Personally I don't find either one more appealing than the other – both approaches are enjoyable and really well executed.

If you own the Kiwi Ears KE4, I wouldn't be in a rush to buy the Light Shuttle – there's just not enough difference between them. However, if you've specifically thought your KE4 could do with a smidge less warmth, a touch more forward vocals, and a better cable with modular terminations, then sure, the Light Shuttle is for you.

The KE4 is a little smoother, the Light Shuttle a little more exciting, but they are both absolutely the best $200 IEMs I've heard to date. You can't lose with either of them.

Upgrade/downgrade?

If you've got the Juzear Defiant, getting the Light Shuttle would be an upgrade worth considering. Now, I love the Defiant for its exciting tuning and excellent value for money at $100. But the Light Shuttle's tuning is more sophisticated, while still being plenty exciting too.

The Defiant has a nice bass boost, but it's a little sloppier than the Light Shuttle, and has a touch messier transition into the mids. The Light Shuttle's mids are subtler and more impactful, whereas the Defiant's mids can come off as a little shouty in comparison. I also find the treble better done in the Light Shuttle, though we're talking slim margins.

My review of the Juzear Defiant is four and half stars out of five, while this review remains four. That's because the Defiant is just $100, and for that it represents insane value for money, as it also comes with a quality modular cable. So, I prefer the Light Shuttle's sound profile, but when you look at the bigger picture of value, build quality and comfort, the Defiant has the edge.

Should you buy it?

The Juzear Light Shuttle is a very good IEM that I strongly recommend to anyone who wants one of the better 'neutral with bass boost' tunings. The fact you get an excellent modular cable and plenty of decent ear tips as well, sweetens the deal.

The fact that the Light Shuttle sounds better than the Juzear Harrier – an IEM that costs $140 more and which goes for a very similar sound profile – while having the exact same cable, makes it a no-brainer for me.

I didn't give the Light Shuttle a four and a half stars because as fun as the bass is, it's not amongst the best I've heard (I prefer the bass of the Truthear Pure, which costs $90, for example), and I really think the weird faceplate is off-putting.

This is a really well tuned IEM, managing to be an all-rounder that doesn't bore you to death. It's balanced and exciting, and it's one of the best IEMs to be released this year so far.

Having spent more than 20 years making games with his brother Tom, from when they were still teenagers, he has made a large number of browser-based games and animations as the Super Flash Bros, before the two founded SFB Games where they have worked with major platform holders like Nintendo and Apple.

While the studio has tried its hand at different types of games, it also has its own series in Detective Grimoire, a murder-mystery adventure originally inspired by Capcom’s Ace Attorney series. With the upcoming release of The Mermaid Mask, the fourth outing for the eponymous detective, Adam shares his insight into how this series’ aesthetic has evolved over the years since its Adobe Flash debut.

If you're inspired, see our guides to the best laptops for game development and the best game engines.

Then we come together and compare them. Then we both draw again, now being influenced by each other’s thoughts, and create a sort of mix of the two. We go back and forth on that. Then the animator, Charlotte Harris, also draws the characters a lot because she has to work out how they’ll look when they move, and what they look like from the side.

We had to basically design each character with a full range of emotion. How do they look when they blink? What do their teeth look like? The kind of body language they might have is so much that goes into the process of designing the characters because you end up staring at them for most of the game, so they have to be really complete and good.

Detective Grimoire's latest murder mystery, The Mermaid Mask, is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2 and 1.

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An e-ink digital frame is more versatile since you can hang it anywhere, it looks more attractive, and there are battery-powered ones that don't leave any cables trailing. One of our favourite ranges is from Switzerland's InkPoster, whose Affresco screen starts at just $499 (for more options, see our guide to the best e-ink art frames around).

• Browse e-ink frames at Amazon

Why use an e-ink picture frame rather than a frame TV?

TVs demand attention, even if they're designed to display art when they're not in use for watching movies or series. An e-ink picture frame is more understated, more versatile in where you might place it, and it doesn't emit a glow.

We were impressed when we reviewed the 28.5-inch InkPoster Tela model. It has the heft of a real frame and flex of a real canvas rather than the rigidity of a TV display. The matte surface and e-ink make the artwork feel more like a printed canvas than a digital reproduction.

You need to plug the screen in for the first install, but then you can unplug and rely on the battery. You choose your art via an accompanying app, which lets you select from a collection of famous paintings or upload your own files, which you can crop and resize on the app before sending to the frame.

Each image loads through a slow, deliberate transition as the display’s pigment microcapsules shift into place. It's almost as if the frame were physically printing the image, which our reviewer found oddly satisfying.

InkPoster makes three sizes of frame: the 31.5-inch and 13.3-inch Affresco models and the mid-sized Tela. The latter is available in premium variations with high-end design accents like Alcantara passepartouts by Italian design house Pininfarina.

Jessica's career has led to her becoming a speaker and judge at industry events, including Spikes Asia, AdFest, APAC Effies and IPA Effectiveness. As part of our 5 questions series, I caught up with Jessica to discuss client relationships, industry survival and the importance of getting comfortable with failure.

Now one creative practice has decided to intentionally create an "AI slop monster" but for a weird reason: to remind themselves to never do it again.

Electric Dreama Studios is a small London-based outfit that specialises in VFX and digital production. Led by creative director Sam Nutt, it's preparing to present an AI-designed piece of sculpture at the British Art Fair at the Saatchi Gallery this coming week.

It describes CH(AI)MER as a grotesque amalgamation of AI slop as body parts. It has poreless skin that looks like it's melting and uncanny dead eyes. The inspiration is obviously the classical chimera from Greek mythology. The creature symbolised chaos and destruction, which is apt given that it's how many people see AI's contribution to the world.

Electric Dreama Studios say the sculpture is a vow. It built the "ugliest version of AI slop" that it could as a reminder of what art NOT to make in the future. Everything the studio makes from now is a commitment to the opposite, it says: "AI used only as a tool in service of human ideas, and taste always shaping the creation".

"We get why most of us reject AI." Sam says. "It’s the slop and the soulless nature of most AI-generated work. The human touch and creativity feels missing. The CH(AI)MERA is a clear example of that – the monster that the world has created with the haphazard generation and use of AI.”

“We created this piece to hold ourselves accountable. To remind our studio and our clients that we’ll never make this kind of slop ever. Everything after this is a promise: only human-first work, where the technology serves the craft, instead of replacing it."

You can see another creation of Electric Dreama below.

CH(AI)MERA will be on public display at the British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London, from 24 to 27 September.

While it's hard to pick a favourite, the new Clayface poster might be the most impressive yet thanks to its handcrafted design. A strangely beautiful, intricate artwork with a viscerally disturbing underbelly, the stunning illustration proves that poster design doesn't have to be constrained to minimalism or floating heads.

Created by Orlando Arocena, the artist clarifies that the poster was made entirely using "Adobe Illustrator, NOT AI." The design features a looming silhouette of Clayface in various states of warped, melting horror. Drips of his face rain down on a city scene, while sharp shards of red and yellow light create an eerily threatening backdrop.

Skull motifs bring an added dark tone to the design, merging and dissolving into the edges of the design in an almost organic fashion. Bone and flesh become indistinguishable, and the visceral horror of the image comes to life. "This is so haunting…absolutely incredible!!," one Instagram commenter wrote. "Woahhhhhh! Best posters I have seen in a longggg time," another added.

For more poster design inspiration, check out the stunning Digger poster that strikes graphic design gold or check out the new design for Laika's Wildwood, which focuses on the hands behind the craft.