The pair that first opened my eyes was the Sennheiser HD 550, and it blew me away because its neutral/bright sound profile encouraged me to focus on higher frequency detail that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. The HD 550 also offers an excellent midrange with natural timbre, but it was the exciting treble that I fixated on.

The $400 Sennheiser HD 480 Pro isn’t here to excite you. Made for studio pros, specifically for tracking and mixing, the 480 Pro isn’t made for audiophiles, so instead of throwing fireworks at you, it delivers a neutral, balanced, accurate sound signature.

The result is the best closed-back pair of headphones that I’ve heard yet, and my new go-to recommendation if you’re looking for a set of the best-sounding headphones on sale today.

Sound profile

Overall, bass and treble are gloriously well-balanced without overshadowing the midrange. That’s a feat for any type of headphone – including the more forgiving open or Bluetooth sets – let alone a closed-back pair. The overall sound is correct-sounding with a touch of warmth. Nothing is out of place, and listening to music I’ve been familiar with for several decades, it all just sounds as it should.

The only negative aspects to the 480 Pro are preference-based, as opposed to glaring tuning errors. For example, you might prefer a different approach to treble than the 480 Pro – yet the 480 Pro’s treble is the best version of its approach that I’ve heard. Altogether, this is an exceptional-sounding headphone, and the best closed-back I’ve ever used.

Bass: This bass is full with plenty of detail and slam, putting a focus on sub-bass yet still offering plenty of mid-bass punch. I find this presentation detailed, with some nice ‘grip’ to it. If I’m nit-picking, I can totally see it being too much bass for audiophiles searching for Perfect Neutral, yet what’s on offer here doesn’t step on the toes of the midrange. It does, however, lend a warmth to things that some might not like (it’s definitely my jam).

You can get bigger bass in the far less expensive $160 FiiO FT1. However, you don’t hear bass in a vacuum, and where the FT1’s midrange’s clarity is hit by the wads of (wonderfully executed) low range, the 480 Pro’s overall balance remains faultless.

Playing Parliament’s Give Up The Funk, I love the fullness of Bootsy Collins' guitar bass in the intro. It has body and slam, backed up with a substantial sub-bass that grounds the whole thing. On lesser sets that simply ramp up the bass, lower frequency details get lost easily, and listening to familiar music becomes frustrating – you can't hear the detail you know is there. That’s not the case with the 480 Pro. I get quality and quantity, and let there be no doubt, there’s plenty of quantity here!

Midrange: There’s more focus on the mid and upper mids, and less on the lower mids here. That makes the bass and lower mids seem more distinct, which is a presentation some people will love, and some will feel lacks cohesion. For me, the 480 Pro has the best of both worlds here, with the mid-bass being distinct enough from the mids so it hits hard, but not so much that the lower mids sound lean.

The ear gain region – the bane of many a headphone tuner – is exceptionally well done. I hear a little dip just before an elevation around 2.45kHz then again at 2.9-3.5 kHz, followed by a noticeable dip around 4kHz. The former elevations are never too much, and serve as extra seasoning on male and female vocals.

4kHz is actually an area which usually gives me issues, so I tend toward headphones that plateau around 2-4kHz instead of putting a spotlight on that area. The HD 480 Pro isn’t shy in this region, but it still doesn’t come across as shouty or grating. Instead, everything in the midrange comes across as timbrally correct. That’s basically the hardest thing to do with audio – any chump can make headphones sound ‘exciting’. The HD 480 Pro makes instruments and vocals sound correct, all balanced with each other. And when you put on a beautifully-produced track, the results are ‘right’.

Treble: To my ears, there’s a generally relaxed approach to the lower treble that I initially read as dark. However, the more I listened to the 480 Pro, the more I found Sennheiser’s approach to the treble was purposeful and in accordance with the balanced approach of the bass and mids.

I get a little spice around 6.6-7kHz, a dip around 8kHz, and then a little bit more around 9kHz. But as with the ear gain region, these slight peaks give added dimension to the sound, rather than sounding piercing or sibilant. In fact, this is the smoothest detailed treble I’ve heard, whether open- or closed-back. Michael Jackson’s remarkably bright Billie Jean has all its stabbing peaks rounded off, and Lucinda Williams’ jarringly sibilant Sweet Old World blends in rather than stands out. That never happens!

Of course, as I've said, a subtle, smooth, balanced treble isn’t everyone’s idea of audiophile-grade audio (Grado still sells headphones, after all). I happen to love the HiFiMan HE1000, with its comparably elevated treble profile. I love that it, along with its incredibly open ear cups, gives me a sense of crisp detail – it’s what I think of when I think ‘audiophile’. And yet, the HE1000 isn’t a practical set for everyday use. It’s a specialised headphone for specific moments. With its balanced sound, the Sennheiser is both an everyday set for YouTube doom scrolling and a specialised set for critical listening. It’s a rare bird in that it excels in every area, so that it may appear unexceptional. That's far from the case.

Price, value, alternatives

At $399/£339, the Sennheiser HD 480 Pro is in a competitive price bracket. It's also in a tricky spot for budget-conscious creatives who may look to the cheaper workhorse classic, the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro ($200).

The value proposition here, however, is undeniable and convincing. Where the DT 770 Pro offers bucket-loads of perceived detail with its incredibly elevated, sibilant treble, the 480 Pro offers unparalleled neutrality that can be enjoyed for hours on end without fatigue.

Closed-back headphones notoriously struggle with boomy bass, due to internal acoustic reflections and resonant standing waves trapped inside the sealed ear cup. But Sennheiser tames low-end clutter without muddying the mix. This is really very rare. Factor in the featherlight 272g build and washable components, and it’s a brilliant, durable investment. For me, at $400, this represents excellent value. After all, it's one of the best headphones I've heard, and it will last many, many years.

HD 480 Pro vs Focal Azurys

The HD 480 Pro slams just as much as the renowned Focal Azurys in the bass, but it's cleaner and clearer, without reverting to the overly-bright approach of the Focal set.

The Azurys is a very comfortable, cool-looking pair of headphones, but it offers more of a V-shape sound profile than the perfectly-balanced HD 480.

The upside of that is that the Azurys is a more exciting, dynamic pair of headphones. More bass and more treble mean more contrast. The midrange is really good with the Azurys as well. Yet it's not the star, as it's slightly overshadowed by all the excitement. You get none of these compromises with the HD 480 Pro.

For me, the smoothness of treble in the HD 480 allows everything to pull focus, whereas the comparatively sharper Azurys can sound almost hollow in comparison. And I think this is largely down to treble, as both cans sound very similar in the midrange (and certainly graph so).

The Focal Azurys retail for $599, though you can currently (and frequently) get them for more like $449 over at Amazon, and though I'd recommend them to certain people, I'd recommend the HD 480 Pro to everyone.

HD 480 Pro vs FiiO FT1

I have a soft spot for the FiiO FT1 – and not just because they are one of the best value pair of closed-back headphones in existence, at $165 over at Amazon. They sound fantastic, with their vaguely absurd levels of bass, which is plenty detailed and only messes with the lower mids a bit (coping much?!)

But A/B testing the FT1 with the HD 480 Pro, I still think it holds up... kind of. Sure it offers a more dynamic V-shape sound profile to the Sennheiser cans, but just like the Azurys, it does exciting well. The bass is definitely the boss here, but the midrange isn't just bullied around as is the case with so many bass cannons.

However, when comparing the treble responses, it's like comparing a scalpel to a sledgehammer. The HD 480 Pro walks a fine line between detail and sibilance.

Switching between the two on K-Lone’s glitchy treble showcase 'slk', the FT1 ramps up the highs, almost shouting the detail at you. While the 480 Pro conveys all the same top-end information with more body. I know that might sound weird, to refer to treble having body, but that's what I get from the 480 Pro – a far fuller picture.

DAC/Amp requirements

The Sennheiser HD 480 Pro is relatively easy to drive despite its 130 Ω impedance, because its sensitivity is reasonably high at 107 dB SPL (1 Vrms) or 98 dB SPL (1 mW).

What that means in practice is an M-chipped MacBook or modern PC will drive the HD 480 Pro effortlessly with ample headroom.

For music listening, a $9 Apple dongle will give you all the clean power you actually need. The only real limitation would be maximum volume if you're working with quiet, uncompressed studio recordings – which I don't!

Bottom line: for the majority of music fans thinking about buying the HD 480 Pro, as long as you have a $9 Apple dongle, you're golden.

Build & comfort

Build and comfort are big wins for the Sennheiser HD 480 Pro. Although it may look like a lot of other headphones, this set really is amongst the most comfortable out there.

It's the combination of light plastic, stainless spring steel, and soft velour ear cups that make this a durable, lightweight headphone that doesn't register even after hours of use. And with that steel, you know this headphone is going to retain its shape, no matter how it's treated.

This level of comfort is rare on a single headband headphone (ie, not headphones with dedicated comfort straps to distribute the weight on your head). I've previously had to add an additional Capra strap to make most single-band headphones bearable – such as the FiiO FT1, or the HEDD D1. And all these super light materials are replaceable – the detachable headband padding is even washable!

The width and depth of the ear cups are such that my average-sized ears never touch the driver housing, and the depth and soft materials of the cups mean that the passive isolation is excellent.. This is actually one of the highlights for me, as I work in a home office with my beautiful (noisy!) wife and an equally beautiful, noisy gaming PC. With the 480 Pro, I get to immerse myself in great sound, and not be distracted by either.

This is a well-designed headphone that's not built for show, but is built to last a very long time. For $400, this should be the standard – if I'm going to spend $400 on headphones, I want to be listening to them in 20 years' time. And there's no reason that won't be the case with the HD 480 Pro.

Should you buy it?

I've given this pair of headphones a full five stars, so the answer is obviously, 'yes, yes, yes – of course you should buy it'. But that doesn't mean they're for everyone.

So, who is this headphone not for? I think any audiophile who wants a detail monster set that offers high-treble sizzle excitement and accompanying hearing loss should give the 480 Pro a miss. Instead, pick up a HiFiMan– my current favourite is the HiFiMan HE1000 Stealth.

The Sennheiser 480 Pro doesn't get in the way of the music. It presents it honestly and clearly. It lacks the fireworks of the more exciting sets out there, but this is a pair of headphones that you can use all day, every day with absolutely no issues – in sound or comfort.

If you want timbral accuracy, supreme comfort, and the passive isolation benefits of a closed-back, there is currently no better option than the Sennheiser 480 Pro.

I always preferred Bonk!'s oddball platforming and Toki's tighter, almost shooter-like design to the Joe & Mac series, but in the early ’90s, if you owned a console, you needed Data East's caveman ninja. The cavemen were daft, the dinosaurs were enormous, and the colours leapt from my old CRT. I was happy to revisit these games on Switch 2 (I'm playing the Switch edition), but I wasn’t expecting the two sequels to leave the biggest impression.

The Joe & Mac Retro Collection brings together three Data East SNES games: Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, Congo’s Caper, and Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics (known as Joe & Mac 3 in Japan). They’re all variations on the same prehistoric platforming idea, but each takes it in a slightly different direction. The original is an arcade conversion, Congo’s Caper is a proper console platformer of the era, and the third game adds a small map, some exploration and the option to build a camp and woo cave girls. Well, you didn’t get that in Toki.

Three caveman games, three different takes

The original Joe & Mac is the simplest of the bunch. You run, jump and fling weapons at dinosaurs and other prehistoric nasties, moving through colourful stages until you reach the next boss. It’s straightforward arcade stuff, and the loose animation makes it easy to forgive the old-school frustrations like sudden deaths, enemies respawning just off-screen, and forced weapon pick-ups that make life harder (does anyone really like the stone wheel throwables?).

The dinosaur designs are still adorable. Their eyes bulge when they’re hit, and their little bodies wobble, and even getting battered by one is funny to watch. The bosses, though, rarely offer much of a challenge, and the action doesn’t have the staying power of the games that follow.

Congo’s Caper is where things get more interesting. Its core design has more in common with Sonic the Hedgehog and Kid Chameleon than the arcade original, with greater emphasis on platforming, exploration, and finding things tucked away off the main route. Hidden rooms and collectables give you a reason to poke around, and the climbable vines that grow up the screen are a lovely bit of old-school design. Take the easy route, or hang around while the vines grow and see how far up you can get?

Then there’s Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics (erm, 3?), which returns to the original's action-platform template but takes it a step further. There’s a map, you choose which levels to tackle, and between bouts of dinosaur-bashing you can build a camp and woo cave girls by spending collected stone coins on flowers. It’s a much bigger game than the original, with a bolder art direction and more to do than just reach the end of a stage.

I can’t escape the feeling that this one owes something to Toki. The bigger pixel designs and seed-spitting combat remind me of that game’s mix of shooting and traversal. The ground shifts beneath your ape’s weight, ice makes him slide, and the levels offer more than just platforms and enemies to clear. It borrows from a good source, and the extra ideas work.

Having all three together lets you watch the series work through those ideas. The first game nails the basic formula; Congo’s Caper makes platforming the main thing in a very 90s console-specific way – more complex levels, secrets, power upgrades, collectables – and Lost in the Tropics brings the two together with some exploration and more ways to dispatch dinosaurs. Most people will remember the original, but the sequels have more legs, more ideas and, in 2026, more playability.

Bosses, bonkers animation and rewind

The art is what keeps me coming back, and honestly, it's what I loved about these games back in the '90s. These games are bright, chunky, and full of character, with exaggerated 16-bit animation that makes everything feel slightly over-the-top and vibrant. The bosses show it off best in their exaggerated, head-heavy designs and attack methods: a T-Rex spits its caveman lunch, and a diplodocus spurts water jets.

The new Boss Rush mode lets you take on the bosses from all three games in succession. The later games offer more variety, and it’s a good excuse to enjoy the designs without replaying entire levels. I particularly like how Lost in the Tropics teases its bosses before you fight them. The triceratops that smashes through an ice wall piece by piece is wonderfully dramatic. The effect is simple, but the build-up makes the reveal land.

Red Art Games has included the modern conveniences you’d hope for. Rewind rescues you when an old platformer catches you out, and save states mean you don’t have to replay the same sections to get back to where you were. It also offers an optional CRT filter and a selection of custom frames, which smooth out the old pixels like the TVs would.

More than a ROM collection

There’s some real preservation work here. You get the Western releases alongside the Japanese editions, including the uncensored Japanese version of Caveman Ninja, which will interest anyone curious about how these games were presented in different markets.

The virtual unboxing lets you look over the original SNES boxes, cartridges and manuals, and an art gallery gathers concept designs and character sketches. You don’t get the feel of a real manual, as the physical editions will, due for release in 2027, but you can flick through the originals.

I’d have liked more on the people who made these games, perhaps interviews or oral histories. Digital Eclipse has shown how much richer a retro collection can be when it pairs development stories with the artwork and packaging, as I found in the recent Toy Toy Story: Retro Roundup! + Toy Story 3 Complete Edition. Here, I wanted to know more about the artists behind those bulging dinosaur eyes and how the games changed from one entry to the next, but I only had the sketches to look at.

Should you buy Joe & Mac Retro Collection on Switch 2?

This collection is better than I expected. Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja is still a charming slice of early-’90s arcade platforming, though it shows its age. Congo’s Caper is more inventive and rewards exploration but feels like a very of its time platformer, while Lost in the Tropics takes the series somewhere bigger and more involved.

The lack of developer interviews is a missed opportunity, and these are still old platformers with all the quirks that entails. But rewind, save states, and Boss Rush give them new life, and the virtual packaging and art gallery show that someone cares about preserving them properly.

If you remember playing Joe & Mac in the ’90s, you'll find plenty here. If you don’t, the two sequels might surprise you, and that's why I’d recommend it.

Not to be a grandma, but I remember when the Instagram logo was a skeuomorphic vintage camera, so I feel I've earned the right to whinge. The app has evolved a lot since its debut, but the move to long-form video means yet another social media app is gunning for our precious attention, and I'm really feeling the fatigue.

On Monday, Instagram began testing the 90-minute clips with a handful of US-based creators. The 'Features' project has already been tested in Brazil and is aimed predominantly at podcasters and comedians. Whether other long-form creators will migrate from the safety of rival platforms like YouTube remains to be seen, but I already find the concept of extended video content on IG rather tiresome.

I'm a woman of structure. I like that TikTok is for brainrot and YouTube is for slightly more nuanced, long-form brainrot. But it's no secret that podcast content is ruling the social feed – it's cheap to produce, and so long as you can wrangle some semi-interesting yappers to host, you've got a steady flow of hour-long content each week.

I've already seen video content infiltrate my other precious apps like Spotify. Do I watch podcast videos on the platform? Absolutely not, but the fact that it's even there suggests I may be in the minority. Social media brands are competing to become the next 'every app', and with little distinction between them, it all feels a little like a desperate plea for my watch time.

I see a not-so-distant future where an evening can be swallowed by circling the drain of social media. 15 minutes on TikTok as an appetiser, catching up with your favourite zillenial podcasters on IG for main, and a nice YouTube video essay for dessert. Simply put, it's becoming too tempting to switch off.

For more social media news, check out Instagram's new brand identity that's more than just a wordmark, or take a look at the best social media platforms for artists and designers.

While many ad campaigns are focusing on the digital side of design, it's a refreshing change to see Coca-Cola embracing analogue art. A campaign with heart and intention, Local Royalty demonstrates how stripping back to the tactile can create some of the best adverts.

The four portrait subjects were chosen to represent everyday people from hospitality and retail, including workers from a pub, corner shop, café, and fish and chip shop. Painted by artists who have previously captured royals such as Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles III, the Prince and Princess of Wales and Princess Anne, the stately portraits are a wonderfully unexpected homage to life's everyday heroes.

“Independent business owners create the places where local life happens, yet their contribution often goes unrecognised," says Rhona Stephen, senior director, communications for Coca-Cola Great Britain. "With Local Royalty, we wanted to celebrate them in a way that felt deliberately unexpected and enduring. By borrowing the visual language of official portraiture and placing these owners at its centre, the campaign gives their everyday impact the status it deserves.”

The portraits will be displayed as part of a free public exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London from 28th October to 1st November. For more creative news, check out Coca-Cola's new look or take a look at our guide on how to stand out as a portrait artist.

I liked the original XPPen Magic Drawing Pad because it showed that an Android tablet could be built around artists' needs. Its drawing surface felt closer to a desktop tablet than the glossy, slippery screens on most consumer devices, like an iPad or Samsung's Galaxy Tab series (read our guide to the best tablets with a stylus pen for drawing). I used it as a loose sketching tool, but accuracy issues kept me from replacing my desktop tablet, and I soon went back to my iPad Pro.

Three years on, and XPPen's new Magic Pro 13 fixes the biggest issues I had with the older first-time model. It has a processor that handles demanding art apps, a new stylus (importantly with 5,080 LPI resolution), a 3K 120Hz screen, and a USB-C connection that turns it into a PC drawing display. It’s also a good everyday Android tablet for video, email and Google Docs.

Wacom’s MovinkPad Pro 14 currently leads this category, and Huion’s Kamvas Pad 12 undercuts both, though its performance comes at the cost of a less impressive processor. The Magic Pro 13 sits closer to Wacom and Apple than the brand's old ‘budget tablet’ reputation, and it makes a strong case to be the one you pick, based on price, specs, and performance.

XPPen has come a long way from a disruptor to a genuinely impressive drawing tablet manufacturer; for example, its recent Artist Ultra 14 OLED tablet is an advanced desktop drawing tablet. The pitch with the Magic Pro 13 is that the same tech, minus OLED, can fit into an Android tablet.

Inside the box and Magic Pro 13's premium design

Opening the box, I'm struck that XPPen hasn't overloaded the package with extras for the first time; you get the tablet, spare nibs, a drawing glove, and a high-quality USB-C cable for charging and PC connectivity. A case or stand would have been welcome, but that would have bumped the cost; besides, XPPen sells a stand, case, and magnetic keyboard separately, just like Apple.

A close look at the new tablet reveals a premium-feeling product. The white frame, curved edges, flat matte display, and discreet buttons make the Magic Pro 13's design choices closer to Wacom and Apple than the budget end of the market. At 655g and 6.65mm, it’s easy to hold for long stretches, which matters when you’re not propping it on a desk. I took it outside to sketch a local lane and also used it on the sofa, and it suits both.

The 12.95-inch screen gives you room to paint comfortably. For long, detailed desk sessions, some artists prefer a larger display; for example, you don't get the space to rest your wrist as you do with a desktop design, but as a tablet for all occasions, it's a nice size.

The Magic Pro 13 has two USB-C ports, but only one supports the high-bandwidth video connection needed for PC mode, so make sure you plug into the right one. Storage is expandable by microSD, which helps if you collect reference images and large art files. There are some quirks to the design; for example, XPPen has chosen to keep the rear camera that comes on standard tablets, a small lens in the top corner of the rear panel, which I thought could make drawing on the screen when laid flat a little awkward, expecting a slump or wobble, but it never happened.

XPPen Magic Pro 13 screen and pen: 3K, 120Hz and 16K pressure

The nano-etched glass has a matte, paper-like finish with a little resistance under the nib. The 3K panel covers 100% sRGB and 96% DCI-P3, with a peak brightness of 650 nits. At 120Hz, marks keep up with the pen, so it feels natural. The tablet display can toggle between 120Hz, 90Hz, and 60Hz, so you can balance battery life to how you use it; 60Hz, for example, is fine for browsing, and 120Hz is ideal for digital painting.

The X4 Smart Chip Stylus offers 16,384 pressure levels, a 2g initial activation force and 60 degrees of tilt. The 5,080 LPI figure is worth noting: it measures how finely the tablet resolves pen movement, separate from the number of pressure steps, and this is double the resolution of the original Magic Drawing Pad and on par with most high-end desktop drawing tablets.

The pen has enough weight to feel sturdy without tiring my hand; I draw for around two hours at a time and never get the kind of cramp that can creep in with slim styluses or cheaper, lighter pens.

To test tracking, I drew small circles, tapped dots, scribbled brush strokes, and repeatedly overdrew the same line. Lines stayed smooth, the cursor followed the nib, and I saw no jitter. That’s where the original Magic Drawing Pad fell short, and some recent budget tablets, like the Kamvas Pad 12, too. Side by side with Wacom’s Pro Pen 3, I couldn’t pick a difference.

Digital painting on the Magic Pro 13

My go-to Android drawing app is ArtRage (ArtRage 6 is on XPPen's free install list, but I use ArtRage Vitae); it's an older painting simulator with excellent traditional-media brushes and heavy paint tools that show quickly whether a tablet can keep up. I painted a quick sketch of a lane near my house, switching brushes and pushing paint around with the heavier tools. There was no visible lag, strokes landed where I aimed, and overall it's a really nice experience, close to using a desktop tablet.

The Dimensity 8300 processor, 8GB of RAM, and Android 16 handle painting and illustration well. Wacom’s MovinkPad Pro 14 offers 12GB, which gives it an edge with very large files. I tested the 3D sculpting app Nomad Sculpt on the tablet, and it was fine, with no issues; unlike the new budget Huion Kamvas Pad 12, the Magic Pro 13 didn’t get warm or have any issues, even in Performance mode. I’m not one for using massive amounts of layers; I rarely get past three and tend to collapse them regularly, but even when I did decide to add 10 layers and duplicate my painting to see what would happen, there was no slowdown or warming.

Using the Magic Pro 13 as a PC pen display

A key feature of the Magic Pro 13 is that it works as a standalone Android tablet and as a drawing display for a desktop or laptop. I plugged in the included USB-C cable, and it connected as a display, with the hardware handling the video link. I use an HP Omen Max 16 for gaming and art, and it worked seamlessly, with no need to download drivers or fiddle with the laptop or tablet settings.

Wacom’s MovinkPad Pro 14 offers a similar workflow, wired or over Wi-Fi, but it relies on a companion app on the PC to get it working. A wired connection also means turning on Developer mode and USB debugging on the tablet first. Those are one-off steps, and XPPen doesn’t offer a wireless option, but the XPPen route requires less setup and is literally a 'plug and go' solution.

I drew on the Magic Pro 13 away from my desk, then connected it to my computer to use my desktop art software, moving from ArtRage Vitae and into Rebelle. If you work at a desk all day, you’ll want a bigger screen, but for home work, travel, or hobbyists like myself who can’t justify both a tablet and a pen display, it covers both jobs really well.

Software, battery and cameras

The Magic Pro 13 ships with ibisPaint X and XPPen’s own Canvas app. I still prefer ArtRage for painting. Canvas adds Quick Draw, which wakes the tablet straight into sketching, and a doodle tool for annotating photos. It also keeps reference images from my shelf available alongside other work.

Split-screen and multi-app use work as you’d expect on Android 16, so I can check email or a web page mid-painting and return without losing my place. Performance mode suits artwork and demanding video, while Comfort mode cuts heat and suits browsing and Google Docs, though I didn't notice any heat during extended use.

The 13MP rear and 8MP front cameras cover video calls and reference snaps. I’ve been using the Magic Pro 13 on and off for three weeks, from general browsing to art creation; generally, the battery has lasted a couple of days before needing a charge.

XPPen Magic Pro 13 vs Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14

The Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14 has a larger 14-inch OLED display with deeper blacks and 900 nits of peak brightness, plus a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip and 12GB of RAM. It can also connect to a PC wirelessly (but, as mentioned, you need a companion app, since it's not a hardware solution). If screen quality, desk space, or a wireless link matters most to you, buy the Wacom.

By contrast, the new XPPen Magic Pro 13 costs around $100 / £100 less, has cameras the Wacom lacks, and connects to a PC through a hardware-level USB-C video link rather than a companion app for an easy solution. The recently released Huion Kamvas Pad 12 is cheaper, but the Magic Pro 13 sits a tier above it in screen, pen, and processing power – it's altogether closer to the experience of using MovinkPad Pro 14 or even an iPad Air.

Should you buy an XPPen Magic Pro 13?

The bottom line is that the new Magic Pro 13 is an accomplished, premium Android tablet with artists' needs at the centre of its design and workflow. If you want one tablet for drawing on the move and at a desk, this does the job: the stylus and screen feel natural, the original's tracking problems are gone, and it connects to a PC quickly. The Magic Pro 13 is the best option yet for artists looking beyond an iPad for an Android tablet, if you can live without the Wacom's OLED.

He creates his art using Maya, ZBrush, Mari, Marvelous Designer and Blender (see our guides to the best 3D modelling software and the best laptops for 3D modelling). Below, he talks us through four examples of his work.

Smug Goblin

“This piece was the subject for a tutorial I made for the Think Tank Training Centre. I had to choose a concept and present my workflow from start to finish. This subject is a bit more stylised than the work I usually do, but I had a vision of how it would work with my detailed style.”

Albino Demon

“I created this piece after seeing an illustration by the artist Vetarmora. When I see a design which really inspires me I begin to visualise it in my own style. Through my work, I enjoy breathing a level of realism into the character.”

Adolescent Chimp

“Inspired by the work Weta did on The Planet of the Apes series, I wanted to see how far I could push my skills to create my own realistic chimpanzee.”

Dark Elf

“Based on a painting by Vetarmora. I just loved the use of light in this piece, the earring design being the focal point, paired with the deep dark shiny eyes.”

You can see more of Tom's work on his ArtStation profile

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

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But recently I got myself a monitor light, and I feel my mood has genuinely improved. And now you can get the $60 Quntis monitor light that I got for just $33 over at Amazon.

I've found this monitor light to noticeably reduce the eye fatigue that accompanies late-night work/gaming sessions because of the harsh contrast of staring into a brightly lit screen with no ambient lighting. This exact model is my top budget pick of the best monitor light bars, so at $33, it's an absolute bargain.

• Shop monitor light bars on Amazon

Not the design you want for your setup? Check out more of the best monitor light bars below.

There's up to $250 off the H2D AMS Combo, an all-in-one creative hub that will serve you for plotting and cutting as well as 3D printing. And for beginners, there's the affordable compact A1 Mini is now just $199.

There's also up to 35% off filament when you buy in bulk, and up to 40% Off on Maker's Supply Model Kits.

Bambu lab is one of the most reliable brands in the business, as our reviewers attest to in our comparison to the best 3D printers. The sale runs until 1 December, making it the last opportunity of the year to get reduced prices.

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Placing itself shoulder to shoulder with the competition, Notion's confident ad proves that it stands out against its rivals. Dividing critics with its bold and minimalist billboard design, the ad proves that creative bravery is a priceless tool for standing out in a crowded market.

The billboard in question features a lineup of AI logos including Claude, Perplexity, Grok Bot, ChatGPT and, of course, Notion front and centre. It might seem a little barmy to place yourself among the competition in your own ad, but it's this very confidence that makes Notion's ad shine.

"As much as I hate to admit it, this is a really great ad," a user on X wrote. "No words, just app icons. There’s mystery over who paid for it. There's controversy over why certain apps should be there. It's bold and makes a statement," they added. "Super cool and smart, or super dumb?" another added.

I, for one, am in the "super cool" camp. Given that most AI logos look the same, Notion's simple letterblock logo instantly stands out against the competition. The neutral ground of the logo lineup only helps Notion to emerge among its competitors, suggesting a certain edge against the competition.

While some have criticised the billboard for being too vague, I think that's where its strength emerges. The best adverts often spark conversation, and Notion's bold billboard is not only a symbol of confidence, but a conversation prompt about where the brand belongs in the AI sphere.

So why is Etsy suddenly telling its sellers: "The photo of the product you're selling should actually be the photo of the product you're selling"?

Last week the marketplace for handmade goods made an important-sounding announcement: that every listing must now include at least one unedited photo of the actual item, shot against a real background.

It also specifically banned the use of AI image generators for patterns, recipes and instructions for customers. It's outlawed listings created by bots. And while it's still okay to see AI-generated art on Etsy, you need to be clear about that fact, so buyers know exactly what it is they're buying.

All of which sounds great. But I can't help feeling we never should have got to the place where any of this was necessary.

Who wants to shop for slop?

Admittedly, Etsy had to do something, because the complaints are mounting fast. Full-time creator Kara Lynne summed it up on X, writing: "I can't explain how infuriating it has been to purchase a crochet pattern, only to open the PDF and realise it's fully AI-generated, doesn't make sense, and definitely doesn't match what the finished product should be." Quite.

That's the world that AI is delivering to us. Someone spending their hard-earned money and an evening of their life on instructions that were never going to work. Multiply that by thousands of buyers and you can see how big the problem has become, both for shoppers and the majority of Etsy sellers, who are trying to do everything properly yet end up being tarred with the same brush.

So what Etsy has said does make sense, although it does make you wonder why they haven't acted sooner. Despite its folksy image, this is a company with a market cap of $7.81 billion, after all. You'd think they'd have enough cash to hire a few people to keep an eye on this stuff.

Still, at least Etsy now seems to be pulling in the same direction as much of the creative world. The company now follows Spotify pulling 50 million AI tracks, Snap keeping gen-AI content out of its recommendations and LinkedIn, well, at least adding a button to report it.

Etsy's new rules won't fix everything. But they do acknowledge what should have been obvious: that when people buy something "handmade", they want to know whether a human actually made it. Baby steps, of course, but at least they're steps in the right direction.

If you look at a lot of anything, you tend to get snow blindness after a while. And so it's been with me. Through my tired and cynical eyes, most agency sites look like they've been built by the same person.

Looping showreel? Check? Big, bold type? Check. Meaningless waffle about how the studio is “building brands that matter” (barf). Check. An imposing contact form you sense no one human will ever be bothered to fill out? Check. I could go on, but you get the point.

That's why an email from Denver’s Bound Agency made me smile this morning. Its subject line described their new website, built by Denver studio Wunder Werkz, as "Messy, meaningful and made by humans". And it did not disappoint.

Tumblr feels

The logo is a handwritten scrawl. The navigation icons are wobbly doodles: a slice of cake, an arrow, a signpost, a camera. There are acres of white space (well, soft lilac space to be precise). And scrolling down the tiles feels like I'm flicking through a fanzine.

A collage of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry pictures, all big blonde hair and glam-rock make-up, overlaid with the words: “Pack your wigs, divas. We’re being called home.” A Juno Calypso photo of a woman in a pink heart-shaped bath, pinned with a paperclip. A Spotify playlist titled The Dregs of Summer. A Victorian paper-doll bust. If you spent any time on Tumblr in the late 2000s, it all feels very familiar.

While it's not a carbon copy of the era, many of the hallmarks are there. Found imagery, ironic captions, mixtapes, and a sense that someone’s personal taste is the whole point. Personally, I’m here for it.

So why take this approach? Bound's founder Lauren “Lolo” Butts notes that in 13 years, their website has never won them a single client. “New business almost always comes from word of mouth,” she explains. “So this revamp wasn’t about lead-gen. It was about building a beautiful, fun place that feels like the person you were already told to talk to.”

I find this super-refreshing. It frees the site from having to do lots of boring jobs. There’s no “About us” page and no list of the services the agency offers. Instead, it’s a playground. You can pull a tarot card. You can rearrange a grid that keeps changing. You can build and share a cake. You can browse an estate sale guide called Let’s Go Hunting!

Handmade, for real

Almost a year ago I wrote about a tactile rebellion against slick, synthetic design, and turns out my article headline, "Messy, meaningful and made by humans", were the very words Bound used in their email to me. Flattery will get you everywhere, as they say; but I do genuinely feel this site lives up to that promise.

Every logo, doodle and arrow on the site is in Lauren's own handwriting. And even the eyeballs subtly signal an agency willing to look clients in the eye.

You can’t prompt your way to this kind of personality in Claude; it can only come from somewhere real. And for potential clients, this site is a handy vibe check. If it holds your attention, you’re probably the kind of client they want. If it doesn’t, you’ve both saved yourselves a meeting.

In short, it's a great example of a classic design maxim: why describe your message, your point of view, when you can just show it?

We caught up with him to learn more about his career and influences. If you need to upgrade your own setup for digital art, see our guides to the best drawing tablets and the best laptops for drawing.

You can see more of Iain's work on his ArtStation profile. .

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

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2026 has proven to be a huge year for Apple. With the unprecedented success of the iPhone Duo and MacBook Neo, plus the small matter of the company’s 50th birthday, the last few months have certainly been, er, fruitful for Apple. And just because it can, the company is embarking on a victory lap.

Now that the dust has settled on the new iPhones, all eyes are turning to the Mac and iPad line ups. Apple has announced that it has a bunch of new products to reveal this week, all under the umbrella of an event named Pro and Tell.

We’re on our way to Los Angeles to find out exactly what Apple has in the oven for us, but in the meantime, Apple has already made one minor announcement. The new iPad mini is here, complete with OLED display and a new, thinner design. Oh, and a price hike – it now starts at $699.

We’ll be keeping this page updated with every announcement as it happens, as well as details about all the rumours.

What has Apple announced?

• A new iPad mini, with a thinner and lighter design, OLED display and the A20 Pro chip.
• A new iMac featuring the M6 chip
• A new 14-inch MacBook Pro featuring the M6 chip
• A new 16-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and touch for the first time on Mac

Apple deals this week

The XPPen Magic Pro 13 is an Android 16 tablet going on sale today at an early-bird price of $899 / £899, with digital art-focused specs that compete with both Wacom and iPad.

The original XPPen Magic Drawing Pad opened my eyes and made me question whether an iPad really was the only sensible choice for mobile digital art. It had a drawing-focused screen and a stylus built for artists, without the glossy glass that makes an iPad feel like sketching on a glass table. I use an iPad Pro but a Rock Paper Pencil screen protector to get that toothy drawing-tablet feel.

Since XPPen's first Android tablet, Wacom has launched the high-spec OLED MovinkPad Pro 14, and Huion has gone for a budget spec with the Kamvas Pad 12. But the new XPPen Magic Pro 13 sits at the higher end, alongside Wacom and Apple. I've been using the Magic Pro 13 for about three weeks, and it's an impressive tablet for artists looking for a strong iPad alternative.

XPPen Magic Pro 13 Drawing Display Mode: use it as a pen display

The big idea is Drawing Display Mode: you can connect the Magic Pro 13 to a compatible PC with a single full-featured USB-C cable, and it becomes a pen display running at up to 3K at 120Hz. The stylus keeps its 16K pressure levels, tilt detection, hover preview and customisable barrel buttons, and XPPen promises ultra-low-latency input.

XPPen's pitch is that it makes this connectivity easier. In practice, that means you can sketch on the sofa or the train in your favourite Android apps, then plug in at your desk to keep going and use the tablet like a standard drawing tablet. It could save you buying a standalone tablet and a separate pen display.

XPPen’s Brian Huang, Marketing Director, says the Magic Pro 13 is “an industry-first 2-in-1 device” that works as a standalone drawing pad and a professional drawing display. “Artists need creative tools that can adapt to the way they work, wherever they create,” he adds.

Wacom's MovinkPad Pro 14 can do something similar, but it's not as simple as plug-and-play; you need to enable Developer Mode and USB Debugging in the Android settings (though it also offers WiFi connectivity).

Magic Pro 13 screen and X4 stylus: 3K, 120Hz and 16K pressure

The Magic Pro 13's sleek, tactile 3K display lets you choose 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz, and its nano-etched AG+AF glass feels papery and more natural than drawing on an iPad. The display offers a bright 650 nits peak brightness, higher than the iPad and iPad Air but below the OLEDs of the MovinkPad Pro 14 and iPad Pro, plus 100% sRGB and 96% DCI-P3 coverage, with system-level switching between sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3. There’s also TÜV SÜD Low Blue Light certification.

The new X4 Smart Chip Stylus has a bullet-shaped nib, 16K pressure levels, 60-degree tilt and a claimed 2g activation force. In use, I've found the low threshold helps with light marks and delicate shading and is a huge step up from the original Magic Drawing Pad. Slow diagonals and gradual line-weight changes tell me more than the pressure count alone, especially against Wacom’s Pro Pen 3 and Huion’s PenTech 4.0, and the XPPen feels good – my Magic Pro 13 review is now live.

Magic Pro 13 design, battery and software

The Magic Pro 13 is 6.65mm thick and weighs 655g, with a 10,200mAh battery and 45W PD fast charging on both USB-C ports. It has an 8MP front camera and a 13MP rear camera for capturing references and textures on the go.

XPPen has added its own software, a must and a sign the brand is finally catching up with Wacom in software and driver support. The Shelf app lets you tag, annotate, and search reference images, and Canvas lets you make quick sketches. You also get Quick Draw with Screen Off, Freeform Windowing and Screenshot Doodle.

XPPen Magic Pro 13 price: is it worth $899?

That’s a lot for an Android drawing tablet, and Huion’s Kamvas Pad 12 is the cheaper option at $499, but it has a less powerful processor and a lower-spec display. With XPPen's new Magic Pro 13, you’re paying for the higher-end tech you expect from Wacom and Apple: a high-refresh 3K screen, 120Hz, the MediaTek Dimensity 8300 processor to handle 3D as well as standard apps, and an easy-to-use PC drawing mode. Whether the pen and the desktop connection justify the money is something I explore further in my full review.

You can find the Magic Pro 13 on XPPen’s website.

While the best adverts often spark conversation, TFL's controversial ad has ignited the wrong kind of public engagement. With its unintentionally ambiguous design, the ad demonstrates why the Corporate Memphis art style might not be the best choice for PSA ads.

The design in question is supposed to feature a man looking over his shoulder, but thanks to the featureless style of Corporate Memphis, some commuters saw otherwise. "Disgusting insinuation in this campaign. Absolutely appalling," one X user wrote. "Suspicion, paranoia and ethnically ambiguous abstract art - 1984 is here in full force," another added, while another joked, "This is a wonderful Rorschach test."

Since the ad was clearly misinterpreted by many, TFL was forced to respond, informing the OP that the poster was being investigated. It later claimed the poster had been "installed without TFL's permission."

"Our media partner, our teams and contractors have been instructed to inspect trains and remove any unauthorised posters that are found on our network. The incident has been reported to [British Transport Police] as flyposting is an illegal activity," TFL explained in a now deleted X post.

While the origin of the ad remains unclear, the controversy points to a wider issue with ad campaigns. Creating the right language and visual tone is key to a successful campaign, and this ad (whether fake or not) completely missed the mark. Paranoia-inducing copy and ambiguous design created a recipe for disaster, and now TFL have to deal with the fallout.

For more ad controversy, take a look at why 2026 is the year of the cancelled ad, or check out why Sydney Sweeney's racy ad sparked a Gen Z culture war.

On Friday, Laika’s Wildwood, the studio’s sixth feature, opened in cinemas worldwide. I've already written about how its focus on stop-motion is what we all need in the AI era. So it's fantastic news that the movie seems to be doing well at the box office so far.

Shortly after that, we got The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror XXXVII opener: a stop-motion homage to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Bart is Jack Skellington, Marge is Sally, Homer is the two-faced Mayor, Santa’s Little Helper is Zero, and Ned Flanders is a bug-stuffed Oogie Boogie. Together, they belt out a parody version of This Is Halloween, replaced by the words "Simpsons Halloween".

The Simpson's Halloween specials have impressed since 1990

Since 1990, the Halloween specials have sat deliciously outside the show’s continuity. Characters die gruesome deaths, Springfield gets destroyed, but the following week everything's back to normal. In the new opener, Lisa (dressed as a witch) even spells it out in song: "Halloween episodes are not canon". And brilliantly, that freedom extends to the animation style itself.

Thematically, this sequence and Laika's Wildwood have almost nothing in common. But what matters is that both were made the slow, handmade way: with puppets, physical sets, and people moving them frame by frame. That's truly a lovely thing to see.

Stoopid Buddy Stoodios' stop-motion animation approach

The Simpsons sequence came from Burbank’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, best known for Robot Chicken, which uses retro toys, action figures and dolls in stop-motion animation to deliver pop-culture parodies.

The studio could have used 3D printing. It chose not to. Co-founder John Harvatine IV told Animation World Network. “We kind of just did old school the whole way, from sculpting by hand." Similarly, sculptor Jim McKenzie told Entertainment Weekly: “I think in a time of AI, to be involved with something that’s truly handmade, it’s very special these days." Hear, hear.

It’s fitting that The Simpsons chose Nightmare Before Christmas as its Halloween tribute. When director Henry Selick’s chaotic classic arrived in 1993, it proved that a stop-motion feature could be a mainstream hit, and set him on the path to Coraline, the film that launched Laika.

Back then, stop-motion was seen as very old hat, a thing of the past. Three decades later, it feels like a refreshing antidote to AI and overly slick CG, and this Simpsons opener plays right into that idea.

These gruesome puppet caricatures might only be on screen for half a minute, but they’re part of a much bigger fightback for handmade animation and creativity in general. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

As part of Regal Movies' new popcorn bucket promo, you can now 3D-print your own Wicker husband (well, at least a part of him). Is it a bit cheeky getting moviegoers to print their own popcorn buckets? Yes. Is it a bit stingy that the deal only got you a small popcorn? Absolutely. Do I still want a 3D-printed version of Alexander Skarsgård's rippling Wicker bod? Definitely.

Straight from Regal's Prop Shop, the 3D-printed Wicker popcorn bucket was created using 3D scans of Skarsgård's costume (note the design is just the torso, so get your mind out of the gutter). Those brave enough to bring their freshly printed Wicker husband to the movie theatre received a free small popcorn for their efforts.

Unsurprisingly, the design is wonderfully detailed and, popcorn novelty aside, a playful prop for fans. The print files are entirely free, so your Wicker man is well within reach, provided you have your own setup (or a kind, unquestioning friend who will print it for you).

For more creative inspiration, check out these 3D printing essentials or take a look at our guide to the fastest way to get comfortable with 3D software

One of the more curious issues facing some iPhone Duo units is the screen cracking in one very specific location. This involves a thin crack down the centre hinge, and a line of stuck bright white pixels across the right side of the display. The result has aready led to some amusing wallpaper designs making light of the issue.

But why are multiple Duo models breaking in the same way? Well, now that teardowns of the device have begun, we might have an answer. iFixit has revealed an area of concentrated components around the hinge, with a different shape to the rest of the hinge, which could be causing excess stress on the screen.

"To see where the stresses build up from folding, we built a 3D hinge model from teardown footage, patents, and CT scans, then compared it with the reported damage locations," reports iFixit. "The breaks cluster near the transition from the gap for the crossing flex cable to the central hinge support. The damage we’re seeing in photos isn’t right where the display cable passes through the hinge, but slightly lower, at a point where several edges meet and change how the thin display is supported as it bends... The screen’s curved fold comes down onto it, creating a small stress hotspot near the reported break location."

While it's too early to tell the scale of the problem, it seems at least a few units from this early batch of iPhone Duos might feature a subtle design flaw. Right now, early adopters are likely stress testing the product more than the average user, and the fault could be limited to a handful of units, leading to an outsized impression of the issue. If anything, it shows just how much more intricate the design of these foldable needs to be – and that not even Apple is necessarily immune to the difficulties of creating a durable device that can happily fold in half.

Once I got the design requirements, I started planning the overall layout right away. I depicted the main dragon in a vivid dynamic stance, dashing forward from a distance in the frame, straight towards audiences with its mouth wide open in a fierce roar.

Floating clouds and sailing fleets spread across the sea in the lower part of the picture. The huge dragon and the tiny distant ships form a sharp contrast, building remarkable spatial depth. The whole scene is set against a glowing backlit sunset sky, and striking light rays enrich the visual layers.

For the back cover, I drew the other two dragons from the novel locked in an intense battle. I arranged the three dragons with clear visual hierarchy, and concentrated the finest details on the main dragon’s head on the front cover to highlight the core character.

If you want to follow a similar process, you'll need digital art software, and you might want one of the best drawing tablets to work on.

Artist's tips

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Phantom Blade Zero wants you to feel like a kung fu master from the opening moments, and you should, since you play as Soul, an elite assassin for the Order. Even after a fateful duel leaves him with 66 days to live, there’s no cheap Metroid-style reset, and his martial arts prowess keeps growing.

Whether taking on another fearsome warrior one-on-one or a group of enemies, there’s a fluid confidence to his moveset that captures the spirit of the classic martial arts films that have inspired studio S-Game's ambitious debut, itself based on the indie RPG Rainblood: Town of Death that director Soulframe Liang made more than 15 years ago.

While China’s first AAA hits like Black Myth: Wukong and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers have leveraged both Unreal Engine 5 and the overwhelming influence of Soulslikes, S-Game tries to carve out its own identity, which it has coined as ‘kungfupunk’. Aesthetically, that means a curious blend of traditional Chinese culture with the modern: steel-factory architecture clashing with bamboo forests and temples from a more classic wuxia setting, and music where elegant pipa strings give way to electric-guitar rock riffs. More literally, it’s about how Sha-Chi, the energy that powers your kung fu (in-game, it’s basically your stamina gauge used for heavy combos and guarding attacks), also powers other technologies.

Phantom Blade Zero combat: martial-arts mocap and 50+ weapons

But it's definitely the kung fu that's centre-stage here, with all of the fighting styles and movements in-game captured by real martial artists, notably with the involvement of Hong Kong martial arts legend Donnie Yen (he also plays a character, albeit one you don't strictly encounter on the main story path, while spending most of it behind a mask) and his stunt team.

Even though your combos are essentially just spamming light or heavy attacks, your fighting style changes depending on the weapon you use, such as the one-handed Jagged Steel, which inflicts bleed damage, or the weighty two-handed Scarlet Wraithblade, which leaves energy-draining red spider lilies on the ground. The action can often feel too fast for its own good, so you're usually focused on your flurry of attacks before waiting to react to an enemy's blue or red attacks to parry or dodge, but hitting the prompt to unleash a finishing move is pretty satisfying.

Since most bosses drop new weapons, there's a thrill in getting a new toy to play with, and the game has more than 50 to find and master. It can feel a little overwhelming, and some may feel more gimmicky than useful, like a sword that gives you unpredictable drunken-martial-arts movements, so I naturally stuck to a few favourites, especially since I needed to prioritise upgrading them with my limited resources.

Nonetheless, there's an incentive to master more than one weapon, as switching automatically gives you a full Sha-Chi gauge. I often used up a gauge with one weapon, then quickly swapped to another to keep my offensive momentum going (a cooldown period does prevent you from just exploiting this).

Exploration and level design

Special weapons called Phantom Edges have limited uses but, used at the right time, can turn the tide in encounters, like a large axe that smashes through enemy shields or a chain sickle that tears through multiple surrounding enemies. Some even serve Metroidvania-style exploration, letting you access areas you couldn't reach before.

But despite some interesting designs, it's hard not to see these as glorified keycards, with most leading to little more than a small room and a chest for your trouble. Even though the chain doubles as a grappling hook, it's a bit disappointing once you realise that, like other traversal options such as running up cliffs or wall-running, it's limited to a button prompt at prescribed points in the environment.

This is one of the frustrating aspects of Phantom Blade Zero's rich, dense Wulin, even as it takes you from the bottom of a valley to mountain peaks, plus a massive lake you can explore by boat. It may all look pleasing to the eye, but it suffers from environments where you regularly bump up against invisible barriers as you try to parse the artistically rendered map (albeit elegantly emulating a Chinese ink wash painting that fills up the more checkpoints you come across).

This is especially annoying when a quest marker is supposedly close by, but you still have to wander aimlessly until you spot an interaction prompt, or discover there's actually a long-winded detour you're supposed to take instead. Doors that require specific keys are one thing, but I catch myself sighing when I approach a ledge you would expect to mantle in a similar game, only for Soul's kung fu skills to be arbitrarily eluded.

Boss fights and difficulty

Another question you might have about Phantom Blade Zero is whether it's a Soulslike. In many ways, it isn't. For instance, its checkpoints don't revive defeated enemies when you rest at them, and you also don't lose any resources permanently if you don't recover them. It nonetheless has some similarities, such as some labyrinthine level design where you'll encounter your share of doors inconveniently locked from your side, but it almost seems to turn into a Soulslike in challenge the moment you encounter bosses with hard-hitting attacks and where you have very limited heals (which you won't even be able to upgrade meaningfully until the game's midpoint).

On the one hand, some difficulty spikes are mitigated by bosses with a second phase, which also have a checkpoint so you're not forced to go through the first phase with fewer resources, and there are also difficulty options. The accessories you find and equip can also make a difference, especially ones that widen the parry and dodge windows, but my major gripe remains how spongy these boss fights feel, even for those that come back with a second phase.

This isn't unique to Phantom Blade Zero (see also Control Resonant, until Remedy patched it at launch), but it makes you question the point of staggering your opponent when, in this state, all your heaviest attacks still only chip away at their health. In many fights, it also makes your aggressive momentum push the enemy back until you inevitably get stuck on geometry. When it hits the camera, some cool-looking finishing moves get framed awkwardly, with parts of the environment obscuring the shot.

Phantom Blade Zero performance on PS5 Pro

Even though I was testing on PS5 Pro, I still ran into some pretty glaring technical issues during my playthrough, mostly in the latter half of the game, which I think came down to optimisation and bugs, since they persisted even after I turned off ray tracing and set the graphics to Performance mode. Sometimes the audio got knocked way out of balance between the voice acting and music, and in a couple of cases the big puddles I came across didn't show reflections so much as they looked more like a big mirror or a hole in the ground.

Most egregious, however, were framerate drops during combat that devolved into a slideshow, spoiling several major boss fights. I should be relieved they didn't kill me, since most of these happened when I was already locked into my (likely very VFX-laden) attack animations against a staggered opponent.

That may make it seem like I have a lot to be down about Phantom Blade Zero, but there is still plenty to admire, including cultural and artistic flourishes I can't share in this review. The Wulin's centrepiece, Pangzhen, is the kind of labyrinthine town that deserves to be talked about in the same breath as Bloodborne's Yharnam, so rich and dense with secrets and lore, and home to some of the game's best bosses, while there's clearly been a lot of thought that has gone into the intriguing characters and deep questlines that offer meaningful rewards, including having an impact on the ending you'll get. It's just a shame that the version I got to play still needed a bit more time in the oven.

A final note: S-Game released a patch that supposedly resolves most of the above issues, but it came after I finished my playthrough, so I didn't have a chance to go through it again to make sure every issue I encountered was fixed.

While the standard Pro X use Status Audio's default signature tuning alongside an open EQ that lets you customise your own sound profiles via the app, the new GoldenSound Edition featues a locked, specialised sound profile from renowned audio engineer Cameron "GoldenSound" Oatley.

There are plenty of great over-ear wireless headphones, but for inner-ear earphones, the Status Pro really stand out right now.

• Browse Status headphones at Amazon

At the heart of the Status Audio Pro X is a triple-driver configuration, combining a 12mm dynamic driver for deep sub-bass with dual Knowles-balanced armatures for highs and mids. The standard signature profile delivers impressive instrument separation and a weighty sub bass partnered with splashes of high end, but with a rich midrange presence for an engaging V-shape sound signature.

The GoldenSound Edition feature an additional locked profile developed using the specialised Brüel & Kjær 5128 head and torso simulator. This targets a natural, balanced timbre, smoother treble and improved mid-range cohesion for a more acoustic-friendly and realistic presentation. You to switch back to the standard Pro X tuning using the app.

They also have a sharp aesthetic with a matte black and matte gold finish on the earbuds, with a matte black charging case and a matte gold lid stamped with both the Status Audio and GoldenSound logos.

The iPhone Duo selling out until January suggested that people were buying into that idea with Apple's first foldable. Now the early reviews and feedback are starting to raise questions.

One of the most concerning issues coming from real-world feedback involves breaks concentrated around the hinge of the phone, including vertical cracks down the centre, dead pixels or lines across one side of the screen. And because of the scarcity of stock, some people have been told they'll have to wait until January for a replacement.

While clearly not ideal, the extent of the issue is unclear. There's no evidence yet of a widespread manufacturing or design defect.

A lot of iPhone Duo testing posted on social media has focused precisely on the hinge and crease given that it's a potential source of weakness (and that the invisibility of the crease has been touted as one of the features making the Duo superior to other foldables.

In the video by Tim Pan above, the crease does become visibly deeper after 500 manual folds and palpably deeper after 10,000, easily within the range of a few months of real use, but Tim generally finds the hinge to hold up well.

But another test, by HTX Studio (below), finds that the crease became deeper than that of two other foldables after just 3,000 folds and also notes that the screen around the crease is softer.

Some have been subjecting to the poor Duo to harsher treatment. Trung Peng decides to pass on the device after finding the crease to be a magnet for dust and dirty. He also finds that the screen gets marked if you hold a naked flame to it. So, yeah, maybe don't do that.

Speaking of heat, other early tests have raised concerns about the phone running warm without being intentionally singed. Joanna Stern was concerned enough to end a FaceTime call during her testing because it felt too hot.

Apple responded that this points to the cooling system working correctly. The Duo's vapor chamber is slimmer than the one in the iPhone 18 Pro, and there's a flexible graphite heat pipe around the hinge to compensate. This helps transfer heat between the two halves of the device, increasing the surface area to dissipate heat but potentially making the whole device warmer to the touch.

Another common gripe with the Duo involves the optimisation of some apps (or lack of). Some apps designed for iOS 26 or 27 present a smaller layout surrounded by black bars. Some behave the same as iPhone-only apps on an iPad: presenting a tiny version of the app in the middle of the display, which is blurry when resized.

But apps that have already been redesigned for the iPhone Duo appear to work very well. It's not ideal for the Duo to launch before a lot of apps are ready for it, but developers will catch up.

Others have cited buggy transition animations and apps that get the camera orientation wrong. Sometimes Apple's own software seems to get confused show the wrong orientation. Again, this is something that can probably be fixed.

For Stefan Van Der Merwe, the lack of Face ID is a deal breaker. I don't think this will be such a decisive factor for everyone, but I can see how it can be disappointing for a phone designed with multitasking in mind. That said, as a foldable, the Duo really needs two hands.

We haven't completed our own review of the Duo yet, and I've not yet seen anything that should massively change people's decision on whether to buy the Duo or not. It was already clear that it's not one of the best camera phones, and it's not presented as such.

You might want to wait a few months for some of the software problems to be ironed out for a smoother initial experience of the Duo – but then you might have no choice with preorders backed up until the end the year. And by that point, you might feel you have enough patience to wait another nine months for the Duo 2.

My studio is about 30 square metres, and it has a slightly odd history: it used to be two bedrooms – mine and my older brother’s – in my parents’ house just outside Paris, until we knocked the wall through. My brother’s bed is still in here, and I’ll come back to why that matters.

The space is split in two. On one side, everything digital: a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 hooked up to a MacBook Pro M2 Max, running Clip Studio Paint [see the best digital art software – ed]. For manga specifically, nothing else comes close – the pen stabilisation, the panel tools, the screentones, it’s all built for exactly what I do.

All three screens are running my own drawings. When I’m working on my new manga I want my previous pages permanently in front of me, so I’m always referencing myself rather than hunting through folders.

The desk itself is custom-built: two and a half metres of solid wood worktop weighing around 100kg, which is not something you move on a whim. It's rated for 300kg of load. I had it built to carry everything at once: Mac, PC, drawing setup and the full streaming rig, without a single wobble.

I built the computer myself, and I’d be lying if I said it was purely for work – I’m a lifelong geek and gamer. The water-cooling loop was a project in itself. When I need to reset my eye before going back to a page, this is where I go.

On the other side, everything traditional, and this is where things get out of hand. I own more than 3,000 markers. Not a typo. Plus dozens and dozens of nibs, pencils and screentone sheets. I’m an ambassador for a few art brands, including Clairefontaine and Graph’it, so material arrives constantly and I ran out of places to put it.

This is my second desk, dedicated entirely to traditional work, with the marker and liner wall standing right in front of it. Everything is arranged so I can reach any colour without standing up or breaking concentration – that’s the whole point. I sit down here and just sink into the drawing. After a morning of screens, the smell of alcohol markers is what tells my brain it’s time to make something with my hands

Everything now lives in labelled boxes, because otherwise I’d never find anything again. There’s a third layer to the room too: I’ve been shooting photo and video since 2011, and I still use that gear every day.

A Sony FX30, a Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun mic and big continuous softboxes – the proper studio kind – because I film courses and live critique sessions for my drawing school, and for the 550,000 people who follow the channel.

I sit on an HBADA X7, which has built-in massage, heating and ventilation – it sounds ridiculous until you’ve spent six straight hours inking a page.

Next to me is a manga library of over a thousand volumes that I raid constantly for reference, plus copies of my own manga, Astral. My day is very rigid. Up at 5:30, sport at 6, at my desk by 7. If I start at 8 I feel like I’ve already lost the day – which is ridiculous, but there it is. I work until noon, then my energy collapses, so I sleep from 2pm to 3:30pm.

That’s what the bed is for. It’s the single most important piece of furniture in the room. Cutting the day in half is non negotiable. Back at it until 6 or 7pm, then in bed by 10. I’m obsessively organised. Clean desk, batteries charged, every pen where it should be, or I feel half-lost before I’ve started.

The biggest lesson? For years I called myself a mangaka online and quietly felt like a fraud, because I was teaching manga without having published one. Then Astral came out in 2025 and the impostor syndrome simply vanished. I’m on my second book now.

Astral is the story of Nejma, a young woman searching for meaning, and Elane, a druidess, who are bound by Merlin’s lost grimoire as ancient Celtic legends come to life.

I was 40 when it came out, and I’d spent years teaching manga online while quietly wondering whether I had the right to – this book is what settled that question, for good.

This is an illustration of Sana, a character from the Astral universe, drawn in Clip Studio Paint.

I'm a serious figure collector: 12 large-scale statues and a small army of smaller ones. Owning them is a childhood dream made literal – as a kid these were completely out of reach, and now I get to work inside the universe that made me want to draw in the first place. They’re also genuinely useful for lighting and anatomy reference.

Gohan is my favourite character in all of manga. He’s the kid who inherits enormous potential and has to decide what to do with it, and every single day he pushes me to go and build my own version of that.

Nami is on my desk because we share one very specific trait: an excellent sense of direction. Whenever I travel with friends, I’m always the one navigating – nobody else even tries anymore.

Apprendre à Dessiner des Mangas is a practical guide book designed for those who truly want to learn to draw – not just watch tutorials, but pick up a pencil and get started.

You can see more of Yé's work on his website.

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Just Eat has apologised and said it was removing the images. But what was it thinking?

As reported by the BBC, images spotted on the Just Eat app in the UK include a bacon and egg soda bread cocktail at a Northern Ireland cafe and a 'jacket potato' represented by an actual jacket with pictures of baked potatoes on it.

Other gems included a plain garlic bread shaped like a plane because of a typo, a bowl of tiger cubs (tiger prawns, apparently), a literal toad in the hole and a 'lighter' breakfast depicted as a cigarette lighter.

Just Eat is really late to this party. Its rival Uber Eats went through this embarrassment almost three years ago. The technology has advanced massively since then, but somehow Just Eat managed to roll out an even worse implementation. On social media, people have been asking how a $4bn company managed to mess up so badly and how it could roll out such a risky feature without properly testing it.

But there's also an even more obvious question: why? Even if the AI 'worked' as intended and generated an image of the perfect Platonic ideal of each dish, using fake product photography for food seems like a guaranteed way to cause disappointment and complaints from customers.

Users have already been sharing screenshots on social media, showing 'AI vs reality' comparisons, with some complaining that Just Eat has refused to issue refunds despite the actual product ordered not even remotely resembling the AI hallucination.

That's not the fault of the business making the food when the false impression was created by an AI image foisted on it by the app. They join the growing list of businesses suffering because of automatic AI-generated images pushed on their products on platforms as varied as Amazon and Reddit.

In 2026, my inbox has been full of PR emails about these kind of developments. How&How rebranding AI image generator Ideogram. Lazarev crafting the identity for AI video app Elva. Together giving AI audit firm Clusia a four-petal mark. Meta asking lettering artist Jessica Hische to draw the new logo for its new AI platform, Muse.

So why do the companies who seem most invested in machine-made creativity keep reaching for the human kind? And should creatives whose livelihoods AI threatens be helping them? The more I think about these conundrums, the more confused I seem to get.

What branding does

The first question is, if we accept that AI can make nice looking images, why wouldn't AI companies want to use them for their own branding? It's a simple question, and actually there's a simple answer too. Branding has never been about making things look nice. It’s about making people believe you.

As I noted in my recent article about attempts to rebrand AI slop, it's pretty clear that AI companies have a credibility problem right now. Not just with designers, but with the general public too.

I've lost track of how many times I've heard people without a creative bone in their body calling out AI images, whether they're on Facebook, a dodgy gig poster hanging up in the pub, or the cover of their nephew’s self-published fantasy novel.

So it might seem like a paradox, yet it makes perfect sense that AI companies are putting humans front and centre when it comes to their own branding. But it's no surprise, too, that the backlash from some creatives has been noisy.

Understandable anger

When Jessica announced her Muse work, for example, she was hammered on Threads, despite explaining that the $12,500 fee would help her keep two small shops and their staff afloat. Her critics argued, though, that we shouldn't be lending our craft and credibility to the thing that’s eroding demand for it.

I understand the logic and I understand the anger. But one has to wonder how much refusing such commissions would actually change anything.

Capitalists are investing literal billions of dollars in generative AI, and ultimately if Jessica had turned down the Muse job, it's not like they'd have turned on their heels and gone home. They'd just have found someone else. There are lot of capable designers out there, and even if they'd hired a bad one and the logo hadn't been any good, it hardly would have brought the AI juggernaut to halt.

On a more positive note, the very fact these companies are keen to hire humans is surely something we can hang on to. As Jessica said in an interview for Wired: “Isn’t this ultimately the future that we want? Large companies hiring independent artists to do things?”

In short, if AI companies want to pay humans to make them look human, surely it's best we take the money, do brilliant work and remind everyone why they asked in the first place?