Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch Review

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Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch

Gamers looking to buy a mid-range gaming laptop have all the choice in the world. They also have no choice at all. While there’s plenty of laptops sold for around $1,000, they all have similar hardware – an Intel Core processor with a GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti GPU. No other pairing can beat the value of this dream team.

That makes life difficult for humble laptops like the Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch. Armed with an Intel Core i7-8750H, Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, 16GB of RAM, and a 1080p screen, nothing about it stands out at a glance.

Yet that doesn’t mean you should dismiss it. In fact, the similarity of today’s many gaming laptops means there’s opportunity for a dark horse to unset popular competitors. Can Legion mount an offense against Dell, Asus, and MSI?

Familiar, but handsome

Lenovo’s has a tight design language, with traits noticeably leaking between the company’s many sub-brands. Past Legion laptops have bucked that trend, mimicking the look of laptops from Alienware, but the Y730 15-inch is firmly inside Lenovo’s wheel-trod aesthetic. Its simple, boxy, slate-like look is reminiscent of an IdeaPad, while the matte gray exterior is reminiscent of the ThinkPad’s workmanlike appearance.

It ultimately lands on the boring side of subtle, but it’s certainly not offensive, and it has some handsome touches. The Legion branding looks great and made us want to slap an X-Men logo on the laptop’s lid.

The Y730 is also thoroughly modern. It has thin display bezels, which cuts down the footprint, and it’s less than an inch thick. It’s not as svelte as the Razer Blade, but the Legion Y730 is quite a bit less expensive, instead competing with laptops like the Dell G5 Gaming Laptop and Asus ROG Strix Hero.

Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch Compared To

Razer Blade (2018)

Digital Storm Equinox

Dell Inspiron 15 7577

HP Omen 15

Origin EON15-S

Asus ROG Zephyrus

MSI GS63VR 6RF Stealth Pro

MSI GS60 Ghost Pro

Alienware 15 (2015)

Asus ROG G501

Digital Storm Triton

Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Edition

AVADirect Clevo P157SM-A

MSI Global GT60 Dominator Pro

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500

While reasonably thin, it’s not so sleek that it compromises connectivity, which includes three USB ports, HDMI, Mini-DisplayPort, a Thunderbolt 3 port, a headphone jack, and Ethernet. That’s a solid array of connectivity that should cover any peripheral a gamer would use.

The keyboard feels off, but boy, is it pretty

The keyboard is another area the Lenovo Legion Y730 cribs from the company’s other designs. It’s a very Lenovo keyboard, with flat keycaps, lots of space between keys, and a slightly strange layout that includes macro keys on the left-hand side.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

We struggled a bit at first. The key layout felt shifted from where it should be due to the macro keys, but we adjusted after a couple days. Key feel is fine, with decent travel but a vague overall motion, and there’s plenty of space to make long typing sessions comfortable.

The display is otherwise unremarkable, but that’s not a bad thing.

It’s a colorful keyboard, as Lenovo has stuffed a per-key customizable RGB LED backlight into the laptop. The control of it, which is managed by Corsair’s iCue program, is a bit confusing, but offers a huge range of options. You can even upload an image and have the keyboard do its best to mimic it.

The LEDs behind the Legion logo and the side fan vents can also be changed. MSI’s GP63 Leopard is the only serious alternative that can rival Legion’s extensive lighting customization.

We like the touchpad. It’s not amazing, but it’s large, smooth, and never registered unintended input. Gaming laptops often treat touchpads as an afterthought because gamers don’t use them to play, but the Y730’s is fine, which instantly makes it better than most.

The 1080p screen suits the laptop’s hardware

Every Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with a 1080p anti-glare panel. It’s unusual to see anti-glare in a gaming laptop. Most have a glossy coat, which tends to improve contrast and vibrance, but make the laptop harder to use in bright rooms. Going anti-glare makes the Y730 a more utilitarian option, one that you can haul anywhere and expect to use in comfort.

The display is otherwise unremarkable, but that’s not a bad thing. It offers solid color accuracy and a contrast ratio of 860:1 at the panel’s maximum brightness of 305 lux. The Y730’s competitors are not a tough crowd. The Acer Predator Helio, Dell Inspiron G3 Gaming, and even Razer Blade rank slightly below the Legion in color accuracy and contrast. A truly great display, like that on the MacBook Pro or Surface Book 2, will decimate the Y730’s scores in every category – but such laptops aren’t the Y730’s competition.

Overall, games look sharp, with strong color and lots of detail in dark scenes. Even the 1080p resolution isn’t a problem. It’s not as crystal-clear as 4K, of course, but it’s a more realistic match for the Y730’s affordable hardware.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

Audio is provided by a pair of Harman branded speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and we liked what we heard. Games and movies were crisp, clear, and served with a bit of bass. They’re not better than a good pair of headphones, but they’ll keep you from reaching for your cans the moment you launch a game.

The processor and hard drive overperform

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with Intel’s Core i7-8750H processor, which has six cores and a maximum Turbo Boost clock speed of 4.1 GHz. It’s a common processor in high-end laptops and perhaps overkill for gaming – cores five and six won’t be used much in most games. The CPU was paired with 16GB of RAM.

Geekbench had good things to say about the Legion Y730. It did as well as the Dell XPS 15 we reviewed and defeated the HP Spectre x360 15-inch. Our Handbrake test was put the Y730 right alongside these peers. It’s not the fastest laptop ever made, but it’s a strong performer that could even serve as a portable workstation.

Our review unit’s 256GB PCIe solid state drive also performed well, hitting read speeds of over 1.5 gigabytes per second and write speeds of 425 megabytes per second. That easily beats the Dell G3 Gaming, which hit a read speed of 500 MB/s and a write speed of only 209 MB/s. These strong results go well beyond what’s needed to load games quickly.

The GPU is only as quick as you’d expect

As with the display and processor, the Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with just one choice of graphics: Nvidia’s GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. This is by far the most common GPU in affordable and mid-range gaming laptops, which means it’s difficult for laptops to stand out in performance.

Riley Young/Digital Trends

3DMark’s Fire Strike benchmark gives us no reason to think the Legion Y730 will be different. Its score of 7,066 slightly defeats the pair of similarly equipped Dell laptops, but the margin of victory is extremely small.

No surprises so far, then. Let’s load up the games.

Again, the Legion Y730’s performance is no surprise. Yet the results do require some explanation. There’s a wide variety of designs and configurations in the list of competitors we’ve placed the Y730 against. The Dell XPS 15 lags the Y730 in some games due to throttling issues despite the fact its hardware is extremely similar. The older Inspiron 7677 Gaming, with a GTX 1060, mostly wins by a large margin over the GTX 1050 Ti laptops – except in Civilization VI, where a slow processor holds back its results.

On balance, though, the Legion Y730 provides the performance we’ve come to expect from the GTX 1050 Ti. It’s fast enough to play any game, though demanding games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will force you to abandon hope of playing at 60 FPS and high detail settings. Whether this laptop suits your needs depends on what you expect. Hardcore PC gamers may demand a higher display refresh rate and GPU performance to match, but most players will find the Legion comfortably adequate.

The battery life is bad, even by a gaming laptop’s standards

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch ships with a 57 watt-hour battery, and that gave us immediate reason to worry. That’s similar in size to the Dell XPS 13’s battery, yet the Y730 is much more powerful. The math isn’t in Lenovo’s favor here.

Our worries were confirmed by our test results. The Legion Y730 15-inch didn’t even last three hours in our video loop test, our least demanding. It failed to last two hours in the more demanding Basemark browser benchmark loop. Dell’s G3 Gaming laptop offers roughly twice the battery life of the Legion. Even the Alienware 17 R5, a GTX 1080-powered laptop, lasted longer in most tests.

Real-world results were no better. A few episodes of Disenchanted drained three-quarters of the battery. Light web surfing and document editing ate through a full charge in less than four hours. You’ll need to bring the power brick on most journeys.

Sour software

Lenovo’s Vantage software suite makes an appearance on the Legion Y730. It replaces the standard Windows battery life indicator and offers a few other extras, like extra hotkey support. The keyboard’s lighting is controlled by Corsair’s iCUE app, but there’s also a separate Lenovo menu which…well, we never quite figured out what it’s supposed to do, aside from control the macro keys. McAfee LiveSafe trial edition was installed on our review unit, as well.

Our Take

Handsome and sturdy, the Lenovo Legion Y730 is an enjoyable laptop that’s held back by its price. Our review unit, with a 256GB solid state drive and 2TB mechanical disk, sells for $1,550. That’s way too much for a gaming laptop powered by the GTX 1050 Ti.

Entry-level models start at $1,200 and differ from our review unit only in RAM and hard drive size, so we recommend you go for the base version unless you need more storage. Yet even the most affordable version puts the Y730 up against peers packing the GTX 1060, a substantially better graphics chip. We’d like Lenovo to shave at least $100 from the price.

Is there a better alternative?

Though it has a less attractive display and similar battery life woes, Dell’s G3 Gaming can match the Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch in performance at a lower price.

There’s also a long list of laptops that compete on price but pack a GTX 1060. These include the Asus ROG Strix Hero, the Dell G5 Gaming, and MSI GP63 Leopard. We haven’t reviewed these particular models, but we do know the GTX 1060 is significantly quicker than the GTX 1050 Ti.

How long will it last?

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch will last you longer than it’s capable of serving as a gaming laptop. Its sturdy, well-built, and has far more processor power than it needs. The GTX 1050 Ti graphics chip is the weak spot, however, and will start to feel pokey after a few years.

The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch comes with the usual one-year warranty against manufacturer defects. That’s typical for a system in this price range.

Should you buy it?

Not unless it’s on sale. The Lenovo Legion Y730 15-inch is a solid affordable gaming laptop that’s more attractive than many of its peers, but we’d expect to see a GTX 1060 at this price.

This company is recycling your food scraps into 3D printer material

We’ve previously written about the role that 3D printing can play in the future of food, but could additive manufacturing also have a part to play in disposing of food waste? Indeed it can, claim the brains behind a startup called Genecis, made up of graduates from Canada’s University of Toronto Scarborough. With this ambition in mind, they have developed a way to transform today’s restaurant food waste into tomorrow’s biodegradable plastics — useful for everything from creating packaging to 3D printing filament.

“Genecis uses biology to convert organic waste into higher value materials,” Luna Yu, founder and CEO of Genecis, told Digital Trends. “The first product line is PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates) biopolymers, which is used in combination with PLA to make 3D printing filaments. It is also used to make high-end flexible packaging and containers. In addition, PHAs makes a tougher and less brittle 3D printing filament. The end product is 100 percent biodegradable, and can be mixed with a variety of colors. Currently, all PHAs are made from expensive food crops such as corn, sugar cane, and canola. Genecis has developed a novel technology that produces PHAs from mixed food waste, dramatically reducing the production costs.”

The core of Genecis’ technology involves what Yu describes as “special recipes of bacteria.” These assemble materials automatically at rapid speeds in a way that can be used to produce rare chemicals or materials which are expensive to create chemically.

“Over the past two years, Genecis has collected bacteria from all around the world, and isolated over 200 species that are not present in any existing database,” Yu continued. “This allows us to start developing our own synthetic biology platform, which rapidly creates new synthetic bacteria. These bacteria can be used to make better PHAs for 3D printing, and reprogrammed to make higher value materials used in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and nano-materials industries.”

Currently, Genecis is working to commercialize its first product line consisting of PHA bioplastic pellets. It is also seeking partnerships for users of its manufactured polymers. In other words, if any readers happen to be 3D printing filament makers, packaging manufacturers, or general plastic manufacturers that currently use PHAs, now is the time to get in touch!

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Leak shows Intel’s Core i9-9900K comes in a cool 12-sided box, but costs $580

After an initial round of early 3DMark benchmarks in July, the Intel Core i9-9900K leaks just keep on coming. In the latest, a $582.50 price listing and an image of some fancy packaging for the much-anticipated processor reportedly appeared on Amazon, spotted by Tom’s Hardware.

These leaks suggest Intel has clearly now stepped up its game, seemingly taking a shot at the AMD Threadripper which already comes in impressive packaging. The listing has since been pulled, but screenshots captured by Twitter user Momo_Us show that the box resembles a translucent dodecahedron, with a space in the middle part for the processor.

Things look pretty similar to the shape of a twelve-sided die, marking a big departure from Intel’s typical square-shaped processor boxes. Unfortunately, the image suggests there is still no cooler included, despite how big the box may look.

Intel’s Core i9-9900K Listing on Amazon (Image from Toms Hardware)

It is hard to verify if this listing holds up to be true, but the photos look fairly convincing. Amazon briefly mentions that the processor comes packed with eight cores and sixteen threads, a boost of up to 5.0 GHz, with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology for sixteen-way multitasking. That’s not necessarily new information, but it is plenty of power and confirms the benchmarks from July which mentioned that the Core i9-9900K was “noticeably quicker than its last-generation predecessors and AMD’s Ryzen 2700X.”

As for the reported price, $582.50 is still quite a bit expensive compared to the $380 Coffee Lake Intel Core i7-8700K. That’s also higher than some of the originally rumored price suggestions, but then again, this is Intel’s first eight-core, sixteen-thread desktop processor — and it’s meant to compete directly with AMD’s expensive Ryzen processors.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy the processor yet, as Amazon notes that it is still temporarily out of stock. We would have liked to see a sixteen-sided Hexadecagon shaped box instead (with one side for each processor thread,) but the translucent dodecahedron will have to do as a bonus.

All the leaks now considered, a reveal might be coming soon. Best keep your wallet near, and your PC motherboards ready for the upgrade by the end of this year.

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How to watch the October 9 ‘Made by Google’ event

After months of rumors and leaks, Google is finally ready to unveil its latest and greatest creations, including the new Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones — and possibly a new Chrome OS 2-in-1, a Google Home hub, and more. Here’s what we expect from Google at its October 9 New York event.

The event starts at 11 a.m. ET on October 9 — that’s 8 a.m. PT if you’re on the West Coast, or 3 p.m. GMT for our U.K.-based readers.

Of course, you might be wondering how you can watch the Google event for yourself — thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do so. We’ve done the research so you don’t have to.

How to watch the Google event on YouTube

Perhaps the easiest way to watch the event is straight from the Made by Google YouTube channel, which will livestream the event once it begins. Through YouTube, you can watch the event on any phone and any computer without the need for an extra app, which makes it one of the easier ways to watch Google unveil its new products.

The YouTube stream is scheduled to start around 20 minutes before the event — though if you do log on at 11 a.m. ET on the dot, we don’t think you’ll miss much besides pre-event music and perhaps a few ads.

Stream the Made by Google event on YouTube.

How to watch the Google event on Twitter

As Apple did for its last event, Google will also be livestreaming on Twitter — so if you prefer to use the Twitter app for livestreaming, then you’re in luck. Unlike the YouTube stream, the Twitter stream is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. There may be a benefit to watching on Twitter if you’re interested in seeing what others think of the new products — live tweets related to the event will appear below the livestream.

Stream the Made by Google event on Twitter.

Stay tuned

Whether or not you tune in to watch the Made by Google event, we’ll have all the latest news, updates, and insights for you. Head to our roundup to check out all of our Made by Google event-related coverage.

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Look out construction workers; Japan’s new robot might steal your job one day

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot is capable of some impressive feats, but researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) institute have created what looks like an eminently more practical and down-to-earth humanoid robot. Case in point: While Atlas is busy showing off its skills by performing picture-perfect backflips, AIST’s robot showcases its abilities by carrying out regular construction tasks, such as hammering up sheets of drywall. Heck, even its name — HRP-5P — carries the no-nonsense, no-frills naming approach of a 1990s desktop PC.

HRP-5P might be designed to carry out regular DIY jobs, but there is nothing regular about its abilities. Based on what we can see in its demo video and accompanying literature, the robot utilizes impressive object recognition, motion planning, and environmental measurement technology — such as the ability to pick up boards, place them against joists, and then secure them in place using a drill. While we’d need to see evidence of it performing these tasks outside of lab conditions to ensure that this is as good as it appears, it certainly looks extremely promising.

Robots that can replace humans at a number of physical tasks is nothing new, of course. From assembling Ikea furniture to picking berries on farms to, frankly, whatever other job you can think of, machines increasingly offer an alternative to pesky human workers with their propensity for taking vacations and refusing to work much more than eight hours a day.

In the case of HRP-5P, the reason its creation is a bit more location-specific, however. Japan has long had a problem with declining birth rates, meaning that there won’t necessarily be enough able-bodied young people to look after the growing elderly population. While we don’t necessarily want to put grandma in the care of a robot that io comfortable using power tools, machines such as this could one day fill gaps in the job market, particularly in manual labor areas like the construction industry.

Given that millions of contractors in the U.S. could conceivably find their jobs disrupted by a robot such as this, it’s difficult not to be concerned about the possibilities of machines like HRP-5P if commercialized. The news isn’t totally bad, though: According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum, although the number of previously human jobs that can be carried out by a machine is on the rise, plenty more roles are being created as a result. Just don’t expect too many of them to involve drywall!

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How to install the Windows 10 October 2018 Update right now

After months of testing with Windows Insiders, Microsoft has finally pushed out the Windows 10 October 2018 Update to the general public. This update comes packed with plenty of cool new features, and you might not want to miss out.

There are more than a few ways to download the update today. Be it Windows Update, the Update Assistant, or the Windows Insider Program, here’s how you can grab latest and greatest version of Windows.

Windows Update

The best way to grab the Windows 10 October 2018 Update right now is to wait for it to automatically appear in Windows Update. Microsoft pushes out these large featured Windows 10 update out in phases, so not everyone will be seeing it right away. This method ensures maximum compatibility with millions of Windows PCs and ensures you won’t lose files or have hard drive or program trouble when you’re installing.

Step 1: First in this process is to first head to your Start menu, click on the settings cog and then click Update and Security. That should load up Windows Update.

Step 2: Click on “Check for Updates” to see if the Windows 10 October 2018 Update is ready for you.

Step 3: If ready, the download will automatically initiate, but take a while since the file is large.

Step 4: Once downloaded, you’ll get a pop-up prompt to restart your PC. Once you agree, your PC will then reboot several times as part of the update process. This can take anywhere between 10-15 minutes, depending on the age of your PC and processor, so please be patient!

Update Assistant

If you’re not seeing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update in Windows Update, another way to proceed is to use Microsoft’s Update Assistant tool. It might take a while for the Microsoft website to show the new version of the tool, but once live, you can grab it by checking here. From that website, click on the “Update Now” button, and then save the downloaded file.

Next, find the location of the file, double click to run, and then press Update Now. Your device will do some checks, and then download the update, verify and install it. This takes a while, and your PC will restart several times, so grab a cup of coffee and relax. Keep in mind you have an automatic 30-minute buffer period to install the update, and you always can choose “Restart now” to install right away. Also, bear in mind you won’t lose any files as part of the update process.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Windows Insider Program

Worst comes to worst, you might not be able to download the Windows 10 October 2018 Update at all with the methods above. If that’s the case, you can opt your PC into the safest “slow ring” of the Windows Insider Program to proceed. Please be aware this method involves installing beta versions of Windows 10, so you might want to be careful.

To do this, head to Windows 10 Settings, and click on “Update and Security.” You can then “opt” into the Insider Program by clicking on the Windows Insider Program icon. After that, you can click the “Get Started” button and choose your Microsoft Account. Be sure to select “Just fixes, apps, and drivers” to ensure you’re in the Slow ring.

Your computer will then restart, and you can then revisit Windows Update and Press “Check for Updates” to have the Insider build to install on your PC. Again, keep in mind that these builds are very unstable and are beta, so you might not want to take the risk.

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Windows 10 October 2018 Update brings DirectX ray tracing to gaming PCs

Use of ray tracing in the upcoming video game, Battlefield V.

Today, October 2, marks a milestone for gamers everywhere thanks to Microsoft’s release of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. Along with a collection of other new features, the update brings the first public support for Microsoft’s DirectX ray tracing technology. Now, computers can take advantage of graphics hardware that supports ray tracing, such as Nvidia’s lineup of GeForce RTX cards, to render stunning in-game lighting scenarios in real time.

Ray tracing is a technology that has been used to render animations in movies and other computer graphics where the accuracy of light is critical. However, the computation needed for ray tracing has made it nearly impossible to bring the technology to games in real time. As a result, game developers and designers have estimated how light reacts in an environment, pre-shading scenes when possible.

Now, Windows 10’s latest update brings hybrid ray tracing to PCs which are equipped to handle the task. While ray tracing an entire game environment on a consumer machine in real time is still not possible, adapting the old world of rasterized graphics with aspects of ray tracing allows us to see many of the benefits that the technology offers.

Rasterized graphics use basic geometric shapes to render scenes, such as the ones we see in our favorite video games. Ray tracing takes on a more physics-based approach, crafting what is seen by determining how different rays of light fall on objects. By still using rasterized graphics, while employing select ray tracing for enhanced light, a hybrid experience is created.

Games have already started taking advantage of the new technology coming out of companies such as Nvidia, with three blockbuster titles that will have future support: Battlefield V, Metro Exodus, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Those who don’t want to jump into games to test out their PC setup can benefit from 3DMarks’ upcoming benchmark for ray tracing.

The Windows 10 October 2018 Update has officially opened the floodgates for developers to begin creating games and other graphical content in a way we have never previously seen. However, if gaming isn’t your thing, be sure to check out all of the other great features now available in the Windows update.

Editors’ Recommendations

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Windows’ October 2018 update wants to be best buds with your phone

Microsoft’s Windows 10 October 2018 update is finally here, and while it’s not a massive overhaul, there are a number of exciting new features with it. Instead of focusing on stability and security fixes, this update is all about expanding the potential of the modern Windows operating system.

Here’s everything new in the October 2018 update.

Working with smartphones

A major component of this update is improving the interaction between a desktop Windows and a connected smartphone. The new Your Phone app makes it so that you don’t need to ever physically connect your phone to your PC. Share pictures, videos, emails, documents, messages, and more, directly between the two platforms.

It’s compatible with Android and iPhone. Android users will gain access to new features first, through the Microsoft Launcher app. Microsoft says iOS users will see functionality about a month later, through Microsoft Edge for iOS.

The two-way connection also extends to Windows Timeline, which now makes it possible to scroll back through what you were doing on your phone to see what you were viewing or working on earlier in the day or week. Microsoft says that apps “must be able to describe activities to Microsoft Graph” for that feature to work, however, which means compatibility will be limited at first. Office Apps will lead the charge in hopes that third party apps follow in their footsteps.

Inking in Office

The Windows 10 October 2018 update introduces big changes to Microsoft Office apps too, in the form of enhanced inking. Whether you’re using PowerPoint or Word, you can ink directly onto documents or pages and the applications will use smart-AI to automatically turn your cursive and squiggles into correctly formatted slides. Shapes, doodles, and text can be automatically turned into content that can then be manipulated and edited in the programs as if you had used more traditional on-screen tools to create them. Word users also gain new digital pen gestures. Alongside text highlighting and deletion, you can now add line breaks, insert new words, and split and join words together.

Powerpoint users will enjoy the new Office AI system’s recommendations for slide design. The same goes for typed text. Should you create a block of prose, PowerPoint Designer can understand the context of what’s been written and create a slide design using icons and Smart Art to enhance it. Both Word and PowerPoint now support 3D models and animations too, so you can spice up a presentation with movement.

Most of these features are available now, but some will be rolling out to Office Insiders first, releasing to the wider Office 365 audience in the near future. The Text to Smart Art feature will also be made available to PowerPoint Online and Mac users.

Edging ahead

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Elsewhere in the OS, Microsoft Edge is getting some enhancements. Line Focus is designed to reduce onscreen clutter when reading an article by highlighting a set of lines, while new grammar tools help highlight text and individual syllables. Offline reading has also been improved with a new offline dictionary and new learning tools with a refreshed choice of themes for a more customized reading experience.

If you want to take a screenshot of any of the fun new features in the Windows 10 October 2018 update, Snip and Sketch has been improved to make that easier. It can be pulled up by pressing Alt + Tab and its Windows size can be adjusted too. Any screenshots taken will go straight to your clipboard and if you want to edit them, you’ll get the chance to quickly open that screengrab in the Snip and Sketch app — a little like MacOS does in the latest Mojave update.

The classic Snipping Tool will remain available for now if people continue to use it, but if Microsoft detects a big drop off it will discontinue it in the future.

If you have any trouble downloading the latest Windows update, try these quick fixes.

Ray Tracing support arrives

Nvidia’s new GTX 2080 and 2080 Ti support Ray Tracing, an advanced graphics feature that can greatly improve lighting quality, but they needed Windows support to enable it. That support has now arrived with the Windows 10 Fall Update. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you can immediately use Ray Tracing in your favorite games, but it does means games can begin to implement that support in future patches and releases.

Availability

The first wave of users can download the Windows 10 October 2018 Update immediately through Windows Update. Additional users will be added in the coming weeks. It will automatically update and install unless you’ve turned off automatic updates.

Having trouble, or lacking patience? Check out our guide to installing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update for tips and tricks that will resolve any lingering update problems.

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The newly-announced Forma is Kobo’s thinnest, most durable e-reader yet

Take your books anywhere… even underwater.

Kobo’s Forma e-reader has arrived. The ergonomically-designed device was created with long-term readers in mind as it offers a form which is lightweight and comfortable enough to hold in either portrait or landscape mode for hours on end.

The Forma was designed with Mobius display technology which incorporates a flexible plastic layer into the screen, keeping the device not just lightweight but extremely durable as well. Its 8-inch HD Carta E Ink screen remains visible even in direct sunlight while its waterproofing allows you to bring it to the beach or the pool without worry.

There are now on-board buttons which can turn to the next or previous page if you aren’t a fan of turning the page digitally, similar to those found on the Kindle Oasis. The device features built-in OverDrive which allows you to borrow e-books from your local public library as long as your library card is active, along with access to the Kobo bookstore which is full of over five million titles to read.

The device with 8GB internal storage is set to arrive in the US in stores and online at Kobo beginning on October 23 with a retail price of $279.99. A version with 32GB of storage is set to be released later this month in Japan and other countries at a later date. If you’re interested, you’ll be able to pre-order the device starting October 15.

Considering the price, an Amazon Kindle could be more fitting for your lifestyle. There are various options for as low as $80, along with Kindle Unlimited which is a great buy for avid readers as well.

See at Kobo

Apple Store App Updated With Siri Shortcuts Support to Make Pre-Ordering iPhone XR Faster

Apple today updated its Apple Store app with support for Siri Shortcuts, which the company says can be used to make pre-ordering the upcoming iPhone XR with the iPhone Upgrade Program faster than ever.

When getting pre-approved for an iPhone XR, iPhone Upgrade Program members will see a new “Add to Siri” button that can be used to record a custom phrase like “pre-order my iPhone.”

Once pre-orders are available on October 19, customers can say the custom-made phrase and Siri will pull up their pre-approvals in the Apple Store app, allowing for quick order completion.

Other than the Siri Shortcut outlined by Apple, there do not appear to be other Apple Store Shortcut options available at this time. Full release notes for the update are below:

What’s New
iPhone Upgrade Program members can now use Siri Shortcuts for an even faster way to complete their iPhone XR pre-order on 10.19. Look for the ‘Add to Siri’ button while getting pre-approved, and record your own voice command, like “pre-order my iPhone.” Say your phrase when pre-order begins, and let Siri pull up your pre-approval in the Apple Store app so you can quickly complete your order.

The Apple Store app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
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