Hardware manufacturer Corsair announced a new range of solid-state drives Tuesday that it claims will deliver unparalleled performance in an incredibly small form factor. Corsair calls the Force Series MP500 SSDs the fastest the company has ever produced, adding that they deliver read/write speeds around five times faster than traditional SATA 6GB-per-second SSDs.
The new SSDs are in the popular — and very compact — M.2 2280 form factor (that’s 22mm by 80m) and come in three different sizes: 120GB, 240GB and 480GB. According to Corsair’s internal testing, the Force Series is capable of hitting read speeds of 3,000 megabytes per second and write speeds of 2,400 megabytes per second, which would put them well ahead of similarly sized SSDs in terms of speed.
However, those numbers will undoubtedly vary during actual use – most of the SSDs we test in our product reviews rarely hit even half those speeds. Still, Corsair’s latest Force Series lineup packs some impressive technology under those very tiny hoods.
Using Corsair’s proprietary technologies — SmartECC, SmartRefresh, and SmartFlush — the hard drive manufacturer claims that this latest range of SSDs are not only the fastest they’ve produced but among the most reliable. These technologies safeguard against data corruption caused by unexpected power loss or unsafe shutdown, like when your PC hard locks while trying to exit a game, and you decide to force it to shut down even though you know you shouldn’t.
The new Force Series MP500 range is also fully compatible with Corsair’s SSD Toolbox, a utility for monitoring drive health and stats in real time – so you can watch those ultrafast read/write speeds at work. The Force Series is cross-compatible with MacOS, Windows, and even Linux without any special or proprietary drivers required.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.