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By Tim Gideon

At first glance, the new Libratone Zipp looks a lot like the original version that came out back in 2012. Since then, the wireless speaker has gained some new tricks, in the form of an upgraded control panel, better acoustic performance, a revamped app, and most importantly, Bluetooth streaming in addition to AirPlay. For $299, the Zipp balances a striking, modern design with impressively powerful audio. It may not be cheap, but Libratone does an excellent job of making sure you get your money's worth, enough so to earn our Editors' Choice award.

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Design Like its predecessor, the Zipp is an upright cylinder that measures 10.3 by 4.8 inches (HW) and weighs 3.3 pounds. As the name implies, you can remove the cloth speaker cover by unzipping it—the Zipp comes with a dark gray, light gray, green, or red cover, and additional covers cost $29 each if you want to mix things up. Beneath the fabric, the Zipp is white and packs a 4-inch woofer, two 1-inch tweeters, and two 4-inch low frequency radiators, all driven by a class D amplifier (with digital signal processing, or DSP) for 100 watts of power. 

A thick, built-in leather strap allows you to hang the speaker from anything it will fit around, from doorknobs to coat hooks, while a rubberized bottom panel prevents it from vibrating across tabletops. This is no small feat, as the Zipp provides quite a bit of rumble and will easily resonate surfaces like wooden desktops. The speaker projects sound outward in a nearly 360-degree field, so if you place it in the middle of the room you'll hear sound equally from every angle.

The top edge houses the backlit control panel, which features Libratone's bird logo in the center. Running your finger in a clockwise motion around the surface of the circular panel raises the volume level (a series of dots will appear to display the actual level), and there are markings for track navigation, a heart button (to program up to five favorite Internet radio stations), and a SoundSpace button to link multiple speakers on the same network, a la Sonos (you can have up to six speakers per group, and up to eight groups per wireless network). The bird logo acts as the play/pause button, as well as the Bluetooth pairing button and your call management control for incoming calls. One clever feature: Simply placing your hand atop the circular panel immediately lowers the volume level dramatically until you lift it back up.

Pairing via Bluetooth is a quick and simple, but you can also stream audio using Apple's AirPlay (which requires an iOS device and uses your home Wi-Fi network). In order to do this, you need to download the free Libratone app. Once it's set up, you can then peruse various Internet radio stations that the app streams directly, and even configure the speaker settings to better match the acoustics of your listening environment. The Libratone app is also available for Android, though AirPlay integration won't work through your Android device.

The included power adapter has a stylish clothbound cord that connects to the rear panel near the base of the speaker. This is also where the power button is located, as well as a 3.5mm aux input for wired listening (no cable is included), and a USB connection for charging your mobile devices.

Libratone estimates the Zipp's battery life to be roughly 8-10 hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels and your mix of wired and wireless playback.

Performance On tracks with powerful sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Zipp delivers powerful bass that's likely to rattle and vibrate surfaces around it. The DSP employed by the Zipp keeps it from distorting on tracks like this, even at top volumes, while at lower levels it still manages to put out a very healthy, rich bass experience.

See How We Test Speakers

Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with far less deep bass in its mix, gives us a better idea of the Zipp's sound signature. The drums on this track receive a pleasant helping of added bass depth, but nothing over the top, while Callahan's baritone vocals have a very rich, heavy-in-the-low-mids presence. This could all spell disaster if the Zipp didn't also provide plenty of high-mid and high frequency presence to balance things out crisply and cleanly. The overall sound is vibrant—full-bodied lows matched by bright, but never harsh, highs.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives plenty of high-mid edge, allowing its attack to have a piercing presence that cuts through the layers of the mix. The sub-bass synth hits on this track have some solid bass depth, but aren't quite at subwoofer level in terms of truly deep, low-frequency power—we've heard more bass presence in this realm from other speakers. The various vocals on this track float cleanly and clearly over the entire mix without ever sounding overly sibilant.

For orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, the lower register instrumentation gets some added bass punch and fullness. Luckily, the higher register strings, brass, and vocals also receive a fair share of boosting and sculpting. What you end up with is not really a sound signature for purists, but a powerful delivery that combines low-frequency body with high-frequency clarity to a pleasant effect.

One annoyance: The Zipp has the habit of fading into tracks, so you often miss the first split-second of audio. It's in the name of allowing the DSP to adjust to the dynamics of the new track, but it's not ideal.

In this price range, there are plenty of solid wireless speaker options to conisder. We're fans of the Creative iRoar, the JBL Xtreme, the Marshall Kilburn, and the Sonos Play:1. If it's flat response you're after, the Audioengine B2 will not disappoint. The Libratone Zipp looks, functions, and sounds like a $300 speaker—it feels fairly priced for what it offers. Ideal for parties, adding multiple listening zones to your house, or simply outfitting a single room with vibrant wireless audio in a stylish design, it's our new Editors' Choice for wireless speakers.

By Ajay Kumar

It's often hard to find a phone, geared toward the senior market that doesn't suffer from major compromises. Most simple phones, like the Doro PhoneEasy 618, are feature phones, or if they are smartphones, they come with heavy limitations on what you're able to do. The Huawei Vision 3 LTE ($100; 8GB) is different. It has custom software that makes it easy to use for first-time users, while still retaining all the capabilities of a fully featured smartphone. It sits right between the ultra-budget Motorola Moto E and the budget Moto G in terms of hardware and price. It's a good pick for Consumer Cellular customers who want a simple, yet functional phone.

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Design, Display, and Features   An uninspiring black square, the Vision 3 measures 5.68 by 2.86 by 0.36 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.64 ounces. It's a bit more slender than the Moto G (5.59 by 2.85 by 0.48 inches; 5.47 ounces), but has similar dimensions otherwise. Its looks are nothing to write home about, but then again, neither are the Moto G's. You're getting a modestly sized phone that won't weigh down your pocket and is easy to use with a single hand. 

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The Power button and volume rocker are both located on the right side of the plastic frame. There's a 3.5mm audio jack up top and a micro USB port on the bottom right. The back of the phone is textured polycarbonate, featuring too-bold Consumer Cellular branding, and a tinny rear-facing speaker. Peeling back the rear panel provides access to the SIM card slot and a microSD card slot. We were able to use our 200GB SanDisk card without issue. This is a good thing, since there's only 8GB of onboard storage. 

The 5-inch 1,280-by-720 display is bright, but I wouldn't describe it as crisp. It looks slightly washed out and suffers from narrow viewing angles. It's bright enough to use in direct sunlight, and certainly better quality than the Moto E's 960-by-540 display, but the Moto G's 720p panel looks a lot sharper. 

Network Performance and Connectivity The Vision 3 is exclusive to Consumer Cellular, an MVNO operating on AT&T and T-Mobile's networks. The carrier has fared very well in our Readers' Choice Survey for the past few years. The phone supports GSM (850/900/1800/1900), UMTS (850/1900/2100/AWS), and LTE (2/4/5/12/17) bands. According to phono, I was connected to T-Mobile's network while testing in midtown Manhattan. Download speeds were strong, averaging around 22Mbps outdoors and 10Mbps indoors. Wi-Fi is limited to single-band, and there's no NFC, which you won't find on the Moto G either, but you do get Bluetooth. 

Voice calls on the Vision 3 LTE have clear transmission, but voices sound a bit robotic. Noise cancellation is good, blotting out most background noise. Earpiece volume is loud, but it's not as thunderous as with the Moto G's mic.

Processor, Battery, and Camera The Vision 3 runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM. It benchmarks on the lower end of things, scoring 17,943 on AnTuTu compared with 22,484 on the Moto E and 25,166 on the Moto G. You won't be able to run lots of intensive apps or engage in heavy multitasking since you'll hit the RAM usage limit fairly easily. Asphalt 8 is playable, but there's latency in controls and lengthy load times between races.

Battery life is excellent, at 6 hours and 6 minutes in our rundown test, which streams video over LTE at maximum screen brightness. It's close to the Moto G (6 hours and 32 minutes) and better than the Moto E (5 hours and 59 minutes). All day use should be no trouble. 

On the other hand, camera performance is mediocre at best. The 5-megapixel rear-facing sensor on the Vision 3 produces lackluster outdoor shots. Images are clear and color reproduction is accurate, however, there are patches of noise and blur, especially around moving objects and fine detail. Stationary objects come across clearly enough, but anything that moved, even slightly, ended up blurry in my test shots. The camera is capable of 720p video recording at 30fps, which is passable, if shaky. The 2-megapixel front-facing camera is decent for capturing faces for video chats, but frequently washes out images.

Software and Conclusions The Vision 3 runs Google Android 4.4 KitKat, which is outdated at this point. You're almost certainly not going to get any updates, but that's not necessarily a bad thing since a stable OS experience is important if you're looking for a phone that's easy to use. The phone runs Huawei's EMUI, splashing apps across the screen iPhone-style, and removing the app drawer. There's also an altered lock screen, notification shade, and Settings menu. 

The only preinstalled apps, aside from the stock apps and Google apps, are the My Consumer Cellular account app, and a Consumer Cellular messaging app. You're left with 4.10GB of storage, so you'll want to throw in a microSD card if you intend to take photos or listen to music locally.

See How We Test Cell Phones  

Aimed at first-time phone users, Simple mode can be enabled in the phone's Settings. In this mode, the home screen will convert to a grid of brightly colored app icons accompanied by large text. Apps and widgets are replaced with a simple set of options—Browser, Camera, Contacts, Dialer, Messaging, and Settings. You can add two more apps to the grid yourself, and the rest can be found under Others and Downloads. Switching between simple and standard home screen styles is easy, so you can restore full functionality whenever you want.

Overall, the Huawei Vision 3 LTE is a very affordable, highly capable smartphone. It's more powerful than the slightly less expensive Moto E, but for $50 more you can get the Moto G, which offers a much better camera, a sharper screen, and a louder earpiece. However, it lacks any customized software to simplify app layout, so users looking for an easy-to-use phone will be better off with the Vision 3. 

Since Consumer Cellular allows you to bring your own phone, other options include the unlocked Blu Life One X and the premium Huawei Honor 5X. However, neither of these hit the flat $100 sweet spot of the Vision 3.

By Neil J. Rubenking

How well do you know your kids? You may feel sure they're mature enough they won't be scarred for life by accidentally viewing websites that a typical parental control utility would block. But are they good enough at impulse control to avoid misusing their smartphones or social media? With a uKnowKids Premier subscription, you can keep tabs on your children's social communication. It's an impressively complete product, with unusually comprehensive coverage on iOS devices.

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At $100 per year, uKnowKids costs more than most competing products, but it does let you keep track of four children. For each child, you can track activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and also track one Android smartphone and one iOS device per child. If you're convinced you'll want this service for many years, you can pay $180 for a lifetime subscription. Either way, there's an additional one-time fee of $60 if you want to make use of the service's impressive iOS support. You can try the service for one week without cost, but you do have to enter your credit card information to start the trial.

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Do keep in mind that uKnowKids is strictly an informational tool, monitoring your children's online behavior. If you want to impose control over their behavior, for example, by blocking access to inappropriate websites, or by setting limits for time online, you should look at a more traditional parental control product like Qustodio Parental Control 2015 or Symantec Norton Family Premier instead.

Easy Start Creating your account on the uKnowKids website is just a matter of entering your credit card data to start the trial. Next, you'll get the first of many friendly messages from the company's hands-on CEO. This message advises that setup is most easily handled on a computer rather than a phone, and goes into detail about what it takes to connect with the iCloud account for your child's iOS device.

During setup, you'll configure uKnowKids with the tracking data it needs. You start by entering the child's name and birthdate (note that the program will only track children under 18). If you'll be tracking an iOS device, you enter the username and password for the corresponding iCloud account. Don't have that information? It may be time for a little talk, one that begins, "Well, I'm the one who pays for that phone…"

Going through iCloud gives uKnowKids an impressive ability to report on many activities, but real-time geolocation isn't among them. If you want to track your child's location via iPhone, you'll need to install the separate uKnowMobile app and link it with your account. On an Android device, uKnowMobile handles all tracking.

Next, you'll enter your child's login credentials for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Clearly this only works if you have access to those credentials, or if you can get your child to enter them for you. ContentWatch Net Nanny Social tracks those same three sites and adds Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The free MinorMonitor just tracks Facebook and Twitter. Whichever of these products you use, full-scale tracking of Facebook activity only works if you get buy-in from the children. A child who resents being tracked can just disable the app.

Qustodio does take steps to keep kids from turning off its tracking. It simply doesn't permit access to Facebook when its Facebook app isn't installed. That approach wouldn't work for uKnowKids, as it doesn't attempt to control or limit online activity, just track it.

To finish the setup process, you can optionally fill in data like the child's email accounts, favorite usernames, and so on. The Social Scan feature uses this information to locate accounts that might belong to your child on a variety of social networks (more about Social Scan later). That's it. Now you just wait for uKnowKids to sync your child's data for the first time.

Email Notifications The various components of uKnowKids keep track of your child's smartphone and social media activity, and email you a notification of any potentially risky communications. Problem words in the notification message display in underlined red, while slang terms that parents might not understand appear in underlined blue. I appreciate the fact that uKnowKids clearly explains the reason for marking up each term. I still don't know why mentioning the Dallas / Fort Worth airport (DFW) caused MinorMonitor to freak out, because it doesn't offer those details.

Each notification also clearly explains that the flagged communication might be perfectly innocent, and recommends that parents visit the online Launchpad for full details. Even if the child's activity doesn't trigger any warnings, you'll get a daily summary, and a weekly summary. And, just to make sure you get off to a good start, the company sends out a daily "Digital Parenting Boot Camp" email for your first week.

One more thing. If your child blocks uKnowKids from accessing a social media account, you'll get a notification about that. Of course, it's the last notification you'll get until you convince the kid to restore access.

Online Launchpad I don't have any kids of the proper age, so for testing purposes I invented "Junior Rubenking" and associated that profile with my own Facebook and Twitter accounts. I also connected it with my iPhone. I didn't actively test the Android edition because uKnowKids only works on Android smartphones, and the Android devices I have access to are tablets. Fortunately uKnowKids on iOS does everything it can do on Android and more.

You can log in to the online Launchpad from any Internet-equipped device—it will make use of whatever screen space you've got. On a big-screen PC, you can see the entire Launchpad at once, while on a smartphone you see just one piece at a time.

Summary boxes at the top give you a high-level view of activity. Icons at top left let you verify that the connections to your child's accounts and devices are still active. Another box reports on recent texts and images that generated notifications. You also get statistics on recent contacts, images, posts, and messages. Here "recent" means either the last 7 days or the last 30 days, your choice.

A large panel lists the child's top 10 contacts, with a pie chart to show the relative frequency of contact. Another list displays the most recent contacts. In either case, pointing at a list item with the mouse gets more detailed information. You'll also find a collage of the latest images posted, a small map showing the child's most recent location, and a list of all recent activity.

Like MinorMonitor, uKnowKids graphs your child's average daily online activity on a 24-hour scale. If you see a ton of activity in the wee hours, you may want to have a talk about appropriate times for going online.

Activity Feed In addition to the overall summary provided by the Launchpad, you can view a feed of all activity from all sources. That could be a bit overwhelming, so the Feed page offers a variety of filters. A number of items from the Launchpad make use of these filters. For example, clicking the number of text notifications opens the Feed page filtered to show precisely the activities that triggered those notifications. You can also limit the view to items from a particular social media account, or launch a search.

Items on the Feed page display as rectangular cards, with contents varying depending on the action. Image posts display as thumbnails, for example, while text messages, iMessages, and social media posts show the text. Phone calls only show duration. A band across the bottom identifies the source.

When you click on a card, it flips over to display more information. If it's a text or social media post, the back gives you access to the full conversation. The back also displays details about any words that were flagged as risky or as slang. I'm impressed with this well thought-out display.

Social Scan The full power of uKnowKids goes into tracking your children's Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, the ones you know about. The kids might well have other accounts, hidden ones, or accounts on other social networks. Social Scan helps you find those, with some limitations. A product called SafetyWeb used to work in much the same way, before it got absorbed by Experian.

You start by listing your child's favorite usernames, if you know them, and all the email addresses you know. You can fine-tune the search by adding the child's school name and your city and state. Then launch the search and sit back. The program reports that it's busy "sorting through 1+ billion online profiles" to find ones that might belong to your child.

The list of sites checked is impressive: Bebo, Facebook, Flickr, Formspring, Foursquare, Gaia, Google+, Habbo, Instagram, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter, Xbox LIVE, and YouTube. When I ran the scan using a couple of my preferred usernames, it found quite a few. Most weren't mine, but it did turn up a couple of legitimate ones that I had forgotten about.

The catch is, uKnowKids can only scan accounts that are public. That makes perfect sense, but it also means that if your child has a secret non-public Facebook account, you won't find it with this scan.

Family Locator Have you ever tried to take a smartphone away from a modern teen? Right, it can't be done. One thing you can be sure of, if you know the location of your child's phone, you know where the child is. As noted, real-time geolocation on iOS devices require installation of the separate (and tiny) uKnowMobile app. On Android devices, uKnowMobile handles all tracking.

The Family Locator page lets you see where your child is now, along with snapshots of prior locations. Flip through the History list at right and you can see the markers light up, tracing out a path. You can also schedule check-ins, meaning that uKnowKids will notify you of the child's location at specific times. For example, a check-in scheduled a little while after school ends could let you make sure the child got home OK.

Geofences are another way to keep track of your child. Creating a geofence is simple. You just click a location on the map and then drag to create a circle centered on that location. Set the fence to trigger on entry or on exit and you're done. You might create a geofence to notify you any time the child leaves the school grounds, or any time the child enters a forbidden area.

In testing, I had a little trouble with the Family Locator. For one thing, geofences that I created by clicking a link on the current location marker weren't saved properly; I had to click the New geofence button.

I also noticed some problems with location recording. The current location panel on the Launchpad currently shows that I'm at a restaurant on the Sacramento River, where I had brunch yesterday. Yet the Family Locator page doesn't show me there at all. My contact at the company explained that at present uKnowKids relies on Apple's Significant-Change Location Service so as to avoid draining the battery on older iPhones by over-using the GPS.

A significant update for the Family Locator feature is coming soon, according to my contact. For now, I suggest creating check-ins at significant times during the day, if you're concerned about tracking your child's location.

Update Status The first time you visit the Update Status page, you'll get a warning that this is a beta feature. Its purpose is simple—to give parents a way to verify that what they're seeing in the Launchpad is current. This is most important when an iOS device is involved, because there are various reasons an update might not have happened. The Run Manual Update button is apparently supposed to trigger an iCloud backup, but I didn't see that happen in testing.

The dates and times shown for other events aren't necessarily correct. I found that the iCloud Backup Date was right, but the Last Successful Update time was several hours in the future. According to my uKnow contact, uKnowKids checks for new data from social media accounts every two hours, but judging from the stated times on this page you might imagine the interval to be six hours, or twelve. This feature will be more useful as it evolves out of beta.

Mobile-Specific Features When uKnowKids is installed on your child's Android device or connected to your child's iCloud account, it can report on various kinds of activity. It captures data about phone calls made, received, or missed, and about SMS/MMS messages sent, received, or deleted. It can report on all photos taken and photos shared. Through it you can view your child's contacts and installed apps. And as discussed above, it keeps track of the device's location.

Some products go even farther with mobile parental control. Installed on an Android device, Norton gives parents full control over who their kids can connect with. Qustodio includes call blocking along with a panic button that lets your child instantly send a call for help. Do remember, though, that uKnowKids is strictly a monitoring tool. It doesn't attempt to impose controls on what your child does online.

Most multi-platform parental control systems either omit support for iOS devices or offer limited functionality. Norton, for example, does little more than track location on iOS devices. That's because Apple just doesn't allow the kind of device integration they'd need to offer the same kind of features you find in Android parental control systems. Because uKnowKids gets most of its data by mining your iCloud backups, it can do everything it does on Android, and more, with the caveat that you won't get new information until the next iCloud backup.

On an iOS device, uKnowKids adds a number of additional features. It can capture iMessages just the same way it captures texts. It can report on Twitter direct messages. And it even records browsing and Web search history.

I was a little surprised to find that most of these mobile-specific data items don't show up in the Feed page, even though that page specifically offers filters to display only mobile data. If you want to see mobile-specific data, you'll have to click the Apple or Android icon on the Launchpad to change the viewing mode.

When it's in iCloud mode, the Launchpad displays five stats boxes: New Contacts, Recent Calls, Total Apps, Text Messages, and URLs Visited. Clicking the Text messages box opens the Feed page with the necessary filter applied automatically. Clicking any of the other four gets an awkward list that slides in from the right-hand side of the screen. When you point at an installed app, a new contact, or other list item, uKnowKids displays more detail in a popup window. However, I found that in many cases the popup blinked rapidly making it hard to read. I'd like to see this mobile-specific information better integrated with the general data feed.

Powerful Social Tracking uKnowKids Premier doesn't try to control who your kids chat with, what they post on social media, or where they go after school. Rather, it works hard to give parents insight into those activities, and it does a very good job. I did find a few oddities in testing, but overall I was quite impressed. If you're specifically looking for a social media monitor, this is a great choice.

Our Editors' Choice parental control products, ContentWatch Net Nanny, Qustodio Parental Control, and Symantec Norton Family Premier, monitor a wide variety of online activities, not just social media interaction. They also allow you to set limits such as banning inappropriate websites and controlling just when the kids can go online. That's especially important for younger kids. When the kids get older, you might consider letting go of the reins and just using a tracker, like uKnowKids.

REVIEW

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Pros

Mesmerizing, addictive action. Unique mechanics. Creative presentation.

Cons

Very short campaign. Simple, unimpressive visuals.

Bottom Line

Superhot is a PC-based first-person shooter that offers some of the most unusual, hypnotic gameplay ever seen in the genre.

By Will Greenwald

Superhot is the most innovative shooter I've played in years. Despite its unimpressive visuals, this $24.99 PC game is a genuinely creative and challenging experience that I recommend everyone try at least once. It injects puzzle elements and a bizarre meta-narrative into quick, bite-sized servings of computerized violence. It might seem like a short and simple game at first, but between the addictive time-pausing mechanic and some very satisfying and repeatable extra modes, you'll quickly find yourself playing it for hours, and the built-in social media features for sharing your best runs will keep you coming back to get more consecutive, stylish kills. Superhot is an easy Editors' Choice award winner.

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Have You Tried This Game? Going too deep into Superhot's premise would spoil some of the fun, but here's a small taste: the story revolves around the concept of receiving a cracked pre-release game from a friend. The entire interface is built around this concession, using an ASCII text menu system, as seen through a barrel-distorted view, to evoke navigating an old BBS on a CRT monitor. Then you start playing the game-within-the-game, and things get surreal.

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At its heart, Superhot is a first-person shooter in a graphically simple, untextured virtual world. You're a dark gray humanoid fighting red humanoids in completely white spaces, using dark blue props and weapons to defend yourself. There are offices, apartment buildings, and warehouses, all dressed up in sterile, completely white surfaces. Even the characters are relatively simple three-dimensional figures, with polygonal heads and limbs reminiscent of Nintendo 64 games. It's a jarring style choice that keeps everything visually clean and distinct, if not particularly detailed.

Stop and I'll Shoot In Superhot, time only moves when you do. If you stand still, everything in the world is frozen. You can see bullets as they fly at you, while the enemies who fired at you pose like mannequins in the distance. This power lets you perform some remarkable moves that would be nearly impossible to pull off in real-time. As a bullet heads toward you, you can side-step it, fire your own gun where a charging enemy will be in a few seconds, then turn around and punch another enemy to send his weapon flying before he can fire it. Then you can grab the flying gun as it sits frozen in the air and blow away two more red figures before they get close.

This system sounds like it would remove any sense of challenge from the game, but thanks to a single design concession it avoids that problem. Time is still when you're still and moves when you move, but time also moves when you look around. You can't spend minutes setting up your shots when every motion of your mouse sends bullets inches closer to your head. This lets Superhot preserve the core concept without sacrificing challenge. Even if you can freeze time, you still have to deal with multiple enemies with multiple guns, and only enough wiggle room to disarm one at a time.

More to Do in the System You can run through the game's main campaign in two or three hours, but you can keep playing well past that. Once you play through the story mode, you can access any level at any time. More importantly, there are Challenge versions of the levels, which provide difficult limitations to how you can play while stripping out the story elements. You can also play Endless mode, an extra game mode that places you in large, complex environments and forces you to deal with never-ending waves of enemies. There are also unlockable Endless mode mods that add more variety to the game. And if you want a different take on the Superhot experience, try SuperQOT, a free mash-up of the original Quake and Superhot.

Superhot doesn't offer any direct competitive multiplayer, but there are extensive social elements with the Killstagram website. You can record any of your level or mode playthroughs in the game and upload them to Superhot's own social network site (a YouTube aggregator). These recordings display the action in real-time without the slowing/pausing effect, so every successful encounter looks like a super-fast, expertly choreographed gunfight.

Deceptively Unique At first glance, it might not look like there's a lot of meat on Superhot's bones. For a $25 game, it has a short campaign and extremely simplistic graphics. Both of those things belie the game's addictive, mesmerizing action. You might beat the game in one sitting, but you'll keep coming back to the different modes just to enjoy the strange thrill of dispatching crowds of gunmen at your leisure and then watching it all play out in a lightning-fast, realtime brawl as though you're Jason Bourne. This is an incredibly innovative, remarkably polished experience that any fan of PC violence should try.

By Will Greenwald Senior Analyst, Consumer Electronics

Will Greenwald has been covering consumer technology for more than six years, and has served on the editorial staffs of CNET.com, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC. Since graduating from Syracuse University in 2005, Will has been an active technology journalist both online and in print. His work and analysis has been seen in GamePro, Tested.com, Geek.com, and several other publications. He currently covers consumer electronics in the PCMag.com labs, focusing on Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and other home theater equipment. ... More »

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By Timothy Torres

If price has been your barrier to entry for connected lighting, your time has come: The TikTeck LED is the most affordable smart bulb we've seen. $9.99 gets you a color-changing bulb you can control with a smartphone or tablet without the need for a hub. That's pretty major, considering its closest competition (as far as price goes), the Cree Connected LED and the GE Link, cost more, require a hub, and only shine white. For the price, the TikTeck is an easy recommendation, though its companion app can use some work.

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Design and Setup The top half of the TikTeck is a transluscent white plastic dome that enables 185.1-degree light dispersion. The bottom half is an aluminum body that terminates in an E26 Edison screw connector, so it fits in all the same bases as a regular incandescent bulb. It measures 4.17 inches in length and 2.36 inches in diameter, which should fit most fixtures. 

Capable of producing 600 lumens, the TikTeck is right in the middle of the brightness scale when compared with the competition. Though it doesn't surpass the LIFX LED (1,017) lumens or the Misfit Bolt (800 lumens), it does match the Philips Hue and cruises past the Elgato Avea Dynamic Mood Light (430 lumens). The TikTeck is capable of color temperatures from 2,700K to 6,500K, and like most bulbs in this category, it should last up to 20 years based on three hours of use per day, seven days a week, which makes for a lifetime of around 20,000 hours.

The bulb works without the need for a hub or bridge, which the aforementioned Cree, GE, and Philips bulbs require. There is no complicated setup involved. You simply need a smart device with Bluetooth 4.0 running Android 4.3 or later, or iOS 6 or later. Download the free TikTeck LED Light app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, screw in the bulb, and turn it on. Make sure you have Bluetooth turned on, then open the app, tap Add Device, and it will connect. I paired the bulb with a Samsung Galaxy S6 with no issues.

That said, I ran into some connectivity issues in testing. Occasionally the bulb would disconnect from the app until I turned the bulb on or off or closed the app and opened it again. I'm hoping that this is worked out in a future software update.

You can add up to 32 bulbs to your home and control them all with the same device. To allow other users to control the lights you need to authorize their device, which you can do from the app when both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Since the bulb itself is controlled via Bluetooth, you can only control it when you are in the house, and within Bluetooth range. This is where a hub comes in handy, since it lets you control bulbs over Wi-Fi from anywhere.

App and Performance The TikTeck app is a basic affair, but it can use some better organization. Several of the most interesting features are buried under other menus, so it takes some tapping around to find them. The main screen is home to a big color wheel, with a power button in the middle that turns lights on or off when you tap it. There's a brightness slider below, as well as a Kelvin slider that shifts color temperature. Everything else is accessed by tapping the Settings or Timer icons in the upper right corner.

Settings is where you'll find most of the light's features. Under Lab you'll find Colorful, Game, Music, and Night Light. Music lets you play music stored on your device, and the light will flash to the beat. I played "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, "What Planet is This" by Yoko Kanno, and part of the Blade Runner soundtrack, and noticed the light reacted to the rhythms of each track appropriately for the most part. Game is a match-three affair you play on your phone screen, like Bejeweled 3 but with balloons. Selecting balloons changes the light's color, which is neat. Night Light dims the bulb and brings you to a screen where you can select different shades. And Colorful causes the bulb to shift gradually from one color to the next; you can select how fast or slow the colors fade.

Finally, there's the Timer, which you need to access through the main screen. Here you can add and adjust multiple lighting schedules. You can set the time the light turns on, decide whether it should repeat on multiple days of the week or not, and choose the color. And as mentioned above, you can add two or more lights to the same group so that they can be controlled together. 

You don't get any of the geofencing features or If This Then That (IFTTT) integration that you'll find with Philips Hue bulbs, but then, you're only paying a fraction of the price. 

Conclusions The TikTeck Smart LED is the most affordable color-changing smart bulb we've seen, and it doesn't skimp on quality or features to reach its $10 price point. Sure, it's still a lot more expensive than your standard LED bulb, and the syncing errors can become an irritating hurdle, but compared with other options, like the $60 Philips Hue, it's a bargain. The Philips Hue still offers more features, like the ability to control lights from anywhere, geofencing, IFTTT support, and a better app experience. But if you're looking to give smart lighting a try, you can get six TikTeck bulbs for the price of one Hue. That makes it worth your strong consideration, especially if you're planning to connect your entire home.

By Neil J. Rubenking

Many antivirus vendors release new model year editions each fall, just the way the automakers do. Others schedule their new versions independently of the season, waiting until there are enough significant enhancements and new features. IObit Malware Fighter 4 Pro doesn't seem to fit either of these patterns. It's not next year's model, and it's not significantly better than the dreadful IObit Malware Fighter 3 Pro that I reviewed last year. Don't even consider relying on this product to protect your devices and data. 

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The list price for a one-device, one-year subscription is $39.95, the same as Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2016). However, Malware Fighter seems to be perpetually on sale for $19.95.

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IObit's other security product, IObit Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 9, costs $29.99 per year. However, Advanced SystemCare Ultimate also includes a significant system tune-up component, and its performance against malware, while not great, is significantly better than that of Malware Fighter. I still can't understand why the company maintains both products. There's also a free edition of Malware Fighter, but given the dismal performance of the Pro edition I see no need for a separate review of the free edition.

Getting Started Getting the product installed starts out quick and easy—just click the Accept and Install button and sit back. However, after installation it reported its status as "Unprotected by any antivirus engine." I had to enter the registration code and separately install the licensed Bitdefender anti-malware engine before it was happy. I also had to click a link to download the latest antivirus definitions.

Even then, the product wasn't completely ready for use. The Browser Protect and Security Guard buttons (two of the four large buttons that dominate the product's main window) both reported the computer was not fully protected. I had to click each and turn on a couple of important features.

Dismal Malware Blocking I haven't updated my malware samples since the previous review, so I wound up testing this product with the same set of samples I used against the previous edition. With most vendors, that would mean a much better performance the second time around. With Malware Fighter, not so much.

As always, I began by opening the folder containing my samples. Many antivirus tools eliminate 70 percent or more of the samples immediately, thinning the field considerably. Malware Fighter managed to wipe out just 7 percent of the samples on sight, leaving me to launch the others and note its behavior.

Most of the samples installed and ran without any reaction from Malware Fighter. Of those it did nominally block, some installed executable files, and one actually managed to execute despite endless blocking attempts by the antivirus. This product's detection rate of 18 percent and overall score of 1.4 (out of ten possible points) look good only in comparison with the previous edition's 14 percent and 1.3 points, and with the zero points earned by My PC Watchdog.

The best products achieve far better scores in this test. Avast Pro Antivirus 2016 detected every sample in this set and earned 9.3 points; Bitdefender also got 9.3 points. Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security 2016 came close, with 9.1 points.

I also test each product's ability to block downloads of the very latest malware, using a feed supplied by MRG-Effitas. These malware-hosting URLs are generally no more than a day or two old. I launch the URLs one after another, noting whether the antivirus keeps the browser from accessing the dangerous URL, wipes out the malware during download, or lets the download proceed without taking any action to protect the test syste.

I tested Malware Fighter in parallel with ThreatTrack Vipre Antivirus 2016 and one other product, since all three were in my queue. Had I not done so, I might have given up halfway through, convinced that Malware Fighter does not block malware downloads at all.

Of the 100 verified malware-hosting URLs, Malware Fighter blocked exactly two at the browser level. Somewhat confusingly, the blocking screen credited Advanced SystemCare with the discovery. It eliminated four other malware payloads immediately upon download. This product's total of 6 percent protection is better than the previous edition's big fat zero, but still among the very lowest. The top score in this test, 91 percent, is shared by McAfee AntiVirus Plus (2016) and Symantec Norton Security Premium.

See How We Test Malware Blocking

Dismal Phishing Protection That painfully weak performance in the malicious URL blocking test didn't raise my expectations for success in the somewhat similar antiphishing test. In fact, before spending any time on this test I double-checked the IObit website to make sure phishing protection is an included feature. Finding a clear statement that the product's "enhanced Security Guard and Browser Protect…protect users from phishing site attacks, scams and other potential threats," I proceeded with the test.

Just about every antivirus I've seen implements phishing protection by replacing the fraudulent page with a warning page that explains the problem and, in some cases, lets the thus-warned user proceed. Malware Fighter takes a different approach, as far as I could see. In testing, it denied access to the phishing site's HTML page using the same notification popup that occurs when blocks access to known malware.

Malware Fighter's phishing detection rate wasn't the lowest I've seen, but it lagged a full 88 percentage points behind Norton's. The built-in phishing protection components in Internet Explorer and Chrome also beat out Malware Fighter by a wide margin.

Admittedly, few products can match Norton's antiphishing accuracy. Even so, Kaspersky, Avast, and Qihoo 360 Total Security Essential came within 1 percent of tying Norton, and Bitdefender actually beat Norton. These products clearly do antiphishing right.

See How We Test Antiphishing

Bonus Features Malware Fighter's Browser Protect page includes several security-related bonus features. I observed the home page protection in action when Malware Fighter prevented a home page change by a malware sample that it did not otherwise detect. Surfing protection is the feature that (minimally) handled malicious URLs. I assume DNS protection works, but I can't say for sure as my samples don't attempt to take over the system's Domain Name System settings.

Likewise, I did not see the protection against malicious toolbars kick in. And while the product promises anti-tracking, it doesn't offer anything like the visible Do Not Track feature found in Avast, AVG AntiVirus (2016), Check Point ZoneAlarm PRO Antivirus + Firewall 2016, and others.

If you click the Action Center button on the main window, you'll see a list of recommendations for "better security protection." You can click a link to get any one of the recommended items, or click a button to get all of them. But be warned; most of these aren't precisely bonus features. Rather, they are free editions of other IObit programs, and getting their full feature set will require another purchase.

Long, Crashed Scan My notes show that the last time I reviewed this product, a full scan took about 15 minutes. I'm not sure what changed, but this time the scan took well over three hours to finish, reporting discovery of several dozen malware samples. These were samples that were not found by the on-access or on-launch scan. I clicked a link to save the report to disk before proceeding with removal…and the product crashed. Seriously! I don't remember ever having this happen before.

Unwilling to spend another three hours on a full scan, I directly scanned the folder containing my samples. Including those caught by the full scan along with samples that that were eliminated on sight earlier, Malware Fighter managed 86 percent detection. What this says to me is that Malware Fighter's real-time protection systems are failing (by a long shot) to use all of the product's capabilities.

What's Up, Bitdefender? In this review, I've mentioned Bitdefender quite a few times as a product that does extremely well in my tests. It also earns excellent scores across the board from the independent testing labs. Alas, none of the labs include IObit in their testing. And from my own hands-on evaluation, it's very clear that, despite incorporating some Bitdefender technology, IObit can't deliver the same test results as Bitdefender. The labs themselves state clearly that results apply only to the tested product.

The discrepancy between Editors' Choice Bitdefender and dismal flop Malware Fighter was so great that I sent up a query to my Bitdefender contacts. They explained that Bitdefender only licenses core technologies to third parties; it's up to the licensee to integrate these technologies correctly. They also noted that IObit doesn't license all of Bitdefender's technologies. Indeed my testing shows that they clearly don't license Bitdefender's impressive ability to block malicious URLs and fend off phishing sites.

This point is especially important because Malware Fighter strongly emphasizes its use of Bitdefender technology. Point to the Bitdefender icon and the tooltip says, "Your PC is protected by the world leading Anti-malware & Anti-virus Engine." The press release states, "Combined with the world-leading Bitdefender antivirus engine, [this product] delivers a more comprehensive antivirus and antispyware security solution to users." Yes, it includes some Bitdefender code, but no, it doesn't use that code very well.

I Just Don't Get It I never feel thrilled to assign a low rating to any product. I always hope the vendor will take my review as constructive criticism, and I'm quite pleased when I see a much improved subsequent version. I got no thrills at all from reviewing IObit Malware Fighter 4 Pro. While there are some minor improvements over the previous edition, this product still floats near the very bottom of all the security products I've reviewed. I hope the next version will do better in my tests. In the meanwhile, please, stay away from it. 

If you need to choose a new antivirus, go for one of our Editors' Choice products. There are plenty to choose from: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, McAfee AntiVirus Plus, and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus. And if you're at all tempted to spend money on Malware Fighter, save your cash! Avast Free Antivirus, AVG AntiVirus Free, and Panda Free Antivirus, our Editors' Choice free antivirus products, will do a much better job.

By John R. Delaney

If you're a guitar player who likes to experiment with alternative tunings, you know what a hassle it can be to retune your guitar every time you switch from one tuning to another, especially if you're playing a 12-string. Enter the Roadie Guitar Tuner ($99), an electronic tuner that connects to your Android or iOS phone via Bluetooth. This neat little gizmo automatically turns your instrument's tuning pegs to deliver very accurate tuning quickly and easily. It works with electric and acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles, and it supports alternate and custom tunings, but you can't use it to tune bass guitars, violins, or instruments with wooden tuning pegs. As with most connected devices, the Roadie carries a premium price considering you can pick up a clip-on headstock tuner for around $20 or so. But clip-on tuners don't physically tune your guitar like the Roadie does, and they don't offer a database of alternate and custom tunings.

Design and Features At 3.5 by 2.0 by 1.2 inches (HWD), the Roadie Tuner fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. The peg connector at the top of the device adds another 0.75-inch to the width. The tuner is made of black plastic with red trim and has an LED indicator on top and a power switch at the rear, behind the peg connector. There's a Wind/Rewind button on the front face, just below the peg connector, and a mini USB charging port, a Reset button, and a small power indicator on the bottom. Inside are a 3.7-volt rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery and a Bluetooth radio that connects to your smartphone. The tuner comes with a USB charging cable, a Quick Start Guide, and a dongle that lets you plug your electric guitar directly into your smartphone for silent tuning without the need for an amp.

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The Wind/Rewind button makes it easy to remove old strings and install new strings, as it turns the tuning pegs for you and continues turning until you stop pressing the button. The LED indicator blinks blue when you first power up the tuner as it searches for a Bluetooth connection. It glows solid blue when connected and solid green while tuning or calibrating a string. A blinking red light indicates a low battery and solid red indicates an error.

The app makes it easy to tune and create profiles for your guitars. The home screen has three buttons; Add Instrument, Manual Tuner, and Wind/Unwind. The Manual tuner lets you decide if the string is in tune and gives you a visual aide to show you how close you are. To add an instrument, tap the button and select from the list which includes Acoustic Guitar, Classical Guitar, Electric Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, and Ukulele. There's also an option to create a Custom Instrument where you add strings with specific notes.

Each guitar profile has choices for 6-, 7-, or 12-string models, and you can create a custom model. The 7- and 12-string guitars have a standard tuning preset, but you can build a custom tuning by selecting a note for each string and saving it. For example, I created a DADDAD tuning that I use for playing blues and Celtic folk songs. The 6-string guitar option offers nine tuning presets and you can add customized tunings here as well.

Once you've named your guitar, the app creates a profile and adds a new button for that profile to your home screen. You can go into the settings for each profile and add more tunings or change the way the tuner performs by adjusting the Microphone and Accuracy sliders. If you're in a noisy room, adjust the Microphone slider toward Noisy to decrease the microphone's sensitivity. If you're in a quiet room, slide it toward Quiet to increase sensitivity. Similarly, adjust the Accuracy slider toward Fast for quick tuning and toward Accurate for precise tuning.

Each guitar profile offers an Instrument Doctor that displays string information, such as when it was last changed and its overall health (Good or Bad). When you restring the guitar the data is reset using the new date, and the Doctor will advise you when new strings are needed.

Tuning is easy. Simply chose a profile and select a tuning. You can have the tuner tune each string sequentially by tapping the red S button, or you can choose which string to tune by tapping the Tune button next to each string. There are five indicators at the top of the screen that glow red to verify that the app is hearing the string when you pluck it. As you pluck a string, the wavy status bar will begin to straighten out as the tuner does its thing. When the string is in tune the bar will be perfectly straight and the Roadie will emit a beep.

Installation and Performances To begin using the Roadie tuner, download the free Android or iOS app using the handy QR codes found in the user manual (or simply search for it in the app store). Enable Bluetooth on your mobile device, launch the app, and press the Power button on the tuner. The LED indicator will begin blinking blue and will become solid when a Bluetooth connection is made. This took around 20 seconds in my testing.

I compared the Roadie's tuning accuracy with a Snark SN-1 Clip-On Chromatic Tuner and a Peterson StroboClip Clip-On Strobe Tuner, and found that the Roadie was very accurate in all of my tests. To start, I created profiles for three different guitars; a 6-string Martin (acoustic), a 12-string Yamaha (acoustic), and a Fender Stratocaster (electric). I assigned four different tunings to the Martin including Standard, Open C, Open D, and Open G, and calibrated each string, which took around one minute. Switching between tunings was much easier with the Roadie than with my Snark clip-on tuner because the Roadie knew which strings to adjust for each tuning. However, it didn't really save me much time; I needed just under a minute to switch between Open C and standard, which requires that four strings are retuned, using either tuner.

The Roadie really shines when it comes to tuning a 12-string guitar, which can be time-consuming (and frustrating) using a conventional tuner. That's because eight of the strings are tuned in octaves, and it's very easy to accidentally hit two strings at the same time if you're not paying attention. My Yamaha profile contained a standard tuning, and I added my custom DADDAD tuning which sounds awesome on a 12-string guitar. It normally takes me between three and five minutes to tune my 12-string using the Snark tuner, and I usually use an online tone generator to make sure I have the octaves right (more experienced players probably won't have this problem). With the Roadie tuner I was able to switch between tunings in around a minute and a half and it nailed the octave tunings every time, regardless of which alternative tuning I was using. Calibrating the strings took a little less than three minutes. It'd be great if the app had a tone generator, as it's helpful to be able to hear the note you're tuning to.

For my Stratocaster profile, I used standard tuning and added Open G to channel my inner Keith Richards. I tuned the Strat using the included cable that allowed me to plug it directly into my iPhone. As was the case with my 6-string Martin, the Roadie made short work of calibrating the strings and switching between various tunings, completing each in around one minute. At first it had trouble tuning the first string (the high E), but once I adjusted the accuracy slider it tuned up nicely.

I have a few other electric guitars, including an Epiphone Dot and an old Hagstrom II that is always difficult to tune for some reason, and the Roadie worked wonderfully on them as well.

Conclusions You'll pay more for the Roadie Guitar Tuner than you will for most clip-on and acoustic tuners, and support for bass guitars would be nice, as would the addition of a tone generator. That said, the Roadie earns its keep by taking the guesswork out of using alternate tunings and gets the job done quickly and accurately. I love that you can create profiles and custom tunings for each guitar, and the Wind/Unwind feature is a great timesaver. If you're willing to pay the price of admission, you won't be disappointed.

By Michael Muchmore

Flickr remains the photo social network of record. It's not just a place you can upload, organize, and back up all your smartphone shots as well as high-resolution images from a DSLR, but it's where you can participate in a huge community of professional and amateur photographers. You'll find current photography from the White House, the British Monarchy, and most other major institutions on Flickr. You get a free terabyte of online storage for your photos with Flickr, and whiz-bang technology automatically tags photos based on what's in them—a beach, a bird, or a group of people. Upgrade to a Pro account ($5.99 per month or $49.99 per year), and you get the slick desktop auto-uploader, ad-free viewing, and unlimited storage. With the richest combination photo and social features, along with a large, active community, Flickr is our image-sharing Editors' Choice.

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Signing Up and Setting Up If you have a Yahoo account, you already have a Flickr account. Otherwise you can sign up for the free ad-supported 1TB account. Yahoo now requires you to enter a mobile phone number to create an account, which I find irksome, but it's an attempt by the service to keep out spammers. It also helps prevent others from hijacking your account.

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The Pro account level (currently discounted to $34.99) also gets you detailed traffic stats for your photos and a 20-percent discount on Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography plan (which includes Photoshop and Lightroom). In addition, it gets you a "PRO" designation next to your name, so that other users take you seriously.

For comparison, SmugMug offers no free account and charges $40 per year for its Basic account, which gets you unlimited uploads and a customizable site. Photobucket offers 10GB free (only 1/100th of what Flickr gets you) and charges $49.99 per year for 50GB. It lets you go ad-free for $9.99 a year. Furthermore, a half terabyte of Photobucket will run you $399.99 per year. As long as your photos are 16-megapixel or less, Google Photos gives you unlimited storage for free, but only 15GB for larger images (each photo in Flickr can be up to 200MB in size). To get an unlimited terabyte of storage with Google Photos you'd pay $119.88 per year. 500px, a beautiful site catering to pros wanting to sell their best photos, lets free users upload 20 photos per week, which rises to unlimited for $25 a year.

An optional part of setup is to install the new Flickr Uploadr application (now only available to Pro users). This is a far cry from its bare-bones counterpart of the past, and it can automatically upload (privately) images from folders and plugged-in camera media. After installing the lightweight 21MB program you log into your account, and select which folders to auto-upload (Desktop, Downloads, and Pictures are selected by default, but you can add or remove folders to taste). The app notifies you of its activities from a system tray icon, which also provides a link to your Web Camera Roll (see below). It also lets you pause uploading when you need your Internet connection for other activities, and view status in the Uploadr utility.

When I plugged in my camera media, the app prompted me that a new disk had been added, and asked if I wanted to upload photos. On the whole, the app is clear, modern, and automatic. But you don't need to install the Uploadr software: The Web-based upload page, accessible from the cloud-up-arrow icon, is brilliant, letting you tag, caption, set privacy, and even rotate photos before and during upload.

Interface Flickr is really about getting your photos seen by your contacts and you seeing theirs. To this end, the default view when you load the site into your browser is of recent images from your contacts. It's not just an unmoderated firehose like a Twitter feed; rather, images that have been starred by other users take precedence. For example, you're more likely to see a full-page-width photo if it's been starred by a lot of users. This view has infinite scroll, so you can just scroll down to see the feed as long as you like, with the latest images on top and older ones lower down. Along the right side are links to the Flickr blog and users you might know, and, if you're a free user, ads. Thankfully they're not aggressive or distracting.

So how do you find good photographers to follow? You can click Explore, where you'll see the most-favorited photos on the service. These have gotten more postcard-ish and less artistic in recent years, with a more mainstream audience joining Flickr, but scroll down far enough and you're sure to find some real gems. The photographer's handle always appears with an image, and following them is a click away.

Clicking any image opens the photo page, which removes the right panel and darkens the background so that you can focus on the shot. It also presents thumbnails of the photographer's photo stream. You can always hit the back and forward arrow keys to move through a photo stream, or you can click on a thumbnail to jump. Clicking with the mouse on top of a photo zooms it to actual size, and you can pan around by moving the mouse. There's also a full-screen view, accessible by the top-right corner arrows.

On the lower part of the photo page, you can also favorite, share, and download the image (if the member has permitted this). Sharing is handled well, with direct links to Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Pinterest, as well as email and embed codes. Or you could just grab a direct link to the photo and paste it anywhere.

But that's just the beginning: There's a lot going on in the lower part of the photo page. A big blue button lets you follow the photographer if you haven't already, and you can also see how many times the photo's been viewed, starred, and commented on. Below this to the left are any comments, and to the right is detailed information about the photo, including the camera model used, lens and shutter settings, and (if the photographer hasn't disabled it) the whole set of EXIF data. Try that in Instagram, which doesn't even let you zoom in on photos.

It doesn't end there. You can see if the photo's been added to any groups or galleries (see below), as well as its privacy and safety levels. There's also an area for adding keyword tags and people tags. The latter can be Flickr users or just email addresses. One item that sometimes shows up here is a geotag map. It's something I wish more Flickr photographers would use. 

Keyboard shortcuts are a recent interface addition to Flickr. You can now hit F to Favorite, C to Comment, and S to Search, for example.

Camera Roll Not enough organizing options? Camera Roll is a term that will be familiar to iPhone users. Where Photo Stream has always been chronologically arranged by the date and time of upload, and only appears as fairly large tiles, the new Camera Roll view lets you sort by date in small square thumbnails.

But the real cool-factor comes with Magic View, which can sort photos by 60 content types, such as people, animals, landscapes, and so on. It's a pretty awesome display of machine learning, and it was surprisingly accurate on my large photo collection, grouping animals, architecture, landscapes, and even subgrouping them. The categorization uses tags that you can see for this, so you can correct a miscategorization simply by removing the clearly marked robot tags.

Google Photos has a similar feature, but you only see it in action after typing something into its search box; you don't get an organized grid view like that above. Nor do you get to see the automatically generated keyword tags the way you do in Flickr. And forget about such wizardry in photo hosting site competitors like Photobucket and SmugMug, though Microsoft's OneDrive now offers similar photo auto-tagging in beta.

The new Camera Roll view shows all your photos, whether they're publicly visible or not. This is particularly useful if you've installed the Flickr app on your mobile phone and set it to auto-upload photos. There are so many apps besides Flickr that can do this these days—Dropbox, Facebook, Google Photos, OneDrive, along with many of the online backup providers. But Flickr offers advantages over all of them, with its many rich Web viewing and sharing options.

Profile Page Like many social sites, the Flickr profile takes a page from Facebook by letting you choose a cover photo as a banner atop your page and background to your profile photo. You can choose from recent photos in your stream or upload a new image for your cover photo. Some Pro users may be miffed that they can't choose the presentation of their images on their profile page, but Flickr was never intended as a portfolio site with lots of individual control over webpage design. For that, look to SmugMug.

Search Flickr also boasts an updated search feature that uses the same image intelligence, letting you find photos with more accuracy using new search algorithms. Advanced options let you filter the found photos by color, size, orientation (portrait or landscape), and content type (photo or video).

Tagging, Faces, and Maps You can apply tags and attach names to photos at the uploading step, but you can also add and edit tags on a photo's page, and Flickr remembers all your previous tags, so you can easily click on them to apply to a new photo. Photo editing and management programs like iPhoto and Lightroom also can transfer tags to Flickr that you've applied inside the applications. Once your photos are tagged, they'll be more easily searchable by Flickr visitors, and it will be much easier for you to find all those photos that, say, included your cat.

Each of your photo pages has a location field, the clicking of which lets you add it to your map if it hasn't been added automatically by your camera's built-in GPS (such as that on the Canon EOS 6D). If you do want to add the photo to your map, you drag a pointer to the spot where you shot the photo. If the image already has location data embedded, as is usually the case for pictures taken with a smartphone, Flickr's map will propose the exact location you actually snapped the picture—try that using Facebook!

Though Flickr does let you assign People tags, the feature is more limited than what you can get in Facebook or Picasa. For starters, there's no face recognition. You simply have to tell Flickr that the picture includes a person. In Picasa, if your person isn't a contact in the service, you can simply use any name. You could just use a standard tag for this purpose.

Editing in Aviary For a long time, Flickr integrated with the excellent Web-based Picnik photo editor/enhancer to allow you to make changes to your photos without leaving the site. Since Google bought and shut down Picnik's owner Picasa, Flickr has shifted this functionality to another Web photo editor, Aviary. Accessible from any photo's Edit button, Aviary's very simple interface offers autofixes, as well as a crop tool, an "orientation" tool that lets you level photos, and a decent selection of Instagram-like effects.

Aviary's red-eye and blemish correction work fairly well, but if you want a more powerful Web-based photo editor, check out Autodesk's Pixlr.com or Adobe's Photoshop Express, either of which can access your Flickr photos. One advantage of Flickr's Aviary, though, is that it doesn't require the Adobe Flash plugin, as most other online photo editors do. This means it should work in Flash-free browsers.

Video Flickr is primarily a still image site, but for years you've been able to upload HD video clips. The intention was to use this capability not for YouTube-style videos, but for "long photos." With the recent Flickr update, your long photos can be longer—up to three minutes and up to 1GB, and there's no limit on how many you can upload. With a terabyte to burn, that's a lot of 1080p HD video.

Community Flickr offers an unequalled number of avenues that further connecting with fellow photo enthusiasts—groups, contacts, a profile, and even Flickr mail for communicating inside the service with your contacts. You can designate any other member as a contact, and further identify them as friends or family. Community is so important to Flickr, that your home page on the site, after greeting you in a different language every day, shows activity for your account—new contacts, newly favorited photos, and new comments on your pictures.

With well over 10 million users in groups, you'd be hard-pressed to find a larger selection of photo-based interest groups anywhere. If you want to join a group focusing on Birds of Prey photos, you'll find one with lots of activity on Flickr. Topics span an amazing range, from nature to Extar 100 film photography to travel and portraiture. There's a group for every photographic style and taste. By comparison, the most popular SmugMug group I could find had only about 3,000 members. Some Flickr groups boast in the tens of thousands of members, and some in the hundreds of thousands, with millions of photos submitted. If you don't see a group focused on your passion, create a new one—any user can.

Stats You can see how many times any photo you've uploaded has been viewed right on the photo page, but for detailed reports, you'll need a Pro account; this has been the case for several years. Flickr recently changed the stats tool, and though it shows you how many times your photos were viewed over the past two months, you can't zoom back to any date the way you used to be able to. I also had a problem opening my photo with the most comments from the stats page. One improvement is that it shows you if traffic came from social networks like Facebook and Pinterest.

A Flickr of Greatness Flickr's offerings, both photography and community-wise, are unmatched. Just being able to view full-size, full resolution photos, along with metadata and tagging (face, geo, and keyword) bests competitors like Instagram. Google Photos can't boast Flickr's social community features (especially its groups), and limits you to 16 megapixels or 15GB, which isn't enough for serious photographers. While Facebook has made strides with photos, it still down-samples them drastically. 500px doesn't suffer from that, but has limited organization features. I've already outlined above how Flickr bests its closer rivals, SmugMug and Photobucket. For being the fullest offering with the most generous terms, Flickr is PCMag's Editors' Choice for online photo storage and sharing.

REVIEW

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Pros

Fast. Excellent paper handling, with a duplexer, 550-sheet drawer, and 100-sheet multipurpose tray standard. Maximum 2,300-sheet capacity. Ethernet. Prints through the cloud.

Cons

Low text quality for a monochrome laser. Small fonts look a little gray, rather than black.

Bottom Line

The HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn monochrome laser printer offers a combination of fast printing and excellent paper handling, though it prints somewhat grayish text.

By M. David Stone

Clearly meant to be a workhorse monochrome laser printer for small to midsize offices and workgroups, the HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn ($749.99) offers fast performance, excellent paper handling, and extras like private printing (holding a print job in memory until you to enter a PIN from the front panel). Unfortunately, its text quality is at the bottom of the range for a monochrome laser, though good enough for most business purposes. As long as you don't need high-quality text at a small font size, there's enough here to make the M506dn a strong contender.

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In most ways, the M506dn can stand toe to toe with the Dell B3460dn, our Editors' Choice monochrome laser for up to heavy-duty use in a small or midsize office. Both include a 550-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a duplexer standard, and both let you increase the capacity from 650 sheets to a maximum 2,300 sheets by adding up to three additional 550-sheet paper drawers ($199 each for the M506dn). That's more than enough for almost any midsize office, and arguably the most critical issue for heavy-duty print needs.

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One useful convenience the M506dn has that's relatively rare for a single-function printer is the ability to print Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files directly from a USB key. The USB Type A port is on the top of the printer, on the left side, hidden behind a small door. All you have to do is plug in a USB key, use the front panel to navigate to the file you want to print, and give the print command.

Setup and Speed The M506dn is a typical size and weight for its level of speed and paper handling. It measures 11.7 by 16.5 by 14.8 inches (HWD) without the optional additional trays, and weighs 26 pounds 3 ounces. Setup is standard fare.

The only connection choices that come standard on the M506dn are USB and Ethernet. However, you can add a module for standard Wi-Fi ($149), so you can connect the printer to a network wirelessly. A second Wi-Fi option ($59) adds Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. According to HP, you can add either module by itself or add both.

If you connect the printer to a network, you can print to it though the cloud, and also connect to it through a Wi-Fi access point on your network to print from a mobile device. If you get the Wi-Fi Direct module, you can also connect to it directly, even if you connect it to a single PC via USB cable. For my tests, I installed it on a network using its Ethernet port and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system.

As with paper handling, print speed counts as one of the M506dn's strongest features. HP rates the engine at 45 pages per minute (ppm). I timed it on our tests (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 16.1ppm. That makes it a bit faster on our tests than the Dell B3460dn, which Dell rates at 50ppm, and which came in at 15.3ppm. To put the speed in context, however, it's also a bit slower than the less expensive HP LaserJet Pro M402dw, which managed 17ppm on our tests, and it's not much faster than the even less expensive Dell B2360dn, a top pick for personal to medium-duty small office use, which came in at 15ppm.

Output Quality and Running Cost The M506dn's Achilles' heel is text quality that falls at the bottom of the scale on our tests for monochrome laser printers. The only saving grace is that monochrome lasers as a group handle text so well that even being at the bottom of the range is good enough for most business use.

See How We Test Printers

The text is actually well formed, even at small font sizes. But at sizes below 8 points, it's also a touch gray rather than a dark black, making it a hard to read. Even so, unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn't have a problem with it.

Graphics quality is on par for a monochrome laser, making it easily good enough for internal business use. If you're a perfectionist, however, you may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. The photo quality is suitable for printing recognizable images from photos on webpages, but not much more than that.

One other key feature for any printer meant for heavy-duty use is its running cost. The M506dn's claimed cost per page is 1.6 cents, which is fairly typical for the category.

Conclusion For higher-quality text than the HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn offers, be sure to consider the Dell B3460dn, which delivers significantly better text quality, similar-quality graphics, and lower-quality photos than the M506dn. For most offices, however, the M506dn is a strong choice, with excellent paper handling, better-looking photos than the Dell printer offers, and text that's good enough for most business use.

Other Hewlett-Packard Laser Printers

HP PageWide Pro 552dw Printer

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  By M. David Stone Lead Analyst Printers, Scanners & Projectors

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, monitors, large-screen displays, projectors, scanners, and digital cameras), storage (both magnetic and optical), and word processing. He is a recognized expert on printers, well known within the industry, and has been a judge for... More »

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HP OfficeJet Pro 8740 All-in-One Printer

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8740 All-in-One Printer competes more directly with color laser multifunction p... More »

HP PageWide Pro 552dw Printer

The HP PageWide Pro 552dw Printer uses inkjet technology, but competes directly with lasers designed... More »

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The Ricoh PJ HD5450 doesn't handle fine detail as well as most 1080p models, but it's bright enough ... More »

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By Timothy Torres

If price has been your barrier to entry for connected lighting, your time has come: The TikTeck LED is the most affordable smart bulb we've seen. $9.99 gets you a color-changing bulb you can control with a smartphone or tablet without the need for a hub. That's pretty major, considering its closest competition (as far as price goes), the Cree Connected LED and the GE Link, cost more, require a hub, and only shine white. For the price, the TikTeck is an easy recommendation, though its companion app can use some work.

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Design and Setup The top half of the TikTeck is a transluscent white plastic dome that enables 185.1-degree light dispersion. The bottom half is an aluminum body that terminates in an E26 Edison screw connector, so it fits in all the same bases as a regular incandescent bulb. It measures 4.17 inches in length and 2.36 inches in diameter, which should fit most fixtures. 

Capable of producing 600 lumens, the TikTeck is right in the middle of the brightness scale when compared with the competition. Though it doesn't surpass the LIFX LED (1,017) lumens or the Misfit Bolt (800 lumens), it does match the Philips Hue and cruises past the Elgato Avea Dynamic Mood Light (430 lumens). The TikTeck is capable of color temperatures from 2,700K to 6,500K, and like most bulbs in this category, it should last up to 20 years based on three hours of use per day, seven days a week, which makes for a lifetime of around 20,000 hours.

The bulb works without the need for a hub or bridge, which the aforementioned Cree, GE, and Philips bulbs require. There is no complicated setup involved. You simply need a smart device with Bluetooth 4.0 running Android 4.3 or later, or iOS 6 or later. Download the free TikTeck LED Light app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, screw in the bulb, and turn it on. Make sure you have Bluetooth turned on, then open the app, tap Add Device, and it will connect. I paired the bulb with a Samsung Galaxy S6 with no issues.

That said, I ran into some connectivity issues in testing. Occasionally the bulb would disconnect from the app until I turned the bulb on or off or closed the app and opened it again. I'm hoping that this is worked out in a future software update.

You can add up to 32 bulbs to your home and control them all with the same device. To allow other users to control the lights you need to authorize their device, which you can do from the app when both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Since the bulb itself is controlled via Bluetooth, you can only control it when you are in the house, and within Bluetooth range. This is where a hub comes in handy, since it lets you control bulbs over Wi-Fi from anywhere.

App and Performance The TikTeck app is a basic affair, but it can use some better organization. Several of the most interesting features are buried under other menus, so it takes some tapping around to find them. The main screen is home to a big color wheel, with a power button in the middle that turns lights on or off when you tap it. There's a brightness slider below, as well as a Kelvin slider that shifts color temperature. Everything else is accessed by tapping the Settings or Timer icons in the upper right corner.

Settings is where you'll find most of the light's features. Under Lab you'll find Colorful, Game, Music, and Night Light. Music lets you play music stored on your device, and the light will flash to the beat. I played "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, "What Planet is This" by Yoko Kanno, and part of the Blade Runner soundtrack, and noticed the light reacted to the rhythms of each track appropriately for the most part. Game is a match-three affair you play on your phone screen, like Bejeweled 3 but with balloons. Selecting balloons changes the light's color, which is neat. Night Light dims the bulb and brings you to a screen where you can select different shades. And Colorful causes the bulb to shift gradually from one color to the next; you can select how fast or slow the colors fade.

Finally, there's the Timer, which you need to access through the main screen. Here you can add and adjust multiple lighting schedules. You can set the time the light turns on, decide whether it should repeat on multiple days of the week or not, and choose the color. And as mentioned above, you can add two or more lights to the same group so that they can be controlled together. 

You don't get any of the geofencing features or If This Then That (IFTTT) integration that you'll find with Philips Hue bulbs, but then, you're only paying a fraction of the price. 

Conclusions The TikTeck Smart LED is the most affordable color-changing smart bulb we've seen, and it doesn't skimp on quality or features to reach its $10 price point. Sure, it's still a lot more expensive than your standard LED bulb, and the syncing errors can become an irritating hurdle, but compared with other options, like the $60 Philips Hue, it's a bargain. The Philips Hue still offers more features, like the ability to control lights from anywhere, geofencing, IFTTT support, and a better app experience. But if you're looking to give smart lighting a try, you can get six TikTeck bulbs for the price of one Hue. That makes it worth your strong consideration, especially if you're planning to connect your entire home.

By Neil J. Rubenking

Many antivirus vendors release new model year editions each fall, just the way the automakers do. Others schedule their new versions independently of the season, waiting until there are enough significant enhancements and new features. IObit Malware Fighter 4 Pro doesn't seem to fit either of these patterns. It's not next year's model, and it's not significantly better than the dreadful IObit Malware Fighter 3 Pro that I reviewed last year. Don't even consider relying on this product to protect your devices and data. 

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The list price for a one-device, one-year subscription is $39.95, the same as Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2016). However, Malware Fighter seems to be perpetually on sale for $19.95.

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IObit's other security product, IObit Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 9, costs $29.99 per year. However, Advanced SystemCare Ultimate also includes a significant system tune-up component, and its performance against malware, while not great, is significantly better than that of Malware Fighter. I still can't understand why the company maintains both products. There's also a free edition of Malware Fighter, but given the dismal performance of the Pro edition I see no need for a separate review of the free edition.

Getting Started Getting the product installed starts out quick and easy—just click the Accept and Install button and sit back. However, after installation it reported its status as "Unprotected by any antivirus engine." I had to enter the registration code and separately install the licensed Bitdefender anti-malware engine before it was happy. I also had to click a link to download the latest antivirus definitions.

Even then, the product wasn't completely ready for use. The Browser Protect and Security Guard buttons (two of the four large buttons that dominate the product's main window) both reported the computer was not fully protected. I had to click each and turn on a couple of important features.

Dismal Malware Blocking I haven't updated my malware samples since the previous review, so I wound up testing this product with the same set of samples I used against the previous edition. With most vendors, that would mean a much better performance the second time around. With Malware Fighter, not so much.

As always, I began by opening the folder containing my samples. Many antivirus tools eliminate 70 percent or more of the samples immediately, thinning the field considerably. Malware Fighter managed to wipe out just 7 percent of the samples on sight, leaving me to launch the others and note its behavior.

Most of the samples installed and ran without any reaction from Malware Fighter. Of those it did nominally block, some installed executable files, and one actually managed to execute despite endless blocking attempts by the antivirus. This product's detection rate of 18 percent and overall score of 1.4 (out of ten possible points) look good only in comparison with the previous edition's 14 percent and 1.3 points, and with the zero points earned by My PC Watchdog.

The best products achieve far better scores in this test. Avast Pro Antivirus 2016 detected every sample in this set and earned 9.3 points; Bitdefender also got 9.3 points. Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security 2016 came close, with 9.1 points.

I also test each product's ability to block downloads of the very latest malware, using a feed supplied by MRG-Effitas. These malware-hosting URLs are generally no more than a day or two old. I launch the URLs one after another, noting whether the antivirus keeps the browser from accessing the dangerous URL, wipes out the malware during download, or lets the download proceed without taking any action to protect the test syste.

I tested Malware Fighter in parallel with ThreatTrack Vipre Antivirus 2016 and one other product, since all three were in my queue. Had I not done so, I might have given up halfway through, convinced that Malware Fighter does not block malware downloads at all.

Of the 100 verified malware-hosting URLs, Malware Fighter blocked exactly two at the browser level. Somewhat confusingly, the blocking screen credited Advanced SystemCare with the discovery. It eliminated four other malware payloads immediately upon download. This product's total of 6 percent protection is better than the previous edition's big fat zero, but still among the very lowest. The top score in this test, 91 percent, is shared by McAfee AntiVirus Plus (2016) and Symantec Norton Security Premium.

See How We Test Malware Blocking

Dismal Phishing Protection That painfully weak performance in the malicious URL blocking test didn't raise my expectations for success in the somewhat similar antiphishing test. In fact, before spending any time on this test I double-checked the IObit website to make sure phishing protection is an included feature. Finding a clear statement that the product's "enhanced Security Guard and Browser Protect…protect users from phishing site attacks, scams and other potential threats," I proceeded with the test.

Just about every antivirus I've seen implements phishing protection by replacing the fraudulent page with a warning page that explains the problem and, in some cases, lets the thus-warned user proceed. Malware Fighter takes a different approach, as far as I could see. In testing, it denied access to the phishing site's HTML page using the same notification popup that occurs when blocks access to known malware.

Malware Fighter's phishing detection rate wasn't the lowest I've seen, but it lagged a full 88 percentage points behind Norton's. The built-in phishing protection components in Internet Explorer and Chrome also beat out Malware Fighter by a wide margin.

Admittedly, few products can match Norton's antiphishing accuracy. Even so, Kaspersky, Avast, and Qihoo 360 Total Security Essential came within 1 percent of tying Norton, and Bitdefender actually beat Norton. These products clearly do antiphishing right.

See How We Test Antiphishing

Bonus Features Malware Fighter's Browser Protect page includes several security-related bonus features. I observed the home page protection in action when Malware Fighter prevented a home page change by a malware sample that it did not otherwise detect. Surfing protection is the feature that (minimally) handled malicious URLs. I assume DNS protection works, but I can't say for sure as my samples don't attempt to take over the system's Domain Name System settings.

Likewise, I did not see the protection against malicious toolbars kick in. And while the product promises anti-tracking, it doesn't offer anything like the visible Do Not Track feature found in Avast, AVG AntiVirus (2016), Check Point ZoneAlarm PRO Antivirus + Firewall 2016, and others.

If you click the Action Center button on the main window, you'll see a list of recommendations for "better security protection." You can click a link to get any one of the recommended items, or click a button to get all of them. But be warned; most of these aren't precisely bonus features. Rather, they are free editions of other IObit programs, and getting their full feature set will require another purchase.

Long, Crashed Scan My notes show that the last time I reviewed this product, a full scan took about 15 minutes. I'm not sure what changed, but this time the scan took well over three hours to finish, reporting discovery of several dozen malware samples. These were samples that were not found by the on-access or on-launch scan. I clicked a link to save the report to disk before proceeding with removal…and the product crashed. Seriously! I don't remember ever having this happen before.

Unwilling to spend another three hours on a full scan, I directly scanned the folder containing my samples. Including those caught by the full scan along with samples that that were eliminated on sight earlier, Malware Fighter managed 86 percent detection. What this says to me is that Malware Fighter's real-time protection systems are failing (by a long shot) to use all of the product's capabilities.

What's Up, Bitdefender? In this review, I've mentioned Bitdefender quite a few times as a product that does extremely well in my tests. It also earns excellent scores across the board from the independent testing labs. Alas, none of the labs include IObit in their testing. And from my own hands-on evaluation, it's very clear that, despite incorporating some Bitdefender technology, IObit can't deliver the same test results as Bitdefender. The labs themselves state clearly that results apply only to the tested product.

The discrepancy between Editors' Choice Bitdefender and dismal flop Malware Fighter was so great that I sent up a query to my Bitdefender contacts. They explained that Bitdefender only licenses core technologies to third parties; it's up to the licensee to integrate these technologies correctly. They also noted that IObit doesn't license all of Bitdefender's technologies. Indeed my testing shows that they clearly don't license Bitdefender's impressive ability to block malicious URLs and fend off phishing sites.

This point is especially important because Malware Fighter strongly emphasizes its use of Bitdefender technology. Point to the Bitdefender icon and the tooltip says, "Your PC is protected by the world leading Anti-malware & Anti-virus Engine." The press release states, "Combined with the world-leading Bitdefender antivirus engine, [this product] delivers a more comprehensive antivirus and antispyware security solution to users." Yes, it includes some Bitdefender code, but no, it doesn't use that code very well.

I Just Don't Get It I never feel thrilled to assign a low rating to any product. I always hope the vendor will take my review as constructive criticism, and I'm quite pleased when I see a much improved subsequent version. I got no thrills at all from reviewing IObit Malware Fighter 4 Pro. While there are some minor improvements over the previous edition, this product still floats near the very bottom of all the security products I've reviewed. I hope the next version will do better in my tests. In the meanwhile, please, stay away from it. 

If you need to choose a new antivirus, go for one of our Editors' Choice products. There are plenty to choose from: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, McAfee AntiVirus Plus, and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus. And if you're at all tempted to spend money on Malware Fighter, save your cash! Avast Free Antivirus, AVG AntiVirus Free, and Panda Free Antivirus, our Editors' Choice free antivirus products, will do a much better job.

By John R. Delaney

If you're a guitar player who likes to experiment with alternative tunings, you know what a hassle it can be to retune your guitar every time you switch from one tuning to another, especially if you're playing a 12-string. Enter the Roadie Guitar Tuner ($99), an electronic tuner that connects to your Android or iOS phone via Bluetooth. This neat little gizmo automatically turns your instrument's tuning pegs to deliver very accurate tuning quickly and easily. It works with electric and acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles, and it supports alternate and custom tunings, but you can't use it to tune bass guitars, violins, or instruments with wooden tuning pegs. As with most connected devices, the Roadie carries a premium price considering you can pick up a clip-on headstock tuner for around $20 or so. But clip-on tuners don't physically tune your guitar like the Roadie does, and they don't offer a database of alternate and custom tunings.

Design and Features At 3.5 by 2.0 by 1.2 inches (HWD), the Roadie Tuner fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. The peg connector at the top of the device adds another 0.75-inch to the width. The tuner is made of black plastic with red trim and has an LED indicator on top and a power switch at the rear, behind the peg connector. There's a Wind/Rewind button on the front face, just below the peg connector, and a mini USB charging port, a Reset button, and a small power indicator on the bottom. Inside are a 3.7-volt rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery and a Bluetooth radio that connects to your smartphone. The tuner comes with a USB charging cable, a Quick Start Guide, and a dongle that lets you plug your electric guitar directly into your smartphone for silent tuning without the need for an amp.

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The Wind/Rewind button makes it easy to remove old strings and install new strings, as it turns the tuning pegs for you and continues turning until you stop pressing the button. The LED indicator blinks blue when you first power up the tuner as it searches for a Bluetooth connection. It glows solid blue when connected and solid green while tuning or calibrating a string. A blinking red light indicates a low battery and solid red indicates an error.

The app makes it easy to tune and create profiles for your guitars. The home screen has three buttons; Add Instrument, Manual Tuner, and Wind/Unwind. The Manual tuner lets you decide if the string is in tune and gives you a visual aide to show you how close you are. To add an instrument, tap the button and select from the list which includes Acoustic Guitar, Classical Guitar, Electric Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, and Ukulele. There's also an option to create a Custom Instrument where you add strings with specific notes.

Each guitar profile has choices for 6-, 7-, or 12-string models, and you can create a custom model. The 7- and 12-string guitars have a standard tuning preset, but you can build a custom tuning by selecting a note for each string and saving it. For example, I created a DADDAD tuning that I use for playing blues and Celtic folk songs. The 6-string guitar option offers nine tuning presets and you can add customized tunings here as well.

Once you've named your guitar, the app creates a profile and adds a new button for that profile to your home screen. You can go into the settings for each profile and add more tunings or change the way the tuner performs by adjusting the Microphone and Accuracy sliders. If you're in a noisy room, adjust the Microphone slider toward Noisy to decrease the microphone's sensitivity. If you're in a quiet room, slide it toward Quiet to increase sensitivity. Similarly, adjust the Accuracy slider toward Fast for quick tuning and toward Accurate for precise tuning.

Each guitar profile offers an Instrument Doctor that displays string information, such as when it was last changed and its overall health (Good or Bad). When you restring the guitar the data is reset using the new date, and the Doctor will advise you when new strings are needed.

Tuning is easy. Simply chose a profile and select a tuning. You can have the tuner tune each string sequentially by tapping the red S button, or you can choose which string to tune by tapping the Tune button next to each string. There are five indicators at the top of the screen that glow red to verify that the app is hearing the string when you pluck it. As you pluck a string, the wavy status bar will begin to straighten out as the tuner does its thing. When the string is in tune the bar will be perfectly straight and the Roadie will emit a beep.

Installation and Performances To begin using the Roadie tuner, download the free Android or iOS app using the handy QR codes found in the user manual (or simply search for it in the app store). Enable Bluetooth on your mobile device, launch the app, and press the Power button on the tuner. The LED indicator will begin blinking blue and will become solid when a Bluetooth connection is made. This took around 20 seconds in my testing.

I compared the Roadie's tuning accuracy with a Snark SN-1 Clip-On Chromatic Tuner and a Peterson StroboClip Clip-On Strobe Tuner, and found that the Roadie was very accurate in all of my tests. To start, I created profiles for three different guitars; a 6-string Martin (acoustic), a 12-string Yamaha (acoustic), and a Fender Stratocaster (electric). I assigned four different tunings to the Martin including Standard, Open C, Open D, and Open G, and calibrated each string, which took around one minute. Switching between tunings was much easier with the Roadie than with my Snark clip-on tuner because the Roadie knew which strings to adjust for each tuning. However, it didn't really save me much time; I needed just under a minute to switch between Open C and standard, which requires that four strings are retuned, using either tuner.

The Roadie really shines when it comes to tuning a 12-string guitar, which can be time-consuming (and frustrating) using a conventional tuner. That's because eight of the strings are tuned in octaves, and it's very easy to accidentally hit two strings at the same time if you're not paying attention. My Yamaha profile contained a standard tuning, and I added my custom DADDAD tuning which sounds awesome on a 12-string guitar. It normally takes me between three and five minutes to tune my 12-string using the Snark tuner, and I usually use an online tone generator to make sure I have the octaves right (more experienced players probably won't have this problem). With the Roadie tuner I was able to switch between tunings in around a minute and a half and it nailed the octave tunings every time, regardless of which alternative tuning I was using. Calibrating the strings took a little less than three minutes. It'd be great if the app had a tone generator, as it's helpful to be able to hear the note you're tuning to.

For my Stratocaster profile, I used standard tuning and added Open G to channel my inner Keith Richards. I tuned the Strat using the included cable that allowed me to plug it directly into my iPhone. As was the case with my 6-string Martin, the Roadie made short work of calibrating the strings and switching between various tunings, completing each in around one minute. At first it had trouble tuning the first string (the high E), but once I adjusted the accuracy slider it tuned up nicely.

I have a few other electric guitars, including an Epiphone Dot and an old Hagstrom II that is always difficult to tune for some reason, and the Roadie worked wonderfully on them as well.

Conclusions You'll pay more for the Roadie Guitar Tuner than you will for most clip-on and acoustic tuners, and support for bass guitars would be nice, as would the addition of a tone generator. That said, the Roadie earns its keep by taking the guesswork out of using alternate tunings and gets the job done quickly and accurately. I love that you can create profiles and custom tunings for each guitar, and the Wind/Unwind feature is a great timesaver. If you're willing to pay the price of admission, you won't be disappointed.

By Michael Muchmore

Flickr remains the photo social network of record. It's not just a place you can upload, organize, and back up all your smartphone shots as well as high-resolution images from a DSLR, but it's where you can participate in a huge community of professional and amateur photographers. You'll find current photography from the White House, the British Monarchy, and most other major institutions on Flickr. You get a free terabyte of online storage for your photos with Flickr, and whiz-bang technology automatically tags photos based on what's in them—a beach, a bird, or a group of people. Upgrade to a Pro account ($5.99 per month or $49.99 per year), and you get the slick desktop auto-uploader, ad-free viewing, and unlimited storage. With the richest combination photo and social features, along with a large, active community, Flickr is our image-sharing Editors' Choice.

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Signing Up and Setting Up If you have a Yahoo account, you already have a Flickr account. Otherwise you can sign up for the free ad-supported 1TB account. Yahoo now requires you to enter a mobile phone number to create an account, which I find irksome, but it's an attempt by the service to keep out spammers. It also helps prevent others from hijacking your account.

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The Pro account level (currently discounted to $34.99) also gets you detailed traffic stats for your photos and a 20-percent discount on Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography plan (which includes Photoshop and Lightroom). In addition, it gets you a "PRO" designation next to your name, so that other users take you seriously.

For comparison, SmugMug offers no free account and charges $40 per year for its Basic account, which gets you unlimited uploads and a customizable site. Photobucket offers 10GB free (only 1/100th of what Flickr gets you) and charges $49.99 per year for 50GB. It lets you go ad-free for $9.99 a year. Furthermore, a half terabyte of Photobucket will run you $399.99 per year. As long as your photos are 16-megapixel or less, Google Photos gives you unlimited storage for free, but only 15GB for larger images (each photo in Flickr can be up to 200MB in size). To get an unlimited terabyte of storage with Google Photos you'd pay $119.88 per year. 500px, a beautiful site catering to pros wanting to sell their best photos, lets free users upload 20 photos per week, which rises to unlimited for $25 a year.

An optional part of setup is to install the new Flickr Uploadr application (now only available to Pro users). This is a far cry from its bare-bones counterpart of the past, and it can automatically upload (privately) images from folders and plugged-in camera media. After installing the lightweight 21MB program you log into your account, and select which folders to auto-upload (Desktop, Downloads, and Pictures are selected by default, but you can add or remove folders to taste). The app notifies you of its activities from a system tray icon, which also provides a link to your Web Camera Roll (see below). It also lets you pause uploading when you need your Internet connection for other activities, and view status in the Uploadr utility.

When I plugged in my camera media, the app prompted me that a new disk had been added, and asked if I wanted to upload photos. On the whole, the app is clear, modern, and automatic. But you don't need to install the Uploadr software: The Web-based upload page, accessible from the cloud-up-arrow icon, is brilliant, letting you tag, caption, set privacy, and even rotate photos before and during upload.

Interface Flickr is really about getting your photos seen by your contacts and you seeing theirs. To this end, the default view when you load the site into your browser is of recent images from your contacts. It's not just an unmoderated firehose like a Twitter feed; rather, images that have been starred by other users take precedence. For example, you're more likely to see a full-page-width photo if it's been starred by a lot of users. This view has infinite scroll, so you can just scroll down to see the feed as long as you like, with the latest images on top and older ones lower down. Along the right side are links to the Flickr blog and users you might know, and, if you're a free user, ads. Thankfully they're not aggressive or distracting.

So how do you find good photographers to follow? You can click Explore, where you'll see the most-favorited photos on the service. These have gotten more postcard-ish and less artistic in recent years, with a more mainstream audience joining Flickr, but scroll down far enough and you're sure to find some real gems. The photographer's handle always appears with an image, and following them is a click away.

Clicking any image opens the photo page, which removes the right panel and darkens the background so that you can focus on the shot. It also presents thumbnails of the photographer's photo stream. You can always hit the back and forward arrow keys to move through a photo stream, or you can click on a thumbnail to jump. Clicking with the mouse on top of a photo zooms it to actual size, and you can pan around by moving the mouse. There's also a full-screen view, accessible by the top-right corner arrows.

On the lower part of the photo page, you can also favorite, share, and download the image (if the member has permitted this). Sharing is handled well, with direct links to Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Pinterest, as well as email and embed codes. Or you could just grab a direct link to the photo and paste it anywhere.

But that's just the beginning: There's a lot going on in the lower part of the photo page. A big blue button lets you follow the photographer if you haven't already, and you can also see how many times the photo's been viewed, starred, and commented on. Below this to the left are any comments, and to the right is detailed information about the photo, including the camera model used, lens and shutter settings, and (if the photographer hasn't disabled it) the whole set of EXIF data. Try that in Instagram, which doesn't even let you zoom in on photos.

It doesn't end there. You can see if the photo's been added to any groups or galleries (see below), as well as its privacy and safety levels. There's also an area for adding keyword tags and people tags. The latter can be Flickr users or just email addresses. One item that sometimes shows up here is a geotag map. It's something I wish more Flickr photographers would use. 

Keyboard shortcuts are a recent interface addition to Flickr. You can now hit F to Favorite, C to Comment, and S to Search, for example.

Camera Roll Not enough organizing options? Camera Roll is a term that will be familiar to iPhone users. Where Photo Stream has always been chronologically arranged by the date and time of upload, and only appears as fairly large tiles, the new Camera Roll view lets you sort by date in small square thumbnails.

But the real cool-factor comes with Magic View, which can sort photos by 60 content types, such as people, animals, landscapes, and so on. It's a pretty awesome display of machine learning, and it was surprisingly accurate on my large photo collection, grouping animals, architecture, landscapes, and even subgrouping them. The categorization uses tags that you can see for this, so you can correct a miscategorization simply by removing the clearly marked robot tags.

Google Photos has a similar feature, but you only see it in action after typing something into its search box; you don't get an organized grid view like that above. Nor do you get to see the automatically generated keyword tags the way you do in Flickr. And forget about such wizardry in photo hosting site competitors like Photobucket and SmugMug, though Microsoft's OneDrive now offers similar photo auto-tagging in beta.

The new Camera Roll view shows all your photos, whether they're publicly visible or not. This is particularly useful if you've installed the Flickr app on your mobile phone and set it to auto-upload photos. There are so many apps besides Flickr that can do this these days—Dropbox, Facebook, Google Photos, OneDrive, along with many of the online backup providers. But Flickr offers advantages over all of them, with its many rich Web viewing and sharing options.

Profile Page Like many social sites, the Flickr profile takes a page from Facebook by letting you choose a cover photo as a banner atop your page and background to your profile photo. You can choose from recent photos in your stream or upload a new image for your cover photo. Some Pro users may be miffed that they can't choose the presentation of their images on their profile page, but Flickr was never intended as a portfolio site with lots of individual control over webpage design. For that, look to SmugMug.

Search Flickr also boasts an updated search feature that uses the same image intelligence, letting you find photos with more accuracy using new search algorithms. Advanced options let you filter the found photos by color, size, orientation (portrait or landscape), and content type (photo or video).

Tagging, Faces, and Maps You can apply tags and attach names to photos at the uploading step, but you can also add and edit tags on a photo's page, and Flickr remembers all your previous tags, so you can easily click on them to apply to a new photo. Photo editing and management programs like iPhoto and Lightroom also can transfer tags to Flickr that you've applied inside the applications. Once your photos are tagged, they'll be more easily searchable by Flickr visitors, and it will be much easier for you to find all those photos that, say, included your cat.

Each of your photo pages has a location field, the clicking of which lets you add it to your map if it hasn't been added automatically by your camera's built-in GPS (such as that on the Canon EOS 6D). If you do want to add the photo to your map, you drag a pointer to the spot where you shot the photo. If the image already has location data embedded, as is usually the case for pictures taken with a smartphone, Flickr's map will propose the exact location you actually snapped the picture—try that using Facebook!

Though Flickr does let you assign People tags, the feature is more limited than what you can get in Facebook or Picasa. For starters, there's no face recognition. You simply have to tell Flickr that the picture includes a person. In Picasa, if your person isn't a contact in the service, you can simply use any name. You could just use a standard tag for this purpose.

Editing in Aviary For a long time, Flickr integrated with the excellent Web-based Picnik photo editor/enhancer to allow you to make changes to your photos without leaving the site. Since Google bought and shut down Picnik's owner Picasa, Flickr has shifted this functionality to another Web photo editor, Aviary. Accessible from any photo's Edit button, Aviary's very simple interface offers autofixes, as well as a crop tool, an "orientation" tool that lets you level photos, and a decent selection of Instagram-like effects.

Aviary's red-eye and blemish correction work fairly well, but if you want a more powerful Web-based photo editor, check out Autodesk's Pixlr.com or Adobe's Photoshop Express, either of which can access your Flickr photos. One advantage of Flickr's Aviary, though, is that it doesn't require the Adobe Flash plugin, as most other online photo editors do. This means it should work in Flash-free browsers.

Video Flickr is primarily a still image site, but for years you've been able to upload HD video clips. The intention was to use this capability not for YouTube-style videos, but for "long photos." With the recent Flickr update, your long photos can be longer—up to three minutes and up to 1GB, and there's no limit on how many you can upload. With a terabyte to burn, that's a lot of 1080p HD video.

Community Flickr offers an unequalled number of avenues that further connecting with fellow photo enthusiasts—groups, contacts, a profile, and even Flickr mail for communicating inside the service with your contacts. You can designate any other member as a contact, and further identify them as friends or family. Community is so important to Flickr, that your home page on the site, after greeting you in a different language every day, shows activity for your account—new contacts, newly favorited photos, and new comments on your pictures.

With well over 10 million users in groups, you'd be hard-pressed to find a larger selection of photo-based interest groups anywhere. If you want to join a group focusing on Birds of Prey photos, you'll find one with lots of activity on Flickr. Topics span an amazing range, from nature to Extar 100 film photography to travel and portraiture. There's a group for every photographic style and taste. By comparison, the most popular SmugMug group I could find had only about 3,000 members. Some Flickr groups boast in the tens of thousands of members, and some in the hundreds of thousands, with millions of photos submitted. If you don't see a group focused on your passion, create a new one—any user can.

Stats You can see how many times any photo you've uploaded has been viewed right on the photo page, but for detailed reports, you'll need a Pro account; this has been the case for several years. Flickr recently changed the stats tool, and though it shows you how many times your photos were viewed over the past two months, you can't zoom back to any date the way you used to be able to. I also had a problem opening my photo with the most comments from the stats page. One improvement is that it shows you if traffic came from social networks like Facebook and Pinterest.

A Flickr of Greatness Flickr's offerings, both photography and community-wise, are unmatched. Just being able to view full-size, full resolution photos, along with metadata and tagging (face, geo, and keyword) bests competitors like Instagram. Google Photos can't boast Flickr's social community features (especially its groups), and limits you to 16 megapixels or 15GB, which isn't enough for serious photographers. While Facebook has made strides with photos, it still down-samples them drastically. 500px doesn't suffer from that, but has limited organization features. I've already outlined above how Flickr bests its closer rivals, SmugMug and Photobucket. For being the fullest offering with the most generous terms, Flickr is PCMag's Editors' Choice for online photo storage and sharing.

REVIEW

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Pros

Fast. Excellent paper handling, with a duplexer, 550-sheet drawer, and 100-sheet multipurpose tray standard. Maximum 2,300-sheet capacity. Ethernet. Prints through the cloud.

Cons

Low text quality for a monochrome laser. Small fonts look a little gray, rather than black.

Bottom Line

The HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn monochrome laser printer offers a combination of fast printing and excellent paper handling, though it prints somewhat grayish text.

By M. David Stone

Clearly meant to be a workhorse monochrome laser printer for small to midsize offices and workgroups, the HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn ($749.99) offers fast performance, excellent paper handling, and extras like private printing (holding a print job in memory until you to enter a PIN from the front panel). Unfortunately, its text quality is at the bottom of the range for a monochrome laser, though good enough for most business purposes. As long as you don't need high-quality text at a small font size, there's enough here to make the M506dn a strong contender.

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In most ways, the M506dn can stand toe to toe with the Dell B3460dn, our Editors' Choice monochrome laser for up to heavy-duty use in a small or midsize office. Both include a 550-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a duplexer standard, and both let you increase the capacity from 650 sheets to a maximum 2,300 sheets by adding up to three additional 550-sheet paper drawers ($199 each for the M506dn). That's more than enough for almost any midsize office, and arguably the most critical issue for heavy-duty print needs.

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One useful convenience the M506dn has that's relatively rare for a single-function printer is the ability to print Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files directly from a USB key. The USB Type A port is on the top of the printer, on the left side, hidden behind a small door. All you have to do is plug in a USB key, use the front panel to navigate to the file you want to print, and give the print command.

Setup and Speed The M506dn is a typical size and weight for its level of speed and paper handling. It measures 11.7 by 16.5 by 14.8 inches (HWD) without the optional additional trays, and weighs 26 pounds 3 ounces. Setup is standard fare.

The only connection choices that come standard on the M506dn are USB and Ethernet. However, you can add a module for standard Wi-Fi ($149), so you can connect the printer to a network wirelessly. A second Wi-Fi option ($59) adds Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. According to HP, you can add either module by itself or add both.

If you connect the printer to a network, you can print to it though the cloud, and also connect to it through a Wi-Fi access point on your network to print from a mobile device. If you get the Wi-Fi Direct module, you can also connect to it directly, even if you connect it to a single PC via USB cable. For my tests, I installed it on a network using its Ethernet port and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system.

As with paper handling, print speed counts as one of the M506dn's strongest features. HP rates the engine at 45 pages per minute (ppm). I timed it on our tests (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 16.1ppm. That makes it a bit faster on our tests than the Dell B3460dn, which Dell rates at 50ppm, and which came in at 15.3ppm. To put the speed in context, however, it's also a bit slower than the less expensive HP LaserJet Pro M402dw, which managed 17ppm on our tests, and it's not much faster than the even less expensive Dell B2360dn, a top pick for personal to medium-duty small office use, which came in at 15ppm.

Output Quality and Running Cost The M506dn's Achilles' heel is text quality that falls at the bottom of the scale on our tests for monochrome laser printers. The only saving grace is that monochrome lasers as a group handle text so well that even being at the bottom of the range is good enough for most business use.

See How We Test Printers

The text is actually well formed, even at small font sizes. But at sizes below 8 points, it's also a touch gray rather than a dark black, making it a hard to read. Even so, unless you have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn't have a problem with it.

Graphics quality is on par for a monochrome laser, making it easily good enough for internal business use. If you're a perfectionist, however, you may not consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. The photo quality is suitable for printing recognizable images from photos on webpages, but not much more than that.

One other key feature for any printer meant for heavy-duty use is its running cost. The M506dn's claimed cost per page is 1.6 cents, which is fairly typical for the category.

Conclusion For higher-quality text than the HP LaserJet Enterprise M506dn offers, be sure to consider the Dell B3460dn, which delivers significantly better text quality, similar-quality graphics, and lower-quality photos than the M506dn. For most offices, however, the M506dn is a strong choice, with excellent paper handling, better-looking photos than the Dell printer offers, and text that's good enough for most business use.

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  By M. David Stone Lead Analyst Printers, Scanners & Projectors

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, monitors, large-screen displays, projectors, scanners, and digital cameras), storage (both magnetic and optical), and word processing. He is a recognized expert on printers, well known within the industry, and has been a judge for... More »

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HP PageWide Pro 552dw Printer

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By Max Eddy, Michael Muchmore

Google Image Search has changed the way we use the Internet, and the Google Photos iPhone app attempts to bring that experience to your phone. With this iPhone app, you can back up and store nearly all your photos for free, create shareable micro-masterpieces, and search among them just like you do on the Web. But the image search in the app isn't as comprehensive or impressive as Google's Web image search, and bottomless storage limits you to high-quality but compressed images. It serves as an excellent syncing and backup tool for the masses, but for the serious photographer with an iPhone, our Editors' Choice Flickr is still the act to beat.

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Backup and Pricing Google Photos is available as a free download in the iTunes App Store. For this review, we installed it on an iPhone 6 with 64GB of storage and an iPhone 6s Plus with 128GB of storage. You'll need to sign into a Google Account to get started, and you can easily switch among multiple accounts—a claim that iCloud Photos can't make. The central Photos page displays all your recent snaps, and it has a fast-scrolling button to help you find your pictures quickly. It also lets you pinch to enlarge and shrink groups of photos. A hidden drawer on the left opens to reveal the rest of the app's features.

Google Photos biggest selling point by far is its promise of unlimited photo backups. Plus, these images are stored in Google Drive and synced among all your enrolled devices. They are available in the Web version of Google Photos, too.

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Apple has a similar scheme, but you'll have to shell out some cash if (when) you fill up iCloud's complimentary 5GB with images. Flickr also offers automatic photo backup and a free terabyte of space, which is more than enough for the average user. Dropbox offers photo backup, with a free 2GB of storage, and OneDrive does the same with 15GB free (thought the company has said it's going down to 5GB sometime this year). Many online backup services throw in automatic backup of photos in their apps, too, some of which offer truly unlimited storage, but not for free.

By contrast, Flickr's free terabyte includes any photo of up to 200MB in size. Google Drive, by comparison, has only 15GB available for free users and offers a terabyte of storage for $9.99 per month. All Apple users have the option to back up their photos to iCloud, which includes 5GB for free. A terabyte of space from Apple also costs $9.99 per month.

Google doesn't actually back up the original photos if they're larger than 16 megapixels. Instead, it uploads a high-quality (compressed) image that is, to most people's eyes, indistinguishable from the original. If you're a serious photographer, this probably won't do. You can configure Google Photos to store your (uncompressed) original image files, but doing so will count against your space in Google Drive, and your free storage will quickly fill up. If you do max out your storage, you'll find yourself unable to do much with your Google applications that are connected to the account. You won't, for example, be able to receive Gmail.

Note that you can now view Apple's not-quite-videos-not-quite-photos Live Photos in Google Photos. When you view a Live Photo on Google Drive, you can only see a video; the image component is lost. We had no trouble uploading and viewing a Live Photo in the app, even though we were only uploading the compressed version of the photo. It did not appear to affect the almost-bottomless storage provided by Google Photos for compressed images.

If local storage is an issue, you can free up space on your device by deleting the local copies of photos already uploaded to the cloud. It's a smart feature that leverages Google's bottomless backup policy to help users. Note, however, that if you've opted to only backup compressed versions of photos, the uncompressed ones will be deleted in this process.

Prior to testing Google Photos, we signed up for Apple's photo storage scheme that syncs all pictures between all iOS devices. This meant that Google Photos had a hefty 24,000-odd pictures to chunk through. If you need to make it through a similarly large library, you may want to turn on the app and then leave your phone plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi overnight. Or over several nights.

Google Image Search on Your Phone Though you can scroll through all your photos, this is a Google app, so search is at the forefront. Tapping the blue magnifying glass pulls up a search field, where any query returns what Google thinks is relevant, using all the experience it has gained with Google Image Search. It also looks at information you've attached to photos, like captions.

Searching for "rat" pulled up a few photos of Max's lovely pets without any additional input. Searching "prom" even turned up some (not all) of an embarrassing set of forgotten photos. But it seems some searches work better than others. Searching "dog" pulled up many dogs, along with pictures of a goat, a pig, a lemur, and a room full of wooden ducks. In one account Michael tested, "dog" only brought up one image—of a cat. Google is really, really close to making search magical in photos, but it's not quite there yet.

Along with search, Photos automatically detects features in your photos grouped into People, Places, and Things. The People search is excellent, organizing faces from across all your images. It can even detect the same person across several years. It had no trouble discerning Max's countenance, whether it was him as a baby-faced teen or a bearded not-quite-30. This is easily the best example of Google's search technology in the app. That said, Google's face detection relies on its own technology, and we couldn't find a way to tag a photo or add a face, as you can in Flickr.

One feature Max appreciates is the ability to suppress pictures of people, keeping the visage of your dearly departed loved ones or much loathed former romantic partner(s) out of view.

The Things category is rather curious. What groups it did present—statues, flowers, sky—were mostly correct but didn't do much to guide us toward images we wanted to see. Flickr's Camera Roll Magic View automatic object categorization is in some ways more impressive, presenting multilevel categories of objects, though it, too, is tripped up occasionally. Accurate image recognition is a serious technological hurdle.

When we reviewed Instagram, we were very impressed with its photomap, which made it very easy to find particular images and even discover ones we'd forgotten about. Instead of using a map, Google sorts your pictures into place-related categories, with mixed success. It grouped photos taken in Royal Oak, Michigan, for example, but added an empty category called Gloucestershire, which neither of us had ever visited. A group titled Rice contained one photo from a New Jersey eatery called Miami Rice, and nine photos of dogs in Illinois. Color us bewildered.

We assumed that these results would improve as the app was updated and additional photos were added to our account. In the many months since our first review, all of the odd search behaviors we observed still exist.

The Assistant and Sharing Google Photos includes basic image-editing tools like cropping and vignette, and so on. There are even 14 prefab Instagram-like filters. And that's just for starters. From just about anywhere in the app, you can create a new Album, Movie, Story, Animation, or Collage.

Two of these creations require some explanation. Stories are interactive timelines of images and videos that you explore from left to right. Animations are brief, looping, GIF-like animations made from your photos. All are easily shareable, usually with public links hosted by Google.

Assembling any of these collections together is supremely simple, thanks especially to Google's new tap-and-drag feature (but no 3D touch, yet) for selecting multiple files. But it's a little too easy. We could select filters and preset background music for Movies, but we couldn't control how long images appeared onscreen in an Animation, and neither the size nor position of images in Collages. That's fine on Android devices, where in some cases Google Photos will be a built-in, baseline app. But on the iPhone it's competing with Apple's Photos app plus other apps that do a much better job creating customizable content, like Instagram's Layout.

If you like these little collections but lack the creative spirit, the Google Photos Assistant can do it for you! Periodically, you receive alerts that the Assistant has produced another masterpiece; Sometimes an animation, sometimes a collage, sometimes just an artistically edited and filtered photo.

To its credit, Assistant doesn't just do this willy-nilly. For example, photos from the same time period get grouped into collages, and photos taken in sequence are made into animations. But is it really saving anyone time or effort? This automation removes all the creativity and the fun, and can even feel intrusive. For example, Max was not emotionally prepared to see an animated GIF of his prom. You can toggle this feature off, thankfully.

Good at the Basics The features available in Google Photos place it among the best iPhone photo apps. It offers unlimited storage (with image resolution limits) and a fairly seamless backup process. Its interface is typical clean Google, and it offers just enough navigational innovation to feel fresh without being confusing.

We have some quibbles with Google Photos, but our biggest issue is that photo search still has not delivered on its promise. When you use Google Image Search on the Web to look for a picture, there's a good chance millions of other people also searched for that same image (or something similar), and have helped hone Google's search results. Google doesn't have that luxury on your own phone. Search in Google Photos is impressive, but it still doesn't feel finished.

Though Google has continued to roll out new features, such as support for Live Photos and smarter storage management for your devices, our Editors' Choice photo-sharing app remains Flickr, which actually gets you a lot more free storage (if your photos top 16 megapixels) and offers a thriving photo social experience and excellent editing tools.