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Last updated: October 22, 2026. Drive notes come from WIRED's external drive guide (September 2026) and backup guide (March 2026), PCWorld's drive roundup (October 4, 2026 listing), CISA's backup guidance and Apple Support (published October 16, 2026), read October 22, 2026. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer Follow 3-2-1: three copies, two kinds of storage, one copy off-site, as CISA's backup guidance describes. WIRED's top pick for cheap bulk backups is a desktop hard drive, the WD Elements, while portable and SSD options suit travel and speed. Buy a drive at least twice the size of your computer's storage, set backups to run automatically, and test a restore before you need it. Hard drives can fail without warning, and one copy of your photos and documents on one drive is not a backup plan. This gu...

Last updated: October 22, 2026. Specs and picks come from Newegg Insider (published October 6, updated October 7, 2026), WIRED's external drive guide (updated September 2026) and Apple Support's iPhone guide, all read October 22, 2026. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer Match the drive to your port first: USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives run near 1,050 MB/s, and Gen 2x2 drives near 2,000 MB/s only on devices that support it. For iPhone, Apple says the drive needs a single data partition in a supported format such as APFS, exFAT or FAT32. Treat a portable SSD as one copy, not your only copy, and check current retailer prices because WIRED reports big price jumps. A portable SSD is one of the easiest ways to free up space on a phone or laptop, move large photo and video files, or keep a quick extra copy of your work. The catch is ...

Last updated: October 22, 2026. Test figures come from Back2Gaming’s April 2026 review of the Core Ultra 200S Plus. Intel’s announcement of March 11, 2026 is the source for the product details. Results vary by game, GPU, and settings. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer In 2026 the better Intel buy is usually the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, not the 285K or the 14900K. Back2Gaming found it essentially matches the 285K in productivity for about $290 less. For pure gaming, AMD’s X3D chips still lead. Back2Gaming reports the Ryzen 7 9800X3D wins by 20 to 50 percent in some titles. At 4K, the graphics card is usually the limit and CPU differences shrink to about 5 to 10 percent. When Intel’s Core Ultra 200S launched in 2024, early tests showed it trailing the Core i9-14900K in many games, and a comparison between them was popular. Two...

Last updated: October 22, 2026. Specs come from Apple, Macworld, PCWorld, and MacRumors. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer The USB-C port on the iPad (10th generation) and the current base iPad (A16) runs at USB 2.0 speed, 480 Mbps. A hub cannot make it faster. Pick a hub for the ports you need (HDMI, SD card, Ethernet, charging), not for speed. A 5 Gbps or 10 Gbps hub still works, it just runs at the iPad’s limit. For a flash drive or keyboard, a simple USB-C to USB-A adapter is enough. For desk setups, choose a hub with power pass-through so the iPad charges while you work. If you bought the iPad 10th generation (2022) or the current base iPad, you probably noticed it has a USB-C port but almost no accessories in the box. The right adapter depends on what you plug in: a flash drive, a camera card, a keyboard, a monitor, o...

Last updated: October 22, 2026. Display limits and dock details come from Macworld’s guide updated July 13, 2026. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer A standard M1 or M2 MacBook (and the MacBook Neo) natively supports only one external monitor. M1 Pro supports two, and M1 Max supports four. To add more screens on a base M1, you need a DisplayLink or InstantView dock plus a free driver. A simple HDMI splitter will not give you separate screens. The trade-offs are a 60Hz refresh cap, a small amount of latency, and no HDCP-protected streaming on those extra screens. You bought an M1 MacBook, plugged in a second monitor, and found that macOS will not let you extend to both. That is not a setting you missed. It is a hardware limit of the base chip. The good news is that a USB graphics dock can work around it. This guide explains w...

Last updated: October 22, 2026. Steps follow Apple Support’s “iPhone battery and performance” page and Apple Community guidance. Menu names can vary by iOS version. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer Check Settings, Battery, Battery Health & Charging first. If maximum capacity is low or a service message appears, the battery is aging, not just misreporting. iPhone batteries cannot be calibrated by the user. Restart, update iOS, and give the phone a few normal charge cycles before you assume a fault. If the percentage keeps jumping, drops to 1 percent and recovers, or the phone shuts down, book a battery check with Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider. Your iPhone says 40 percent, then 15, then 38. Or it will not stay at one number while charging. Before you replace anything, it helps to know what is normal and w...