A theme park dedicated to Nintendo’s famous Super Mario World has opened in Japan, nearly a year after it was originally due to welcome guests.
Super Nintendo World – which cost about $0.5bn ($0.36bn) to build – was meant to open last summer but was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Initially only Japanese visitors can go amid international travel bans.
For Nintendo, it represents part of a move from games firm to entertainment company.
At first the park will take half of the visitors it can accommodate to comply with social-distancing measures. Visitors will need to wear masks in most areas.
The park is modelled on levels in Nintendo’s Mario games, the first of which was released in 1985 and followed the adventures of a plumber and his brother
The franchise went on to sell more than 370 million games globally.
BBC Archive: Inside Nintendo, 1990 One of the most popular rides in the new theme park will feature a Mario Kart race, which visitors will ride sporting an augmented reality headset attached to a red cap.
And the park itself is a gaming experience, with visitors encouraged to buy wristbands to collect keys, redeem coins, play mini-games around the land and even team up with other visitors via a smartphone app.
Three more Super Nintendo World parks are being built at Universal Studios in LA, Orlando and in Singapore.
A US teenager has pleaded guilty to hacking several high-profile Twitter accounts in a large-scale Bitcoin scam.
Graham Ivan Clark was 17 when he co-ordinated the scam – which hijacked the profiles of celebrities, including Kim Kardashian West, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Barack Obama.
He would spend three years in prison as part of his plea deal, a Florida court filing said.
But Clark has already served 229 days of this three-year sentence.
Now 18, but sentenced as a “youthful offender”, he may also be able to serve some of the sentence at a boot camp, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
But Clark will also be banned from using computers without permission and supervision from law enforcement.
The scam The hack, on 15 July last year, promoted a scam in which hijacked celebrity accounts encouraged followers to donate bitcoin to coronavirus-relief projects.
“Everyone is asking me to give back,” a tweet purportedly sent from Mr Gates’s account said. “You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000.”
More than $117,000 (£84,200) of the cryptocurrency was collected through the scam.
The money had been handed to the authorities to be returned to the victims, Clark’s lawyer said.
It was alleged Clark had imitated a member of Twitter staff to gain access to the company’s networks and worked with two other hackers to complete the heist.
Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, and Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, have been charged with federal crimes.
The family of Mr Sheppard have declined to comment and the Home Office said it “does not comment on extradition requests”.
Intel has launched its latest desktop PC chips having had to retrofit some of its recent semiconductor designs to work on older transistor tech to deliver the processing power required.
The stopgap effort has consequences for both the speeds and heat they produce.
The US firm claims the Rocket Lake chips deliver a 19% headline-rate gain over the last generation, and introduce features that will help PCs keep pace with the latest gaming consoles.
Intel continues to dominate the sector.
But rivals have benefited from outsourcing production, leading to suggestions that Intel’s position as the leading CPU (central processing unit) provider is not as secure as it might appear.
Tiny switches Transistors are basically tiny on-off switches, and billions of them are arranged in different patterns to carry out calculations on a chip.
The benefit of making them smaller is that more can be packed into the same space – allowing computers to run more quickly while potentially using less power.
Intel’s new Rocket Lake chips rely on 14 nanometre transistors, and are made within its own fabrication plants.
By contrast, its chief competitor AMD uses a contract manufacturer – Taiwan’s TSMC – to build its latest Ryzen desktop PC chips, which benefit from smaller 7nm transistors.
And Apple is in the process of weaning itself off Intel to use its own designs, also produced by TSMC but using its even more advanced 5nm tech.
Fab-less pressure There is no set way to measure transistor sizes, and Intel claims its 14nm tech equates to TSMC’s 10nm. Even so, the US firm acknowledges it is running behind.
It had originally intended to make the transition to 10nm desktop chips between 2017 and 2019. As it is, this will not happen to a future generation launched in late 2021-2022.
And Intel is also experiencing delays in making the next leap forward to 7nm.
However, there are advantages to keeping production in-house.
It helps keep costs down.
And it also means it avoids feeding into wider concerns that the US has become over-reliant on overseas chip-producers.
Intel recently appointed a new chief executive – Pat Gelsinger – who has made it clear he intends to resist pressure from some investors to become a “fab-less” firm, a term used to refer to chip designers who do not operate fabrication plants of their own.
“The factory is the power and soul of an enterprise, and we must become even better in the future,” said Mr Gelsinger in January.
Faster frame rates The new “11th generation” desktop chips take the microarchitecture for their CPU cores from one set of 10nm laptop chips – 2019’s Ice Lake series – and their graphics architecture from another – 2020’s Tiger Lake family.
Intel has described the process of reworking these designs for 14nm transistors as “backporting”.
“We’ve been making 14nm CPUs for a long time, and part of the benefit of that is it is a very established manufacturing process to the point where we know it inside and out,” spokesman Mark Walton explained.
“So we really know how to ramp up the clock speeds – and for a gaming product, that’s really, really important.”
The firm’s own benchmarks indicate its new i9-11900K chip will deliver a boost of 14% more frames-per-second when playing Microsoft Flight Simulator over the last-generation i9-10900K, when set at high quality graphics, for example.
And Intel is also playing up other benefits, including support for PCie 4.0, which increases the bandwidth available to third-party components such as add-on graphics cards and solid state drives, effectively allowing them to shunt data about more quickly.
“You will have much faster loading times, textures will load more quickly in games, and you get a much more seamless experience,” said Mr Walton, suggesting this would counter one of the key advantages the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 enjoyed.
Testing hot Intel will be marketing the new chips as offering a 19% improvement in “instructions per cycle” over their predecessors.
But the site Anandtech said it had only noticed modest gains when testing some of the chips with games of its own choice, and in some cases said the differences were imperceptible.
“It trails behind its competitor AMD at times by a significant margin,” the site’s Dr Ian Cutress told the BBC.
Moreover, the review also highlighted that the chips could run very hot.
Intel has removed a very thin layer of material between the block of semiconducting material on which the CPU’s circuits are fabricated and the “heat spreader” on top to help keep the components cool.
But Anandtech recorded peak temperatures of 104C (219F) in one of its tests, which is only just in the safety zone.
“Intel’s laptop chips were designed specifically for the characteristics of 10nm, and that includes thermal performance and frequency, and voltage,” explained Dr Cutress.
“Because they’ve done a retrofit, compromises have had to be made – they still get the performance gains, but it’s at the expense of needing lots of power and potential heat issues.”
In real-world terms, that means if users give the chip taxing tasks and do not have proper cooling, the chip may throttle its own performance to avoid damage.
One added consequence is that Intel is only offering Rocket Lake chips with a maximum of eight cores – the more cores you have the faster a program can run if optimised to share the load between them.
By contrast, AMD’s Ryzen chips go up to 16.
However, AMD’s newest processors remain in short supply.
And one advantage Intel has as its own manufacturer, is that it can relatively easily adjust production to match demand.
By contrast, AMD must vie with Apple, Nvidia and others for TSMC’s capacity.
An online campaign inviting users to post anonymous testimonies of sexual assault and harassment has been growing in popularity.
The collection of more than 4,100 testimonies include accounts from girls aged as young as nine.
The youngsters have written personal accounts of “rape culture”, identifying the school or university the alleged perpetrators attended.
Eton, St Paul’s and Latymer Upper School are among those referenced.
But while these and other private schools commonly appear, there are also examples given of unnamed males from state schools and universities.
The testimonies have been published on Everyone’s Invited website and its Instagram account.
Experiences recounted range from being drugged and raped at parties to explicit images being shared over messaging platforms.
‘It exists everywhere’ “The testimonies expose rape culture and the scale of sexual violence amongst young people in the UK,” Soma Sara, founder of Everyone’s Invited, told the BBC.
“If we start pointing fingers at certain demographics or singling out individuals or institutions, we risk making these cases seem like anomalies… when really this problem is pervasive, it exists everywhere.”
Everyone had a responsibility to take action to expose and eradicate this culture, she added.
“It is so important that teachers and parents are able to learn how to communicate with their children and talk about these issues,” she said.
At least 35 people claim to have been raped in their testimony. In the accounts where a university or school is named, it is unclear when the incidents took place.
The high master of St Paul’s said she had informed children’s services of the Instagram account.
“The school completely condemns the actions described, and takes this matter extremely seriously,” Sally-Anne Huang said in a letter to alumni. “[We] would always investigate fully matters of this nature brought to our attention.”
No names or details had been provided so the cases had not been reported to the police, she added.
The issue of reporting is raised in some of the testimonies.
“I blamed myself and think a lot of people – especially men, would blame me for getting into the situation in the first place,” one user wrote of not reporting her rape at the age of 17.
“I didn’t feel that there was space to, or I was ashamed and I just felt so alone,” another account said.
“I never said anything to someone of authority because I had no faith in an outcome,” one account which cites Goldsmiths, University of London, said.
A spokesman for the university said it has a dedicated anonymous reporting and support website for victims of sexual violence, harassment or misconduct.
Goldsmiths Students’ Union also runs anti-sexual violence training for students, and is currently running remote Consent Matters training to help educate students on consent and healthy relationships.
‘Long way to go’ “Every case of sexual violence is one too many, and universities are committed to becoming safer places to live, work and study,” said a spokesman for Universities UK, which represents UK universities.
“Universities are taking innovative actions to address some of the issues, but there is a long way to go in ending sexual misconduct for good in higher education.”
A spokeswoman for Eton College said it took any specific allegations “extremely seriously” and would report to the relevant authorities “when necessary.”
Eton College is speaking to the founder of the website and looking for ways to work with them in future.
Latymer Upper School, which is one of the most-mentioned schools, said it was “deeply disturbed” by the accounts on the website.
“We have a zero-tolerance approach to behaviours that foster the prevalence of misogyny, sexism, harassment, abuse and assault,” a spokeswoman said, adding all reports of this kind were escalated to police when necessary.
“We take all such issues very seriously and have encouraged anyone affected to come and talk to us directly. We will be listening carefully to them and reflecting on what further steps we should take.”
Cryptocurrency Bitcoin has risen for the first time above $60,000 (£43,100), continuing its record-breaking run.
Bitcoin – which has more than tripled in value since the end of last year – has been powered on by well-known companies adopting it as a method of payment.
But some analysts said this latest surge came in part due to the huge US stimulus package approved this week.
Bitcoin’s total market value last month exceeded $1tn.
However, Bitcoin has a track record of wild price swings and has fallen sharply a number of times since it was created in 2009.
Bitcoin hits new record of $50,000 Man has two guesses to unlock bitcoin fortune Bitcoin consumes ‘more electricity than Argentina’ The recent spikes have been fuelled by big companies.
In February, Elon Musk revealed that his electric carmaker Tesla had bought $1.5bn worth of Bitcoin and would be accepting it as payment for its cars in future.
Mastercard also plans to accept certain cryptocurrencies as a form of payment while BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is exploring ways it can use the digital currency.
The Covid-19 pandemic has also played its part in Bitcoin’s price rise, as more people go online for shopping, moving further away from physical coins and notes.
Critics argue Bitcoin is less of a currency and more of a speculative trading tool that is open to market manipulation.
There is also concern over its environmental impact, with huge amounts of energy needed to conduct transactions.
GameStop’s shares slumped by 40% in 25 minutes on Wednesday, after a few days of frenetic growth.
Earlier that day the share price had soared to nearly $350 (£250) – 100 times more than this time last year.
What does this tell us? One of the wildest stories of the year is still very much alive Many amateur traders are still both making money – and getting hurt Our understanding of what happened in late January, when GameStop’s share price was making headlines around the world, remains incomplete Why is it shocking? In February, the prevailing attitude on Wall Street was the share price was slowly finding its natural position.
It had fallen to about a 10th of its late January market high.
And that spike was widely thought to have been a one-off – hedge funds would never again allow themselves to be blindsided.
How were hedge funds used to drive up the price? Believing GameStop overpriced, hedge funds had “shorted” the company, betting the share price would fall.
Many people on the WallStreetBets Reddit forum realised if together they drove up the price, the hedge funds would have to try to buy back shares, to cut their losses, raising the price still further.
This is known as a short squeeze.
In the past month, I have been told multiple times hedge funds were too clever to allow this again.
But on Wednesday, the share price was approaching its January high.
So what is going on now? The most obvious explanation is hedge funds did not learn their lesson.
But there is far more to this than hedge funds.
Many amateur investors believe GameStop is a great long-term investment.
And far from being a failing, bricks-and-mortar gaming company, it is well placed to move into the digital space, where even a small part of the market would make it hugely valuable.
Any news suggesting progress in this direction is therefore met by much fanfare on WallStreetBets.
On Monday, it was announced successful pet company Chewy co-founder and GameStop investor Ryan Cohen was to join a strategic-planning committee to “identify initiatives that can further accelerate the company’s transformation”.
And that pretty meagre announcement generated a load of buzz on WallStreetBets – which in turn, foot pumped the share price.
To put that into perspective, Amazon’s share price barely moved when Jeff Bezos announced he was stepping aside as chief executive
What has Reddit got to do with it? Some say Reddit – and WallStreetBets in particular – is the perfect place to generate hysteria around a stock.
“Reddit is like the definition of confirmation bias,” Matt Kimbro, from PR company NowADays Media, told me.
“The way the platform works is the content gets served to you based on how many upvotes it has.
“So that means you are only going to hear from the people who are saying what people want to hear.”
Could there be another explanation? Attempts to give America’s economy a shot in the arm during the past year have included sending stimulus cheques to many Americans earning less than $75,000 a year.
And, the theory goes, many retail investors used their cheques to invest in the stock market.
With Joe Biden signing off a $1.9tn (£1.4tn) economic relief bill on Thursday, a load of new cheques are likely to arrive on people’s doorsteps in the coming weeks.
Mr Biden hopes it will stimulate the economy.
But it may have already stimulated GameStop’s share price.
Last month, a Deutsche Bank survey of 430 retail investors found they planned to put 37%, on average, of any stimulus cheques directly into equities.
And many of these retail investors are looking at “meme” stocks such as GameStop.
If you believe this theory, you should buy GameStop shares before the cash is sent out – and then ride the wave up.
And that, in turn, is having a real-world effect on the share price right now.
Are there any other theories? Another theory is that although amateur investors on WallStreetBets are the trigger, bigger institutional investors do the real moving.
They are watching forums such as WallStreetBets very closely.
They know GameStop’s is a bubbly stock, prone to highs and lows.
And they know a lot of the money going in is from amateur investors.
Wall Street sometimes refers to these kinds of investors as “dumb money”.
“Everybody is looking at WallStreetBets now,” Americans for Financial Reform analyst and former trader Alexis Goldstein told me.
“My sense is [hedge funds] are like, ‘Oh, they’re going to get excited again, maybe we can ride the thing up’.
“I just think there are too many eyes on this now.”
Jordan Belfort, whose financial crimes are portrayed in the film The Wolf of Wall Street, is a supporter of amateurs taking on the pros.
But he told me he was now worried for some novice investors.
“What makes this dangerous is that sophisticated investors are smart enough to know when to get out of the situation,” he said.
“While the little guy is typically the one that ends up holding the bag.
“And that’s very dangerous – and sad.”
What happens next? GameStop’s wild ride is set to continue, as people continue to hype the stock.
But legislators are looking on closely.
GameStop may look like an opportunity.
But it also comes with inherent risk.
WallStreetBets is a great description of the group – investing in GameStop has become one collective gamble.
With the stock price high, many people will feel like that gamble has paid off.
But that is certainly not the end of the story.
“Nobody goes to WallStreetBets thinking that this is a safe place to spend money,” Reddit boss Steve Huffman recently told me.
Outside of its mobile-workstation-grade machines, Lenovo already has a “Think”-branded laptop aimed at creative professionals: the ThinkPad X1 Extreme, which competes with elite systems like the Apple MacBook Pro 16, the Dell XPS 15, and the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED. But kit those machines out, and all cost more than $2,000—way more, in the case of the $3,899 Apple and the near-$4,500 HP ZBook Create G7. Lenovo’s small-business-minded ThinkBook 15p (starts at $954.85; around $1,350 as tested) offers creative power and a handsome 4K display at a considerably lower price. Its CPU and GPU aren’t the absolute fastest in its class, but it’s a great value for designers and video editors on a budget who don’t need all the deep manageability and security of a top-end ThinkPad.
A Top Value in Two-Tone Aluminum
The ThinkBook 15p doesn’t qualify as a mobile workstation because it has Nvidia GeForce rather than Quadro graphics, and it lacks independent software vendor (ISV) certifications for specialized design, rendering, and scientific apps. And it doesn’t match the ThinkPad X1 Extreme for a host of reasons. For one, it hasn’t passed MIL-STD durability torture tests as ThinkPads have. Also, its screen uses IPS instead of the more brilliant and expensive OLED technology, and it has no Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port for exotic drive arrays or external graphics. Furthermore, its processor lacks Intel’s vPro manageability for corporate IT departments.
But our test model 20V30020US—between $1,300 and $1,400 at etailers like Walmart, Newegg, and CDW at this writing—is nevertheless a bargain. It gets you a six-core Intel Core i7-10750H CPU, 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, 4GB GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics, a 3,840-by-2,160-pixel non-touch screen, and Windows 10 Pro. Also at this writing, the only configuration at Lenovo.com offered inferior (Core i5, 256GB SSD, 1080p) hardware for a higher “web price” of $1,469, though it was on sale for $954.85. So, like with many Lenovo and competing laptops, you may find the pricing fungible when you look.
At 0.78 by 14.1 by 9.8 inches, the ThinkBook is a match for the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED (0.78 by 14 by 9.8 inches), though a few grams lighter at 4.2 pounds. The Dell XPS 15 is a bit more compact, at 0.71 by 13.6 by 9.1 inches and 4 pounds. Its aluminum case features two shades of gray with monochromatic Lenovo and ThinkBook logos (no flashy chrome) on the lid.
The 15.6-inch screen has medium-thin side borders and thicker top and bottom bezels. The top bezel holds a webcam with a sliding privacy shutter. The camera lacks face-recognition capability, but the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello. (You can turn the PC on and sign in with one press.)
We’re disappointed to see an over-$1,000 laptop without a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 port, but the Lenovo otherwise offers good connectivity. On the left are HDMI and Ethernet ports, USB 3.2 Type-A and Type-C ports, an audio jack, and the connector for the AC adapter. Another USB-A port, an SD card slot, and a security-cable locking notch are on the right. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth are standard.
One of the Brightest
We hope to see 400 nits of brightness from a laptop screen but often settle for 300, so the ThinkBook’s 600-nit panel is a sunny surprise—it’s one of the rare displays that doesn’t look dim if you dial the backlight down a few notches.
Colors from this screen are rich and well saturated—the company says the screen is calibrated to 100% of the Adobe RGB gamut—and contrast is high. Wide viewing angles and crisp details, thanks to 4K native resolution, add to the appeal.
If the screen is a match for its ThinkPad cousins (well, all but the OLED models), the keyboard falls a bit short of that standard. On the upside, the key backlighting is bright, and the numeric keypad and top-row shortcut keys are handy. (The latter bunch includes microphone mute, video call start and end, and access to online support.) The typing feel is snappy, if a bit shallow. A smallish, buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly and takes gentle pressure to click.
On the minus side, you must team the Fn and arrow keys in key combinations to make up for the absence of dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys. Also, the cursor arrows are in the clumsy row I eternally excoriate on HP laptops—with half-size up and down arrows sandwiched between full-size left and right—instead of the proper inverted T.
The 720p webcam captures reasonably well-lit and colorful images, but its focus isn’t sharp and there’s a bit of digital noise. Bottom-mounted speakers produce adequate audio, not particularly loud and missing bass but with clean highs and midtones; you can make out overlapping tracks clearly enough. Dolby software lets you choose music, movie, game, or voice presets or play with an equalizer.
A Lenovo Vantage utility centralizes system-update and security options and hardware settings. Lenovo preloads a McAfee LiveSafe trial and backs the ThinkBook 15p with a one-year warranty.
Performance Testing: Creative Pros Compete
In constructing our benchmark charts below, I chose the MSI Prestige 15 so the ThinkBook 15p wouldn’t be the only contender with a six-core processor. (That said, the Prestige uses a U-series low-power chip, versus the ThinkBook’s heavier-hitting H-series.) The Apple MacBook Pro 16, the Dell XPS 15, and the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XC all have eight-core CPUs (and the last has a mighty GeForce RTX 3070 GPU that makes it the overdog in our graphics tests). All have high-resolution screens—4K for the ThinkBook, the Prestige, and the Aero; 3,840 by 2,400 pixels for the Dell; and 3,072 by 1,920 for the Apple. You can see their basic specs in the table below.
Productivity and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
All four Windows laptops breezed past the 4,000 points that indicate excellent productivity in PCMark 10—they’re overkill for Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Today’s swift SSDs all deliver similarly fast results for everyday tasks in PCMark 8’s storage measurement.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
Six processing cores are rarely a match for eight, but the ThinkBook acquitted itself well in our processing tests. It can’t keep up with the fastest workstations, but it won’t make you wait impatiently for media editing operations.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each task and add up the total. (Lower times are better.) The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters.
The Lenovo wasn’t the quickest laptop ever to complete this exercise, but its brisk performance combines with its bright 4K screen to make it a first-rate image editing platform.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and lets high-end PCs and gaming rigs strut their stuff.
The Gigabyte’s bleeding-edge GeForce RTX 30 series GPU predictably clobbered the competition in this gaming simulation, but the ThinkBook can deliver decent gameplay at 1080p resolution.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene, this one rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine for a second opinion on the machine’s graphical prowess.
With the Dell balking at this test and the MacBook Pro not running our Windows benchmarks, we have only three sets of results to compare. The Lenovo edged out the last-place MSI, far behind the overpowering Aero but fast enough to handle a little after-hours gaming if you’re so inclined.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.
Can a ThinkBook Undercut a ThinkPad?
The much-better-equipped ThinkBook 15p available from a host of online retailers, with a lower price than the model at Lenovo.com, is quite a find, and the 15p as a whole is good enough to make buyers considering a ThinkPad X1 Extreme think twice.
Since it’s intended for content creators, its poor support for multiple monitors is a minus—there’s an HDMI port, but no Thunderbolt connectors, and the USB-C port lacks DisplayPort functionality—but its own screen is extremely attractive. The ThinkBook comes up shy of Editors’ Choice honors, but it is well worth a look from wallet-conscious creatives who need a bright, color-accurate screen, a little GPU muscle, and H-series CPU power at a midrange-laptop price.
It seems whenever you need a certain type of battery at home, it’s always the one you’re out of. When you run to the store, you find a lot of choices and different prices.
But before you buy any batteries, you need to know a few things. First, there are two types of batteries: alkaline and lithium. More to the point, not all batteries are a good value. Does paying more mean you’ll get a better, longer lasting battery?
No, not according to tests from Consumer Reports. They tested 15 brands of AA batteries, including Amazon-branded batteries and Costco’s Kirkland batteries, to see which ones came out on top in the past.
The prestigious magazine found previously that some lower-cost batteries are just as good or nearly as good as the most expensive brands. In fact, you’ll be shocked by how you don’t need to break the bank for high-quality batteries that will keep your Christmas presents humming for weeks or months.
Note: Consumer Reports previously tested batteries in two ways: They used the batteries until they died in toys for one hour a day and in flashlights for four minutes every eight hours. They no longer test batteries, however, but their findings still hold true – you can get some great batteries without having to break the bank, depending on which brand you use.
Alkaline vs. Lithium
First things first. You’ve probably noticed that generally speaking, lithium batteries are expensive.
You might be tempted to buy them, thinking that if they cost more they probably last longer. As it turns out, Consumer Reports has suggested in the past to use lithium batteries sparingly, like in devices that need a quick burst of power or that you don’t use very often.
Note: You can store lithium batteries for up to 15 years. They don’t need to be stored in the refrigerator and they don’t usually spew liquid like older, carbon-zinc batteries did.
Some alkaline batteries performed as well as lithium batteries in the same previous Consumer Reports test. These batteries are typically less expensive. You may want to use them in devices you use a lot, like your TV remote control and your computer’s wireless mouse.
Best value
So, which brands performed best in Consumer Reports’ tests? Both alkaline and lithium batteries were among the best values.
This might surprise you. The top performers included two brands that might have the perception of being “cheap.”
Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand AA alkaline battery had an overall score of 80, out of a possible 100. Unfortunately, while they remain the highest-scored product in terms of branded store batteries, they have since gone up in price – Duracell raised its prices and passed them on to Costco on its private branded products, and that’s what the Kirkland Signature batteries are, after all. They aren’t the best deal any longer, but they still performed the best at the time of this test.
Meanwhile, AmazonBasics Performance AA Alkaline scored a 71 on the original test.
That compares to top-rated brands such as Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA (89), Duracell Quantum AA Alkaline (89) and Rayovac Fusion Advanced AA Alkaline (85).
There are other great deals you can find as well, however, on batteries that weren’t included in the test. For instance, you can check out the Dollar Tree deal on four Sunbeam batters for a $1 a package, which makes them 25 cents apiece. Additionally, Tenergy batteries make for great choices.
Here’s the full list of the most recent Consumer Reports test for your reference:
Lithium batteries
Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA – CR only tested two lithium batteries and this one came out on top. It received an overall score of 89.
Energizer Advanced Lithium AA – This one came in second with an overall score of 82.
Alkaline batteries
Duracell Quantum AA Alkaline – CR tested a total of 13 alkaline batteries and this one is the best. It received an overall score of 89.
Rayovac Fusion Advanced AA Alkaline – Overall score of 85.
CVS Max AA Alkaline – Overall score of 82.
Duracell Coppertop Duralock AA Alkaline – Overall score of 80.
Kirkland Signature (Costco) AA Alkaline – Overall score of 80.
Rite Aid Home AA Alkaline – Overall score of 79.
AmazonBasics Performance AA Alkaline – Overall score of 71.
Walgreens W Alkaline Supercell AA – Overall score of 71.
Energizer ecoAdvanced AA Alkaline – Overall score of 68.
Energizer MAX +PowerSeal AA Alkaline – Overall score of 67.
CVS AA Alkaline – Overall score of 62.
Dynex (Best Buy) High Capacity AA Alkaline – Overall score of 60.
EcoAlkalines AA Alkaline – Overall score of 59.
How to store and use batteries
When you’re not using a device very often, take out the batteries. It’s best to store them in a cool, dry place.
You may also want to wipe off the batteries before you put them into a toy or gadget. When you can, use the same type of battery and brand when you’re using more than one AA battery.
Be careful, too. Keep batteries away from children, including tossing old ones in the trash.
A battery is a device composed of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections to power electrical devices. In this guide we will cover all types of rechargeable batteries as well as non-rechargeable (alkaline) technology.
Rechargeable batteries come in many different shapes and sizes, ranging from button cells to megawatt systems connected to stabilize electrical distribution networks. Several different combinations of electrode and electrolyte materials are used, including lead acid, nickel cadmium (Ni-Cd), nickel metal hydride (NiMH), lithium ion (Li-ion) and lithium ion polymer (Li-ion polymer).
How to choose a battery?
When choosing a battery, you should take the following characteristics into account:
The battery capacity in milliampere-hours (mAh) (calculation method provided below).
The voltage, which is dictated by the materials used for the electrodes and can range from 3.2 to 4 V for lithium batteries and from 1.2 to 2 V for others.
The operating temperature.
The size and shape of the battery.
The type of use.
The price.
All batteries have two common characteristics:
Their voltage, expressed in volts (V): rechargeable batteries are generally 12 V. For larger cells with voltages of 12 V, 24 V or 48 V, separate 2 V cells are used, intended to be assembled in series, and which have a lifespan of about 10 years.
Their capacity, expressed in ampere-hours (Ah): to increase it, several batteries must be connected in parallel.
When you multiply the voltage by the capacity, you get the amount of electricity stored in kilowatt-hours (kWh). For example: A 12 V – 100 Ah battery theoretically contains 12 x 100 = 1,200 Wh = 1.2 kWh.
Depending on these characteristics, you will have to choose the technology, or battery type, and chemical composition: lead-acid, nickel or lithium. There isn’t one battery technology that’s better than the others. Each type of battery has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it is up to the operators of battery-requiring applications to choose the one that best meets their requirements.
Batteries have a predetermined lifespan and number of cycles depending on the climate (ambient temperature) and type of use (depth of discharge). In order to increase their lifespan and optimize their operation, it is advisable to follow the storage and use recommendations.
How do you correctly calculate the size of a battery?
In order to calculate the size of the battery you need, you will have to to calculate the expected consumption in a day and divide this sum (in watts per day) by the direct current voltage (in volts). It is not recommended to let some batteries, especially lead-acid batteries, discharge to less than 50%. To obtain the minimum power you need, divide this result (in amperes/day) by 0.5. Working in 24 V allows you to halve the power required compared to using 12 V, or even divide it by four if you work in 48 V. If you have several devices operating at the same time, it is better to have more power.
Why choose a lithium battery?
A lithium battery is an electrochemical accumulator that uses lithium as a chemical element. Any material containing lithium can be the basis of a lithium-ion battery. It is therefore very difficult to speak generally about this type of battery as high-volume markets (i.e. cameras, mobile phones, etc.) and high-energy markets (i.e. hybrid or electric vehicles, aeronautics, etc.) do not have the same needs in terms of lifespan, cost or power.
There are different types of lithium batteries:
Lithium-ion (Li-ion): very stable batteries with a very high energy density (the highest on the market).
Lithium polymer (Li-Po): this lithium-ion technology uses a polymer electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyte. This electrolyte is formed by semi-solid polymers with high conductivity. This is promising dry technology.
Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4): the energy density of this type of battery is lower than other technologies but it offers excellent lifespan and safety. These batteries are ideal for emergency power supplies (UPS).
Advantages:
High energy density, which reduces the weight and volume of your batteries.
Low maintenance.
Rechargeable.
Long lifespan.
Very low self-discharge.
Wide variety of shapes.
Limited memory effect.
Disadvantages:
More expensive than other types of technology.
Require a protective circuit as they are dangerous.
Strict regulations for transportation.
Wear out even without use.
Cycles: provide approximately 1,300 cycles at 100% discharge.
Applications (all types of lithium batteries):
Can store solar and wind energy.
Can store electric energy.
Autonomous applications (lighting of public spaces, parking meters, security cameras, radar speed signs, traffic lights, etc.).
Mobility (electric bicycles, electric vehicles [utility ou industrial], robotics, aeronautics, drones, boats, etc.)
Portable energy (batteries, converters, power packs).
Why choose a lead battery?
There are two types of lead batteries:
Lead-acid batteries opened with a sulphuric acid electrolyte diluted with water. This type of battery is characterized by the fact that they are reliable and use a technology that has been well-known since the 19th century and is well mastered. These batteries have the disadvantage of being influenced by temperature changes. They also require regular maintenance (refilling with distilled water), as their electrolyte evaporates over time.
Lead-acid batteries closed with a gel electrolyte. They have the advantage of being maintenance-free and easy to handle (no leaks) with stability that’s perfectly controlled by the manufacturer. They generally provide about 400 cycles at 80% discharge.
Advantages:
Reliability.
Good lifespan.
No memory effect.
Inexpensive.
Low self-discharge rate, 5 to 10% per month
Disadvantages:
Heavy.
Low autonomy.
Sensitive to cold.
Require regular maintenance (only open batteries).
Low energy density.
Applications:
Industry.
Equipment for rail and automotive vehicles (including trucks), airplanes, satellites, etc.
Why choose a nickel battery?
Nickel-metal hybrid batteries, known as NiMH batteries, have almost entirely replaced Ni-Cd nickel-cadmium batteries because they are less harmful for the environment. The presence of cadmium in Ni-Cd batteries poses problems for recycling batteries at the end of their life. NiMH batteries have high energy density and can be completely discharged without affecting their lifespan.
They have the disadvantage of being low capacity, which makes them more suitable for portable devices where battery life rarely exceeds a few hours. They generally provide between 500 and 700 cycles at 80% discharge.
Advantages of Ni-Cd batteries:
Very long lifespan, up to 20 years.
Can withstand extreme temperatures (-20°C to +40°C).
Low internal resistance: high energy density, combined with fast charging capacity.
Lighter than lead batteries.
Disadvantages of Ni-Cd batteries :
More expensive.
Pollutant: both nickel and cadmium are toxic. Battery disposal/recycling processes are expensive.
Memory effect, the battery must be completely discharged before recharging.
Average autonomy.
Advantages of NiMH batteries:
Similar to Ni-Cd.
Suffer less from memory effect.
Better autonomy.
Disadvantages of NiMH batteries:
More expensive.
Subject to self-discharge.
Why choose an alkaline battery?
The most common alkaline batteries are zinc manganese dioxide (Zn-MnO2) and lithium manganese dioxide (Li-MnO2). Alkaline batteries are mainly used for domestic purposes. The main formats are cylindrical (LR3, LR6, LR14, LR20) and button cell. Due to their size and weight, alkaline batteries are widely used in low-power portable devices such as remote controls, flashlights, clocks, toys, etc.