Apple has announced that CEO Tim Cook is stepping down.

The tech giant revealed the leadership shakeup today, plotting a course for Cook to leave his position after 15 years in the role. Senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternus will take over as CEO September 1, 2026.

Cook will continue to lead Apple through the summer to ensure a smooth transition process following the decision, which was unanimously approved by the company’s board of directors. He will then become executive chairman of its board of directors.

"It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement. “I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world."

He continued: "John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman."

Cook first joined Apple in 1998 and has helped bring products like Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Watch, and more to market in the years since. While also serving as the face of the iPhone company, it has grown by more than 100,000 employees and added to its installed base by more than 2.5 billion devices.

Ternus’ career path at Apple follows a similar trajectory, as he joined in 2001 before assuming his position as vice president of hardware engineering in 2013. The company says he was instrumental in products like the iPad and AirPods, while also helping to make the Mac what it is today. Most recently, his work at Apple saw him aiding with the launch of the iPhone 17 line, as well as the iPhone Air.

"I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward," Ternus said. "Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century."

As the transition begins, non-executive chairman Arthur Levinson is also set to undergo a change. When Cook takes over as executive chairman of the board of directors, Levinson will become lead independent director. Cook said he would like to thank Levinson for the last 15 years of his work, adding that he looks "forward to working with him in my new role."

Cook signed off with a more personal letter shared on the Apple website. In it, he thanks the tech community for their support since he took over as CEO in 2011 while reassuring them that Ternus is "the perfect person for the job."

"John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity," Cook said. "I am so proud to call him Apple’s next CEO. This company will reach such incredible heights under his leadership, and you will feel his impact in every bit of delight and discovery that grows out of the products and services to come. I can’t wait for you to get to know him like I do."

Photo by Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images.

Photo by Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

The Asus TUF Gaming A14 has been one of the best budget gaming laptops of the last few years. Not only is the A14 lightweight and easy on the wallet, it’s also packed quite a punch in terms of performance and battery life.

And, while the TUF Gaming A14 has historically been a fantastic bargain, providing incredible performance for the price, that’s unfortunately changed due to the current memory shortage. This year’s A14 is quite a bit pricier than its predecessors, which makes it less attractive as a student laptop.

Asus does make up for inflated hardware costs a bit by switching up the A14 formula. Rather than pairing an Nvidia discrete GPU with an AMD APU, Asus went all-in on AMD’s powerful Ryzen AI Max+ chipset with powerful Radeon 8060S integrated graphics. Asus started playing around with the Ryzen AI Max+ chips in gaming laptops last year, but the A14 is its first major gamble in creating a gaming laptop with solely integrated graphics.

Design and Features

The TUF Gaming A14’s chassis is very much a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The chassis has been practically identical throughout the A14’s life cycle these last few years with the same small hinge bump, same keyboard, and same display panel. As gaming laptops go, the A 14 is one of Asus’ more budget-friendly designs with a stripped-down aesthetic.

The most immediate aspect of the A14’s design is its lightweight build. Weighing just over 3 pounds, the A14 doesn’t feel like a gaming laptop. It’s relatively thin, ultra lightweight, and easy to carry. This makes it perfect for college students who need a powerful laptop for STEM or creative workloads, but still need to take that laptop to class. And with MIL-STD-810H certification, the A14 should be as durable as it is lightweight.

Unlike some of the flashier laptops Asus puts out every year, the TUF Gaming A14 is a sleek gray gaming laptop with minimal keyboard lighting and no external RGB lightbars, which makes it fantastic for students and professionals. The top cover lid and bottom panel are made out of lightweight aluminum while the sides of the chassis and the keyboard deck are made of soft-touch plastic.

The A14’s keyboard is also identical to previous models, with large keys, adequate keyspacing, and a satisfying click activation. The mechanical touchpad has a smooth feel and an oversized footprint for fine-tuned precision.

The display is a 14-inch, 16:10, 2,560 x 1,600, 165Hz panel that’s been used on previous versions of the laptop. It’s not the most jaw-dropping display out there, but the A14’s matte panel features crisp colors, sharp blacks, and enough brightness (just under 400 nits) to cut through any indoor glare you might run into. The A14 is rated to 100% coverage on the sRGB color gamut, so it’s ideal for gaming or video streaming but may not be the most accurate for in-depth color grading.

However, all versions of the TUF Gaming A14 have been sleek and durable with satisfying keyboards, bright crisp displays, and enough ports for all your accessories. What’s surprising this year is that the A14 isn’t any lighter despite ditching the discrete GPU. Just goes to show how well optimized the A14’s design has been.

In terms of ports, the TUF A14 has two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 hook-up, and an audio jack along the right and left sides of the chassis. That’s more than enough connection options to set up the A14 as a fully-fledged game station complete with a monitor and mouse, should you want a more permanent setup. And none of them are in difficult spots, so you won’t need to go hunting along the back of the laptop for the correct port.

The audio system on the A14 is perhaps its weakest design feature. Boasting a dual-speaker system with Dolby Atmos tuning, the audio is powerful, but the rear-facing speaker design does mean the audio can get a bit muddied. This is particularly true when the fans kick on during a gaming session. You’re better off connecting a solid pair of studio headphones for any intense gaming rather than rely on the built-in speaker system.

Budget Isn’t So Budget Anymore

Priced at $2,199 the 2026 TUF A14 is a far cry from its 2024 starting price tag of $1,399. The 2025 model was also a bit pricier at $1,699 but still felt affordable. $2,199 isn’t that bad when compared to many of the current generation gaming laptops, but it’s about $1,000 too expensive to be considered a “budget” anything. The 2026 A14 is still thin, powerful, and lightweight but it’s a far cry from affordable.

Software and Features – Armoury Crate

Asus Armoury Crate has grown a bit bloated over the years, particularly after the launch of the Asus ROG Ally, which required additional features like a game library management tool. Unfortunately, on a gaming laptop, that makes Armoury Crate a heavier load than it should be for software that’s mostly useful for adjusting power profiles and controlling RGB lighting.

Asus has also recently added an AI image generation tool into Armoury Crate inside the Aura Wallpaper manager, which just makes the software more bloated and sluggish to respond. It’s a somewhat useful tool for customizing your laptop wallpaper, but other image generators or wallpaper aggregators will likely get you a better design without all the extra software bloat. Thankfully, you don’t need to download all of the resources for the AI image generator, and it’s probably for the best that you pretend it doesn’t exist.

The Scenario Profiles, Macros, and Display Settings are the most useful tabs in Armoury Crate. Though, you can handle most of the thermal and lighting management features from the home screen, which is one key benefit of Armoury Crate over some other laptop management tools like Razer Synapse or Lenovo Legion Space.

Performance and Gaming

In terms of general performance and content creation workflows, there isn’t much you can throw at the TUF Gaming A14 that it can’t handle. It may not be the most expensive hardware on the market, but the A14 has enough raw power to compete with much more robust hardware. The A14’s Ryzen AI Max+ 392 APU is a 12-core, 24-thread beast of an APU, after all.

Unfortunately, Asus loads the TUF Gaming A14 with 32GB of RAM. That’s perfectly average for a gaming laptop, if not slightly more RAM than you tend to find in budget systems. But, because the Radeon 8060S is an integrated GPU, it needs to share system memory with the processor, something a discrete graphics chip like the RTX 4070 doesn’t have to do. That’s one of the reasons why the Ryzen AI Max+ 392 supports up to 128GB of memory, after all.

This is why the A14 doesn’t come as close to RTX 4070 mobile performance as some other iterations of the Ryzen AI Max+ APU. Because, with just 32GB of RAM total, the 8060S has less memory to play with, whereas the RTX 4070 has 8GB of faster VRAM that it doesn’t have to share.

Still, you get solid gaming performance that can handle modern titles at 1080p or 1600p on medium to high settings depending on the game. In Baldur’s Gate 3, the A14 can easily jack the settings up to 1600p Ultra without issue, and Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail runs smoothly at 1600p High (Laptop). But Monster Hunter Wilds runs best at 1080p Medium.

In my testing, Assassin’s Creed Shadows runs at 60fps on 1080p Ultra High if you enable 2x frame generation, but the A14 struggles to scrape past 30fps without FSR frame-gen. Meanwhile, games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition can’t even hit 30fps on the highest settings at 1080p. Playing either game on lower graphics presets does get you better performance, but you are losing out on those glossy ray-traced reflections and lighting.

If you want to play your games at the highest settings possible, a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU like the Alienware Aurora 16X or the Razer Blade 16 are going to get you far better performance, but especially in more graphics-intense games like Metro Exodus. Even though the A14’s Radeon 8060S is a powerful integrated GPU, it doesn’t have the raw horsepower of a discrete RTX 50-series GPU. It’s a bit more comparable to an RTX 4050 or RTX 4060, so the Aurora 16X’s RTX 5070 and the Razer Blade 16’s RTX 5090 will always outperform the A14.

However, if you’re a more casual gamer, or you’re willing to drop your graphics settings and resolution in favor of a lighter, thinner laptop, the A14 is more than powerful enough for some cozy game sessions.

Battery Life

The TUF Gaming A14 has always been a gaming laptop with solid battery life. And despite the specs changes Asus made this year, the A14 can still get solid longevity on a single charge.

The A14 easily survives a full 8-hour work day with my standard workload of multiple browser tabs, photo editing software, and a few background apps like Spotify and Discord. On the UL Procyon Battery Life benchmark, the A14 averaged over 9 hours of battery life, with the longest run lasting 11 hours and 34 minutes.

As you might expect from a powerful x86 laptop, however, battery life dropped drastically when gaming. I got about 2 hours of Baldur’s Gate III in before the battery dropped to critical levels, which isn’t bad. It’s a bit below a gaming handheld, but the A14 is a far more powerful device than your average handheld gaming PC, so that’s to be expected.

Madeline (She/Her) is a contributing writer at IGN. She’s been writing about comics, tech, and gaming since 2013. Her byline has appeared at sites like Laptop Mag, PCMag, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, CGMagazine, and Bleeding Cool.

The Epic Games Store is almost 10 years old, launching all the way back in 2018. And while it's kind of come a long way since then – it has a search function now – it's still exponentially worse than Steam, which it was built to dethrone.

To this day, Epic's storefront is slow and devoid of the features that transformed Steam from an annoying piece of DRM you had to install with Half-Life 2 into the community-focused storefront that's nearly synonymous with "PC gaming” itself. It's little wonder, then, that an Epic employee told Polygon that most users "come for the free games, then leave." If Epic really does want to dethrone Steam, then I can't help but wonder if it has its priorities completely backwards.

Publishers Aren’t The Ones Buying Games

When the Epic Games Store first launched, a lot was said about how it would finally be the PC storefront to actually pose a challenge to Steam. We here at IGN even said that Epic’s store actually had a chance to dethrone Valve. But eight years later, that really hasn’t happened, even if it still gets a few exclusives here and there.

A lot of that comes down to Epic’s philosophy around selling games. You see, every platform – whether it’s Valve, Apple, Google, or any other – takes a slice of revenue from games and apps sold on its storefront. Epic’s approach was to offer a much more favorable revenue share – just 12% – compared to the larger margins taken by most other storefronts. (Valve takes a 24% cut of every game sold on Steam, for example.) The problem is, that doesn’t mean much to the average gamer that just wants to play games.

If it did, Epic’s market share would account for a much bigger slice of the pie. But despite Valve’s apparent greed here, Steam was estimated to generate $1.6 billion in December 2025 alone, according to Alinea Analytics – more than the $1.16 billion that Epic made in the whole of 2025.

It’s no secret why Valve sells so many more games than Epic, it has a huge install base of loyal users that have been using Steam for years. For as long as it’s existed, Epic has been desperately trying to carve out its own dedicated userbase, mostly by giving away free games every couple of weeks. And while dangling free game keys in front of people’s faces is a good way to get people to download the app once, it doesn’t do much to keep people coming back, especially when the games store itself is kind of a mess.

Need To Go Faster

IGN interviewed Steve Allison, VP and GM of the Epic Games Store back in February, where he told us that Epic is investing in making the Epic Games Store a better experience for users. Specifically, the company is focused on making the launcher “feel fast and snappy and just be what you expect, frankly.” To its credit, Epic seems to have a finger on the pulse of what makes its platform such a slog to use.

To this day, the Epic Games Store takes forever to load, and once you start scrolling through your library, you often have to wait for a couple seconds for the next batch of games to load. That would be bad enough for a brand new app, but the Epic Games Store has been around for nearly a decade at this point, and even though computers are orders of magnitudes faster than they were in 2018, it still takes way too long to load my library, even when I have it set to a list view.

Epic claims that the new, more efficient store will launch in June, and that’ll be awesome if it’s true, but the store doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation for improving its storefront on time. Back in 2019, Epic released a roadmap of features that would be added to the app, thankfully preserved by Wccftech, and while a lot of those features did end up getting worked in, there are still features like user reviews that are nowhere to be found.

Playing Catch-Up

While Epic runs in circles, trying to improve its game store, Valve isn’t exactly sitting on its hands. Steam is still incredibly snappy, especially when you’re just scrolling through your library, and it continues to add actually useful features. I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, files were found in Steam’s beta that suggests that the platform will help you figure out exactly how well games will run on your PC.

It’s this focus on making PC gaming more user-friendly that has turned Steam into the juggernaut it is today. And now, it’s at the point where you can argue that Steam is more than just some program that you use to buy video games. You can just use it to buy games, but there’s a reason that there’s a bold “Community” tab that lives at the top of the window.

Steam has everything from message boards, to user reviews, to extremely customizable profiles. Hell, I remember back when Trading Cards came out in 2013 – I was obsessed, for like six months, on collecting them and raising my Steam Level, just so I could add more bullshit to my profile. Features like this are probably why the Valve logo is often shown alongside the Playstation and Xbox symbols whenever a multiplatform game is released. Steam just kind of is PC gaming.

If Epic wants to compete with that, that’s awesome. By all means release an updated Epic Games Store that makes people actually want to use the platform, because the PC gaming scene absolutely needs more competition. But that competition needs to actually compete. Epic Games can continue dangling free games in front of people, but expecting that gamers are just going to flock to its store, even though it has a worse UX and no community features, is just delusional.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

If you want to make the most of your PlayStation 5 or PS5 Pro experience, the right accessories can take your gaming from great to amazing. There are loads of PS5 accessories to consider, and not all of them are big ticket items. We've done the research, testing, and reviews to help guide you the perfect add-ons for your console that you won't regret buying. Below are the very best gaming accessories we recommend buying if you own a PS5 or PS5 Pro.

TL;DR – These Are the Best PS5 Accessories:

Accessories can of course enhance your gameplay, but they can also add a level of convenience above the console alone. Things like a charging station for your DualSense controllers can make a significant difference, cutting out the need to dig out cables or realizing too late that your controller is out of juice. A good SSD can significantly increase the storage space so you won't have to be stuck in a cycle of deleting old games to add new ones. Or maybe you're just not a huge fan of the design. A faceplate is simple way to switch up the aesthetic. There are seemingly endless ways to customize your PS5.

Looking for savings? Be sure to check out the best PlayStation 5 game deals.

Best SSD for PS5

Corsair MP600 Pro LPX

Best Headset for PS5

SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless

Best VR for PS5

PlayStation VR2

Best Controller for PS5

PS5 PlayStation DualSense Edge Wireless Controller

Best Controller Charging Station for PS5

PowerA Twin Charging Station

Best TV for PS5 and PS5 Pro

65" C4 OLED Evo

Best Faceplates for PS5

Dbrand Darkplates 2.0

Best Racing Wheel for PS5

Logitech G29 Driving Force Racing Wheel

Best Thumbsticks for DualSense Controllers

KontrolFreek Call of Duty: Warzone Performance Thumbsticks

Best Remote for PS5

PS5 Media Remote

Combine your PS5 and TV controls into one remote and navigate your favorite streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, and Spotify through your console. You can also use it for watching 4K Blu-rays if you happen to have a disc drive installed. You can use the remote to power on your PS5, so you don’t need to dig around looking for your DualSense controller or take it off its charging stand.

If you’re watching TV, you can adjust the volume and power settings, as long as your TV is compatible, for added convenience. The PS5 Media Remote might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s certainly useful if your PS5 or PS5 Pro is your main streaming device.

Best for PS5 Remote Play

PlayStation Portal

Best HDMI Cable for PS5

Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable

How to Choose the Right PS5 Accessories

There isn’t really a one-size-fits-all answer that can tell you which accessories are an added value for you becuase every gamer is individual. One person’s treasure is another's rage-inducing nightmare.

That said, the one thing you'll always want to triple check when buying an accessory for your PS5 or PS5 is compatibility. Is that hard drive fast enough for your PS5 games to work, rather than just store them? Do those headphones take full advantage of Tempest 3D Audio? Additionally, how is this accessory going to help me enjoy games more?

As with all things, make sure to check the reviews before pulling the trigger. There are plenty of cheaper accessory alternatives out there, but they’re often cheap for a reason. If gaming is a hobby you take seriously, you want to make sure you’re purchasing the best PS5 accessories possible, not only to maximize your enjoyment, but also to ensure that they'll last you for at least as long as the lifespan of the console itself.

PS5 Accessories FAQ

Does the PS5 need additional cooling?

The PS5 does a perfectly good job of cooling without the need for any additional third-party PS5 accessories to help it. While there are plenty of PS5 cooling fans and stands out there, in honesty, they’re more likely to be a hindrance to the console's natural cooling ability, rather than assist it.

Can I buy a USB hard drive for my PS5?

If you want to keep things simple and install a USB hard drive rather than a NVMe SSD, you can, but it does come at a cost. Due to the loading requirements of next-gen games, PS5 games require much faster write speeds of 5Gbps or higher to run. Sadly, USB drives cannot reach these speeds yet. That means a USB hard drive could only store PS5 games. However, it can be used to play PS4 games without needing to move them to the console.

Which brand makes the best PS5 accessories?

Most of the best PS5 accessories come from Sony themselves. In fact, Sony is well known for creating tons of great accessories, all designed to take full advantage of the console’s latest capabilities in order to improve your gaming experience.

When do PS5 accessories go on sale?

Although the PS5 itself doesn't go on sale very often, PlayStation accessories will often see discounts throughout the year. The general rule of thumb is that the best times to buy a PS5 are also the best times to buy accessories for the console. Some of the more popular events where you're guaranteed to find discounts on gaming accessories are Amazon Prime Day in July and Black Friday in November There's also PlayStation's Days of Play sale, happening now through mid-June.

Pragmata is Capcom’s second RE Engine-based game in just a few months, and while the gameplay feels like it was ripped straight out of the Xbox 360 era, the game looks much better. And, because it’s a relatively small game built on the engine Capcom built for Resident Evil, it runs extremely well across a wide range of hardware. Hell, it even looks pretty good on the Nintendo Switch 2.

Most gaming PCs should be able to run Pragmata with little issue, but just like with any PC game, the trick is finding that perfect middle ground between image quality and performance. For anyone with a high-end machine packing something like an RTX 5080, this will just mean cranking up all the settings, turning path tracing and frame generation on and just going wild, but for most people, some light tweaking can go a long way here.

The Ray Tracing Problem

Pragmata largely takes place on a giant space station on the moon or something – I don’t know, I didn’t really pay much attention to the story. Because of this setting, there are a ton of reflective surfaces and cool lighting effects that really lend themselves to ray tracing. And, well, yeah, ray tracing does make the game look much better, but only if you’re lucky enough to have a high-end Nvidia card.

There are basically two types of ray tracing effects on offer in Pragmata, a ‘ray tracing’ toggle which will enable RT Global Illumination and Reflections, and Path Tracing, which completely replaces the rasterized lighting engine with ray tracing. You’d think that in a game with so many shiny surfaces, the regular ray traced reflections would go a long way to enhancing the look of the game, but in some places it actually makes the game worse.

This is very apparent in the Hideout, the Firelink Shrine in space that you return to whenever you die or have to make some upgrades. The metallic floors have a dark gray reflective sheen to them, which looks awesome when combined with the path traced lighting. But on the lower ray traced settings, the reflections from the indirect lighting are incredibly noisy.

There’s one hallway I found a couple hours into the game where this setting makes it look like there are raindrops falling on the floor, even though we’re indoors… in space. Curiously, this type of floor looks better with no ray tracing at all, which is excellent news for anyone that wants to maximise performance anyway.

It’s a shame, though, because when you’re in an environment with a lot of more transparent reflective surfaces, the ray tracing genuinely looks fantastic. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s worth the trade off of noisy, static-y floors. A solution for this, at least for Nvidia graphics cards, would be the DLSS Ray Reconstruction setting, but that’s conveniently grayed out unless you’re using path tracing.

That’s likely because it does come with a performance cost, but it would go a long way to making the baseline ray tracing look better, especially when combined with upscaling.

However, if you have a mid-to-high-end Nvidia graphics card, I’d recommend at least trying the path tracing, because it looks incredible. Unfortunately, you can’t even turn it on with an AMD graphics card, even with FSR.

Pragmata Recommended Graphics Settings

With how easy it is to run Pragmata, most people are going to be able to run the game at high settings, even with modest graphics cards. For instance, with the RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p, you can get a good 97 fps with ray tracing enabled, and with no DLSS upscaling. It does struggle a bit when you try to turn on path tracing, with the frame rate dropping down to 44 fps, especially since that card is a bit too old to support frame generation.

Instead, the question comes down to what your performance goals for pragmata actually are. If you’re good with 60 fps, most people will be able to reach that by just turning the preset to “Quality” or “Balanced” and calling it a day. But PC gaming is, at its core, all about tweaking things to get it running just right, and you can tune Pragmata to give you close to the "Balanced" preset when it comes to performance, while looking extremely similar to the “Quality Preset.”

In the interest of time, it’s best to start with the “Balanced” preset and tweak it from there. Luckily, the settings menu has a little preview image that shows you roughly what each setting is changing, along with the impact to your VRAM and the GPU itself. My goal here is to keep image quality as good as possible, particularly in combat, while maximising the frame rate.

Global Illumination Quality: Medium

In most modern games, lighting is one of the biggest drags on GPU performance. There are three different settings, and the Balanced preset sets the global illumination quality to high. However, while this does make a big difference to atmospheric lighting and really enhances reflections, it is quite heavy on your performance.

By my measurements, moving from the high setting to medium will save you a solid 11% performance. That will give you a bit of a hit to image quality, to be sure, but with the RTX 5080 it took me from 101 fps with max lighting to 113 fps at 4K. That’s worth it.

Hair Quality: Medium

For some reason, modern developers keep trying to work some version of fancy hair technology into games, and every time it comes with a huge cost to performance. The same is true here, too. The worst part is that there’s only really hair on one character, so it feels completely unnecessary.

My gut tells me that most people should turn this setting down to low, but it genuinely looks bad when turned all the way down. I’d pick the middle ground here, and set it to medium. Or, if you just care about maximising frame rate, and especially if you’re on a handheld, just turn this all the way down.

Texture Quality: It Depends

When you select the “Balanced” preset, it’s going to default to the “High: 2GB” setting for textures. That’s fine if you have a low-end card, but my advice would be to crank this setting all the way up and only lower it if your game starts stuttering. Texture Quality only affects game performance if you’re running out of VRAM, so the right setting really depends on what kind of GPU you’re using.

If you have at least 8GB of VRAM, just leave it maxed out, unless you’re playing at 4K. And, really, if you’re playing at 4K, you should have a GPU with more than 8GB anyway.

Texture Filtering: It Also Depends

Just like with Texture Quality, Texture Filtering only really affects your performance if you’re running out of VRAM. Turn it all the way up if you have the VRAM budget for it, and only turn it down if you start stuttering.

Mesh Quality: Max

Mesh Quality is another VRAM budget question. It changes how 3D models are rendered, and I prefer to keep character models looking as high-end as possible. Especially with all the weird robots that you’ll be going against in Pragmata. Max out mesh quality, and then turn it down to “High” if you’re over your VRAM budget.

Shadow Quality: High

Ok, hear me out. The Balanced preset sets shadow quality to medium, which does save quite a bit of performance. But with the way that the lighting is set up in this game, there are shadows all over the place, and moving it up to high just goes that extra little way to making it look better, especially since we turned down Global Illumination earlier.

Bumping up the shadows like this hardly touches the actual processing load of the game, and only slightly increases the VRAM demand. So, if you’re right up against your VRAM limit, absolutely keep shadows at medium. For everyone else though, you probably won’t notice the performance hit of High Shadows.

Shadow Cache: On

The shadow cache is simply a toggle that lets the game store shadow information in your VRAM. If you have the spare VRAM, this will greatly improve performance, because the game has less to dig for whenever it’s drawing a scene. For most people that aren’t VRAM-limited, turning this off will basically just shave 10% off of your fps. Nobody wants that. Leave this on unless you’ve already turned everything else off and you still need VRAM.

Contact Shadows: On

This is another toggle, and it changes the way shadows are cast on 3D objects. Turning it off makes basically no impact on your performance, so I’d just leave it on. The game looks a tiny bit better with them enabled, and unless you’re really scraping by with low-end hardware, it’s going to run fine.

Effects Quality: Max

This is largely why I turned down the global illumination earlier. Listen, after you fight basically any enemy, it explodes into a mass of fire, metal and some kind of blue goo. It looks really freaking cool. You can save a bit of performance by lowering the effects quality, but you’d really be missing out.

This is definitely one of those things that come down to personal preference, though. So, if you care more about environmental lighting than explosions, then turn up Global Illumination instead. I, for one, wouldn’t trade these robot explosions for the world.

Video Quality: It Depends on What Resolution You’re Playing At

There are only two options for Video Quality, and it only affects cutscenes. If you’re playing at 1080p, keep the video quality at 1080p. And, then, if you’re playing at 4K, turn it up, it’s that simple.

Of course, turning up the cutscene quality will lower your frame rate in cutscenes a bit, but it’s a cutscene, it doesn’t need to be running at 120 fps. I said it.

Anti-Aliasing: FXAA+TAA

The right setting for anti-aliasing is going to depend entirely on whether or not you’re using upscaling. If you’re turning on DLSS or FSR, then you don’t really need the game’s built-in Anti-Aliasing. However, if you’re intent on playing the game at native resolution, just enable FXAA+TAA or turn Anti-Aliasing off if you’re really struggling with performance.

Ambient Occlusion - SSAO

Ambient Occlusion is one of the most obvious places to cut in order to save performance. By turning it off, you’ll get around 5% more frames, but the game will lose a lot of subtle detail in various objects. I prefer to keep it on, but this is one of the first things you should turn off if you’re having trouble hitting 60 fps.

Bloom: Personal Preference

Bloom doesn’t really affect your performance, so keep it on or turn it off depending on how much you like the effect.

Screen Space Reflections: On

Because of the sheer amount of reflective surfaces in Pragmata, Screen Space Reflections make a huge impact on how the game looks. There are so many glass panels and shiny floors that look really cool with this enabled. That said, turning it off will probably improve your frame rate by 10%, so it makes a lot of sense to disable it if you’re trying to maximise frame rate at all costs.

Subsurface Scattering: Off

Subsurface Scattering changes the way that light interacts with skin, making it look much more realistic. This was a huge deal in something like Resident Evil: Requiem, because everything was human or human-adjacent. In Pragmata, though? It really only affects Diana, and you’ll be spending most of the time looking at the back of her head as she rides on your shoulder hacking robots. It doesn’t affect performance that much, but it’s still not really worth the performance cost.

Motion Blur, Lens Flare, Lens Distortion and Depth of Field

All of these are post-processing effects that hardly impact game performance. They do change the overall presentation, but it’s really down to your personal taste here. I despise motion blur, so I turn that off in every game that’ll let me, but really it’s up to you.

How Do These Settings Affect Performance?

To test my settings for Pragmata, I found a section relatively early on, with a bunch of lasers and glass surfaces, along with a little combat encounter at the end to give me a good idea how well it would perform.

I then tested the game at three separate resolutions, with three different graphics cards to get a rough idea of how the game would perform. I ran the game with an RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p, an AMD Radeon RX 9070 at 1440p and an RTX 5080 at 4K.

I was most surprised by how well the RTX 3060 Ti held up. That graphics card is getting quite old at this point, but with my tweaked settings, it was able to get around 100 to 110 fps in this section. The GPU was even able to stretch up to 1440p, getting around 60-70 fps at that resolution.

Then, the Radeon RX 9070 absolutely soars at 1440p, able to get between 130 and 140 fps with my recommended settings.This GPU was also able to stretch up to 4K, getting around 70 to 80 fps.

At 4K, the RTX 5080 is able to swing between 100 and 110 fps with the recommended settings, with plenty of space left over for ray or path tracing if you really want to make the game look better. Though, with the latter, I’d suggest setting DLSS to the Performance setting.

To test each of the presets themselves, though, I tossed in an RTX 5090 and set the resolution to 4K to see how much of an impact each change would have on the massive second boss battle. This is a scene with a lot of complicated effects and lighting, so the differences are really going to show themselves. It’s important to keep in mind though, that every time I did this boss fight was slightly different, so there’s some wiggle room in these results.

The minimum preset is what you’d be playing on a handheld, and it’s no surprise that the RTX 5090 was able to get a solid 195 fps, but the game looks incredibly flat and lifeless. That’s kind of fitting for a game about 3D printed robots, though.

The balanced preset brings the average frame rate down to around 126 fps, but it already looks much better. The reflections in the little puddles around Times Square make the game pop, and the boss’s attack effects actually have some meat to them.

What’s interesting, though, is that my recommended settings, even though I turned up effects settings and shadows, the frame rate actually goes up to an average of 129 fps. That’s not a huge difference by any means, but it does make all the little explosions look much better, without having too much of an impact on the ambient details of the scene.

Then, of course as we start turning up the settings the frame rate starts to drop. Bringing it to the Quality preset enables ray tracing, and the frame rate drops all the way down to 115 fps. That’s still a very solid frame rate, and you can always enable DLSS to bring the performance up a bit higher.

Finally, maxing out every setting with path tracing comes with a pretty massive performance hit. However, the game won’t actually let you turn on path tracing without DLSS, so that softens the blow a little bit. But, even with DLSS set to balanced and without frame generation, the RTX 5090 only gets an average of 59 fps here. So, you should really only turn this setting on if you’re going to set DLSS to performance, and even then you might need to turn on frame generation to fully saturate your monitor.

At the end of the day, Pragmata runs extremely well no matter what hardware you’re running it on. Even on the RTX 3060 Ti, which is almost six years old at this point, you’re able to get nearly 120 fps at 1080p, which is going to be more than enough for most people.

But even though the game is extremely accessible for lower-end hardware, it still has plenty of room to scale up, so that even the most high-end gaming rigs can stretch their legs a bit. Tuning Pragmata really does come down to what you want out of the game, I’m just glad that it’s scalable enough to actually let people make meaningful choices about its performance.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

The very good Turtle Beach Stealth Pro wireless headset now has a sequel, Turtle Beach has announced. Called the Stealth Pro 2, these multiplatform over-ear headphones have been redesigned with a surprising new design, larger 60mm drivers, hi-res 24-bit, 95kHz audio, and much longer battery life than the previous model. Like their predecessor, they won't come cheap when they launch, on May 17, for $349.99, or $20 more than the originals.

Also like the first Stealth Pro, the Pro 2 will connect via Bluetooth or the company's own proprietary 2.4GHz signal using an included dongle. They feature two removable batteries that the company says will get up to 40 hours to a charge, or almost four times the 12 hours promised by the original. They're closed-back headphones with an anodized aluminum-and-soft-touch exterior for the cans and a tubular headband with mesh fabric that's clearly inspired by Apple's AirPods Max, which is a weird comparison for a gaming headset.

We liked the sound of the originals in our review, and it seems like Turtle Beach has tried to one-up things with its hi-res 24-bit/96kHz output and Dolby Atmos support. That's pushed through those 60mm drivers, which are a 10mm bump from the previous headphones' 50mm ones and feature dedicated woofers and tweeters. They include a removable, 9mm microphone as well as built-in beamforming mics if you don't want a little stalk tickling your mustache. The company also says the headphones feature "AI-based noise reduction," which, you know, could mean anything. The Swarm 2 companion app lets you tweak EQ settings for the speakers and microphone, among other things.

Turtle Beach is actually releasing two versions of the headphones – one for for Xbox One and Series X/S consoles that also works with the PS4, PS5, and Windows 10-and-up PCs, and another that's specifically for PC but also works with Sony's consoles. If you've got them connected to multiple platforms, you can switch between them using a button on the headphones. You'll even be able to listen to two audio sources at once, as the headset supports simultaneous 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.

The Stealth Pro 2 headphones are available for preorder from the Turtle Beach website today, ahead of their official May 17 launch.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

Belkin has announced the Stage Creator Kit, a bundled collection of creator-focused hardware that includes a telescoping tripod, a magnetic phone holder, and Belkin's compact set of two clip-on, wireless microphones, and a USB-C receiver. The all-in-one set costs $129.99, and is available now on Belkin's website.

The set is fairly complete, if your needs are few. The adjustable tripod is compact, but stands up to 5.5 feet with its telescoping legs fully extended. It's lightweight, and can support up to 4.4lbs, and very adjustable with pan, tilt, swivel, and leveling capability. It has a 1/4-inch screw at the top for attaching various mounts, too, including the magnetic, MagSafe-style one that comes with the kit for slapping something like an iPhone onto.

Belkin's wireless microphones are about the size of a small stack of quarters and come pre-paired with a receiver that you plug into the USB-C port on your phone or computer, whichever you're using. They feature built-in noise cancellation, transmit 24-bit, 48KHz audio, work "up to 100 meters in an unobstructed outdoor environment without interference," and Belkin says they'll last up to 36 hours on a charge, although that's including the case. The mics themselves offer up to six hours of use each.

I got a little hands-on time with the kit. I'm no creator with a capital C, but I do stream games from time to time using my phone as my camera and a Logitech Yeti GX, which I'd hold up against any of our favorite game streaming microphones. I found that the mics, which Belkin sells separately, are pleasantly plug-and-play, requiring no setup besides plugging the receiver into my computer, clipping the mic onto my shirt, and turning it on. You can attach the mic to something using magnetic plastic clips, although the attachment is weak; I wouldn't use them on clothes if you plan to move around a lot. Thankfully, they've also got a built-in, rigid clip that's a lot sturdier and just wide enough for sliding them onto something like a shirt. Alternatively, the mics have a hole for slipping a necklace chain through if you'd rather go that route.

I wouldn't use Belkin's wireless microphones for recording music, though. I tried that, too, and they were a little too muddy and clipped – but they're easily good enough for other, less demanding purposes, if you don't already have something better.

The adjustability of the stand made it a great replacement for the very janky setup I normally use, although it's so lightweight that I wouldn't feel good putting a nice DSLR camera on it, even one that's under the 4.4lb weight limit – it really feels mainly aimed at the portability of a smartphone. Still, in the event that the stand tips over, the company says in an image on the Creator Kit's page that it "includes standard 2-year coverage and up to $2,500 in connected equivalent coverage."

It's been a rough year for gaming hardware. Devices from across the industry are going up in price, but there has to be a limit. And, with the Lenovo Legion Go 2 reaching $1,999 at Best Buy, I think we've reached the limit for handheld gaming PCs.

And listen, I get the appeal. While I may have given the Lenovo Legion Go 2 a somewhat middling review, that was mostly because of the already-high asking price it had back in September, before the RAM crisis kicked off in earnest. Everything else about the handheld is solid: It still has the best display in a handheld and I love those silly removable controllers. But, even then it was a hard sell compared to the Xbox Ally X, which was $300 cheaper than the Legion Go 2's starting price with the Z2 Extreme.

Fast forward to today, though, and the Xbox Ally X still hasn't gone up in price. You can still get it for $999, for pretty comparable specs to the now $1,999 Legion Go 2. At that point, you're paying half as much, for what, a slightly smaller screen and the same performance? I don't know about you, but that's an easy sell for me.

Of course, things are a little bit more complicated these days than they were 6-7 months ago. The Steam Deck is still sold out, which means the floor for handheld gaming PCs is higher than it used to be. But even still, you can get the non-X Xbox Ally for $539 at Best Buy, or even the Legion Go S for $649 with the Z2 Go. Neither of these systems will quite get you cutting edge handheld performance, but they're both pretty comparable with the Steam Deck, especially if you get the Legion Go S with SteamOS.

Over the next few months, as we wait for the market to stabilize, I expect that there will be plenty more devices that will be going up in price. After all, the PS5 and PS5 Pro just had huge price jumps last month, and the whole appeal of consoles is that they're supposed to be a less expensive and complicated way to play games.

But there has to be a limit to what companies can charge for this gaming hardware. I'm sure there are people out there that can drop two grand on a handheld gaming PC and not think about it. But for everyone else, there are a ton of better options out there, trust me.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

As promised in December, Samsung has launched new Micro RGB TVs that bring the tech way downmarket with two new models that will cost far less than the $30,000, 115-inch MR95F the company released last year. The new models – R95H and R85H – will start at just $1,599.99 and $3,199.99, respectively, and range in size from 55 inches to 85 inches, with a 100-inch model coming later this year.

IGN's Jacqueline Thomas got some hands-on time with, and snapped pictures of, the new TV at a recent Samsung press briefing. She says they offered "incredible" colors, but that they weren't super bright. She streamed Cyberpunk 2077 via Xbox Cloud Gaming, and while it was too laggy to enjoy the gameplay, she said the rich colors seemed good for movies, but felt that menus in that game were a bit oversaturated. That wasn't an issue with the FF3 Pixel Remaster, though, so perhaps it's not universal.

She also watched Bad Batch, which she thought had really nice blacks that let colors pop, while the color in Alien Earth looked "genuinely amazing." Still, the TV was on the dim side, she found.

For the uninitiated, Micro RGB is the latest TV technology aimed at unseating OLED as the color and contrast king. Although Jacqueline found the TVs a bit dim, one of the advantages of the tech is supposed to be that it can get brighter without risking burn-in than an OLED. In my own experience with the tech (I saw the 115-inch model at CES earlier this year), I agree, at least with her assessment of the color: Samsung's Micro RGB panels are vibrant as all-get-out – smartphone pictures, of course, don't do it justice.

Micro RGB is not a perfect OLED replacement, though – it still uses zoned backlighting, like what you'd see on a Mini LED TV, so you'll see blooming around edges in very high-contrast scenes. The advantage Micro RGB has over a normal Mini LED is that its LEDs beam red, blue, and green light, rather than white light, which should mean richer colors overall.

To that end, Samsung says all of its Micro RGB TVs can cover 100% of the BT.2020 color space. For reference, various tech outlets' measurements of IGN's favorite gaming TV, the Samsung S90F QD-OLED, range between around 80% (Rtings) and 90% (TechRadar). Both models support HDR10+ Advanced and Dolby Atmos sound, and will have four HDMI ports, AirPlay and Google Cast support, Samsung's One UI OS, and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.

Key differences between them includes their refresh rate – the R95H offers a 165Hz variable refresh rate, while the R85H is limited to a piddly 144Hz variable refresh rate. (I kid; it's not piddly. 144Hz is still great.) The R95H also gets more powerful image processing afforded by Samsung's Micro RGB AI Engine Pro chip versus the R85H's Micro RGB AI Engine chip. The pricier model also gets the company's fancy "Glare Free Technology" anti-glare coating, while the R85H doesn't. Also, the former gets an adjustable stand that the latter lacks.

The last difference will be in available sizes and prices. The R95H comes in 85-inch ($6,499.99), 75-inch ($4,499.99), and 65-inch ($3,199.99) options, while the R85H features those same sizes at $3,999.99, $2,799.99, and $2,099.99, respectively, but adds a 55-inch model at $1,599.99. None of them are cheap, of course, but remember: you'd have to buy four of the biggest of those to match the price of the 115-inch MR95F. Later this year, Samsung says it will release a 100-inch version of the S95H, but did not reveal pricing.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

A gaming chair is a great way to complete your desktop setup or even enhance your console gaming experience. But there's almost no way around how expensive they can become. If you're on a limited budget or would rather invest in a new game or upgrade for your PC than a seat, fear not: There are plenty of great gaming chairs that won't leave you grimacing at your bank balance after checkout.

I've done the testing and research to help find the best pick for you, whether you're trying to spend as little as possible without buying a lemon or are looking for something to support that big and tall buddy that goes through gaming chairs like levels in World of Warcraft. These are my recommendations of the best budget gaming chairs of 2026.

TL;DR – The Best Budget Gaming Chairs:

These chosen budget gaming chairs offer a strong foundation, ample padding, durable upholstery, and proper ergonomics. Once the basics are settled, features like lumbar support, adjustable armrests, and tilt are nice additions that allow you to sink in and relax in the seat whether it’s pulled up to your gaming desk or plopped in front of your gaming TV.

However, weeding through the endless duds is a pain, both for your back and your wallet. With this guide, you can cut through the chaff to get back to doing what you love the most: playing games. Don't make that Elden Ring boss wait any longer, let's dive into the best budget picks of the year.

1. Razer Iskur V2 X

Best Budget Gaming Chair Overall

The Razer Iskur V2 X, which I reviewed, is the best budget gaming chair of 2026 so far. Not only does it look the part of a much more expensive gaming chair, it offers a precise mix of comfort, support, and style to fit into virtually any gaming setup. It's built with premium quality materials and is made to last, and it offers one of the best warranties I've seen yet for an affordable gaming chair.

Our own Seth Macy reviewed the original Razer Iskur back in 2021 and quickly fell in love. The line has only gotten better since then with the refined V2 and more affordable now that we have the V2 X. I did some back-and-forth testing for a few weeks and found that, though the V2 offers more features and adjustability, the V2 X is impressively comfortable and supportive for its much lower entry cost of around $300.

That accessible price point gets you one of the best-looking gaming chairs around, whether you choose the black or gray fabric. It features the classic snakeskin pattern on the backrest and a slim but supportive seat cushion that effectively hides the frame beneath while still keeping its slim and stealthy aesthetic. While it's clearly a gaming chair, it's hardly overstated, which allows it to work in virtually any environment.

Razer proves with this chair that you don't need to spend an arm and a leg to get a supportive seat for PC gaming. It does away with the adjustable lumbar support in favor of an integrated built-in lumbar. This could have been a mistake, but the backrest is also precisely contoured to guide you into a proper seating position without even thinking about it or needing to make adjustments. I was able to sit down and find that the integrated lumbar matched the curvature of my back right off the bat. While some adjustability would have been nice to accommodate taller users, the backrest does its job and does it well, so long as you are 5'2" to 6'2".

It also incorporates a number of small touches that make it feel particularly versatile for different kinds of play. It's able to recline between 90 and 152 degrees, so you can really lay down and stretch out if you prefer, and comes with padded 2D armrests to ensure they match the height and width of your elbows, whether you're typing at a keyboard or gaming with a controller.

Razer has also done a good job of ensuring that this chair is built to last. It comes with a metal wheelbase that, while not quite as heavy duty as the standard Iskur V2, guarantees that it should never snap and render the seat unusable. It also comes with an impressive five-year warranty, which is simply one of the best you'll find among any affordable gaming chair.

The biggest omission here is that it doesn't come with any kind of neck pillow. It's a pretty silly thing to leave out, all things considered, and I found myself wishing it had one when I wanted to lean back and relax, like the Enki X. You can purchase one separately, but when gaming chairs a fraction of the price can throw it in, there's no reason why Razer should be leaving it out for either chair.

Taken as a whole, though, the Iskur V2 X is simply a fantastic value and the best gaming chair you can find on a budget for style, support, and comfort.

2. Razer Enki X

Best Big and Tall Budget Gaming Chair

The Razer Enki X is a humble all-star. It includes nearly all of the features of its more expensive counterpart, the standard Razer Enki, which is our pick for the Best Fabric Chair in our list of the Best Gaming Chairs. Most importantly, it’s one of the most comfortable gaming chairs you can buy if you're on the larger side.

The magic of the Enki is its backrest. Razer designed the chair with a 110-degree should arch to gently guide you toward its center. The lumbar support isn’t adjustable, but if you fall within the chair's recommended height range (5’1” to 6’4”) you’ll likely find that it lands in the right place to give you all the support you need. It’s also able to recline 152 degrees, so if you need a quick catnap, it’s ready to deliver.

Best of all, it supports gamers up to 299lbs and 6'8". Its uniquely designed backrest lends it the ability support a wider than average range of potential users. You pay a bit extra for that, to be sure, but it remains a cost effective option that's decidedly more premium than many other affordable gaming chairs targeting larger users.

For its relatively modest cost, it is surprisingly premium. It’s upholstered a mix of easy-to-clean PU leather and soft fabric where it touches the skin. It looks the part of a gaming chair but offers the type of all-day comfort that bland ergonomic chairs achieve. The seat is also very plush and is the perfect blend of supportive and soft without needing a weeks-long break-in period.

The Enki X is the affordable Enki in Razer’s lineup and that does mean some sacrifices. It doesn’t come with a neck pillow, which is a pretty big knock – and a testament to how comfortable the backrest is to win this accolade. Its armrests are also only 3D instead of 4D. But it’s worth buying a neck pillow separately (Razer’s own is available separately). Even with that added purchase, the Enki X is a steal.

3. Corsair TC100 Relaxed Fabric Gaming Chair

Best Fabric Gaming Chair on a Budget

4. Respawn 110 Pro

Best Budget Gaming Chair Under $300

5. Dowinx LS-6657D Breathable Fabric Gaming Chair

Best Gaming Chair Under $200

The Dowinx LS-6657D doesn't need gimmicks to stand out. Instead, this is a chair all about comfort and its understated sense of style. It's trimmed in a breathable fabric, lushly padded, and accommodates different ways to sit while gaming and working at your PC.

Unlike most gaming chairs around this price, the LS-6657D isn't ostentatious. It maintains a connection to the classic racing seat design while also appearing a bit more elegant and grown up to suit a wider range of gamers. Its available colors are more muted, and its presentation is slightly more tame. So if you like the features of racing seats but aren't sold on racing stripes and high contrast colors, this might be the seat for you.

Its upholstery is about more than simple style, however. Its fabric is soft and pleasant to touch, and its ample foam cushioning is enough to completely hide the frame without making the chair look unnecessarily bulky. Just as importantly, if you game in a warmer climate or don't have AC during the summer months, you'll find that it's much more breathable than leatherette.

As usual for gaming chairs around this price point, you won't find advanced adjustments like 4D armrests and seat depth sliders, but you can recline anywhere from 90 to 135 degrees and make use of its built-in footrest when you prefer to game with a controller or relax with a movie. Its armrests feature enough padding to be comfortable and will automatically shift to ensure they remain usable as you sit back to relax.

Its seat also has a couple tricks up its sleeve. In a surprising turn, Dowinx has outfitted it with a removable gel pad to aid in cooling. While its stripes hint at bolsters, the actual seat is much more flat than a traditional racing chair. This allows you to easily cross your legs or tuck a foot under you as you sit. Its lumbar pillow is also much larger than what is typically available around this price, ensuring that you'll receive wider support as a result.

The chair is rated to support gamers up to 300lbs, though I would encourage anyone approaching this weight to exercise caution. The biggest downside of this chair is that it uses a nylon wheelbase, which isn't as durable as aluminum over time. Still, its impressive sense of style and comfort over-deliver for its modest price, making this a great pick for gamers with mid-sized budgets.

6. GTPlayer GT800A Gaming Chair

Best Gaming Chair Under $150

What to Look for in a Budget Gaming Chair

Buying affordable chairs of any kind is tricky, but, like other pieces of furniture, there are things you can look for to ensure you're not getting an absolute clunker that will hurt your back or break in less than a year. The picks above are each top in their class, but if you'd rather go out and do some research of your own (and remember: AI overviews in search will only get you so far and also often present incorrect information). These are the things I recommend looking for:

Ergonomics

If there's one thing a lot of affordable gaming chairs get wrong, it's ergonomics. Look for a chair that offers support in the lower back, either through curvature or a high-quality pillow. This will ensure that your back has the support it needs and you won't get sore after a few short hours of gaming or work at your PC.

Padding, cushioning, and armrests

Another thing to keep in mind is that manufacturers might skimp when it comes to padding at lower prices. The last thing you want is to feel the frame when you're sitting back or decide to cross one or both legs. If an affordable chair looks like it's been put on a diet because of how thin the foam is, it's probably worth avoiding. Additional pillows and cushions can help mitigate this when it comes to the backrest, but I've yet to find a chair where inadequate seat cushioning is anything less than uncomfortable. Pay special attention to the armrests as well because anything too firm that you'll be leaning on for any length of time can quickly cause discomfort and soreness that lasts well beyond your gaming session.

Adjustments

Budget gaming chairs tend to offer fewer adjustments than higher-cost options, but that doesn't mean you should settle for something less than what meets your needs. Even a low-cost chair should allow you to adjust its height, backrests, and armrests, and have some kind of customizability for its tilt functionality.

Upholstery (fabric, leather, and overall quality)

Gaming chairs come with either fabric or leatherette upholstery. As a rule, fabric is more breathable than leather, but leather will be easier to clean. Consider your climate and preferences before style if comfort is your priority. Though it can be difficult to tell in product pictures, I also recommend reading reviews to get an overall impression of the quality of these materials, as both can degrade quickly if the manufacturer has cut costs on quality.

A quality wheelbase

The base of its chair is its very foundation and is critically important to its long-term durability. It's also one of the most frequent things to break. Choose an aluminum wheelbase if at all possible. But if it's not, pay special attention to the chair's maximum supported weight and read reviews to get a picture of its reliability over time.

Avoid paying extra for gimmicks

The Amazon marketplace can be difficult to stand out in, and that's doubly true in the gaming chair market. To set themselves apart from competitors, many chairs offer gimmicks like massaging pillows. Understand that at any kind of reasonable price, these additional features are likely to be ineffective and exist purely to catch your attention. While you don't need to outright avoid these, they shouldn't be a key factor in your decision-making with everything else evenly considered.

How We Pick the Best Budget Gaming Chairs

When making my selections, I always consider the chairs that I've personally used or members of our team have tested, first and foremost. Because there are so many options, it's impossible for me to test everything, so I've also done extensive research to find the very best picks, leveraging my long history of testing gaming chairs for a living to separate the good (and bad) from the great. As I do this, I pay special attention to build quality, ergonomics, pricing, and factor in both critical and user reviews.

Throughout the extensive process of testing, analysis, comparisons, and overall research, I've brought years of experience and a critical lens to every chair considered, highlighting only the best for your purchasing choice.

Budget Gaming Chair FAQs

Are gaming chairs worth it?

While the answer to this question will always be subjective, there is wisdom to the idea of investing in the place you'll be spending a large amount of your life. If you spend hours at your PC, having a comfortable and supportive chair can be a major enhancement to your quality of life. The real question is whether it's worth investing in a gaming chair versus an office or ergo chair. Each type has its benefits, but a gaming chair adds a bit flair to the experienece, which can be important if you're a streamer or have invested in the appearance of your gaming setup. Gaming chairs also brings some unique features like deep reclines, more adjustable armrests, and even footrests for kicking back with a controller. It's also possible to find gaming chairs with good ergonomics and adjustability. Ultimatley, this depends on your taste, budget, and what you're looking to get out of your chair.

Why are gaming chairs so expensive?

In general, gaming chairs are a luxury product. You don't need one, but if you're anything like me, you probably want one to take your PC setup to the next level. Because of this, the prices tend to be higher for both mid-range and premium-level chairs from major companies, but that's not all there is to it. Paying extra often gets you higher quality materials, better warranties, and more stylish designs. It can also open the door to more ergonomic adjustments, which can be very important to your long-term comfort. The law of diminishing returns is very strong in the seating market, however, so research carefully before dropping hundreds of dollars on one chair when a more affordable option might accomplish your goals for less.

Do budget gaming chairs come with a warranty?

Oftentimes, yes. Though if you're buying from a smaller brand located overseas, it's important to remember that there's a difference between listing a warranty and it actually actually supporting it. If you're unsure, purchase from marketplaces with generous return policies, read reviews, and see if you can find other people's experiences with the company. Remember, you can also email the company with any specific questions you might have and their answer, as well as how long it takes to reply, can give you an indication of whether the company will offer the kind of support you require. If you're buying from a major brand, like Razer or Corsair, you can count on a warranty of at least a year and usually more.

Christopher Coke has been a regular contributor to IGN since 2019 and has been covering games and technology since 2013. He has covered tech ranging from gaming controllers to graphics cards, gaming chairs and gaming monitors, headphones, IEMs, and more for sites such as MMORPG.com, Tom’s Hardware, Popular Science, USA Today’s Reviewed, and Popular Mechanics. Find Chris on Twitter @gamebynight.

It's getting harder every year to fully crack Denuvo, but it's still not impossible, and now Resident Evil Requiem has been cracked by voices38 (via TheGamer).

Resident Evil Requiem has been around for about six weeks, and while pirates were technically able to get around the Denuvo DRM by running a virtual machine, or hypervisor, it was risky and complicated, requiring you to completely disable Windows security and Secure Boot. With voices38's crack, though, you just have to modify the game's .exe file, making it much safer to actually run.

In the past, Denuvo cracks came a lot faster, but the DRM has been getting harder to patch out of a game's files. These traditional cracks are still coming, but they're much slower, with last year's Doom: The Dark Ages only getting its crack about a month ago, according to TheGamer.

While Resident Evil Requiem's crack came a lot closer to its launch than Doom: The Dark Ages, future games might take a longer time. There is a constant battle between pirates and Denuvo, and it's very likely that future implementations of the DRM will patch out the vulnerabilities that allowed for Requiem to be cracked.

On the other hand, the hypervisor 'cracks' will continue to be the quickest workaround for DRM-loaded games, but they carry a ton of risks. After all, with all of the safeguards you have to disable, it'll make your system very vulnerable to hackers and rootkits, even if the VM you're running isn't itself infected with malware.

The safest and fastest way that you can play new games is still just buying the game and running it normally, even if Denuvo impacts game performance. If anything, maybe the DRM being cracked so quickly this time will persuade some developers to opt for less invasive and heavy copy protection methods. That's probably just wishful thinking, though.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

SteelSeries gave a bit of a shock to the realm of gaming headsets when it put out the $600 Arctis Nova Elite, which earned a rare 10/10 for doing several things that other headsets just don't do even at the high-end. But one of SteelSeries' biggest strengths is having viable budget-tier options across the board (look at the Rival 3 Gen 2 mouse I reviewed last year, for example). The latest version of the wired Arctis Nova 1 has been out for a little while now, but it still fills that gap for headsets admirably by sporting many of the design principles of the more expensive options while providing solid sound quality worthy of its reasonable price tag. You can hear the advantages in more sophisticated headsets, for sure, but the Arctis Nova 1 is no slouch when it comes to clarity and comfort for the value, making it tough to beat in its price range.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 1 – Design and Comfort

You may recognize the physical makeup of the Arctis Nova 1…because it looks like every other headset in the lineup. And that's a good thing since it's a sleek, no-nonsense design. A few fancy bits have been trimmed off to fit its role as a budget option. The frame and headband is mostly a sturdy plastic that's durable enough to handle with confidence and doesn't feel flimsy when putting on or taking off. This also helps keep its weight down, coming in at just 260g, which is a major contrast to the hulking 560g Audeze Maxwell 2 I reviewed not too long ago.

The earpads provide enough comfort to wear for extended periods and rock a sports mesh material that limits the muggy feeling you get around your ears from a leatherette after several hours. The Arctis Nova 1 does have a pretty strong clamp force, which didn't exactly bother me, but I'd prefer if it'd loosen up over time. Thankfully, the padding prevented it from irritating me during long sessions. The strap that lines the headband creates a sort of buffer between the top of your head and the frame itself, and you can hook the strap onto different notches to adjust its tension. This has been a consistent design choice in SteelSeries headsets, but I didn't worry about the lack of padding here considering the clamp force of the earcups firmly secured the headset in place rather than having it rest on my head.

I would describe the Arctis Nova 1's design as 'efficient' in that it nails the essentials, and nothing more or less. Things like tension-based telescoping arms, the full inward swivel to let it rest around your neck easily, or the retractable snake-like microphone that tucks seamlessly into the earcup – these are great design decisions that make it easy to use.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 1 – Features and Software

Since the Arctis Nova 1 is an analog wired-only headset, it's not going to have many customizable features. You have a microphone mute button, the 3.5mm audio jack for connectivity, and a volume wheel next to the retractable mic. Features like fancy EQ presets, active noise cancelation, or game-chat mix aren't part of the equation here. And for the money, I'm not really worried about those kinds of things. Otherwise, what you get in the package is a three-foot 3.5mm cable and a five-foot extension cord that also allows you to split the audio and microphone feeds. These aren't going to benefit greatly from system-level EQ or driving them through a DAC or amp either since these aren't equipped with the kind of audio drivers that would benefit from them.

This also means you're not going to get the benefits of SeelSeries' software, which has been one of the better apps from big manufacturers. Those tend to be bloated with options you're never going to use and take up too much memory and storage for what they do, but the EQ presets and relatively slim profile of its app has been great on its other headsets (see the Arctis Nova Elite and Arctis GameBuds). With the Arctis Nova 1, what you hear is kind of what you get.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 1 – Sound Quality

Even as a budget-level headset, I'm really happy with the overall audio quality here. The Arctis Nova 1 sports similar 40mm audio drivers as others in SteelSeries lineup so you're not getting a significantly pared-down version of what you get in, say, the Arctis Nova 5 or 7. While the sound experience isn't quite as punchy or detailed as more sophisticated headsets, its sound profile remains clean and balanced – bass comes through nicely while mids and treble thankfully weren't abrasive (although I could hear them struggle a bit at higher-than-normal volumes).

I played through most of Resident Evil Requiem using the Arctis Nova 1 and the scares came through loud and clear – screeching zombies and the dreaded footsteps of monsters that give chase, for example. The one aspect I noticed the headset lacking was positional audio, which can be a huge boon for a game like this where sound cues are often your most reliable tool for judging the direction and distance of zombies in the scarier sections. That's not to say it's going to put you at a severe disadvantage, but its limitations in sound separation were certainly noticeable when switching to the more expensive Asus ROG Kithara that I'm currently testing.

As per usual, Counter-Strike 2 being my go-to competitive shooter for testing, the Arctis Nova 1 was good enough to keep tabs on enemy activity. However, compared to higher-end headsets, I noticed that the direction and distance of those sound cues weren't quite as distinct. There's a little more compression between sound effects – they don't sound bad at all, it's just the audio fidelity I've been spoiled with from $300+ headsets put this kind of sound experience into perspective.

The Arctis Nova 1 is a sub-$60 gaming headset after all, and that's not to give it an excuse, but to illustrate the contrast between different kinds of audio gear. Music still sounded decent between varying genres with formidable bass to back them up, and I was pretty happy with the solid clarity in Final Fantasy XIV's busy soundscape with so many effects and music popping off simultaneously. And if you don't want to sound like an Xbox 360-era Call of Duty lobby full of muffled expletives, the microphone on this one gets the job done.

Just last month, Sony announced that Cyberpunk 2077 would be getting a PSSR 2 update, but now CD Projekt Red has followed up with a huge PS5 Pro update that'll drop on April 8.

Cyberpunk 2077 famously had a problematic launch when it released on consoles in 2020, and even after it got patched up, it's been far behind the PC version. But since the PS5 Pro came out back in 2024, it's been a question of when, not if, CDPR would launch an update that'd bring the game closer to the PC version.

Tomorrow's update will give PS5 Pro players access to three performance profiles: Ray Tracing Pro, Ray Tracing, and Performance. The Ray Tracing Pro mode is where you'll find most of the visual updates made specifically for the PS5 Pro, targeting 30-40 fps, with a new 'BVH8', or 8-way bounding volume hierarchy ray tracing implementation. CDPR didn't detail exactly how this works, but it looks like it'll track up to 8 rays of light to create more realistic reflections, shadows and global illumination. That's not quite to the same level as the Ray Tracing Overdrive mode on PC, but it should bring the PS5 Pro closer to the Ray Tracing Ultra preset on PC.

CD Projekt's blog post doesn't say much of anything about the image quality offered by the 'Performance' mode, only that it'll target high frame rates. If it's anything like similar Performance modes on the PS5 Pro, it'll probably look pretty much the same as the base PS5, just with a much higher frame rate. Then, of course the regular 'Ray Tracing' mode will sit somewhere in the middle, targeting a solid 60 fps.

We won't know exactly how well this Cyberpunk PS5 Pro update will look and run until it goes live on April 8, but the screenshots on the blog post look promising. Either way, I'll be downloading the update and trying it for myself when it goes live tomorrow morning. If CDPR was able to get it looking as good as the PC version, it'll go a long way to proving the power of PSSR 2.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Valve already collects a lot of data about your gaming PC, typically to release its hardware survey every month. But it looks like Steam will soon use frame rate data gathered by its millions of users to estimate how well a game will actually run on your rig.

This all started about a month ago, when a SteamOS beta started collecting performance information. But now, a user on ResetEra (via PC Gamer) has spotted a string in the latest Steam update that would use that data to estimate how well the game will run on your hardware. It does not seem like this performance estimate is visible on any actual game pages quite yet, but Steam wouldn't be the first digital PC games store to give its users this kind of estimate.

Love it or hate it, the Xbox app, and the Windows Store before it, has been giving estimates on game performance for years now, even though the actual information it gives you is... thin to say the least. This is why when you click on a game in Game Pass, you'll get a "Should perform great on your device" message at the top of the page.

It seems like the Steam performance estimate will be much more detailed, though. From the code string found on ResetEra, it looks like you'll be able to enter a CPU, a GPU, and an amount of RAM to get a rough estimate of what your performance should look like. Or, if you're using Steam on your gaming PC like most people do, you'll be able to just see the projected performance based on whatever hardware you're already using. After all, Valve has been collecting users' hardware configuration data for years now.

What this frame rate estimate would be particularly useful for is the Steam Machine and other Valve hardware. Assuming the Steam Machine sells well, Valve will have thousands of nearly identical hardware configurations to gather performance information from, which will really help boost the accuracy of its estimates.

I've seen plenty of people in our comments nervous about the Radeon RX 7600M-level GPU in the mini gaming PC, but with this performance information living on the store page for every game, you'll just be able to know how well the Steam Machine will handle pretty much any game.

Steam's frame rate data harvesting is still only in the beta client, so it'll be a while before this feature is available or widespread. Once it is live, though, it should help plenty of people decide whether or not their hardware is actually powerful enough to run that new game.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

It’s no secret that PC components are quite expensive right now. Even though I’ve seen RAM prices starting to inch (and I mean inch) down, building a new PC is way more expensive than it should be. And while that sucks for anyone wanting to build a rig for a game like Crimson Desert, or another AAA game with pretty lighting effects, PC gaming is more accessible than it’s ever been.

There tends to be this misconception that PC gaming is exclusively these big towers on our desks or dense laptops that need a 5-pound power brick, but thanks to how good APUs have become lately – looking at you Panther Lake – there is much more to it than that.

Handheld gaming PCs and more powerful laptop APUs mean that you don’t need to invest in a high-end machine to play the best PC games. And, in fact, many of the best games you can play on PC can run on a veritable potato.

Hardware Is More Expensive Than Ever, And That Sucks

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that things don’t suck for anyone that doesn’t already have some kind of PC that can play games. Right now, getting into PC gaming is more expensive than ever, with even entry-level graphics cards like the RTX 5060 costing around $360, rather than their $299 starting price.

Things are even more dire with more mid-ranged hardware, with the RTX 5070 starting around $650, which is $100 more than its intended starting price. And don’t even get me started on RAM and SSDs, which are still way too expensive, even if there are signs that prices will start lowering soon.

I don’t envy anyone that needs to start their PC gaming journey from zero right now, but if you have even a mediocre PC or laptop right now, you might not actually have to, as long as you temper your expectations a bit.

This year, we’ve already seen how well games have been scaling. Both Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert run pretty well across a wide range of PC hardware, as long as you’re willing to turn down some of the settings. But even beyond the AAA world, the true magic of PC gaming lies in games that can run on extremely low-end hardware.

PC Gaming Is More Than Just Ray Tracing

A lot of people have this image of PC gaming in their head that it’s nothing but super-expensive hardware, rainbow lights and ray tracing. And, at the high-end, that’s not even inaccurate. But most of the games that push graphics technology forward – your Cyberpunks, your Alan Wake 2s – they’re playable on game consoles as well.

Instead, I’d argue that PC gaming’s true identity lies in the games that you can’t really find on consoles. Whether that means something like World of Warcraft or something like Lethal Company, PC is full of games that just don’t exist anywhere else, and usually these games aren’t packed with all the eye candy that makes high-end hardware sweat.

In fact, a lot of these games are straight-up ugly, with blocky character models and low-resolution textures. Instead, more emphasis is put on making the game fun rather than serving double-duty as a tech demo. No matter how much I enjoy exploring a huge open world like Crimson Desert, nothing quite beats the fun I have logging onto Discord with friends and playing R.E.P.O., and I’m pretty sure my GPU fans don’t even spin up when that game is running.

So, yeah, maybe you do need a high-end gaming PC to play the latest AAA games with all the settings cranked, but that’s honestly just the surface level of PC gaming. Even if you can’t upgrade your PC, or if you’re just playing games on the same laptop you use for work, there are a ton of amazing games that will run just fine. They won’t have ray tracing or DLSS 5 running on top, but does that even matter?

There’s a Reason Linux Gaming Is Growing

The latest Steam Hardware Survey came out last week, and while a lot of the data falls in line with stuff I’ve seen in the past, the Linux install base has been growing incredibly quickly. In March 2026, Linux users made up for 5.33% of Steam users, which is up 3% over last month. In the same time frame, Windows users dropped by 4.28% and MacOS users went up by 1.19%.

If you break down the versions of Linux that are growing, it’s not surprising that the Arch Linux, the distro behind SteamOS (and the Steam Deck) is driving a lot of this growth.

Both the Steam Deck and the Lenovo Legion Go S are way more affordable than a fully-fledged gaming PC, and they’re just powerful enough that they can run most games at low-medium settings. And that’s just AAA games. For the indies and RPGs that really make PC gaming special, handheld gaming PCs are arguably the ideal way to play right now.

Handhelds are portable, which makes it easier to take your games on the go, and even when you do need to plug in a keyboard and mouse to play a strategy game, you can just, like, do that. In fact, the whole reason Valve decided to make the Steam Machine in the first place was because it got data that a ton of people were doing exactly that.

And as gaming hardware continues to get more expensive, using a somewhat low-powered Linux device – be it a handheld or Valve’s gaming cube – is only going to become more common.

Friendslop Is The Future

While rising prices does mean that gaming is in a, well, a weird place right now, I doubt the medium is going to go away. Instead, a lot of the big-budget blockbuster slop that we’re used to seeing during the summer showcases is going to get a bit less popular. In their place, lower-budget games that are just fun to play are going to rise, and it’s already started.

Maybe it’s just the people that I hang out with, but usually when I hear my friends talking about some new game they’re playing, big AAA games are becoming more rare by the day. Instead, I hear a lot about some weird new roguelike, or another new cozy game with some silly twist. I mean, just take a quick look at the top-selling games on Steam right now, and Raccoin, a raccoon-themed coin-pusher roguelike, is sitting at number 4, outselling Resident Evil Requiem. And that’s one of the ‘biggest’ games of the year so far.

Sure, a lot of this probably comes down to the price of the games. After all, just looking at Raccoin versus the game that features Raccoon City, and the former costs $10 right now, compared to $70. But, if anything, that only proves that meeting people at a price tag that makes sense for the moment is a recipe for success, even if you have a very silly and fun game. And I don’t see that happening anywhere but PC right now.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Nvidia DLSS has been around since the RTX 2080 dropped back in 2018, but while it started as a way to use machine learning to upscale games, it's grown to be so much more than that.

Now, 8 years after the Tensor Core that powers DLSS first debuted in Nvidia's Volta GPU architecture, DLSS will upscale your games, generate entirely new frames, and, when DLSS 5 comes out later this year, will even re-draw each frame in your game. Some of these features are more divisive than others, but it's hard to argue that DLSS isn't one of the most important GPU software suites in a while, and is a major part of why Nvidia graphics cards are so good.

DLSS Upscaling

DLSS ostensibly stands for “Deep Learning Super Sampling,” and that’s exactly what it did at the beginning. The whole idea was to render the game at a lower resolution, and then use an AI algorithm, trained on Nvidia super computers and running on Tensor Cores, to accurately upscale to a higher resolution.

For most games, DLSS is available in one of four presets, each changing the scaling factor of the game.

• Ultra Performance: 33%
• Performance: 50%
• Balanced: 58%
• Quality: 66.7%

Obviously, the higher you go up, the better the image quality is going to be, but that will conversely affect your frame rate. As a general rule of thumb, I’d recommend ‘Performance’ for 4K, ‘Balanced’ for 1440p, and ‘Quality’ for 1080p gaming. I personally turn DLSS on whenever I can, but that’s because the algorithm is so good these days that I can’t tell the difference unless I’m actively looking for it. That wasn’t always the case, though.

In the beginning, this was rough. The first iteration of DLSS upscaling was noisy and had a ton of issues with artifacts and general image softness. Coupled with the fact that it only ran in a couple of games, and it was hard to take Nvidia’s upscaling super seriously. However, with DLSS 2.0, released in 2020, Nvidia improved the algorithm by taking motion vector data from the game engine into consideration, making it able to more accurately generate pixels that were true to the motion on the screen.

DLSS 2 also shifted Nvidia’s upscaling algorithm from needing to be trained on each game individually, to an algorithm that could be applied to many different games, assuming developers worked the DLSS files into their game. This made adoption skyrocket, and we started to see a ton of games starting to support the technology.

While the upscaling tech got a little better over the following few years, the next biggest jump came with DLSS 4, which debuted with the RTX 5080 in 2025. This moved the upscaling algorithm from a CNN (convolutional neural network) to a transformer model, which drastically improved accuracy.

This update worked on every RTX graphics card, and you could even force-enable it in the driver software, allowing it to run in basically any game that already supported DLSS 2 or 3. The only downside was that the model was a tad heavier than the older CNN model, so it could lessen the performance boost you got from enabling DLSS – particularly on older RTX 3000 and 2000 graphics cards.

Then, in 2026, Nvidia released a weird little mid-generation update, with DLSS 4.5. This changed both upscaling and frame generation – which I’ll get into later – but for upscaling it just made the transformer model a bit more accurate when you set it to “Performance” or “Ultra Performance” modes. The only problem was that it increased the performance footprint on older cards – so I’d only recommend enabling it with an RTX 5060 or newer graphics card.

Frame Generation

DLSS upscaling has become quite popular over the last few years, but with DLSS 3 and the RTX 4090, Nvidia went from using AI to generate extra pixels, to generating entire frames. Frame gen is incredibly simple in theory: It uses an algorithm to generate extra frames and then inserts them between actually rendered frames in the render queue. However, this is of course a bit more complicated than it sounds.

By their very nature, video games are unpredictable, so Nvidia had to find a way to generate the extra frames that wouldn’t turn games into a mess of hallucinations and artifacts. And, just like the upscaling bit, frame generation was rough at first.

Rather than just being free performance like Nvidia initially claimed, frame generation increased latency, rather than lowering it. One of the main purposes of playing games at a higher frame rate is to lower the delay between whatever you’re doing – clicking a mouse, moving your character, or whatever – and that action being reflected on the screen. Because frame generation isn’t actually making the game run faster, it can only ever add latency, because the algorithm needs a couple of milliseconds to generate each frame.

Nvidia offsets this increase in latency with Reflex, a system that essentially zeroes out the render queue and has the CPU sync with the graphics card, so that frames aren’t just sitting there waiting for the GPU to render them.

Reflex has been out for years, and it really does improve latency quite a bit, but it’s necessary to stop frame generation from being straight up terrible. With frame generation, Nvidia basically added a new render queue that exists on the GPU itself, taking a rendered frame, holding it until a new frame is generated, and then pacing them out to keep the motion smooth.

This is also why frame gen doesn’t exactly double your frame rate, even though it is generating a new frame off of every one sent by the game. And it’s also why it hits latency a bit. In my experience, the latency will typically go from, for example, 30 ms to 40 ms in Cyberpunk 2077 when frame generation is enabled.

The added latency isn’t ideal, but it’s not enough to be noticeable, especially in single player games where you’re not trying to compete.

As controversial as frame generation was when it launched with the RTX 4080, though, Nvidia upped the multiplier with DLSS 4 in 2025, adding a 3x and 4x frame gen option. Now, RTX 50 series graphics cards could generate up to three frames per rendered frame, theoretically boosting frame rates by 4x. Again, that number doesn’t exactly work out in theory, but it does vastly improve performance.

Generating all of those rendered frames could have been a nightmare, but Nvidia worked an AMP core, or AI Management Processor, into its Blackwell (RTX 50 series) graphics cards. This little chip works as a sort of taskmaster for the GPU and takes over frame pacing, which was typically handled by the CPU previously. Because that work is now handled on the same die as the GPU, there is less latency when scheduling out the frames, which is why multi-frame generation is able to work.

What’s more impressive, though, is how little the extra generated frames impact latency beyond the initial latency impact of 2x frame gen. In the same Cyberpunk section I mentioned earlier, turning frame gen to 4x only bumps the PC latency up to 43ms, which is barely more. And while adding latency at all is a downside, the upside is that it’s much easier to use a 4K 240Hz monitor and get your money’s worth.

But 4x frame gen wasn’t enough for Nvidia. At CES 2026, the company announced DLSS 4.5, a sort of half-generation refresh of DLSS 4. With it, 6x frame gen is now possible, but the more exciting part of the equation is Dynamic Multi Frame Generation. When enabled, this will have the GPU, um, dynamically change the frame gen multiplier, to keep your frame rate as close to your monitor’s refresh rate as possible.

Think of it as a sort of spicy V-Sync, but instead of limiting frame rate to your refresh rate, it just generates extra frames to keep your monitor fully fed. With this update, Nvidia also updated the AI model that frame generation runs on. Creatively called “Model B” in the Nvidia App, it is much better at handling UI elements, which can mess up in some games when frame gen is active.

Nvidia seems to be heading in a direction of constantly increasing the amount of frames that DLSS is going to generate, and who knows where it’s going to decide to hit the brakes. But no matter how high that multiplier gets, just keep in mind that this feature definitely isn’t for anybody.

If you’re still rocking a 60Hz display, frame generation is not going to do anything for you. And if you’re struggling to hit 50-60 fps in the first place, frame generation is going to be a laggy, artifact-riddled mess.

Instead, frame generation is best for people who are already getting 50-60 fps on a high-refresh display, where it’ll make games look much smoother. Even then, though, the added latency means that a lot of competitive gamers should probably just ignore it.

The Future of DLSS

While both DLSS upscaling and frame generation use AI to improve performance, they don’t meaningfully change the way the game itself looks. While there might be little mistakes here and there, the final product is extremely faithful to what the game is outputting. But that might be changing later this year when DLSS 5 launches.

All we’ve really seen from DLSS 5 so far is a short demo on-stage at GTC 2026 (Graphics Technology Conference), so there’s not a lot to go off of. But, based on what was there, this new algorithm seems to massively impact the aesthetics of a game, particularly when it comes to character models.

Nvidia claims that the model is grounded in the geometry and “scene semantics” of the game. But when the model is taking the game’s final output along with motion vector data to generate an image that’s overlaid on top, it sure looks like it’s altering the aesthetics of the game.

In theory, this means that the better the underlying game looks, the better DLSS 5 will be at generating a final image, but because it doesn’t take data from the game engine into account, it’s very possible that it will mess up. Though, Nvidia will likely patch it up to make it look better over the next half-a-year before it is available to download.

But beyond the impact to a game’s aesthetic, it remains to be seen whether or not it will actually improve performance. After all, since the beginning, one of the guiding lights of DLSS was maximising performance while preserving image quality. The early model of DLSS 5 needed two RTX 5090s to run. And, sure, Team Green will find a way to optimize it to run on a single graphics card, but only time will tell if it’ll be something that gamers turn on. If it just changes the way the game looks but with worse performance – I don’t think a lot of people are going to choose to use it.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Every year, Samsung launches a new ‘Ultra’ phone, and while it would be nice to see something a little bit, well, different than the same glass slab that we get every time, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is still an attractive device.

Because while it does look remarkably similar to the S25 Ultra that came before, it’s still packing the most powerful mobile chipset on the market, and some excellent cameras. Samsung is really focusing on AI software this time around, but more than anything, the S26 Ultra is just a really good high-end smartphone, and that’s all it really needs to be.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – Design and Features

The Galaxy S26 Ultra looks just like the S25 Ultra. It has the same squared-off edges and rounded corners, and even what looks like the same camera bump, with five lenses jutting out of the back of the device. But just because the device looks similar to its predecessor doesn’t mean it's ugly – the Galaxy S26 Ultra is still a gorgeous device, especially if you can get it in a brighter color.

However, it would have been nice if Samsung took a note from the iPhone 17 Pro Max that came out late last year. Because while the camera bump on the S26 Ultra is far from the most extreme I’ve ever seen, it did not feel great going back to a phone that wobbles any time I lay it flat on a table. That can be mitigated with the right case, but for a $1,299 phone like this, anything that feels annoying without an added accessory doesn’t feel great.

And, just like with other phones with a camera bump, the S26 Ultra is thin, measuring just 7.9mm thick. That’s thinner than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, despite having a similarly powerful SoC and some serious camera.

The device Samsung sent me for review is the Cobalt Violet colorway. At first glance, it looks like the same dark-gray-black color option that’s so popular on high-end phones, but under the right light it gives off a really cool purple tint. It does seem that even the brighter colorways for this phone are subtle, but you can always slap a case on the phone to make it stand out a bit more.

Also like its predecessor, the buttons on the Galaxy S26 Ultra are all found on the right side of the display. There’s a volume rocker at the top, along with the lock button on the side. Unlike something like the Galaxy Z Fold 7, though, the lock button does not double as a fingerprint reader – that’s instead built into the display itself.

Down at the bottom, you’ll find the USB-C charging and data port, along with the SIM tray and the S-Pen. There’s also a little slot there, but don’t get excited if you’re looking for a microSD slot – it’s just the speaker. You also won’t find a card reader in the SIM tray, like on past flagship Galaxy devices, so you’re going to want to make sure you get the right storage configuration when you buy the device.

Samsung is kind of known for putting excellent displays on its phone, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra is definitely no different. You get a 6.9-inch dynamic AMOLED display at 3120 x 1440, with a refresh rate up to 120Hz. It’s gorgeous. I’ve spent a few weeks with this phone at this point, mostly due to a bout of the flu, but in that time I’ve been glued to this screen. Colors are vivid and shows, games, and comics look excellent here.

The higher refresh rate can cause the battery to drain a little bit faster, of course, but these fast displays have come a long way in the last few years, to the point where they’re paired with some of the best battery life I’ve had in a phone in a while.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – Software and AI

For the last two or three years, Samsung has been making a huge deal of the AI features built into its Galaxy phones, and I’m still not sure I see the hype. I even made it a point to turn on all the AI features when I was setting up the phone, and I haven’t really noticed the difference.

The most obvious thing it’s doing is the Now Brief, which has been around for a couple of generations at this point. At a glance, it tells me what the next thing on my calendar is, but I can click on it to get a feed of news, weather, and YouTube videos it thinks I’ll enjoy. However, I’m still not sure how intelligent this system is, as it recommends me playlists on Spotify, which I’ve never opened on the phone, instead of Apple Music, which I’ve used daily since I took the Galaxy S26 Ultra out of the box. Maybe it’s holding a grudge, who knows?

However, there are some more subtle features that Galaxy AI can help with. One of the big things is Call Assist, which can auto-screen calls. Since enabling it, I haven’t been notified about a single robocall, and it’ll give you a handy little transcript of any call it intercepts.

Beyond that, there’s of course a wealth of tools to do everything from writing your text messages to editing your photos. But these tools have been available for so long, and they work exactly like you’d expect them to here, with mixed results. The real star of the show for Galaxy AI is the stuff that’s less flashy, screening your calls, translating them and transcribing them. Same as it ever was.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – Gaming and Performance

With the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is obviously going to be a fast phone, but it seems to be tuned more for productivity than gaming. Because while the GPU in the chip is more powerful, the CPU performance improvement really is the star of the show. This chip also has a beefy NPU (Neural Processing Unit), which really does help all the AI features on the phone feel snappy.

For instance, in Geekbench, which tests pure CPU performance, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra performed in line with the Redmagic 11 Pro and OnePlus 15, which have the same chipset. In the single-core test, the S26 Ultra gets 3517 points, compared to 3683 from the OnePlus 15. Then, in the multi-core test, the Samsung flagship gets 11229 points, outperforming the 10100 points scored by the OnePlus 15.

Likewise in the Geekbench Vulkan graphics test, the Galaxy S26 Ultra gets 28270 points, compared to 27972 points from the OnePlus 15, which is huge for tasks like on-device video editing. However, the results are completely reversed in 3DMark.

The S26 is relatively stable in 3DMark, scoring 80.6% stability in the Steel Nomad Light stress test, meaning that over a 10-minute burn, results only fluctuated by about 20%. But that’s likely because the chip wasn’t being pushed as hard as it could have been.

In the Steel Nomad Light test, the S26 Ultra only gets 2245 points, compared to 2870 points from the OnePlus 15, a pretty massive 27% difference. Then, in the Wild Life Extreme test, the S26 Ultra gets 5758 points, compared to 7111 points from the OnePlus 15, which is about a 23% shortfall. I’ve tested and retested the Galaxy S26 Ultra in these tests probably dozens of times across a couple system updates, and gaming performance just does not seem to be the S26 Ultra’s strong suit. For a better option there, you'll want one of the best gaming phones.

That’s not to say that the Galaxy S26 can’t play games though. In my time with the phone I’ve been playing everything from Wuthering Waves to MTG Arena, and I haven’t really noticed any kind of performance slowdown.

Luckily, like any other Galaxy phone for the last couple of years, the S26 Ultra does come with a gaming overlay, which you can open over a mobile game by swiping from a little rectangle on the screen. From here, you can put the phone into a higher-performance profile, which should help with gaming performance.

The Privacy Screen

A lot about the Galaxy S26 Ultra seems like it was ripped wholecloth from the S25 Ultra, but the biggest new feature here is something altogether new – a built-in software-controlled Privacy Display. This will adjust the display’s pixels in such a way that reduces the screen’s viewing angle. In other words, it makes it hard for anyone to see what’s on your screen while peeking over your shoulder or sitting next to you. And, well, it works extremely well! I even actively asked my partner to try and look at the screen over my shoulder, and she couldn’t do it, which is huge if you’re either constantly dealing with sensitive information, or if you just have some nosy friends.

However, while it is effective, having it on gives the display this weird gray finish that washes out a lot of the colors. You can mitigate this by only enabling it when you have a notification or on certain apps, but it does make the phone a bit less pretty to look at either way.

I ended up turning off the display about a week into using the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but I typically don’t use my phone to do anything super sensitive anyways. The dimmer display started to be kind of a drag, but if privacy is your main concern, that’s a small pill to swallow to protect your information. Either way, it’s a genuinely useful feature as well as altogether novel, and something I'm sure plenty of people hope becomes a standard option on more phones going forward.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – Camera

Not much has changed for the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s camera. You’re still getting a 200MP wide main shooter on the back, along with a 50MP ultrawide and a 50MP telephoto lens. Basically, the same layout found on the S25 Ultra from 2025. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Photos are nice and vibrant, capturing plenty of detail. Even at night, I was surprised by how well it maintains detail, even in darker parts of the scene. For instance, I found a ridiculously huge pile of snow in New Bedford a couple weeks ago, and took a photo when it was dark out. The snow pile itself was brightly lit, so obviously it looks fine, but even the windows in the background have all of their detail, with nearly no noise until you start zooming in on it.

The front facing camera is less powerful, with a 12MP selfie lens. It’s serviceable, to be sure, but it doesn’t take the best photos, especially if you’re not in the best light. However, I will say that the software processing in the background isn’t too extreme, but obviously there are AI tools built into the camera and gallery apps if you’re into that kind of thing.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – Battery Life

The Galaxy S26 Ultra’s gaming performance is a touch disappointing, but at least it comes with some great battery life. Even with my heavy use, I can expect the S26 Ultra to last a good 30 hours before I need to plug it in again, at least from a full charge.

I hardly ever charge my phone up to full, though, and even when I’m only charging the phone up to 50 or 60%, I can expect the phone to last a strong 12 hours before I need to plug it in – and I’m one of those sickos that uses the always-on display.

If you’re a bit more conservative with your battery use, you can easily make the Galaxy S26 last two full days on a full charge. Samsung claims that the phone can get 31 hours of battery life, but honestly after spending about a month with the phone, I think it’s being a bit too safe there.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Nvidia technically launched DLSS 4.5 back at CES 2026, improving the already-great DLSS 4 algorithm with an updated transformer model for upscaling. But its headline feature, Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation, was absent until now.

Essentially, this technology takes the 4x multi-frame generation that was already available to current-generation graphics cards like the RTX 5090, ups the peak multiplier to 6x and adds a dynamic mode that changes the frame multiplier, well, dynamically, to keep it in sync with your monitor’s refresh rate.

It is important to note, though, that this technology is only compatible with RTX 5000 series graphics cards. By its very nature, it requires multi-frame generation, which is something only Nvidia's newest graphics cards can do.

For slower Blackwell graphics cards, that means upping the multiplier when it needs to, such as in more demanding scenes, in order to keep your gaming monitor fully saturated with a high frame rate. For anyone who has something as powerful as the RTX 5090, though, it’ll keep the frame generation limited, which should help a tiny bit with latency – after all, why generate frames that your monitor can’t even display?

What Is Frame Generation? Does It Improve Performance?

Because frame generation improves your frame rate, it’s easy to mistake that for extra performance. That’s because DLSS Frame Generation uses an AI model to look at a rendered frame, along with motion vector data, and generate new frames to insert into the render queue. This sends more frames to your display, which helps with visual fidelity, but it doesn’t make the game run any faster.

In fact, Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation, just like Nvidia’s past iterations of the technology, comes with a bit of a latency cost, which is why you shouldn’t turn it on unless you’re already getting decent performance. In my experience, I make sure I’m already getting between 50-60 fps before I enable it. Under those conditions, I usually don’t get any kind of visual glitches or noticeable input lag.

That’s not to say there’s no benefit, though. If you have a high refresh monitor, especially at a higher resolution, frame generation is the best way to take advantage of that higher refresh rate. Fully saturating one of these displays with frames makes a noticeable difference when it comes to visual smoothness. However, that’s entirely subjective, and might not be worth it if all you care about is minimizing input lag.

Let's Put It To The Test

When I tested Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, I first tried just plugging in an RTX 5090 to see what it could do. However, even with a 4K monitor, in the games I was testing and the graphics settings I was running, the frame generation multiplier just hovered between 2x and 3x, which was great for not ‘wasting’ any frames, but it didn’t really make a difference over the FG models I could already use.

However, when I plugged in the RTX 5080, the technology made a lot more sense. With that graphics card, the multiplier had room to grow, reaching 5x and 6x in games like Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Cyberpunk 2077.

In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake, the RTX 5080 gets a solid 71 fps with no frame generation, and with Nvidia reflex enabled, gets an average PC Latency of 32ms. When I set the frame gen multiplier to 4x – the previous maximum – I ended up with a displayed frame rate of 215 fps, with the latency jumping up to 43ms.

However, when I enabled dynamic multi frame gen, the multiplier typically hovered around 5x, upping the average displayed frame rate to 242 fps, which is right around my monitor’s 240Hz refresh rate. What’s fascinating, though, is that the extra 20-30 fps didn’t impact latency all that much, only increasing it to 44ms.

For Cyberpunk 2077, I tested it at 4K with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset, with upscaling set to ‘Performance’. Without frame generation, the RTX 5080 gets a respectable 79 fps, with PC latency of 31ms. When I set frame generation to 4x, I got an average of 215 fps, but with latency increased to 43ms.

With such similar frame rates to Oblivion, it shouldn’t be surprising that when I enabled Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation, the multiplier again hovered at around 5x, but it ended up delivering a lower average frame rate, at 231 fps. That’s not quite at the refresh rate of the monitor, but it is close enough that you probably wouldn’t notice the difference unless you were actively looking for it. PC latency was unchanged at 43 ms.

With Dragon Age: The Veilguard, though, the RTX 5080 is able to get 105 fps and 23 ms latency even without frame generation at 4K with ultra settings and ray tracing. Turn generation on at 4x, then, and you get an average of 281 fps and 32. In this case, Dynamic Frame Generation has the same behavior I briefly saw with the RTX 5090. It limits the frame rate down to the monitor’s refresh rate, typically hovering around 3x frame gen and averaging 245 fps, with latency of 31 ms.

With Dragon Age, the latency ends up being lower with Dynamic MFG than with the standard 4x, which only makes sense, given the lower average multiplier.

Who Is Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation For?

In my gut, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation seems like it’d be best for anyone that just wants a frame gen option that they can set and forget, automatically configuring itself to your display’s refresh rate. That does seem to be the goal here, but in practice, it’s a bit clunky right now.

In order to enable it, you have to go into the Nvidia app, go to Global Settings and change the Frame Generation model to ‘Preset B’, then go into ‘Frame Generation Mode’ and select ‘Dynamic’. While that doesn’t take long to do, it does require knowing that it’s there. However, this is the same way you had to enable multi frame generation in the early days, and these days there are plenty of games that’ll just let you select your frame gen multiplier in the game settings.

Once that starts to happen, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation is going to make a lot of sense for anyone that’s already getting decent performance and doesn’t want to do the mental math to figure out if they need 2x, 3x or 4x to get the most out of their monitor’s refresh rate. Until then, it probably just makes sense sticking to the game’s settings, and just enabling 4x frame gen if you just want to absolutely maximize the amount of frames being sent to your monitor.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Sony has temporarily suspended orders for many of its memory cards because of the ongoing global storage shortage that's affecting the pricing and availability of things like RAM, GPUs, and game consoles, current and future. The company did not say when it will resume selling the products; just that it will continue "monitoring te supply situation," according to a Peta Pixel translation of the Japanese language announcement.

The suspension, which started Friday, March 27, affects six models of CFexpress Type A and B, which are high-performance memory cards meant for things like professional digital cameras, along with nine models of its SD cards. Here's the full list, from a machine-translation of the article:

• CFexpress Type A Memory Card
  "CEA-G1920T" "CEA-G960T" "CEA-G480T" "CEA-G240T"
• CFexpress Type B Memory Card
  "CEB-G480T" "CEB-G240T"
• SDXC/SDHC memory card
  "SF-G256T" "SF-G128T" "SF-G64T" "SF-M512T" "SF-M256T" "SF-M128T"
  "SF-E256" "SF-E128A" "SF-E64A"

For each of those, the number represents the storage level of the card – CEA-G1920T is a 1,920GB card, for example. That list means tiers will remain, like the 320GB and 640GB Type A cards or the 960GB and 1,920GB Type B ones. At the moment, even some of the temporarily discontinued cards are still available on Sony's website and elsewhere, but don't expect that to last as remaining supply dwindles. The list doesn't include any Sony microSD cards, and thankfully, you can still find and buy many IGN's favorites for the Switch 2, handheld gaming PCs, and the Steam Deck.

The RAM and memory crisis, brought on by massive demand from AI companies, continues to have widespread effects across all of the technology industry, effects that will make for a very expensive and weird gaming generation. We've already seen signs of that, in Steam Deck supply issues and Valve's inability to put a price or release date on the Steam Machine. (The company is still targeting 2026.) The beginning of the year saw manufacturing disruptions for the RTX 5070 Ti, too, and shortages could mean we'll be waiting a while for the Sony PlayStation 6. It's expected – though not guaranteed – that Nintendo will hike prices on the Switch 2, soon.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

Since November 2025, RAM prices have been getting out of hand, thanks to increased demand from AI hyperscalers. However, it looks like we've hit the peak, with RAM kits starting to come down in price – if only by just a little bit.

The easing on memory prices seems to be a response to TurboQuant, a new algorithm from Google that the company claims lowers the memory cost by as much as six times. On top of that, OpenAI's problems with raising funding have also contributed to the lowering memory costs, according to a report from The Telegraph. But even if prices will eventually fall back to a normal level, we're not quite there yet.

I've been using this 32GB kit of G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5 6000 memory as a sort of bellweather for the RAM market over the last few months. Right now, the memory is sitting at $419 for 32GB, which is significantly more expensive than it was at the end of last year. However, according to Camelcamelcamel, that particular kit of RAM peaked at $449 at the end of February.

While a $30 drop in price is hardly the relief that PC gamers are hoping for, it is movement in the right direction. I've been told by analysts like Moor Insights and Strategy's Anshel Sag that the RAM crisis would last into or through 2027, and the recent plateau in memory costs doesn't exactly disprove that. But it does show that RAM is starting to inch back down in price, even if it wasn't in time to stop the PS5 and PS5 Pro from getting yet another price increase.

Only time will tell how quickly the prices start to fall, or even if they're going to start going up again. Who knows? Maybe Valve will soon feel confident enough in memory prices to finally launch the Steam Machine. Either way, it's likely that we're going to see more price increases in the next few months until the RAM crisis finally subsides.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra