Proton, the Swiss company behind Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Pass and Proton Drive, has just had the worst week in its history. Reporting built on leaked Slack messages, meeting audio and interviews with current and former staff alleges that CEO Andy Yen has been forcing an AI-first overhaul on the company, brushing aside security concerns and belittling the employees who raised them. On Friday 30 October, Yen cancelled a round of company-wide AI “re-interviews” that were due to start on 4 November. The Proton AI controversy is nowhere near over, though, because the cancelled interviews were never really the problem.
What happened at Proton
The short version is that Proton told staff they’d be re-interviewed about how they use AI, a leak revealed how hard leadership has been pushing AI internally, and the CEO walked back the interviews a day after the full story landed.
It started on Monday 26 October with an internal email telling employees that selected staff would be re-interviewed between 4 and 11 November to assess how they were adapting to AI. The email described the process as “consequential” and said the outcomes could affect roles, responsibilities and continued employment. Proton responded publicly by insisting it wasn’t carrying out layoffs with AI as cover, saying it was short on talent and still hiring.
Three days later, 404 Media published an investigation into Proton’s internal AI push, drawing on eight current employees, one former employee, Slack chats, meeting recordings and an AI manifesto written by Proton’s CTO, Bart Butler. The detail that set everything alight came from the company’s security Slack channel in late August. An employee asked for a few days to penetration test newly written code before it went live, and Yen reportedly dismissed the request as “bullshit and loser thinking”, telling staff to focus on going faster and to stop hand-crafting so much of their code.
The reporting also describes a manifesto telling engineers their old jobs no longer exist, software installed on staff computers to track how much AI-generated code the company produces, and Yen saying this would be the last year Proton hires engineers at all. Staff described a culture where people with real security concerns felt unable to raise them for fear of being mocked in front of colleagues.
Proton’s response to the AI backlash
At an all-hands meeting on 30 October, Yen admitted to a communication failure on his part and cancelled the re-interviews. In the same breath, he made it clear the direction hasn’t changed, telling staff “I’m still going to push” on AI adoption. Employees later reported that whatever the re-interviews were meant to measure will now be folded into regular performance reviews instead.
Yen also flagged a reorganisation for next month, promising no jobs would be lost to AI, and said Proton’s board is closely monitoring the situation. Butler told staff the CEO had committed to communicating better, and that using AI pragmatically doesn’t mean abandoning security or sound engineering. By his own account, leadership knows it messed up.
Staff reaction was split. Some were glad to see movement. Others described the whole thing as damage control, pointing out that the re-interviews were only scrapped once the story went public, despite concerns being raised internally beforehand. One employee suggested real accountability was unlikely given Yen’s reported majority shareholding. Proton is owned by the Proton Foundation, whose board includes Yen alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and how that board responds over the coming weeks will tell us a lot.
Users, meanwhile, have been giving out in huge numbers. Yen’s own public defence on Proton’s community forum was heavily downvoted, there have been open calls for him to resign, and plenty of paying customers say they’ve cancelled or won’t renew.
Why this hits Proton harder than any other tech company
Proton doesn’t compete on price, design or convenience. It competes on being more trustworthy than the companies its customers are trying to escape, and that’s precisely what this story damages.
Here in Ireland, where most of the big US platforms have their European headquarters and the Data Protection Commission routinely fines them, the appeal of a Swiss privacy alternative is obvious. People don’t pay for Proton Mail because it’s slicker than Gmail. They pay because they don’t want an advertising company reading their inbox. When a Google or a Microsoft forces AI into its workflows, nobody’s surprised. When the company that built its entire brand on being the careful, principled alternative does the same thing and labels a security request “loser thinking”, it lands very differently.
To be clear, using AI isn’t the sin here. Proton already makes its own AI assistant, Lumo, and plenty of engineering teams use AI tools responsibly. The problem is the manner of it. A company holding your emails, your passwords, your files and your VPN traffic is reportedly treating caution as an obstacle to speed. That’s the one trait its customers are paying it not to have.
Is Proton Mail still safe to use?
Yes, for now. Nothing in the reporting suggests Proton’s encryption has been broken, that there’s been a breach, or that anyone’s data has been exposed.
The concern is about the company ethos and future rather than the present. End-to-end encryption means Proton can’t read your messages, but the apps doing that encrypting are still software, and software is only as reliable as the process behind it. If code is being shipped faster with less human review and less testing, the risk of a mistake slipping through goes up. Should you be worried about that? A little, yes. Proton’s apps are open source and have been independently audited in the past, which helps, but the reassurance users need now is evidence that rigour hasn’t been quietly traded for velocity.
What Proton needs to do to win back trust
Another statement won’t cut it. Proton needs to show its work.
That means publishing a clear policy on where AI-generated code is and isn’t allowed, particularly anywhere near encryption, authentication or account security. It means committing publicly to human review and penetration testing for security-critical code, and backing that up with fresh independent audits whose results are published in full. It also means decoupling AI usage from performance reviews entirely, because moving the same measurement into a quieter process isn’t a change of direction. Finally, it means leadership owning the culture problem staff described, not just the communication problem Yen has admitted to.
None of that is unreasonable for a company that asks people to trust it with the most sensitive parts of their digital lives.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it’s worth acknowledging that some have called for Yen to step down too.
Should you leave Proton?
Not in a panic. If you’re on a bundle covering Mail, Pass, VPN and Drive, switching everything is a serious job, and nothing has gone wrong with your data. Watching what Proton does over the next few months is a perfectly sensible position.
That said, if your renewal is coming up, shopping around is fair. Tuta and Mailbox.org are both established, privacy-focused email providers based in Germany, Bitwarden is a strong open-source password manager (I host my own) , and Mullvad has a solid reputation in the VPN space. Spreading your services across a few providers also means one company’s bad week doesn’t affect everything at once. Whatever you decide, make sure you know how to export your data from Proton so you’re never locked in.
Proton’s real dilemma is that it can’t win an AI race by becoming indistinguishable from the companies it was set up to challenge. It can absolutely use AI. What it can’t do is ask privacy-conscious people for their trust while treating caution as a weakness.
It makes me wonder about the disconnect between reality and Reddit, and social media in general. Perhaps nothing embodies that better than reports that Toots, Malahide’s road train, was stolen. This came off the back of a video showing Toots coming through a roundabout at a speed some deemed fairly lively, enough to spark speculation that the road train had been nicked. These stories gather their own train-like momentum, and fact-checking unfortunately goes out the window.
At the time of writing, if you Google “Toots Malahide”, the first thing you see is a video on Reddit claiming it was stolen.
I reached out to Michael Place, operator of Toots, to get to the truth. Michael confirmed that Toots was not stolen, and said he had “tried to quell the media posts as much as I could”. Toots had been out at the annual Halloween festivals run by Limelight Communications and Dublin City Council Events, including Dockers & Demons in Ringsend Park and the Big Scream Parade in North Docklands, along with short loops of the Royal Canal at Sheriff Street.
On the way home, Michael brought Toots up the bus lane on the Malahide Road and through the Darndale Roundabout, which is where the video was filmed. As he put it: “Our 40ft long train needs a good run through there not upsetting the traffic flow so we were foot to the floor at 24kmph, which looked prompt!”
So, contrary to speculation, Toots was not stolen. Michael was out making a living and Toots slept soundly in its yard in Malahide. Michael did say himself that “some took a swipe at Darndale [in social media comments] which I don’t like”, again highlighting the dangers of presumptions on social media.
Thankfully, as Toots is safe and sound, Michael said “we look forward to our service operating weekends at best from here on in to Christmas”. You can follow Toots’ journey and programme on Instagram.
Note: The featured image for this article was upscaled from a social media post using AI but has not been otherwise edited.
Update 20 October 2026: Added comment from Revolut and potential outage cause at Google Cloud
Update 20 October 2026: Revolut has said, “we can confirm that services are now restored. Our customers’ money and data are safe and remained safe throughout”.
Revolut is down for many customers in Ireland and abroad this morning, with reports of app errors, failed logins, declined card payments and blocked transfers. It adds to a long list of headaches the neo-bank has experienced in recent months. A bank spokesperson said, “we are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused”.
Revolut Support said on X that the disruption may leave some services inaccessible, and apologised for the inconvenience. No cause or restoration time has been given. The company has around 3.4 million customers in Ireland, which makes this a big problem for a lot of people trying to pay for things today.
Is Revolut down in Ireland?
Yes, for a lot of customers. Irish users are among those reporting that the app will not load, that tap and online payments are being declined, and that transfers are failing. Reports are also coming in from Portugal, Japan, China, Malaysia and other countries, so this is not an Irish problem alone. That said, the impact looks uneven, with at least one customer in Denmark saying everything was working normally for them.
The outage has been confirmed on Downdetector, with the platform showing several other services experiencing outages, suggesting a third party issue. Google Cloud is indeed experiencing an outage today, suggesting that might be the cause.
What customers are reporting
The app is the most obvious casualty. Customers say it is throwing errors, refusing logins or failing to open at all, and at least one person said reinstalling it made no difference.
The more worrying reports involve payments. Contactless and online card payments are failing for many users, and several say their physical Revolut cards are not working either. That suggests the fault sits deeper in the payment processing side rather than being a simple app glitch, although Revolut has not confirmed that.
Some customers say they cannot see their IBAN or account details, and one reported that a savings account appeared to vanish from the app. Another said an incoming payment could not be verified. Both are single reports and have not been confirmed more widely.
Travellers look to be among the hardest hit, with some saying they could not pay for transport, hotels or flights.
Status page complaints
A common complaint is that Revolut’s system status page kept showing everything as operational while services were clearly failing. Several customers said they only found out about the outage through social media rather than from the app or the company’s own channels.
What to do while Revolut is down
If you are out and about, have a second payment method from another bank or provider to hand, and do not rely on either the app or your physical Revolut card until services are confirmed as restored. If you have an important transfer or bill payment due today, it is worth moving it to another account where you can. Revolut Support is posting updates on X.
In 2023 I built a gaming PC. I call him PinkyBoi, it cost me a small fortune, and it taught me everything I need to know about building a gaming PC in Ireland. The pitfalls, the costs, the pure impossibles and the little wins. Living on an island makes this really tough, lads.
A console-beating gaming PC in Ireland will cost you roughly €1,400 to €1,500 before Windows and a screen, which is a lot more than an Xbox Series X at around €800. That said, a PC grows with you in a way a console never will, and it handles homework, coding and even TinkerCAD for 3D printing on the side. Whether you’re building for yourself or you’re in a cold sweat because your kid just asked for one, this guide covers what to buy, where to buy it and what to avoid.
My take is simple. Build one if you enjoy a challenge, buy a prebuilt if you don’t, and check the VAT before you click buy.
Why build a gaming PC instead of buying a console?
Because a PC is the longer play. When I was a kid, a computer arrived one Christmas morning. A jet black Dell. I couldn’t tell you a single spec, but I remember playing Need for Speed III Hot Pursuit and being blown away by the reflections on the supercars. I’d probably laugh at those graphics now. I even watched films on it at the desk in the hall, because it was the first DVD drive in the house. The Matrix, Deep Blue Sea, The One. All major memories for me.
As much as I loved my SEGA and my PlayStation, they never reached the heights that PC did.
The PC option isn’t cheap, and it definitely isn’t cheaper than console gaming. Consoles are built and locked in forever, until they become retro popular again, and yes, it hurts to see your old PlayStation called retro now. The right PC with the right parts can grow with your kid, or with you.
Is a gaming PC better than a console or a handheld?
Not always, so rule out the alternatives before you spend a cent.
The biggest game in years, GTA 6, arrives on 19 November and it’s practically the only game anyone wants to play. It’s only landing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S at first, and Rockstar hasn’t announced a PC date. If GTA 6 is all they’re talking about, a PC won’t play it at launch. And not to be a buzzkill, kids, but it’s rated 18 and very much an adult game, so maybe it shouldn’t be on the wish list either way.
A portable gaming handheld might be the answer instead. I have a ROG Ally, and it handles older big games like GTA 5, with Fortnite and Minecraft running easily. The battery lasts about two hours of gaming, which means a big Anker power bank on road trips. The big win is that you can dock it. On a desk you can connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse and it behaves like a gaming PC, minus the massive wow of a tower. It’s a hybrid of a Nintendo Switch, a console and a gaming PC. A gaming laptop sits in the same bucket for me.
It’s an important option to consider, because it’s often the shift to keyboard and mouse that kids are after above all else. But if they’ve been talking about their friends with the tower and the RGB fans, a handheld isn’t what they expect you to buy. They want a fully fledged gaming PC, so we move on to the next decision.
Prebuilt gaming PC or self build in Ireland?
A prebuilt is the easiest route, and for a lot of families it’s the sensible one, as long as it passes a simple test. It needs to be at least as good as the console, and it needs room to grow.
You have three options. You can buy a prebuilt off the shelf, get someone to build one for you, or build it yourself. Before you decide, here are the parts you’ll be dealing with. A motherboard, a processor, memory, a graphics card, storage, a power supply, something to keep it cool and a case. Those words make up the bulk of a great gaming PC, and I’ll go through each one below.
I recently looked at a prebuilt in Harvey Norman for €1,400. It has an RTX 5060 graphics card, so it passes on power and gives you PS5-style graphics. The catch is that the processor is a laptop chip soldered to the board, so you can never swap in a better one without replacing the entire motherboard. Console power, yes. Room to grow, no. The price looks fine, but you have to read past the graphics card to see what you’re really getting.
Not every prebuilt fails the test. Currys has a PCSpecialist one for €1,799 at the time of writing, on sale. It has an AMD RX 9060 XT graphics card, 16GB of DDR5, a Ryzen 5 processor and an AM5 board. Console power, yes. Room to grow, yes, as long as you know which motherboard you’re getting, because the listing doesn’t say. It doesn’t name the power supply either, so ask before you buy.
I priced the same parts myself. The graphics card, memory, processor, motherboard and drive came to €1,315 on Amazon. Add a power supply, a case with RGB fans and a cooler and you’re at about €1,500. That’s roughly €300 for someone else to build it, test it and stand over it for three years, which is peace of mind rather than a rip-off.
You’ll find other builders around Ireland, but I can’t recommend many because I’ve never used them. If you’re in Cork, I’ve chatted with Cormac in Crosshaven Computers loads of times and he really knows his stuff. He’d rather send you away than sell you something you don’t need just to meet your budget, and that’s worth its weight in gold.
The real rewards go to those willing to build from a parts list themselves. It’s the most work with the steepest learning curve, but I utterly enjoyed it. Bonus points if you can build it with your kid, even if that comes with some extra risk of missing something on the day. AI and YouTube videos were life savers for me, and Linus Tech Tips has a brilliant step by step guide. I pressed play and built everything along with it, like a nineties cooking show.
One lesson from building PinkyBoi is to pick a theme before you buy a single part. Mine was cyberpunk pink and blue, and as you can see, I have a bit of a thing for it. It made every decision easier and it made the build mine. The little sushi guy came home with me from a trip to Japan, and it’s small things like that which make a build unique. If you or the kids have a favourite colour, lean into it.
Gaming PC parts explained
Parts come and go, in and out of stock, especially when you live in Ireland. Stock can be fleeting and hard to get, so I’m going to give you philosophies rather than specific parts.
AMD or Intel
Two companies make the main chips for gaming PCs, and you need to pick one and stick with it. Broad sweeping statement alert, but they’re largely as good as each other. I picked AMD because it offered what I needed at the time for a better price, and in my experience AMD tends to be cheaper. Cue the fighting in the comments. I didn’t go the Intel route, so I can’t speak to it, and this guide is effectively an AMD build.
Motherboard
The motherboard is the big flat board that connects everything together. Think of it as the foundation, because every part you buy connects to it somehow and it decides what you can upgrade later. I started my whole build by picking mine. Because I went AMD, I was choosing between AM4 and AM5, AMD’s two most recent generations.
I picked a full sized AM5 board, the most modern at the time. It cost a little extra, but AM5 future proofed me to the max, because the latest processors and memory were open to me. AMD has said it will support AM5 until at least 2029. The full size is where you can save money, though. A smaller board does the same job for less, as long as it fits your case.
You may not need all of that, and you could be just as happy with AM4. DDR5 is the newest and most expensive memory, and RAM pricing has been wild lately. AM4 with DDR4 means you’re a generation older but saving money, which isn’t to be frowned upon in this economy. The processors in games consoles are closer to the AM4 generation than AM5 anyway. This should largely be dictated by budget, but AM4 is longer in the tooth, so if you can stretch to AM5 you get maximum future proofing for upgrades down the line.
CPU
The CPU, or processor, is the brain of your computer. Because this is effectively an AMD build, you’ll need a Ryzen CPU, and they’re bang for buck awesome. Make sure it matches your board, AM4 or AM5, because they’re completely different. One has the pins on the board and the other has the pins on the chip.
It’s a fig roll sized chip that drops into place with no force at all, then a latch holds it down. Go slow here. When I did mine I was filming, and the plastic cover on the socket shot across the room. I stopped filming, because getting it right mattered more than the footage. That pop is normal, by the way. The CPU also gets quite hot when the PC is running, so it needs cooling, which I’ll come to shortly.
RAM
If the CPU is the brain, RAM is its short term memory, the stuff it’s holding in its head right now. Too little and everything slows down. It’s also the part whose price has gone through the roof in the last year.
AM4 boards need DDR4 RAM and AM5 boards take DDR5. Newer is better, but DDR5 won’t work in an AM4 build, so budget dictates what you do. If you do go DDR4, buy all the memory you’ll want up front, because it’s being phased out.
When buying RAM, look at the four digit number. DDR5 6000 is faster than DDR5 5200, and for AM5 6000 is plenty. Faster costs more for very little gain.
Anything below 16GB is a waste of time right now. Buy it as two 8GB sticks rather than one, and if your board has four slots it’s easy to add more later.
Graphics card
The GPU is the gem in the crown. It draws the game and makes it look great, which is why a big chunk of your budget goes here. Even with RAM prices this year, it was the biggest single cost in both builds I priced.
This is where you pick your team. Team Red, Team Green or the lesser known Team Blue, and it doesn’t have to match your processor. An AMD processor with an Nvidia graphics card is one of the most common combos out there.
The good news is that most kids aren’t playing the most demanding games. Two in five Irish eight to twelve year olds use Roblox, and Fortnite and Minecraft run on surprisingly modest machines. You don’t need a monster, you need a console beater.
Team Red is AMD, and it’s the one I picked, because the card I got was AMD’s best at the time and had just launched. AMD’s minimum for a console beater is the RX 9060 XT, the 8GB version. Team Green is Nvidia, the household name for graphics cards, and you’ll want at least an RTX 5060. Team Blue is Intel, and yes, Intel makes graphics cards now, which is good for competition. They’ll offer you an Arc B580, the plucky underdog, but also the hardest to find in the Irish market.
One thing confuses people. The 8GB or 16GB in a graphics card’s name is its own memory, and it’s not the same as your RAM.
I can only personally recommend AMD, but your budget and the games they play will dictate which card you go for. You can even use newer graphics cards with AM4 if you want to invest that way. Pay attention to the size of your case here. My GPU only fit by a hair, and I got really lucky because the thing is massive.
Fans and cooling
Keeping all of this processing and power cool is important. I can literally heat a room in the winter with my gaming PC. You’ll want a couple of fans keeping air flowing across the parts. Will RGB on those fans make the computer cooler? No, of course not, but it does make it look cooler.
You can also put an all in one water cooler on your CPU, but I doubt you need to. If your CPU comes with a cooler in the box, just use that. Check the listing, because some do and some don’t.
Power supply
The power supply is the least sexy part of the machine and the part most people underspend on. Its size is dictated by your graphics card, and the card’s listing will tell you how much it needs. Don’t cheap out, and stick to a brand you’ve heard of. Bake in a little headroom too, because the more you have, the more stable it is and the easier it is to fit a bigger graphics card later.
Storage
Storage has also become shockingly expensive. You’ll want at least one M.2 drive, a little stick about the size of a stick of chewing gum, with at least 1TB. This is the fast drive for storing your games. I’d stretch to 2TB if you can, because when I priced it, 2TB was only about €90 more than 1TB. You can add cheaper SATA drives for general storage later, and when I built PinkyBoi I even used some older hard drives I picked up second hand.
Case
I’m being unfair putting the case under the unsexy parts, because it can absolutely make the PC. I don’t care what you have in your office, a glass case that shows it all off is class. Just make sure it comes with a few fans and has room for your graphics card.
Check your parts with PCPartPicker
If you’re terrified now, take a break and breathe into a brown paper bag. I hear you. I had countless spreadsheets going when I was building my PC, and then I discovered PCPartPicker. This is the fun part. You load up the PCPartPicker Ireland compatibility checker, start adding parts you find for sale, and it tells you if something is incompatible. It’s fairly accurate most of the time, but do your own double checks too.
If any of this has felt like double Dutch, that’s your answer. Pay someone to do it, whether that’s a prebuilt like that Currys one or someone like Cormac to plan it and build it. That’s not a failure, it’s the sensible call.
Here are two builds I’ve made myself through researching available products today; a console killer and a world beater.
Here are the full product listings with links to Amazon. Note, if you purchase from Amazon after clicking our links, we may get a small payment from Amazon. It doesn’t cost you a penny extra, but it helps keep the lights on here.
A console-beating gaming PC costs about €1,400 in Ireland before Windows and a screen. That’s about the same as that Harvey Norman PC, but with room to grow.
I’ve put together two builds on PCPartPicker Ireland. The first is my console killer gaming PC parts list, and the second is a higher end world beater gaming PC parts list for anyone who wants to go bigger. Prices are moving fast at the minute, so treat them as a guide rather than a quote.
Where to buy gaming PC parts in Ireland
Online, nearly always, and Amazon is hard to beat. I might get destroyed for this, because we always say shop local, but it’s next to impossible to get everything on the high street, and even harder at a great price. Not every town has a Cormac.
When I built my PC I was looking at lots of different sites, and I didn’t realise until it was built that most of my parts came from Amazon UK. That was before Amazon Ireland launched. Amazon Ireland is underwhelming, but it’s still the best spot to get things. I compared two potential builds across Overclockers, Caseking and Amazon, and Amazon won every line except the processor. Add delivery charges and the fact that Amazon is typically sound on returns, and it’s a bit of a no brainer, even if I’d rather not be giving Jeff the money.
Buying from the UK can be a real risk. I bought my processor, motherboard and drive from a UK shop and sent them through a UK forwarding address. I paid UK VAT at the checkout, then about €190 of Irish VAT on top when it landed. I tried to claim the UK VAT back and never saw a cent.
So learn from me. Irish shops first, EU shops next. There’s no customs, you pay Irish VAT at the checkout, and you get the same consumer rights as here, including a two year guarantee. Some UK shops, like Overclockers and Scan, now add Irish VAT at the checkout too. If a site says taxes and duties are included, you’re sorted. If it doesn’t say, assume you’ll pay extra on the doorstep.
You might find parts going cheap on Adverts, too. I’ve bought parts there myself, namely the hard drives, and some lad got a great deal off me when I upgraded my RAM and sold my old kit on Adverts for €85. That same kit now costs more than three times what I paid for it new. I try not to think about that too much.
Buying from a person doesn’t come with the same rights as buying from a shop, so see it working before you hand over any cash.
Monitor, keyboard, mouse and Windows
Adverts is also a winner for the extras you’ll need, which are a monitor, a keyboard and mouse, and a headset. The monitor is the forgiving bit in my eyes, because a decent one doesn’t cost a fortune, new or second hand. The keyboard is one of the most affordable upgrades after a few months of gaming, so hold it back for a birthday if you have to. When you do buy one, get a clacky mechanical keyboard.
You’ll also need Windows. As much as I’d love to say try Linux, it isn’t a beginner operating system. A Windows licence typically costs about €145. I’ll be honest, I paid about €20 for a key from a reseller site, like loads of people do. Genuine second hand licences are legal in Europe, but you can’t always tell what you’re getting, and if it stops working you’ve no comeback.
Building a gaming PC for your kid at Christmas
I’m really torn on whether parents should build it before handing it over, because building is great fun. You need to know how your kid would react if something doesn’t work and you have to go back and buy more parts.
Here’s what I’d do. Build it and test it before Christmas, so any faulty part gets sorted while there’s still time. Then leave the fun bits for them, like setting up the lights, picking the wallpaper and installing their first game. Before it’s unwrapped, set up parental controls on Windows and Steam, and have a think about where in the house it will live.
If you’re a real sadist, you could build the whole thing, test it and then take it apart again. I really don’t recommend it unless you know what you’re doing, because lots of parts are easy to damage.
Is building a gaming PC worth it?
A gaming PC isn’t like the console everyone has. It’s theirs to change, upgrade and make their own. Somewhere out there is a kid who’ll remember their first gaming PC the way I remember a black Dell and Need for Speed.
Lidl says it has reached 100,000 Lidl Connect registrations ten days after launching on Monday 5 October, which means the €8.99 a month launch offer is now closed. That is well ahead of the 31 December cut-off Lidl originally gave alongside the 100,000 cap.
Anyone joining from now pays €12.99 a month, which Lidl still calls Price for Life, and the only way in is the Lidl Plus app. The plan itself hasn’t changed. It includes unlimited 5G data in Ireland, unlimited calls and texts to Irish and UK networks, 50GB of EU and UK roaming data and 100 international minutes a month to eligible destinations, all on a rolling monthly basis with no contract. Our Lidl Connect video walks through everything that’s included. You can also add up to three extra SIMs to a Lidl Plus account, each at €12.99.
What the €12.99 Price for Life covers
Lidl says the €12.99 price is locked in for as long as the plan stays continuously active. In plain terms, cancelling and rejoining later would probably mean paying whatever the going rate is at that point. You need to be 18 or over with a Lidl Plus account, and you can pick up a physical SIM for €0.99 in Lidl stores nationwide or set up an eSIM through the app. If you’re unsure your handset can do the latter, here’s how to check if your phone supports eSIM. 5G also depends on a compatible phone and coverage where you are.
The service runs on eir’s network, with 1GLOBAL delivering it for Lidl.
How Lidl Connect compares with GoMo, 48 and Clear Mobile now
At €12.99, Lidl Connect no longer undercuts the budget field so much as match it. GoMo, 48 and Clear Mobile charge between €12.99 and €14.99 for comparable SIM-only plans, which puts Lidl at the bottom of that range. Its clearest advantage now is roaming, with 50GB of EU and UK data. Our guide to the best SIM-only deals in Ireland tracks how the rest of the market stacks up.
The rivals haven’t stood still either. GoMo started switching on 5G for customers on its older plans at no extra cost within days of Lidl’s launch, which we covered when GoMo reacted to the Lidl Connect launch. 48 has since told customers on its older 4G plans that they will get 5G by 31 October. Some legacy GoMo customers said in the comments on our video that they planned to switch to Lidl, so it will be interesting to see how many follow through now that the cheapest price has gone.
What Lidl hasn’t said about the 100,000 figure
Lidl’s number counts registrations, and the company hasn’t said how many are active lines, how many customers came from other providers or how many have finished moving their numbers across. In the first week Lidl acknowledged that a small number of customers had delays or temporary interruptions during number transfers, which it put down to demand.
The other thing to watch is performance now that real customers are on the network. Ookla’s pre-launch latency data put Lidl Connect test SIMs at a median of 59.6ms against 32.5ms for eir customers, because traffic goes through 1GLOBAL’s gateways in London or Amsterdam rather than staying in Ireland. Ookla’s view is that coverage and download speeds should match eir’s, since the masts are the same. That was a pre-launch measurement, though, and 100,000 customers will show whether it holds up.
Lidl Connect is open to new customers at €12.99 a month through the Lidl Plus app, with SIMs available in Lidl stores for €0.99, and the Lidl Connect plan details and terms are on Lidl’s site. There’s no word yet on whether Lidl will run another limited-time offer. It’s a quick turnaround from April, when Lidl first confirmed its plans and I looked at whether Lidl Mobile would come to Ireland.
An Post has emailed AddressPal customers to say the service’s website will close on 16 October 2026, ending new registrations and online account management for its parcel forwarding service. Existing customers can keep using AddressPal after that date with their existing APW number, but they’ll no longer be able to log in, change their details or update a payment card online.
For anyone who hasn’t used it, AddressPal gives you a UK or US address so you can shop from retailers that won’t ship to Ireland, or that charge silly money to do so. Your parcel arrives at An Post’s facility abroad and is forwarded on to you here. According to An Post’s AddressPal help and support page, UK deliveries currently cost €10 for items up to 20kg, while US deliveries start at €20 and rise with weight, with customs and VAT added where they apply.
I’ve a real soft spot for this one. We covered the launch of AddressPal’s US shipping service back in 2017, and I’ve used it sporadically ever since, most recently this year when I bought myself a t-shirt after seeing Kirk Hammett wearing it. So it’s a genuine pity to see An Post start winding it down. That said, I’m not even sure “winding down” is the right description, because I’ve read the email several times now and it’s one of the most confusing shutdown notices I’ve ever received.
Is AddressPal closing?
Not exactly, or at least not yet. The AddressPal website closes on 16 October 2026, but An Post says the delivery service itself continues for existing customers, who can keep ordering as they do today.
The problem is that the email doesn’t read that way. The subject line demands action before 16 October. It opens by describing what AddressPal was created to do, in the past tense. It talks about how cross-border shipping has been transformed, says the service has been carefully reviewed, and then announces the website won’t be available. Every line of that is the language of a service being switched off.
Only further down does it explain that this is specifically about the website, which handles new sign-ups and account changes, and that technical and operational changes to the systems behind it mean it can’t stay online. It then signs off hoping you’ll keep using the service as normal. Being totally transparent, I had to read it twice to work out whether I’d lost my US address or not. I hadn’t.
What AddressPal customers need to do before 16 October
If you want to keep using AddressPal, log in to your account before 16 October and make a note of your APW number, the unique reference that sits in your UK or US address so the warehouse knows the parcel is yours. Without the website, you won’t be able to look it up again.
While you’re logged in, check your payment card details are current and update any personal information that might change, such as your delivery address or phone number. An Post also recommends saving any account information you might need later.
The blunt gap here is payment cards. If your card expires after 16 October, the email doesn’t spell out how you’ll replace it, beyond pointing customers to addresspalsupport@anpost.ie for queries. If your card is due to expire in the next while, I’d be sorting out a new one on the account before the deadline rather than finding out the hard way with a parcel sitting in a warehouse.
If you’d rather close your AddressPal account, there’s an option at the bottom of the account screen until 16 October. After that, you’ll need to email the support team to do it.
Why An Post is closing the AddressPal website
An Post’s email points to two reasons for the AddressPal changes. More retailers now ship directly to Ireland, and customs processes have made cross-border shipping more complicated than when AddressPal first launched.
AddressPal launched in April 2016 with a UK address, and it took off quickly. An Post said at the time it had signed up more than 100,000 users within seven months, helped by sterling’s drop after the Brexit vote. Brexit itself then did the opposite. Once Britain left the EU, every UK parcel became an import subject to customs checks and VAT, and the service’s whole appeal, cheap shipping on cheap stuff, took a serious knock. Post Office collection for UK items started at €3.50 back then; today UK delivery costs €10.
The latest blow landed in July. Since 1 July 2026, a €3 customs duty on low-value parcels from outside the EU applies to every distinct item in a parcel worth €150 or less, including goods from Great Britain and the US. For a service many people used for small, inexpensive bits, that’s another charge stacked on top of the forwarding fee and VAT.
To be honest, none of that makes the decision surprising. What I’d question is the wording. A service that can no longer sign up customers, and whose existing customers can’t manage their own accounts, doesn’t strike me as one with a long runway, however the email frames it.
What’s next for AddressPal?
An Post says it knows customers value easy ways to shop with retailers that don’t deliver to Ireland, and that it’s exploring future options in this area. There’s no detail yet on what those might be or when they’d arrive.
I’ve contacted An Post’s press office asking whether there’s a planned end date for the AddressPal delivery service, whether it will run as normal through Black Friday and Christmas, what’s driving the decision, whether a replacement service is on the way, and whether any jobs are affected. I’ll update this piece when I hear back.
In the meantime, existing AddressPal customers have until 16 October 2026 to manage their accounts online, after which queries go to addresspalsupport@anpost.ie.
Google has opened its SynthID Detector for checking AI-generated content to the public, so anyone can now check whether an image, video or audio clip was made with AI. The tool went live globally in English this afternoon, which means it’s available in Ireland from today.
Until now, the detector was limited to journalists, researchers and other media professionals, who could access an early version through a waitlist after Google first showed it off in 2025. The public version recognises content made with Google’s own AI tools and with tools from its SynthID partners. Google lists those as OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao, and says Apple is joining soon.
What is SynthID?
SynthID is Google DeepMind’s invisible watermarking system. It doesn’t add a visible logo to a picture or rely on metadata, which is easily lost when a file is re-saved or screenshotted. Instead, it embeds a signal directly into the content at the moment it’s created. You can’t see or hear it, but the detector can pick it up.
Google says it has watermarked more than 180 billion images and videos since SynthID launched in 2023, along with 240,000 years of audio. Those are Google’s own figures, but they give a sense of how much watermarked content is already out there.
How to check if an image, video or audio clip is AI-generated
The process is simple enough. You sign in to synthid.com with a Google, Apple or OpenAI account, upload the file you’re unsure about, and the detector scans it for a SynthID watermark. Google hasn’t mentioned any cost attached to using it.
It sits alongside the verification features Google has already built into Search, the Gemini app and Chrome. The company says those now handle more than a million requests a day between them.
What SynthID Detector can’t tell you
This is the part to understand before you start lobbing every dodgy-looking image into it. SynthID Detector only finds SynthID watermarks. If something was made with an AI tool that doesn’t use SynthID, such as an open-source image model running on someone’s own computer, there’s simply nothing for it to find.
A negative result doesn’t mean a human made it. It only means the content doesn’t carry a watermark from Google or one of its partners. A positive result tells you far more than a negative one, and that distinction is going to trip people up.
That said, the partner list is the most significant part of this announcement. OpenAI already adds SynthID watermarks to images made in ChatGPT, and if Apple follows through, a large share of the AI content the average person comes across will be checkable in one place. That’s a far cry from when SynthID was effectively a Google-only system.
That being said, a fragmented approach is arguably worse leaving the onus on the public to know that not all AI images are detectable as easily as others.
Availability in Ireland
SynthID Detector is available now in Ireland and worldwide, in English only for the time being. Google hasn’t said when other languages will follow. You can read more in Google’s announcement of the public SynthID Detector.
GoMo appears to be switching on 5G for customers on its original €9.99 a month price for life plan, without any change to their monthly bill. Customers on the legacy plan have reported seeing 5G on their phones in the last few days, with some also receiving a text from GoMo about the change. It isn’t reaching everyone at once, though. Other €9.99 customers say they’ve heard nothing so far, which points to a phased rollout rather than one big switch-over.
GoMo hasn’t announced anything publicly, and its own GoMo 5G upgrade support page still tells customers on the €9.99 and €12.99 plans who joined before November 2025 that they need to move to the €14.99 plan to get 5G. If the reports hold up, it’s a big change for a group of customers who’ve been left on 4G since GoMo first switched on 5G back in February 2023.
Which GoMo customers are getting free 5G?
Going by what customers are reporting, it’s people on the original €9.99 plan, the deal GoMo offered its first 100,000 customers when it launched on the eir network in October 2019. GoMo hasn’t confirmed whether the €12.99 plan that followed is included, or when the rollout will be complete.
The usual 5G rules still apply. You’ll need a 5G-capable phone and 5G coverage where you are. GoMo’s existing advice for anyone who has just had 5G added is to power the phone off for two or three minutes to refresh the SIM, so try that first if you’ve had the text but your phone is still showing 4G.
Why the timing points straight at Lidl Connect
GoMo hasn’t given a reason for the change, but to be honest, it’s hard to read this as anything other than a reaction to Lidl. Lidl Connect’s €8.99 unlimited 5G SIM-only plan went live on Monday 5 October, offering unlimited 5G data, calls and texts for €8.99 a month for life to its first 100,000 customers, or until 31 December. It runs on eir’s network, the same one GoMo uses, and adds 50GB of EU and UK roaming data. If that 100,000 cap sounds familiar, it’s the exact structure GoMo used to build its own customer base in 2019.
Until this week, the maths for anyone on the original GoMo deal was simple. You were paying a euro more than Lidl’s launch price and stuck on 4G. GoMo’s thinking seems to have been that people locked into a €9.99 price for life wouldn’t move over a single euro. The comments on our own Lidl Connect video say otherwise, with GoMo customers on the €9.99 plan saying plainly that they’re switching.
Seen in that light, free 5G looks like GoMo giving its longest-standing customers a reason to stay put, and it takes away the most obvious advantage Lidl had over the legacy plan.
What about GoMo customers who already paid to upgrade for 5G?
This is where it gets messy. Some €9.99 customers did exactly what GoMo told them to and moved to the €14.99 plan to get 5G, paying an extra €5 a month for life in the process. If the €9.99 plan now gets 5G at no extra cost, those customers are paying a premium for something their old plan now includes for free.
There’s no indication they’ll be allowed back. GoMo’s support page is blunt about it, stating that customers can’t return to a previous GoMo plan and that anyone who no longer wants 5G should simply switch it off in their phone settings. That rule made sense when 5G was the thing you were paying the extra fiver for. It makes far less sense if the €9.99 plan gets 5G anyway, and if GoMo is serious about holding on to loyal customers, the people who paid to upgrade are the obvious group to look after next.
Should GoMo €9.99 customers still switch to Lidl Connect?
If 5G was the main thing pulling you towards Lidl, the case for switching gets much weaker once it lands on your GoMo account. You’d be saving a euro a month on the same underlying eir network.
That said, Lidl Connect still has the bigger roaming allowance, with 50GB of EU and UK data compared to the 23GB of EU roaming on GoMo’s current plan, so regular travellers have a reason to look at it. It’s also an MVNO that routes data outside Ireland, which means slightly higher latency than GoMo. Most people won’t notice that day to day, but online gamers might. And once Lidl’s first 100,000 places are gone, the same plan costs €12.99 a month, so the €8.99 price only beats GoMo’s legacy deal for those who get in early.
GoMo hasn’t confirmed when every €9.99 customer will have 5G, so if yours hasn’t arrived yet, keep an eye out for a text over the coming weeks.
The people of Ireland are cute enough. They know that buying phones, like the latest iPhone 18, directly from a network is more or less hire-purchase with a spicy interest rate to boot. What do I mean by that? Well, if you can find a way to buy a phone outright yourself instead of on a long-term 24-month contract, you’ll almost certainly save money. We’ve built a bill-pay versus pre-pay calculator to help you work out the maths too.
But while that’s the phone sorted, you will still need a plan, right? That’s what this article is all about. Helping you find the cheapest mobile plans ireland that offer you the best coverage and usage.
Right now, Lidl Connect is Ireland’s cheapest SIM-only mobile plan
It is just for the first 100k customers and the network is just a few days old at the time of writing. However, I’d be silly to not mention it if you are researching a network change right now. I have already made the move over to Lidl Connect with my own personal number, such is my dedication to the tech review life, so you can follow for more updates over on YouTube or social media.
If you miss the offer, it increases to €12.99 for the same service. The same price as the best “other” plan on the market.
48 offers and Clear Mobile are second fiddle for value
I am calling 48 Ireland’s best “overall plan” right now purely because it’s tried and tested.
48 is Three Ireland’s sister brand, and right now they offer the best value SIM-only mobile phone plan in the Irish market. That means you get most of Tree’s quality network but at a discount price. Sure you don’t get access to Three Plus and the likes but at the end of the day thats a nice little bonus rather than a must have.
Right now 48 is offering their deal for €12.99. Overall this means your first 12 months with 48 will cost you €155.88. And remember there’s nothing to stop you shopping around after 1 month if another better offer comes out.
48, Clear Mobile, and GoMo all have connection fees that we take into consideration for our overall calculations
Critically despite this plan costing just €12.99, you get:
unlimited 5G data
20 GB of EU and UK roaming
5,000 minutes
5,000 texts
No additional contract
It is a rolling 28-day monthly agreement
It is worth noting that 20 GB of EU and UK roaming is amongst the lower of Ireland’s sim-only plans.
Pairing all that with the fact that this is on Three’s sister network, which is arguably Ireland’s strongest network for coverage, there’s a lot to be enjoyed about joining 48.
Lyca Mobile does earn itself an honourable mention as Ireland’s cheapest mobile phone plan
It’s only fair that we give Lyca Mobile some recognition for their offering as well. Usually their plan will cost you €20 per month; however right now they are running a sizeable discount that reduces that down to €11 per month for the first 12 months. That’s a massive €108 saved in the first year, which is great but only if you remember that after 12 months you need to shop around.
The cost of forgetting to shop around is considerable as Lyca Mobile’s first year is €132 total, versus a second year of €240 total. One important fact here is that Lyca Mobile operates on Three’s network.That means coverage should be pretty solid and if you do trust yourself to shop around in 12 months’ time, this is arguably a better deal.
Another big caveat with Lyca Mobile is that if you do a lot of international calling, the rates can be very competitive.
Clear Mobile, Vodafone’s sister network, offers a competitive deal of €12.99 per month, matching 48’s price. However Clear Mobile does not offer any discounts. As 48 has let discounts expire both networks are now identical in price.
Clear Mobile also offers Voice over WiFi which 48 misses out on. This became a deal breaker feature for me a few years back when it launched owing to the difference in call quality and stability it offers.
It’s worth noting that Clear Mobile also charges you a €12.99 connection fee but in return gives you your first month free. While GoMo also charges a €12.99 connection fee, they do not give you 1 month free. This means ClearMobile totals €155.88 in year 1, while GoMo reaches €168.87 in year 1. Both ClearMobile and GoMo give you 23 GB of data while roaming in the EU.
Virgin Media and Sky are not competitive right now unless you’re roaming
Largely speaking Virgin Media is not very competitive right now at €15 per month, with no discounts but no connection fee. Your first and second years with Virgin Media will cost €180. One saving grace for the network is that they offer you 37 GB of roaming data for when you travel in Europe. In case it’s useful, Virgin Media operates on the Three network but shockingly, still does not offer 5G at all.
Similarly Sky Mobile, which operates on the Vodafone network, will give you unlimited calls, text, and data at home and abroad while roaming in the EU and UK for €15 per month. That is unlimited roaming data
It is very important to note that with both of these plans from Virgin Media and Sky, you will be locked into a 12-month contract
OnPost Mobile is €12.99 per month for 50 GB of data, 500 minutes any network, and 300 minutes in texts to other OnPost Mobile customers, which I think will be a small cohort. You also get EU and UK roaming of 25 GB of data. The network operates on the Vodafone network but only offers 4G data.
On paper it is the weakest offering of all and it works really. However if you know a loved one who goes to the post office once a week or once a month, it’s probably the easiest one for them to top up with.
In the search for Ireland’s cheapest mobile phone plans, we’ve found, asked, been asked or answered plenty of questions. And so, we’ve gathered them here in the hope that they can help you too.
Why would anyone pick Eir, Three or Vodafone over GOMO, 48 or Clear Mobile?
The “home networks” like Eir, Three or Vodafone might suit better if you are looking for some of the frills with a network. This might include your need for a new phone to be paid off over the duration of a contract, access to 5G mobile internet or special offer bundles like home TV and Broadband. Another example is loyalty programmes are often reserved for the “parent” network. We shouldn’t ignore that a lot of people remain on the parent networks purely due to branding and a belief that they are a stronger network. Of course this isn’t necessarily true.
Is GOMO as fast as Eir?
Technically, GOMO 4G and Eir 4G should be as fast as each other. Some things like the number of people using the network in an area might influence this. One big difference is that Eir also offers 5G, so if you have a 5G phone and are in a 5G area, you will be able to enjoy very fast mobile internet. But 4G is more than enough for most.
Is Clear Mobile as fast as Vodafone?
Yes. Initially when Clear Mobile launched in Ireland, they throttled their internet connection significantly; however on their website they now say they’ve listened to customers and no longer do this
Is the 48 network as good as the Three network?
Like GOMO and Eir, there’s no real technical reason for there to be any difference between the 48 and Three network nor have we observed one.
Why choose SIM-only?
If you already have a phone and just need a connection, then SIM-only offers a great bit of value. Even if you need a new phone, check out how much you would spend over 24 months getting a network contract versus buying the phone outright and getting a SIM-only deal. Check out our handy calculator to do the maths on whether buying a phone outright yourself or on a contract is better for you.
How to find the best mobile phone sim-only plans in Ireland?
Despite this being a largely numbers-based operation, finding the best plan in Ireland is still somewhat subjective as not everybody’s needs are the same. When picking Ireland’s best mobile phone sim-only plan, we take into consideration monthly cost in the first year and the second year, along with any other things in the margins that might make a difference.
What is Ireland’s cheapest SIM-only plan?
Right now 48 Mobile offers the best sim-only monthly plan in Ireland for €9.99 per month for the first 6 months and €12.99 thereafter
What are connection fees?
Connection fees are an upfront cost networks charge you when you want to join their network. In reality a connection fee is to try and restrict you from jumping around from network to network on a regular basis. However if you do the maths and it works out for the best or you get a month back (as Clear Mobile is doing right now), that cost can be negated.
This is for information only. Pricing is correct as of 9 September 2026. Please see network provider websites for the latest prices, connection types, fees and detailed terms and conditions.
I’ve been riding Pure scooters into the office for a good while now, so when LOCO Scooters sent over the Pure Air 6 Suspension for review, I knew exactly what I’d be measuring it against. My own Pure Advance Flex is a demon on hills, and it has spoiled me rotten. I’ve been riding the Air 6 for over a week, on top of my usual 30km or so a week, and I took it out for extra spins specifically to hunt down the worst surfaces Dublin has to offer, cobblestones included.
The Pure Air 6 Suspension is the cheapest way into Pure’s sixth-generation Air range, and it comes with suspension on both the front and back. It costs €499 in Ireland, runs a 350W motor capped at 20km/h, rolls on 10-inch tubeless tyres and weighs around 21kg. Pure claims up to 45km of range on a single charge, but Loco’s 25km is a much more realistic range.
The suspension is the best thing I’ve felt on a scooter at this price. The trade-off is a 350W motor that’s nippy on the flat but runs out of puff on steep hills if you’re my size. More on both shortly. Let’s get into it.
Is the Pure Air 6 Suspension road legal in Ireland?
Yes. The Irish version is maxed out at 20km/h with no way to change it, the 350W motor sits well under the 400W limit, and at a little over 21kg it comes in under the 25kg weight cap. It has all the bells and whistles the rules ask for, quite literally, including a bell, front and rear lights, reflectors and two braking systems. Up front there’s a drum brake, and on the back there’s a regenerative brake that feeds a little energy back into the battery as you slow down. The handle bars also feature indicators visible from front and rear.
Where you buy it matters too. You can grab this from LOCO Scooters, an Irish electric scooter shop, that makes sure if you’re on the road that your scooter meets the Irish e-scooter rules.
The suspension makes Dublin’s cobbles feel like a cloud
The big feature of the Air 6 is the suspension on the front and back, and it’s every bit as good as I’d hoped. Riding over Dublin’s cobblestones and the bumpier stretches of road was absolutely divine. It’s like riding a cloud.
That comfort runs right through the scooter, from the air-filled tyres all the way up to the shocks. Hitting a bump on most scooters can leave you with your 6th birthday party flashing before your eyes. On the Air 6, it just feels a lot less dramatic, and that gives you real confidence on the road because you’re not bracing for every crack and pothole. Which, given the state of Irish roads, is a blessing.
The suspension is the part that impressed me most, so much so I didn’t even realise how much I missed it on my Flex. A couple of years ago, getting double shocks front and back for €499 would have been impossible. That’s a premium feature at a mid-range price.
Riding position and handling
As a result of the suspensions, the Air 6 gives you a high ride height coupled with a relaxed, leaning-back stance, with the handlebars in a really comfortable position. My Advance Flex has quite low handlebars, so you feel like you’re leaning forward on it. This is the opposite, and it’s incredibly comfortable over a longer spin. If you like the Kukirin-style riding position, it’s very similar.
It’s really interesting to see one scooter company with two totally different design philosophies and after meeting them over at IFA in Berlin, they have plenty more to come too.
That height has a catch, though. When you stop and you’re not used to it, you step down further than you expect. I nearly tried to drive my foot through the concrete once or twice, which isn’t good for an aging knee.
The steering also doesn’t self-right as much as I’m used to, which is not a massive thing, but it does serve as a reminder that every scooter has quirks for ride style, and it’s worth taking it handy when changing over from one to another.
It’s also a standard-length scooter, which felt abnormally long to me at first, but that’s only because the Advance Flex is unusually short.
Is the 350W motor powerful enough for hills?
On the flat, the 350w motor is absolutely plenty, even for me weighing in at 110kg. On steep hills, if you’re a bigger rider, you’ll feel it.
Off the mark, the Air 6 is quick. It gets up to 20km/h nice and nippy. You won’t be racing Vin Diesel for pink slips, but its fast enough to be fun yet responsible. Overall it feels far more powerful than I’d have expected from a 350W motor. Even with me on board, it was quick off the line on flat ground and well able to handle slight inclines.
Steep hills are a different story. I tested it on Patrick Street in Dublin, and to be fair to it, it got up. Like I said, I’m a big lad at 110kg and it slowed down quite a bit on the way. My Advance Flex, with its 400W motor, breezes up the same hill. Fifty watts doesn’t sound like much on paper, but with 110kg on board on a steep climb, you notice it.
So if you’re on the bigger side, or your commute is full of hills, I’d look further up the Air 6 range for more power. If you’re lighter and your routes are mostly flat, you won’t even feel it.
But to put the power comparison in perspective, the Advance Flex costs around €950, nearly double the price. And I really would struggle to justify the higher price point if speaking with just my head.
Pure Air 6 battery life and real-world range
I was getting roughly 40 to 45 minutes of ride time per charge, which is nowhere near Pure’s 45km claim. Even riding flat out at 20km/h the whole way, 45 minutes only gets you around 15km. That said lighter riders will get noticeably more out of it. And don’t worry, I’m not trying to fat shame myself here, but rider weight is one of the biggest variables people don’t consider when buying an electric scooter. I’m just bringing attention to it!
What I do like is that on Loco’s website they will always include their own tested range. This is why buying from a retailer that has a physical space is important. Because they know if you are missing 20km in range, you can come in and give out about that to them. Their own tested range is closter to 25km and I’d tend to agree this is very close for most riders.
Go easy on it early doors, too. Like most scooters, the battery can need a few full charge cycles out of the box to calibrate properly. My time in the third battery bar was brief and with Pure scooters, I find you lose a little bit of power once you drop to two bars. I tend to charge at three bars to keep things at full whack.
One small gripe here. The charging port sits quite low at the back, which makes it a bit awkward to reach and can leave the cable trailing a little. It’s a minor inconvenience, if you could even call it that.
Indicators and visibility
The Air 6 has handlebar indicators that face both forwards and backwards, which is great for anyone in front of you. On the rear of the scooter, though, there’s only a brake light, so people coming up behind you may not spot your indicator. The Advance Flex has indicators on the footplates as well, and I think we’ll see that become a standard feature before long. It gives just that little bit more confidence.
Hand signals are hard to do safely on an e-scooter, so having an indicator low down on the back is a genuinely useful safety feature. I’ve found that in Dublin, a good strong look in the direction you’re going usually earns you the respect of other drivers, but don’t depend on that either.
One quick tip. Give the rear reflector a tighten when you get the scooter. Mine came loose on the first day, and it only needs a quick turn of a screw to keep it secure.
Weight, folding and portability
At around 21kg, this isn’t the lightest scooter in the world. The extra weight comes from the shocks. Now for a scooter with full suspension, it’s on the lighter side, but still considerably heavier than most without shocks. That said, considering you can’t take electric scooters on public transport, most won’t be lifting these around anyway.
The handlebar stem folds down so you can carry it, but you’re not going to carry it very far. I’d gotten very used to the flexibility of my fully folding Flex, so that took some adjusting. Wheeling it around is easy, and it’s very manoeuvrable, though carrying it up stairs into your apartment would get tough without a lift. The handle bars offer great comfort too, but are on the wider side which remaining within Irish legal limits.
One of the easiest scooters to lock up
There are features that are easy to miss when buying a scooter and this is certainly one of them. The footplate connects to the stem with a fork-style design. That lets you run a lock through the main body of the scooter, and that’s shockingly rare. Electric scooters are notoriously hard to lock securely. Looping a lock around the upper stem or the handlebars never feels great, because you always suspect someone could work it loose or unscrew something and walk off with it.
Being able to lock through the body is one of the few times I’ve seen e-scooter design that clearly came from listening to riders. The Air 6 is one of the easiest scooters to secure on a public street I’ve used, but still invest in a good lock.
Pair that with the electronic lock in the Pure app and you’re in good shape. If someone does get through your lock, and be under no illusion, they might, they’re left with a electronically locked 21kg scooter that nobody is running down the street with.
On the weather side, the Air 6 is rated IP65. Bizarrely, I didn’t get a chance to ride it in the rain, but my other IP65-rated Pure scooters have handled plenty of Irish weather, so I’ve no doubts here.
Accessories, niggles and that flag
There are two interesting extras I haven’t seen much about yet. Either side of the rear footplate there are fittings that look designed for a small cargo box, and there’s an aftermarket water bottle holder too. I suspect Pure has more accessories on the way, but no word on that yet.
I use a small carry bag on the front of my Advance Flex for my charger, vest and a few tools, so I can charge in the office and get everything I need without rooting too much. By the letter of Irish law, you’re not supposed to carry goods on an e-scooter. I’d argue those rules are aimed at people bringing an air fryer home from the shops, a week’s shopping at their feet, or a passenger, not a charger and a small toolkit. Still, that’s your call.
My two real negatives are small ones. The kickstand feels a little flimsy. It does its job, but if I had to pick one part I didn’t fully trust, it’s that, so take it easy on it.
The other is the Union Jack on the scooter. Pure is a British brand, founded by Lando Norris’s father, with Lando as the face of it, so it comes with the territory. It’s a bit like the Union Jack on a pair of Reebok Classics. You know it’s there, you wear them anyway, and a sticker sorts the scooter out in seconds.
The Goosed verdict
The Pure Air 6 Suspension gave me more comfort and confidence than any scooter I’ve ridden at this price. The ride quality, the build quality and the clever lock-through-the-body design all tick boxes that scooters costing far more often miss. At €499, it’s one of the best bang-for-buck electric scooters on Irish roads right now.
The one caveat is the motor. If you’re on the bigger side and your commute is hilly, you’ll feel the 350W limit, and stepping up the range makes sense. If your routes are mostly flat, even as a bigger rider, this will be perfectly fine. Any electric scooter that can let me use the word “glide” in the same sentence as Dublin’s cobblestones, is fine by me.
Is the Pure Air 6 Suspension road legal in Ireland?
Yes, when you buy the Irish version. It’s capped at 20km/h with no way to change it, its 350W motor sits under the 400W limit, and at around 21kg it’s under the 25kg weight cap. It also has the bell, lights, reflectors and brakes the Irish rules require.
How much does the Pure Air 6 Suspension cost in Ireland?
The Air 6 is a family of 4 electric scooters. The entry level model, reviewed here is the Pure Air 6 Suspension and it costs €499 in Ireland. For that money you get dual suspension front and back, which a couple of years ago was unheard of at this price.
How far can the Pure Air 6 Suspension go on a single charge?
Pure claims up to 45km, but I got roughly 40 to 45 minutes of ride time per charge as a 110kg rider. Even at a constant 20km/h, that works out at around 15km, so lighter riders will get more, but don’t expect anything close to the official figure. Loco’s own estimates of around 25km is fair enough for most people.
Can the Pure Air 6 Suspension handle hills?
It handles slight inclines with no bother, but steep hills are its weak spot for heavier riders. It got me up Patrick Street in Dublin at 110kg, though it slowed down quite a bit on the way, so if you’re on the bigger side with a hilly commute, look further up the Air 6 range.
How heavy is the Pure Air 6 Suspension and does it fold?
It weighs around 21kg, which is light for a scooter with full suspension but heavy compared with most e-scooters. The handlebar stem folds down so you can carry it short distances, but you won’t want to lug it up the stairs every day.
Is the Pure Air 6 Suspension waterproof?
Pure rates it IP65, which means it’s protected against rain and splashes rather than being fully waterproof. I didn’t get to ride it in the rain during testing, but my other IP65-rated Pure scooters have coped well with plenty of Irish weather.
