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GTA VI Extended Look: Huge Hype, Real Questions

Marty
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GTA VI Extended Look: Huge Hype, Real Questions

I’ve been half dreading today since the first GTA 6 teaser landed back in December 2023, mostly because thirteen years of built up expectation is an awful lot for any twenty six minutes of footage to live up to. Rockstar’s Extended Look, which premiered on Netflix this afternoon before making its way to YouTube, mostly cleared that bar. The ambition on show here isn’t just about how the game looks, it’s about how gameplay and cutscenes are being stitched together almost seamlessly during the dramatic beats. Potentially a new level of immersion if it lands the way it appear it will.

That said, it didn’t answer the one question that’s been rattling around this game for over a year.

What was in the GTA VI Extended Look

The Extended Look wasn’t what I expected. It ran to twenty six minutes with no narration over the top, just gameplay stitched into segments, and it doubled as Rockstar’s own confirmation that 19 November is locked in, with the date apparently not having slipped at all. Worth noting too that this was seemingly captured on a regular PS5, not the Pro, which tells you plenty about the console’s legs still having a bit of fight left.

Jason and Lucia get the full spectrum treatment. There’s a proper car chase with the cops shaken off down an alley, a trap house job done for nightclub owner Boobie Ike, gas station robberies, and a quieter domestic scene with Lucia and Jason. Stealing a car isn’t just a button press either, there’s an actual slim jim animation involved, and I like that being gamified a little rather than handed to you for free. Interactions go deep in general. You’re handed a cigar at one point and you control when Jason actually tokes it, which is the kind of granular detail that suggests the whole world has been built to reward poking at it. Nearly everything on screen seems interactive, and every attempt to interact seems to pay off in some way.

There’s a rectangular, wide format minimap this time round, and a relationship mechanic between Jason and Lucia that shows up as mood emojis and a small heart when they’re getting on. That’s a genuinely interesting hint that there might be a deeper, almost Sims style maintenance layer to keeping the two of them on good terms, though Rockstar hasn’t spelled out how far that goes. Transport options look properly varied too. Electric scooters are in, obviously the crime vehicle of choice as per Ireland, the gym is back for building up your character physically, and there’s kayaking among what looks like a huge spread of ways to get around. Between that and the side activities on show, this looks like a game with genuinely hours of side quest material in it. The map itself, even from this one preview, looks massive.

The immersive parts that will convert most doubters

The world looks absolutely incredible. That’s not hyperbole, it’s just where the lighting and environmental work have landed. Jason and Lucia have chemistry to beat the band, the small character animation, him checking the fridge and reacting to her outfit, sells the relationship better than any cutscene could. The ragdoll physics on death are fantastic too, properly weighty rather than the usual video game floppiness.

You can tell this is taking cues from film as much as from other games. Messages between the two leads appear oversized on screen the way they would in a movie, and between that and the cutscene blending mentioned above, GTA 6 is shaping up to be as much a playable movie as it is a piece of game design. Phil Collins is on the soundtrack as well, which pleases me greatly.

Not everything is a straightforward win. There’s a kill cam on headshots now, which I don’t remember the series doing before, and while it’s a satisfying bit of spectacle, it also pulls you straight back out of the world for a second and reminds you you’re playing a game rather than living in one. Jason’s voice acting leaves a little to be desired too, which is worth saying plainly given how strong the chemistry between the two leads is everywhere else. It’s a small mark against an otherwise very accomplished showing. I want to say it won’t be a deal-breaker but after the incredible performances of GTA V’s three stars, 50% being carried could lose the game some marks.

The frame rate and platform question

Rockstar still hasn’t confirmed a performance target for base PS5 or Xbox Series X|S. A former Rockstar technical director’s recent comments on the trade offs involved suggest thirty frames a second with everything turned up is the more realistic outcome on current hardware, with sixty only rumoured so far and only on PS5 Pro. None of that is confirmed by Rockstar itself, so treat it as informed speculation rather than fact for now.

It does leave me thinking about hardware more than I expected to. The graphics are glorious enough that a PS5 Pro is genuinely tempting, though realistically I know I’ll end up getting this on PC too, since that’s where I’ve got the most power available. Whether a save will carry across between the two is something I’d love an answer on before launch. Maybe I’d have considered a PS5 Pro more until that screen at the end stating it was captured on PS5 (regular I assume).

The Goosed verdict

Today did what it needed to do. The visuals, the character work and the sheer depth of interaction earn the hype that’s been building since 2023, and neither the frame rate uncertainty nor Jason’s voice acting is enough to talk anyone out of a pre-order. My honest advice once this lands is to skip the trailers that I had to watch to bring you this. Just wait, and play.

You can read more about the GTA VI launch across Goosed.ie

Epomaker RT82 review: the retro keyboard that got me giving up my numpad

Marty
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Epomaker RT82 review: the retro keyboard that got me giving up my numpad

Keyboards aren’t really my cornerstone content, if I’m honest. But Epomaker sent the RT82 over for review, and it’s stuck around on my desk a lot longer than most units do, so clearly something about it worked.

The RT82 is a 75% wireless mechanical keyboard from Epomaker, built around a proper little retro screen sitting above the function row. It runs €89.95 to €93.95 depending on which switches you go for, connects over 2.4GHz, Bluetooth 5.0 or wired USB-C, and is fully VIA programmable if you want to get into remapping and macros.

The short version is that this is one of the best built keyboards I’ve used, genuinely satisfying to type on, and that screen is more than a gimmick once you’re living with it day to day. That said, there’s a quality control wobble worth knowing about before you buy, and the battery figure Epomaker quotes needs a bit of a reality check. More on both shortly.

Design and build quality

This thing is heavy, and I mean that as a compliment. It sits on the desk and it does not move, even with the kickstand flipped up on its stilts. No bounce, no shifting about when you’re hammering away at it, just a solid, planted feel every time you sit down. I like the colour I got too, and the whole thing feels prime in the hand before you’ve even typed a word on it.

The cable that comes in the box is genuinely high quality as well, which isn’t something I say about every bundled cable. The one weak point is the power switch, which feels a little cheap compared to everything around it. In fairness, it’s not something you’ll be reaching for constantly since you’re mostly just picking between USB, Bluetooth and 2.4GHz once and leaving it.

Epomaker does get some criticism online, but build quality genuinely isn’t where I’d aim it. Here’s the catch though: my first review unit had a faulty T key, and Epomaker had to send a second one out to me. The replacement has been flawless, and when it works, it works really nicely indeed. But it does leave me with a small question mark over long term reliability that I can’t answer yet, and I’d rather say that plainly than pretend it didn’t happen.

That screen is the real hook but typing feel and switches keep me

Do you need a screen on your keyboard? Almost certainly not. But once you’ve uploaded your own GIFs to it, you’ll understand why it’s the thing everyone asks about.

The RT82’s screen is the obvious selling point, and it earns that spot. At 1.14 inches it’s tiny, but the resolution is genuinely impressive for something that size, and GIFs uploaded to it look properly sharp rather than the mushy mess you’d expect from a display this small.

But if I had to pick one word for how this types, it’s creamy. Buttery, even. It’s that smooth, quiet, satisfying kind of click that barely qualifies as a click at all, every key submitting to your press without fuss. The actuation is muted and the sound is muted too, but the overall experience is deeply satisfying rather than flat. Going by that description, my unit is almost certainly running Epomaker’s Sea Salt Silent switches rather than the louder, more tactile Creamy Jade option, though I can’t confirm that from the box alone. Either way, both are pre-lubed and hot-swappable if you ever fancy changing the feel yourself.

I’ll be honest, it took a little getting used to jumping between a 65% board and a full 100% layout with a numpad, which is closer to what I’m normally on. The RT82 itself is a 75% layout, 80 keys, no dedicated numpad, and swapping over does take a beat of adjustment.

But the payoff is real desk space. I’m actively training myself out of needing a numpad at all now, because the extra room this gives me back is genuinely nice to have. Smaller has turned out to be the right call for how I actually use a desk.

Software, and the one bit IT can’t lock down

When this first landed, I used Epomaker’s desktop software to sort macros, shortcut keys, remaps and getting GIFs onto the screen. Then I discovered there’s a browser based version of the remapping side, through VIA’s online configurator, and that’s genuinely impressive, because if you’re trying to pair a keyboard like this with an office laptop, most IT teams have locked down installing anything on the machine.

Epomaker’s browser based VIA setup lets you map macros to the keyboard straight from a tab, regardless of what your company’s IT department has blocked. I’m sure IT could lock down that website too if they wanted to badly enough, but it’s unlikely they’d have bothered blocking the Epomaker site specifically, at least for now. Worth flagging honestly though, the screen and GIF side still needs Epomaker’s separate desktop tool, so it’s not a fully browser only setup end to end.

Battery life

Battery life has felt really good in practice, I haven’t had to charge this in ages. Some of that is down to also plugging in regularly to add GIFs and debug the screen, which charges it as a side effect. Worth knowing the real numbers though, Epomaker rates the 4000mAh battery at 14 hours with the screen and RGB both running, up to 45 hours with just the screen on, and as much as 115 hours with both off. So the flashy setup does cost you, turn the lights and screen down and it’ll comfortably go days between charges.

Gaming, working and writing

I’ve gamed on this, typed on this, worked on this and written on this, and it’s a satisfying keyboard across the board. Keyboards genuinely aren’t my area of specialism though, so I’m not going to pretend to have strong opinions on latency, polling rate or actuation figures I’m not fully comfortable speaking to.

The lighting is understated, which I’d normally count as tasteful, but here it’s a little too understated for my liking. I never found an animation in the browser settings I actually liked, so I’ve settled on a simple pink background on the keys. The keycaps themselves feel almost soft, almost retro, and the colourway I got has a bit of an old Amstrad computer vibe to it. Very niche observation, I know, and it won’t move the needle for most people, but it’s part of why I’ve enjoyed having this one on the desk.

The Goosed verdict

This is a keyboard I’d genuinely recommend, built like a tank, satisfying to type on, and with a screen that earns its place rather than just being there for the marketing photos. The faulty first unit is the one real asterisk, and the battery figures are better read with the screen and lights turned down rather than taken at face value. If you want a 75% board that looks brilliant, types beautifully and gets you off a numpad for good, this is well worth the money. The Epomaker RT82 runs from €89.95 for the Creamy Jade switches up to €93.95 for Sea Salt Silent, direct from Epomaker or Amazon.ie

Revolut Lounges are coming to Europe

Marty
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Revolut Lounges are coming to Europe

I got about as close as I’ve ever come to using an airport lounge a few months back, flying out of Porto on a late one. We’d arrived at the airport stupidly early, bags dropped and boarding passes sorted with the guts of three hours still to kill. I’ve got a decent stash of RevPoints sitting in my Revolut account, so I did the maths. Spend the points on a lounge pass, or spend the same money on overpriced coffee and a sad airport sandwich anyway. Either way I was parting with roughly the same value, so why not get comfortable while I was at it.

That near miss is exactly why the Revolut Lounge announcement caught my attention. Revolut has confirmed plans to build its own network of branded airport lounges across Europe, with the first one landing at Copenhagen Airport and expected to open in 2027. It’s being developed with Copenhagen Airport itself and Plaza Premium Group, an operator that already runs one of the biggest lounge networks in the world, and Revolut says the finished space will be the largest common use lounge in the Schengen area. The lounge follows Revolut’s plans for its first physical Revolut Store in Barcelona, something we touched on in our piece on Revolut’s rebrand and what it means for customers, so the fintech is clearly serious about stepping outside the app and into buildings people can actually walk into.

For a company with more than 75 million customers worldwide, plenty of them here in Ireland, this is a genuinely exciting prospect for anyone who travels regularly. That said, my own experience trying to use a lounge recently has me hoping Revolut sorts the basics before it gets too caught up in being the biggest thing in the Schengen area.

What is Revolut Lounge and when does it open

Revolut Lounge is the fintech’s first go at running its own physical airport lounge rather than simply buying customers access to somebody else’s. The Copenhagen site is the only confirmed location so far, due to open in 2027, with Revolut saying it plans to roll the concept out to further European hubs after that. No date beyond “2027” has been given, and Revolut hasn’t said whether access to Revolut Lounge will work through the same RevPoints and plan tier system it already uses for its existing network of more than 1,600 partner lounges, or whether it’ll run on entirely separate terms. That’s the bit actually worth watching, because it’s what affects your next trip.

My closest call with an airport lounge

Back to Porto. Bags dropped, hours to kill, RevPoints burning a hole in my account, I figured I’d redeem a pass and treat myself to somewhere comfortable to sit instead of a plastic chair by the gate. So why didn’t it work out? The lounge was closing its doors just as I arrived, timing that no amount of RevPoints was ever going to fix.

There was a second problem too. Getting to the gate meant clearing a border check first, and realistically that would have eaten into any lounge visit even if the doors had stayed open a bit longer. Between the two, I walked away thinking lounges need to be a good deal more reliable, on both fronts, before I’d ever hand over actual cash for one rather than points I’ve already earned.

Some Revolut customers have bought lounge passes in the past that certain lounges simply didn’t honour when they turned up, so I understand completely why the company wants direct control rather than leaning entirely on third party lounge partners it doesn’t run itself. Building and staffing a physical hospitality space is a different game altogether from shipping app updates, though, and that’s a genuinely big leap for a company that’s built its name on software.

The Goosed verdict

My hope, and it’s genuinely a hope rather than a prediction, is that a company that clearly sees the value in looking after its travelling customers can actually deliver on that idea in Copenhagen and wherever comes next. This is a good move in principle. But reliability is the thing that will make or break it for anyone who’s already been let down once, and that’s exactly the experience I had. Get that right and everyone wins. Fair play to them for trying at all. In the meantime, existing lounge access still runs through Revolut’s current lounge pass system, with Ultra customers getting unlimited entry and Premium, Metal and Standard plans working on discounted or pay per visit terms.

YouTube Premium price hikes to hit personal and family users in Ireland

Marty
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YouTube Premium price hikes to hit personal and family users in Ireland

I’m a YouTube Premium customer. It’s one of those subscriptions I regularly tell myself, and anyone that will listen, is well worth it. As soon as I use any device that isn’t signed in to YouTube Premium and I see an ad, I don’t want to be dramatic but it feels nearly nauseous.A similar feeling of nausea overcomes me when I see their price hikes. Yet another price hike coming in September for Irish customers.

Price increases for YouTube Premium in Ireland

If you are a YouTube Premium individual user, your premium subscription will increase from €13.99 to €15.99 per month. If you are a YouTube Family subscriber, your price will increase from €25.99 to €29.99 per month.

This is the first price hike by YouTube in Ireland since late 2024, which saw pricing jump from €11.99 to €13.99 and the family plan jumped from €17.99 to €25.99. For those of you into maths: YouTube Premium Family has gone from €17.99 to €29.99 since its 2018 launch, a 66.7% increase overall. Just since the last hike in late 2024, it’s up 15.4%, from €25.99 to €29.99.

Unfortunately as a household we struggled to move from Spotify to YouTube Premium’s included music subscription, which means we do still pay two separate subscriptions because Spotify is just a nice UI. Let’s talk about why YouTube Premium, I still think, is worth it.

Is YouTube Premium worth €29.99 per month?

Honestly I have to open by saying no. I don’t think any tech platform is worth €29.99 per month. However I do have a value on my time and what YouTube Premium does is remove ads, which is giving me some of my time back.

However this is absolutely massive. Increasingly creators are finding new ways to inject ads into the content that you watch. Just like Spotify Premium is supposed to be ad-free when listening to a podcast, the creators will typically have sponsors that they need to mention. When watching YouTube creators those videos are often peppered with product placement and native ads to the content the creator makes. Now YouTube Premium does include the Jump Ahead feature, which I use on nearly every single ad, but it still feels like I’m paying for ad-free while getting ads.

The one saving grace is that they’re skippable.

I don’t know how this ends

For years I’ve coined the phrase “death by a thousand cuts” and I’m increasingly confused as to where this all ends. Perhaps it started with everybody having a Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and Disney Plus subscription and now you have to choose between two of those. Maybe next year you’re choosing between one of them but eventually surely this becomes a discussion about not having digital subscriptions at all.

Piracy is almost certainly on the increase again as people learn how to create their own home-hosted services, with those services becoming easier than ever to build in your own home. I find the all likelihood will be that Spotify once thrived because they created a middle ground between piracy and legitimacy. Once again the market is rife for a disruptor to make that middle ground again.

I will say I’m fuming that ever increase passes me by with my not cancelling. And that day surely will come sooner rather than later where I’ve had enough. Perhaps I’m just at the point where I admit, you should quit. Don’t do as I do, do as I say. Save your money.

Majority Moto Plus review: a capable turntable let down by its own design

Marty
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Majority Moto Plus review: a capable turntable let down by its own design

I came into this one already a bit smitten with a different turntable, which probably wasn’t fair on the Majority Moto Plus before it even got out of the box. I’d been using an Audio-Technica AT-LP60XBT, a Bluetooth deck I’d bought myself and genuinely liked, and when Majority sent the Moto Plus over to put through its paces, I was excited for a different reason entirely. It came in a timber finish, and I had a specific spot for it, a mid-century cabinet where I could picture it sitting like a proper piece of furniture rather than just another gadget. That’s the vibe I was chasing. It’s also, as it turns out, not quite the vibe I got.

The Majority Moto Plus is a belt-drive Bluetooth turntable that costs €169 in Ireland, built around an Audio-Technica AT3600L cartridge and paired with external 60W bookshelf speakers in a matching walnut finish. It plays 33, 45 and 78 RPM records, connects over Bluetooth 5.3 in both directions so it can stream out to a speaker or take audio in from your phone, and lets you record straight from vinyl onto a USB stick if you want to digitise your collection. It also comes with a three year guarantee once you register it, which is decent cover for a turntable at this price point.

What’s underneath the finish plays records just fine, and the cartridge does what a good cartridge should. But everything wrapped around that, how it looks, how you connect it to anything, how it treats your records when they’re not spinning, feels like nobody sat down and thought about the person actually using it day to day. I ended up not recommending it, and I’ll get into exactly why.

The timber finish that isn’t

Let’s start with the bit that got me excited in the first place, because it’s also the bit that let me down hardest. That timber finish is real enough on top, but look below it and you’re straight into cheap black metal, a scatter of knobs, buttons stuck on the side, and a big red light that does nothing for the overall look. It’s the kind of detail that screams no attention to detail was paid to how this actually sits in a room, which matters more than it sounds when you’ve bought into something specifically because of how it was going to look on a mid-century cabinet.

The bit that annoyed me more, though, was something smaller and much more practical. On the Audio-Technica AT-LP60XBT Bluetooth turntable I’d been using, the hinges for the dust cover (which covers the entire record) are built so you can actually rest your record sleeve against the back of the unit while it plays, propped up so you can see what’s on. It’s a genuinely lovely little design touch, and it tells you Audio-Technica thought about how someone actually uses a turntable, not just how it looks in a product shot. On the Moto Plus, the sleeve just pokes out through the back of the unit with nothing to hold or protect it. That’s not a huge functional problem on its own, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that adds up to a turntable that feels like it was designed in pieces rather than as a whole.

Connecting it to a Bluetooth speaker is needlessly complicated

If you’re wondering how you actually pair the Majority Moto Plus with a Bluetooth speaker, here’s the annoying answer. You don’t use the Bluetooth setting for it at all. You set the mode dial to phono, the setting you’d use to actually play a record, then press a separate BT OUT button before it starts looking for a speaker. Nothing about the interface tells you that’s how it works, so the first time round you’re left turning knobs and guessing.

I actually had to read a manual guys, and that’s really not cool.

That would be a forgivable, one-time inconvenience if it stuck once you’d worked it out. It doesn’t. Every single time I switched the Moto Plus off and back on, I had to go through the entire pairing process again from scratch. It doesn’t remember the last speaker it was connected to, which for a turntable that markets Bluetooth as one of its headline features is a genuinely baffling oversight. Once it was actually paired, the audio itself was fine, not distorted, not laggy, perfectly capable. The problem was never the sound. It was getting there every single time I wanted to listen to a record.

Now, do I get that most people aren’t buying record players to play over Bluetooth speakers? Yes, of course. But this is my review and that’s my take. I have really good Bluetooth speakers and the experience is poor.

What it’s actually like to use day to day

To be honest, once you get past the design and the pairing faff, there’s a solid little turntable in here. It tracked reliably through everything I threw at it, no skips, no unexpected jumps, nothing that made me question the Audio-Technica cartridge doing the actual work. I’m not someone who listens to vinyl for fidelity reasons anyway, that’s what streaming is for in my house, so I care far more about whether a record plays cleanly from start to finish than whether an audiophile would clock some subtle improvement up at the top end. On that measure, the Moto Plus did exactly what it needed to.

I also like the idea of the USB recording feature a lot, being able to digitise records onto a USB stick without needing a separate setup. That suits how I actually use vinyl, which is less about chasing perfect sound and more about the ritual of putting an album on and letting it play the way it was sequenced, especially with something I picked up at a gig rather than something I could just stream anyway. It’s a genuinely useful feature on a turntable at this price, and one I’d have liked to enjoy more if getting music out of it wirelessly wasn’t such a chore.

The Goosed verdict

I can’t recommend the Majority Moto Plus, and that’s a harder thing to say than it sounds given how much of it works properly underneath. The tracking is reliable, the cartridge does its job, and the USB recording is a genuinely nice feature for anyone building a digital archive of physical records. But a turntable lives or dies on how it fits into your actual routine, and between the design that abandons its own good idea halfway through and a Bluetooth setup that makes you re-pair from scratch every time you switch it on, this one asks too much patience for what it gives back. I’ve already swapped my own Audio-Technica AT-LP60XBT back in and am delighted to have it back. It’s an overall neater record player in fact.

If you still want to see it for yourself, the Majority Moto Plus turntable is priced at €169 direct from Currys Ireland, complete with the external speakers and a three year guarantee once you register it.

PeriPage A40 review: The best ink printer alternative has no ink or toner

Marty
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PeriPage A40 review: The best ink printer alternative has no ink or toner

A long long time ago I worked in an Elverys shop. I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but one day after changing the till role I left it somewhere that it got really hot. It turned black. Blew my mind. I always thought all printers had ink or toner. But it occurred to me this was all heat. Flash forward a lot of years and I realise that heat-based printers are the utlimate ink-printer alternative for me.

Why printers absolutely suck

Printers are the worst piece of technology in everyone’s home. If you have one. Once in a blue moon, you’ll have to print something. Typically, when you are already a little annoyed some clothes you bought have to be returned or some company is insisting on some random printing you have to do for some reason. Because it’s so infrequent, the ink dries up, the printer fails and you end up Googling a new printer purchase.

So you have this bit lump of a device sitting in your home, not doing the one job it’s supposed to do. If you can get the ink for it, it’s super expensive. If you can’t you have to replace another piece of e-waste.

I don’t want to brush over the ink thing either. Ink is the main way printer companies make money. They are the OG Netflix subscription game players. I don’t even feel like I’m writing in my regular writing style because printers suck so much they just make me angry.

That’s when, in the middle of a bit of an AliExpress ordering binge, I remembered the receipt printer in Elverys. I wonder.

Thermal printers are amazing

The technical name for those till receipt printers is “thermal printers”. Instead of spraying ink or using toner cartridges, these printers use heat to activate chemicals in the paper you are printing on. Basically, this is how any commercial receipt or label printer works. And it’s ideal for the infrequent home printer for just that reason too.

All I’ve had to order for my printer, the PeriPage A40, since I bought it was new paper rolls. Because it prints in rolls, you can also print in different sizes, including A4. Once printed, you rip the paper off.

Now, I’ll concede a few points. It’s a little odd to tear off your print when it’s done and sometimes, that rips. This also means you’re not going to br printing a thesis on this thing. I couldn’t even imagine trying it. And you won’t get amazing crisp text – but still perfectly legible text noone would look twice at.

However, as someone who only every prints a single page document, or the odd return label if printerless drop offs aren’t available from time to time, this is the perfect solution. It’s also battery powered so you can use it on the go. In fact, mobile use was the reason I bought the Epson WorkForce WF-110W printer which also died and had a god damn service pack that also needed replacement along with ink increasing ink even further.

I won’t lie, I am smug at the fact that for the forseeable future, I will never buy ink again. All thanks to this €100 AliExpress purchase.

Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max review: the earbuds that get calls right

Marty
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Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max review: the earbuds that get calls right

I was in a bar in Munich when I decided to properly test the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max. Not the easiest test either, a long distance call back home to Ireland, in a room full of people, with a lad standing right beside me shouting his order in over the counter. I asked whoever I was on the phone to, “could you hear that”. They said “hear what”. Genuinely one of those rare moments where a bit of tech actually manages to wow me these days.

The Liberty 5 Pro Max are Soundcore’s flagship earbuds, priced at €249.99 in Ireland and the EU. They sit at the top of Anker’s Soundcore range, built around active noise cancellation and a charging case with a 1.78 inch AMOLED screen that doubles as an AI meeting recorder. That’s a lot to ask €250 to cover, and after weeks of actually wearing them, my take is that some of it earns the price tag completely and some of it doesn’t.

Call quality that actually shut the room up

The call quality is the headline feature and it’s not marketing spin. That Munich bar test is the clearest example I can give you, the noise was obvious to me on my end, but the person I was calling couldn’t hear any of it, not the music, not the crowd, not the lad shouting his order two feet from my head. Soundcore advertised these buds with Gary Neville taking a call in a stadium, and having tested them I’m not sure that was overplaying it. I’d nearly believe it. If you spend a lot of your working life on calls in noisy places, this alone could justify the spend.

Wider sound quality was also solid. I didn’t play too much with the EQ settings except for boosting the bass a little which is common out of the box for me. Overall, I listened to a wide variety of music, podcasts and movies without thinking too much about the buds, focusing instead on the content. That’s all I really ask for.

The ANC beats my Sony WH-1000XM5s, and I don’t say that lightly

My usual noise cancelling reference point is the Sony WH-1000XM5, and I found the Liberty 5 Pro Max better at handling dynamic, changing noise, from streets to the kind you get on a flight. Flights are the gold standard test for ANC – mixing droning engines and screaming kids – and these held up well there, arguably better than the Sonys, though I’d stop short of calling the Sonys the benchmark to beat in the first place, but they are my own benchmark.

Some of that might come down to the in-ear seal giving an extra layer of passive isolation that an over-ear pair can’t match. Either way, combined with the call quality, it’s a genuinely strong package for anyone taking calls somewhere loud.

Comfortable, until my ears started arguing with me

Fit wise, these are comfortable buds. That said, I know I’m more sensitive to ear fatigue than most people, and after an hour or two I need them out or I at least begin to become more aware or them. If you already struggle with fatigue from in-ear buds, I’d be honest with you, no in-ear design is really the answer, it’s more a question of degree.

These caused noticeably less discomfort than some other buds I’ve tested recently, but they’re not immune to it either. Anyone who wants genuinely all-day wear without ever thinking about their ears again is better served by an open ear design, accepting that you lose proper noise cancellation in the trade.

Transparency mode still hasn’t been solved by anyone

I haven’t used a transparency mode from any brand that sounds natural yet, and the Liberty 5 Pro Max doesn’t break that streak. It has that same processed quality, like somebody’s holding two Pringles cans to your head and talking into them. I’m also not convinced transparency mode is solving the right problem to begin with, if you need to hear someone properly, just take the buds out, it’s a bit rude to leave them in and talk over them anyway. The actual answer to this, if it matters to you, is an open ear design you can leave on all day and just have a normal conversation without touching anything.

The ear bud case with a screen, genuinely eye catching, occasionally annoying

The screen on the case gets attention. I had someone on a flight ask what the hell it was, assuming it was a phone in its own right, and I had to talk them down before they went and bought a pair on the spot. It’s a proper conversation starter. The problem is there’s no obvious way to stop the screen waking up on its own, so I’d regularly open my crossbody to find it lit up and assume the battery was gone. A physical on off button would have sorted this in seconds.

Functionally, it works fine as a Bluetooth remote for skipping tracks and controlling volume, and it doubles as a camera shutter, which is a nice touch but not something I’d pay a premium for on its own. It’s a bit gimmicky. Useful gimmick, but a gimmick.

What the AI Note-Taker actually records, and what it doesn’t

The case unlocks AI transcription, and this is the part that surprised me most, in a good way and a frustrating way. It’s genuinely useful for high emotion, high information conversations, I found myself using it in a couple of situations where someone was talking through something heavy and technical, and being able to read it back afterwards, or run it through an AI tool to catch what I’d missed, was genuinely valuable. The quality of the transcription itself was solid and extremely useful. If you think a tool like this is only for high-powered executives, think again. Imagine being able to listen to your doctor and not worry about missing something extremely important. You can just read it back later.

Here’s the catch. I assumed, reasonably, that you’d be able to record a call, say a Teams meeting on the bus without putting it on loudspeaker. Having tested out the Viaim RedDot AI transcription buds, this was my general expectation.

You can’t. The Liberty 5 Pro Max only records in person conversations or loudspeaker calls through the case’s own microphone, it does nothing for a call actually running through the earbuds. That feels like a genuine missed opportunity given how good the call hardware already is. Now, it could be something I’m missing or perhaps it’s coming with a software update, but for now – I couldn’t work it out.

You also don’t get much included for free. Soundcore gives you 120 minutes of transcription a month for two years, after that you’re looking at a subscription, roughly €18 a month or around €111 a year for the mid tier, up to €225 a year if you want unlimited. It’s a genuinely useful feature that I’ll keep using, but it’s clearly one that’s designed to become a recurring cost rather than a one off purchase. In a world of subscriptions and “death by a thousand cuts” I don’t need by buds doing that to me too.

But I have to admit, if you use the feature enought and in the right circumstances – it becomes a very nice assitant to have.

Battery life, where the box and my real world experience don’t quite line up

This is my biggest gripe. Soundcore’s own figures put ANC on battery life at 6.5 hours from the buds, up to 28 hours with the case, though that drops to closer to 4 hours from the buds and 17 hours total once you’re running ANC alongside the other AI features. In my own use, with the screen and note taking features actually turned on, I was landing at the lower end, three to four hours from the buds themselves, and the case died on me more than once too, which I’d put down to the screen waking up unprompted in my bag and draining it.

Fast charging genuinely helps here, five minutes on charge buys you about four hours back, and the case supports Qi2 and MagSafe wireless charging too, which worked without issue on my own charger. But if you’re planning to lean on every smart feature these offer, don’t expect to match the number on the box.

Finally, flipping between my phone and laptop worked smoothly and without any dropouts. It’s worth mentioning because it’s genuinely well implemented here, but I’d stop short of calling it a selling point in 2026, plenty of earbuds at this price point handle multipoint pairing just as well now. It’s table stakes rather than a reason to choose these specifically.

The Goosed verdict

The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max are a genuinely considered purchase rather than an easy recommendation for everyone. If you regularly take calls in loud environments, the call quality alone could pay for itself, and the ANC is strong enough to hold its own against far more established names. But you’re paying €249.99 for a package where the standout features are call quality and ANC, while the case’s headline trick, AI transcription, only works on in person conversations and comes with a subscription tucked behind the free tier. Battery life also needs a realistic expectation set before you buy, not the number on the box.

If you take a lot of calls somewhere loud, or you’ll actually use face to face AI note taking regularly, these earn their price. If neither of those apply to you, you’re paying a premium for a screen you might find yourself wishing had an off switch. The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max are available now at €249.99 direct from Soundcore.

Disclosure: This product was gifted to the author. This means it was provided free of charge to be reviewed but the brand supplying it did not insist on a review, nor do they have any control over the content within this review.

Revolut is giving away free ChatGPT Go, and Metal customers get a full year

Marty
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Revolut is giving away free ChatGPT Go, and Metal customers get a full year

Revolut has announced a partnership with OpenAI that hands its retail customers ChatGPT Go at no extra cost, and the amount you get depends entirely on which plan you’re already paying for. If you’re on Metal or Ultra, that’s 12 months. If you’re on Standard, it’s three months on a promotional basis. Either way, it lands today for paid plans.

ChatGPT Go is OpenAI’s cheap middle tier, sitting between the free version and the €23 a month Plus plan. It launched across Europe earlier this year at around €8 a month and gives you higher message limits, more file uploads, document analysis, image generation and memory. It is not the top-end model access that Plus buyers get, but it’s the difference between hitting a wall mid-task and not hitting one at all.

Which Revolut plans get ChatGPT Go free

Here’s the breakdown, with what each plan costs you in Ireland.

  • Ultra, €55 a month: 12 months free, plus a 12-month Buddy pass
  • Metal, €15.99 a month: 12 months free
  • Premium, €8.99 a month, plus Revolut Pro and Revolut Mobile: 6 months free
  • Plus, €3.99 a month, and Standard, free: 3 months free, promotional

Plus and Standard users will get the three-month offer pushed out to them over the coming weeks. Everything else is live now.

The Plus and Standard inclusion is more interesting than it looks. Revolut’s bundled subscriptions normally start at Premium, so this is one of the rare times the free tier gets handed something from the brand partnership pile. It’s a taster designed to make you upgrade, and that’s fine, but it’s not a plan benefit and shouldn’t be counted as one.

Is it actually worth anything?

At roughly €8 a month, a year of ChatGPT Go is about €96 of value. Metal costs €191.88 a year. So this single addition covers about half of what you pay for the plan, which is real money for anyone who was already handing OpenAI a monthly fee.

Revolut’s own numbers deserve a bit of scrutiny though. The Irish site now values Metal’s included subscriptions at €2,400 a year, double the €1,200 it was quoting back in April, with total Metal benefits pitched at €4,000 once insurance and fee savings are stacked on top. Nobody uses all of it. I’ve said before that the premium subscriptions bundled into Revolut Metal make the €15.99 a month easy to justify, but that argument only ever works on the two or three you’d genuinely pay for yourself. The headline value figure is marketing. The subscriptions you actually open every week are the reason to stay.

There’s a slightly awkward wrinkle too. Revolut already includes Perplexity Pro, which normally runs €22 a month and which I use constantly. Now it also includes ChatGPT Go. Two AI subscriptions in one bundle sounds generous until you realise most people settle into one and forget the other exists. If you’re already deep in Perplexity, this is a nice-to-have rather than a saving.

The catch worth knowing about

ChatGPT Go is the tier OpenAI has been putting ads into. Sponsored boxes started appearing under responses for Free and Go users in the US earlier this year and have since rolled out to a handful of other markets. Whether Irish users are seeing them yet is unclear, but it’s the reason Go can sit at €8 while Plus costs €23. You’re not getting a cut-price version of the premium experience. You’re getting a different product with a different business model.

To be honest, that’s a fair trade for something included in a subscription you’re already paying for. It would be a much harder sell at full price. I’ll be keeping an eye on this as I’ve been using Claude and Gemini a lot more than ChatGPT myself lately

Other AI options with Revolut

One element of this I find a little odd is that Revolut already has a commercial agreement with another AI platform; Perplexity – another AI platform that normally runs €22 a month and which I use a fair bit. It landed in the bundle back in November 2024 and has been one of the strongest arguments for Metal ever since. Now ChatGPT Go sits alongside it. Two AI subscriptions in one bundle sounds generous until you realise most people settle into one and forget the other exists.

Which raises the obvious question about how long both survive. Revolut rotates these partnerships, and paying for two overlapping AI tools when most customers only use one is a hard line item to defend internally. Perplexity Pro is the more valuable of the pair on paper at €22 against €8, so it’s not automatically the one that goes. But if you’ve built a workflow around Perplexity because Revolut handed it to you, worth remembering you don’t own that. Nothing in the bundle is permanent, and the same applies to ChatGPT Go this time next year.

The Goosed verdict

This is a good addition to Revolut’s bundle and a sensible one, because AI subscriptions are exactly the kind of recurring cost people are quietly resenting right now. It’s not the headline-grabbing benefit that Perplexity Pro was, and the tiered rollout means Standard users get a taste rather than a benefit. But if you’re on Metal or Ultra and you’ve been paying OpenAI separately, cancel that and claim this.

The wider point is the one that matters. Revolut’s plans are increasingly being sold on what they bundle rather than what they do with your money, and it’s working. Just do the maths on the three or four subscriptions you’d actually miss, not the €2,400.

ChatGPT Go benefits are live now on Revolut Metal, Ultra, Premium, Revolut Pro and Revolut Mobile, with the three-month Plus and Standard offer arriving in the coming weeks. Full plan pricing is on Revolut’s Irish plan comparison page.

Electric scooters could return to public transport

Marty
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Electric scooters could return to public transport

One of the biggest advantages of electric scooters is their “last mile” nature. That means they join up a fractured public transport network that doesn’t always simply get commuters from A to B. It’s often A to B to C or more. It was electric scooters biggest strength until the National Transport Authority banned electric scooters from public transport over battery safety concerns.

Unfortunately, a couple of years ago the Irish Government really dragged its heels on electric scooter regulation. The result was the market being flooded with anything and everything and sometimes the quality wasn’t to safety standards. So the ban was somewhat understandable, justified and in line with many other countries even if still a little over zealous.

But now, with proposed changes to electric scooter regulation in Ireland, electric scooters could, and in my opinion should, be allowed back on public transport.

Proposed electric scooter law changes

The Irish Government has acted surprisingly quickly on electric scooter regulation changes following headlines emerging that they are causing a mini public health crisis. I’d argue plenty of that crisis is somewhat conflated by the initial inaction by the Government that let overpower unregulated scooters flood the market in the first place, but let’s not go down that route.

Proposed changes are fairly logical. Over 18s only, mandatory helmets and hi-vis along with insurance and a registration system. For this article, the most interesting part is the insurance and registration system. Because this element will make electric scooters one of the most heavily regulated modes of transport in the country, arguably even more so than cars in some areas. Yet, someone can take a largely unregulated ebike on a train, while the highly regulated escooter must stay behind.

Given they are such an excellent last mile mode of transport, I personally believe this has to change.

Will electric scooters be allowed on public transport?

A Department of Transport spokesperson told me that “decisions in relation to carriage on public transport will be undertaken by the NTA once further regulations and requirements are in place”. And they absolutely should be allowed on public transport. Here is why.

The same spokesperson also told me that “further consideration in relation to existing e-scooters will be given,” which matters more than it sounds. This can’t just be a framework built for scooters bought after the fact. Ireland already has thousands of legal, compliant scooters on the road today, mine included, and any solution has to account for the horse that’s already bolted, not just the stable door for new arrivals.

First of all, if commuters are paying insurance along with any registration fees or tax, the registration process absolutely must include safeguards that the scooter being used is road legal and meets EU quality standards. Once that framework is in place and done properly, electric scooters become one of the most heavily scrutinised modes of transport, which should be completely safe to carry on public transport.

Ireland has a bad habit of following suit with our EU neighbours without realising we are a unique country. Germany offers the best example. Taking an escooter on public transport in Germany brings mixed results. In Hamburg, you can bring an electric scooter on trains and buses but not the underground. This makes total sense, because should even the unlikely happen underground it’s much easier to deal with in a bus than a metro.

But this is an obviously important point for the NTA to consider in Ireland given we famously have no Metro. We don’t need a blanket ban on public transport. We need nuanced rules that allow commuters to navigate their commutes across rail and bus, with the option to cover the last mile on a scooter.

Remember, there are folding ebike users already using public transport with the very same battery technology. We just have to have checks and balances in place on quality. Electric scooters offer another compact last mile mode of transport that should be adopted, safely.

Airlines and batteries

Another example worth noting is batteries on planes. There have been long standing rules on the maximum rated power bank you can carry on a flight along with not being allowed to check them into the hold. In the past fortnight, I’ve flown with Lufthansa, Aer Lingus and Ryanair – all of which have new instructions on the flight to not store power banks in the overhead locker or to use them during a flight.

This is to reduce the risk of a fire on a flight. A genuine risk that is now navigated with guidelines and processes in the event of fire as planes carry fireproof boxes.

If airlines can assess and navigate the risks of lithium-ion batteries, I think we can do the same for a bus.

The Department of Transport can look at electric scooters as a scourge and a headache. The NTA can look at them as a risk. I look at them as the missing link in a fractured commute, and once registration and insurance are in place, there’s no safety argument left for keeping that link off the DART and the bus.

Featured image by Yiting He on Unsplash

The Samsung Fold8 is potentially a category changing smartphone

Marty
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The Samsung Fold8 is potentially a category changing smartphone

I’ve been living with a Honor Magic V5 for about a year now, and I love it. But there’s one thing that’s felt off. The amount of usable screen I get for actually watching something doesn’t change much whether I’m using the cover screen or unfolding the whole phone. Same tall, narrow ratio on the outside, same story once it’s open, just bigger. Great for productivity, I split screen apps nearly dailys, but less impactful for sitting back and watching something. So when Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Fold8, Fold8 Ultra and Flip8 on 22 July, the Fold8 is the one that actually got my attention, because it’s the first mainstream foldable I’ve seen built specifically to fix that.

Quick facts first. All three are official, pre-orders are open now, and general sale starts 7 August 2026. Irish pricing is spicy and runs from €2,049 for the Fold8, €2,259 for the Fold8 Ultra, and €1,339 for the Flip8, scaling up with storage. Colours are Graphite and Cream across the board, with each model getting an exclusive shade of its own (Violet Shadow for the Ultra, Lavender for the Fold8, Pink for the Flip8, plus web-exclusive colours on Samsung.com).

My lukewarm take is that this is the first Z Fold generation with three devices that actually do different jobs, rather than being the same phone in different shapes. The Fold8 Ultra is the productivity one. The Fold8 is built for media. The Flip8 is for people who just want a phone that’s small in their pocket.

The Samsung Galaxy Flip8. Image: Samsung

Why the screen ratio matters

Most foldables, mine included, use a tall, narrow cover screen (the Magic V5’s is 6.43 inches at a 20:9 ratio) and a roughly square inner screen (4:3 on the V5). That combination is brilliant for typing, browsing and getting work done, but it does nothing for watching video. Unfold a 20:9 phone into a 4:3 tablet and a 16:9 video still gets letterboxed either way. You’ve added screen real estate, not the right shape of it.

The standard Fold8’s cover screen breaks from that. According to Samsung’s own specs it’s a 5.5 inch panel at a 10:16 ratio, which in landscape works out closer to 16:10, noticeably wider than the roughly 20:9 or 21:9 cover screens on most foldables, including the Fold8 Ultra itself. Rotate the 4:3 main display and Samsung is positioning it for reading rather than just spreadsheets. Whether that translates to a genuinely better watching experience in hand is something I can only judge once I’ve got one in front of me, but the spec itself is a direct answer to the exact limitation I’ve been describing for a year. It’s also worth noting the rumoured folding iPhone is reportedly heading toward a similarly wide, iPad-like ratio when it lands later this year, so Samsung isn’t alone in deciding the old tall-and-narrow foldable shape has hit its limit.

The three-way split, in plain terms

The Fold8 Ultra gets the Ultra treatment: an 8 inch main display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a 200MP main camera with a new 50MP ultra-wide, 8K video, a 5,000mAh battery and 45W charging, all in a 4.1mm unfolded body weighing 215g. It’s the one aimed at people replacing a laptop workflow with a phone, not the one aimed at watching a match on the train.

The Fold8 drops the Ultra camera and chip ceiling but picks up Samsung’s lightest Z Fold build yet at 201g, a 4,800mAh battery and that wider display ratio. It still gets a genuinely capable dual 50MP camera setup, just not the Ultra’s specialist gear.

The Flip8 is the simplest story of the three: Samsung’s slimmest and lightest Flip yet, 180g and 6.1mm, built around a redesigned FlexWindow cover screen that now runs apps and Gemini-powered actions directly rather than just notifications. If you want a foldable purely because it’s small in your pocket, this is the one, and it’s also the cheapest way into the range at €1,339.

What else changed

The engineering story worth taking at face value, because it’s specific rather than a vague brightness or speed claim, is Flex Titanium, a titanium-based display structure Samsung says is designed to make the hinge and screen thinner while cutting crease visibility over time. Whether that holds up long-term is exactly the kind of claim that needs a year of pocket use to judge, not a launch event. All three phones also ship with Android’s One UI 9.0 and the usual raft of Galaxy AI features, including an AI Assistant Activity dashboard that at least gives you a single place to see what automations are running on your behalf, which is a reasonable answer to the fair complaint that AI features have become hard to track.

The Goosed verdict

I haven’t gone hands-on with any of these yet, so this isn’t a review. That will come later. But out of the three, the Fold8 is the one I’d want to try first, because it’s tackling a problem I’ve personally lived with for a year rather than just iterating on last year’s spec sheet. The Ultra is clearly the better phone on paper if productivity and camera quality are what you’re after, and the Flip8 is the one to buy if you just want a normal-sized phone that folds. But the standard Fold8 is the first Fold I’ve seen actually built around watching things, not working on things, and that’s a genuinely different pitch. Unfortunately, it comes at a cost that means the category is still not going to be accessible to most people in the market for a new phone and that’s where manufacturers need to start working harder.

Pre-orders are open now at €2,049 for the Fold8 (256GB), with general sale from 7 August 2026 via Samsung’s Irish store.

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