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14 May 2025

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Pegasystems launches AI agents for finance sector control
Pegasystems has launched Pega Predictable AI Agents, designed for regulated sectors like finance and insurance to ensure transparency and control in AI deployment.

Anker’s fast USB-C hub with 4K HDMI is a steal for just $20
If you feel like your laptop ports are limited, then what you need is a USB hub—and if your laptop charges via USB-C, you can’t go wrong with Anker’s 5-in-1 USB-C hub for just $20 on Amazon. The current 43% discount is about as good as it gets, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a better hub with better ports for the price. This Anker hub plugs right into your laptop’s USB-C port and turns it into five, with one of those ports being a 85W USB-C Power Delivery port for fast pass-through charging. In other words, you don’t have to give up charging your laptop to use this hub. There’s also a second USB-C port, which is for flash drives and SSDs and supports up to 5Gbps transfers. In addition, you get two fast USB-A ports—also capable of up to 5Gbps transfers each—and a full-sized HDMI that lets you attach a 4K@30Hz external monitor to your laptop in either mirror or extended modes. That may not be good enough for high-frame-rate gaming, but it’s an excellent and affordable way to get a second 4K screen for productivity. Hurry up and get your own Anker 5-in-1 USB-C hub for $20 because this deal won’t last forever and it would be a shame to miss out on leveling up your laptop for such a cheap price. But if you need more ports or faster specs, check out our roundup of the best USB hubs and docks. Anker's versatile 5-port USB-C hub for laptops is only $20Buy now at Amazon

Acer’s AI-ready OLED productivity laptop is a stunning $400 off today
We have a soft spot for OLED laptops, and it’s easy to see why the second you lay eyes on one—they’re gorgeous! The Acer Swift 16 AI falls into this category, and you can get it for just $850 right now. That’s a massive $400 discount on its original $1,250 price at Best Buy, and that’s a real bargain price for a cutting-edge Copilot+ laptop like this. This is a 16-inch laptop, which is just about perfect for productivity fiends as it’s neither too big nor too small, with plenty of screen real estate in its 2880×1800 resolution for apps, tabs, and content. The OLED panel delivers vibrant colors, excellent contrast, and a fast response time, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s thinner than other screen types. The OLED screen isn’t the only reason to get this laptop, of course. There’s quite a bit of power under the hood, equipped with an AI-ready Intel Core Ultra 7 256V processor that qualifies it as a Copilot+ PC and unlocks access to Microsoft’s AI features in Windows 11. You also get 16GB of RAM and a spacious 1TB SSD, which is enough for a smoothly productive experience without hiccups or sluggishness. When we reviewed the Acer Swift 16 AI, we scored it with 4 stars for its sleek design, sharp OLED display, and long-lasting battery life. The keyboard is pleasantly tactile, the chassis is robust, and the overall machine is capable for day-to-day needs, making it an excellent option for working on the go and trying out the latest AI features. Get the Acer Swift 16 AI for just $850 at Best Buy while you can because we don’t know how long this deal will last. If you end up missing out, consider checking out some of our other favorite laptops to get. Save $400 on the Acer Swift 16 AI productivity laptopBuy now from Best Buy

Addlink P30 review: This affordable, pocketable SSD won my heart
At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Over 3GBps reading and 2.5GBps writing Tiny, shirt-pocketable form factor Magnetic mounting ring included Astoundingly affordable for USB4 Cons Slightly off the performance pace for USB4 Our Verdict The uber-small form factor, good performance, and super-low price make the Addlink P30 one of my favorite USB4 SSDs. The magnetic mounting ring is a hoot as well, though pros might prefer faster real-world performance. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Addlink P30 USB4 SSD Retailer Price $89.44 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Absolutely the first thing you’ll notice upon unboxing Addlink’s P30 portable USB4 SSD is how tiny it is. And while not really large enough to show it off fully, it’s a good-looking little critter. It’s also light in the hand, and light on your wallet. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison. What are the Addlink P30’s features? The P30 is a super-small USB4 SSD measuring a mere 2.5-inches square, by approximately 0.5-inches thick. It weighs only 1.9 ounces solo, and 2.1 ounces with the included 5-inch, 40Gbps Type-C to Type-C cable. Unlike many vendors, Addlink let us know exactly what controller and NAND are inside: a Phison PS2251-21 and 162-layer Kioxia BiCS6 TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND. Thanks, guys! The back of the Addlink P30 with the included, optional magnetic ring in place. The P30 is warrantied for five years. And though I wasn’t provided a TBW rating, given that the NAND is TLC, I’d guess 600TBW per terabyte of capacity. Whatever it is, it’s highly unlikely you’ll exceed it before the warranty period expires. If you’re not familiar, TBW is terabytes written, and represents how much data you can write to the drive before it goes into read/write mode. Note that TBW is a worst-case estimate, and part of a financial liability formula. You might get a lot more — out of warranty. How much does the Addlink P30 cost? The P30 is available in 1TB capacity for $89.44 (tested) and 2TB for $158.44. That’s darn affordable for USB4. In fact, it’s about half the cost of the top-rated Adata SE920. Of course, with larger amounts of data, the SE920 borders on twice as fast, but our test P30 was slightly handicapped as a 1TB unit with less secondary cache than its rival. A 4TB version is in the works, but not yet available. The P30’s value proposition is lots of capacity in a tiny form factor. How fast is the Addlink P30? After a recent spate of compatibility issues with Sandisk and WD (Sandisk), it was a joy to test the P30, which both behaved itself, and turned in a relatively smooth performance. That said, and as just mentioned, being only a 1TB drive, it did run out of steam at points during our 48GB and 450GB write tests. Although not as fast as some larger drives (thermal considerations are no doubt a thing), the P30 is still quite fast in the grand scheme. You can see where the P30 lagged in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential tests below, but it still edged out the Corsair EX400U — a similar design. The P30 lagged in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential tests below, but it edged out the Corsair EX400U ,which is a similar design. The Addlink P30’s random performance was more in keeping with the competition in CrystalDiskMark 8. Note that we’re still puzzled by the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD with USB4’s miserable single-queue/single-thread write score. Not to mention the reasoning behind its ponderous moniker. The P30’s random performance was more in keeping with the competition in CrystalDiskMark 8. Where the P30 really started to lag behind was in the 48GB transfers. While not horrible, they’re certainly nothing to write home about. Again, 1TB. Where the P30 really started to lag behind was in the 48GB transfers. While not horrible, they’re not particularly fast either. At twice the price, the SE920 is actually more than twice as fast as the P30 writing our 450GB file. But some of the difference was due to the SE920 having twice the capacity (2TB) and twice the secondary cache. Not to hammer the excuse, but the Addlink P30 would turn in much better 450GB write times in its 2TB or 4TB flavors. The P30 will turn in much better 450GB write times in its 2TB or 4TB flavors. Below you can see the why behind the slowish 450GB write — only about 50GB of secondary cache — i.e., TLC written as SLC to avoid the ponderous error-checking (in SSD terms) induced by multiple possible cell-voltage levels. The good news is that the write speed drops only to around 830MBps. Previous generations of NAND, especially QLC (Quad-Level Cell.4-bit) could drop to 100MBps — slower than a hard drive. Even modern QLC writes at only a little over twice that. Though not exactly what you want to see from your USB4 SSD, 830MBps is actually a very good pace for TLC written natively (no secondary caching in play). While not the best USB4 performer I’ve tested (it’s actually in last place and slower in the real-world transfers than several 20Gbps SSDs), the P30’s value proposition is lots of capacity in a tiny form factor. Given that, I’ll call it fast enough. For light data-transfer duties, it’s certainly that. Should you buy the Addlink P30? I say, have at it. This tiny P30 has found a place in my heart and one of my computers — magnetically attached of course. Cool, inexpensive (for USB4), and very portable beans from Addlink. On the other hand, if you’re after top 40Gbps performance, you’ll need to spend more bucks on an SSD such as the oft-mentioned Adata SE920. How we test Our storage tests currently utilize Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on a Z790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of memory total). Intel integrated graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the operating system. Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, and other factors. The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped as well as the capacity tested. SSD performance can vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to read/write across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report (systems being roughly equal), by all means — let us know.