The best TECH in 2023
I’ve posted over 200 videos this year, and seeing as I’ve only got one or two left to go, I figured now was a great time to look back at the tech that impressed me the most – and wow there was a lot of stuff! I’ve highlighted what I guess is my top seven most interesting bits of tech I’ve talked about this year, but before I even get into it, I’d love to know what your top tech this year has been – whether it’s stuff you’ve bought this year, tried, or just heard about, let me know in the comments. Right, let’s get into it.
The first one is something that has had the biggest effect on the world this year, and that’s ChatGPT – and large language models and AI in general really. 2023 really was the year of AI – we had Bing Chat, Google’s Bard, hell even Twitter’s stupid one is in beta right now. Every single press release I got this year had “AI” in it somewhere, and both Intel and AMD are putting AI accelerators into their cpus. It’s a big deal, both as a product we all now consume to some degree, but also as an ethical and societal dilemma. On the tech front I’m really interested in how these large language models can take basically all the text on the Internet and turn it into a product that can output coherent sentences and even occasionally useful information!
On the ethical front, I’ve personally learned quite a lot from things like ChatGPT, as we’re now grappling with copyright issues, quality of work and plenty more. Something that struck me from the Hollywood writers strike is that they wanted assurances that movie execs wouldn’t replace them with AI like ChatGPT or other large language models. But if there’s one thing that’s clear from actually using LLMs – both cloud services like CHATGPT and self hosted ones like Vicuna – is that they are wholly unoriginal. They offer bland word soup most of the time, and certainly nothing production ready. Why would you want bland, uninteresting script writing? Cost, obviously, but the reason you hire writers isn’t to produce the first drivel they can spurt out, it’s because you want to create interesting and engaging content. That’s what sells the movie, or at least that’s what should sell the movie anyway. But, before we stray too far into Ms Thorne’s realm – which by the way she has an amazing video on ethical AI I can’t recommend enough, I’ll link it in the cards or something – let’s get back to tech!
My next entry is this, the Steam Deck. This really is the handheld games console we’ve all been asking for. Of course it has its cons, but it’s such a complete package that the whole gaming space welcomed with open arms, that I can’t help but use it as the benchmark when it comes to other handheld gaming systems. Of course, I wish I had the new OLED version which really remedies a lot of the limitations this, technically last year’s model, has, namely the display, cooling and battery life. If you don’t already have a steam deck, the oled is definitely the one to get now.
By far the biggest impact though is Valve’s insane work to get Linux to work for gaming. Ten years ago Valve tried with the “steam machines”, and failed miserably. But, they took what they learned there and made SteamOS, a Linux based operating system – arch by the way – that actually works. It’s a complete experience, plus has the full desktop experience if you want it. Proton in particular is such a big deal in paving the way for Linux gaming to exist, and for more seamless experiences like this. That’s always the problem with moving off of Windows, it’s a chicken and egg problem, and Valve is finally providing the chicken.
On the display side of things, the Steam Deck OLED isn’t the only OLED on this list – the other spot is taken by the EVNIA 8600 and the family of monitors using that ultrawide QD-OLED panel. The thing that has struck me more than anything with the EVNIA is that it feels like a “next gen” panel. Like, the brightness is pretty good – more than enough for my needs – it doesn’t have a horrible adaptive brightness limiter, it has a bunch of protection features that don’t get in your way, and even after several months of daily main-monitor usage, it’s still completely burn-in free. After testing a few W-OLED panels – including the AOC AG276QZD which uses the same panel as basically all of the 27” 1440p 240Hz OLED monitors from people like Corsair and Asus – the QD-OLEDs seem more “next gen”. While all OLED monitors are still considerably more expensive than their LCD counterparts for the same sort of specs, if you can afford one, the EVNIA 8600 and the others like it are arguably the best monitors you can buy right now. At least for my preferences and needs, they offer the right balance of resolution, refresh rate, brightness, colours, protections and being ultrawide is a nice touch. The only downside is the price.
If budget is a problem though, Philips’ sister company, AOC, has the monitor for you. That would be this, the AOC Q24G2A. This is the first 24” 1440p panel I’ve tested, and it’s fantastic. Response times aren’t quite as good as the OLED, obviously, but they are good enough, and the 165Hz refresh rate makes for a smooth and responsive experience. It’s hard to get away from how crisp this is, and if you are space limited, this is a fantastic upgrade to an existing 1080p 24” monitor. It’s also an astonishingly good value, being one of the cheapest 1440p 165Hz IPS monitors on the market, even forgetting its unique size. I’ll link to this and the rest of the products and videos I’m talking about in the description if you’re interested in splashing some Christmas cash!
Sticking with PC tech, I want to talk about something that hasn’t released yet, but is something I covered a few months ago, and that’s Intel’s Meteor Lake architecture. Meteor lake is yet another seismic shift in how Intel makes CPUs. This is arguably bigger than their hybrid architecture shift with the 12th gen Alder Lake chips, because they are finally going chiplet. Although, technically, it’s still a monolithic chip that gets mounted to the substrate. Basically, there is still a single, big slab of silicon at the bottom, but that’s just an interconnect chip. All the logic is on top of that, built from modular tiles – namely the SoC tile, IO tile, Compute tile, and Graphics tile. There are some major changes to the chip layout, including moving the video encoder onto the SoC tile, meaning regardless of if the chip has integrated graphics or not, every chip can now do QuickSync video encoding and decoding. The SoC tile now also contains a new type of core, the Low Power Island E Core. This pair of cores acts as the entry point for processes, and means you can keep the whole Compute tile asleep so long as you don’t need more performance. When you do, you wake it up and use the main E Cores, or even a P Core or two to power through the task, then the whole compute tile can go back to using zero power. Pretty fancy!
There is a whole lot more to Meteor Lake, so if you want to know more I’ll leave the video for that in the cards above, but long story short it’s a really big shift for Intel, and will be coming first with mobile parts, then the 15th gen desktop chips in late 2024. I’m really excited to get these in and put them through their paces.
There is one other somewhat emerging tech solution I want to mention, and that is MATTER. Matter is, I think anyway, the smart home slash internet of things standard we’ve been looking for. It isn’t like Zigbee, as Matter is just the application layer – the language the devices all talk. That means that it can work on top of multiple radio protocols – multiple networks – those being WiFi and Thread. I personally really don’t like WiFi smart devices – the fewer things have access to the internet inside my house, the better, but the fact that Matter works over both is great. With a Zigbee to Matter hub you can even have Zigbee devices controlled too, which should make things more cohesive.
Matter is still in the early stages though, and a number of useful device types aren’t yet supported, and even those that are aren’t fully supported in things like Home Assistant, my smart home system of choice. Matter is open source, but much like Zigbee that doesn’t mean anyone can just make Matter devices. You’ve got to spend a pretty penny – like £30,000 per year – just to get your foot in the door, so it’ll still be big companies making the devices, but it’s better the ZWave which is wholly proprietary.
Something that sure isn’t proprietary though is my final pick, the Open Source Response Time Tool, and Open Source Latency Testing Tool. Naturally I am completely unbiased here but these have to be the best bits of kit I’ve built all year! In all seriousness, these tools have made a significant difference to both my work – I couldn’t imagine doing monitor and laptop reviews without these now – and my personal life. If you don’t know me, I’m Andrew, and beyond being an Autistic nerd with a special interest in tech, I’m pretty disabled. My eyes are literally falling apart, my back is pure pain, my joints hurt every single day, my lungs aren’t great, heart has started acting up and my stomach doesn’t like existing. I kinda struggle to make a living, but selling these tools has made a significant difference to that ability, and knowing that they are a useful tool for people all around the world, from the largest companies in the world like Apple and Sony, to the individual reviewers trying to make their corrupt industry a little less broken, I’m so incredibly happy to have these in the world. Thank you to all of you who’ve bought one, and if you or your favourite reviewers want one, I’m still taking orders over at OSRTT.com.
So, there you have it, my top seven most interesting bits of tech I’ve looked at in 2023. Like I said, let me know what you think is the best bit of tech in 2023, and while you’re at it, let me know what you’re looking forward to in 2024!
