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Razer’s new Optomechanical switch is possibly the most revolutionary thing we’ve seen in a desktop keyboard for years. The hybridized key switches gains the speed of a laser-based optical system while still maintaining the clicky, tactile feel of a mechanical key.

While we were blown away by the technology in our recent review of the Huntsman Elite, we wanted the full backstory of the how the Optomechanical switch came to be. We caught up with Razer’s Hilmar Hahn, Associate Director of Core Peripheral Product Marketing, and VJin Cheng, Associate Manager of Product Marketing, to tell us everything about the Huntsman Elite and its revolutionary key switches.

Hahn, surprisingly, reveals that the Optomechanical switch has been subject to one of the longest product development cycles at Razer.

“We have actually had this [Optomechanical switch] on the roadmap for at least three years now, and having it on the roadmap usually means that we want to launch it within that year,” Hahn says. “Razer only launches product when we feel it’s actually ready, so we pushed this back multiple times just to make sure that we get it right – And this maybe has been four years in the making in total.”

Hahn explains that before the Optomechanical switch even made it onto the roadmap, the peripherals team got together to outline specification documents that detail out what the product should be, what are the ideal features that must be in the product, what are some of the features that are ‘nice-to-haves.’ Only after all that has been done, does Razer officially put it on the roadmap for a specific year to release.

From there Razer started forming an engineering and industrial design team around the project. This core team consisted of product developers, industrial design, software developers, firmware programmers, plus mechanical and electrical engineers.

“All of these guys will then meet on a weekly basis and just share the updates of each part of the project as we go through handmade prototypes, first production samples and all these things, and then review sections all the time,” Hahn explains. “That’s how it comes to life.”

The mechanical keyboard goes digital

The Optomechanical switch is pretty much the closest thing to a digital mechanical keyboard. The ‘Opto’ part of its name refers to the digital optical actuation of the keys, which is driven by a beam of light hitting a receiver every time you hit a key. 

Mechanical keyboards normally use metal contacts as an actuation point at this juncture, but light travels at a 186,000 miles-per-second speed that is exponentially faster than an electric current.

Aside from giving users a much, much faster response rate, adding optical actuation also extends the durability of the Huntsman Elite keyboard.

“Mechanical switches degrade after a while – especially the conversion part which will actually affect the switch performance,” Chen explains. “Maybe in your 20 million clicks for example, you’ll actually see a difference in terms of how the switch performs. But the Optomechanical light continues to be the same where you see the signal is always straight”.

Of course, melding together a key switch that’s both optical and mechanical in nature raises some issues. For one thing, the entire bottom half of the key switch is basically hollow, except for a spring that’s only really there to reset the key after it bottoms out.

To support the mechanical half of the switch and give it more bite, the Razer peripheral team implemented a stabilizer bar.

“We just created the stabilizer bar to give users a consistent key press, because when you’re gaming sometimes you’re not looking at where your fingers are resting, so you may actually hit the side of the keycap and things like that,” Chen reveals. “We designed this stabilizer bar to give that consistent key press on every click.”

Hahn also adds that it was only possible for the team to add the stabilizer bar to their Optomechanical switch because it’s constructed with fewer mechanical parts. “It would be much harder to do a stabilizer bar on standard Razer mechanical keys because there are more individual moving parts and also the factory cost as well,” he says.

Power hungry

Another issue we have with the Huntsman Elite is that it requires two USB ports at all times to operate. However, Chen explains it’s necessary because of just how much light the Huntsman needs to generate for both its optical switches as well as all of the keyboard’s RGB lighting.

“The keyboard actually takes up a lot of USB power because each of the 104 keys needs to be powered up to certain amount to fire across the [optical] signal,” Chen says.

Chen then tallies the RGB lighting points, “so we have 104 keys on the keyboard and then with the media keys there’s 2 lighting points, one for the dial and one edge across all three of the media keys. Then 38 are lighting points around the keyboard itself to add an underglow and then another 24 points on the wrist rest as well, totaling up to 168.

There is a saving grace here, as Chen and Hahn see the possibility of future accessories. The palm rest draws its power through pogo pins located on the bottom of the keyboard that support both power and data transfers.

“What we imagine is things like wireless charging through the pogo pins,” Hahn suggest. “You could even go as crazy as having some sort of heating or something in the wrist rest.

“There are all sorts of different ideas – maybe even cooling – who knows but they’re just thoughts right now,” he says. “We do work with technology partners to see what’s possible and we’re just at the start of it right now. So, if we’re looking at this with a multi-year lifespan, we definitely want to support the ecosystem.”

Feeling it out

One of the most interesting aspects of Razer’s Optomechanical switch is that it melds together the best aspects of existing mechanical keyboards. 

It literally combines the 45g actuation force of Cherry MX Reds mixed with the clicky feedback of Cherry MX Blue and Razer Green switches. Meanwhile, it also features a 3.5mm travel distance and 1.5mm actuation point that closely resembles that of Cherry MX Speed Silver.

“We looked at what was out there in the market competition-wise; what are the specs there, is there something that gamers tend to prefer a lot,” Hahn says. “Then we explored what was possible and wasn’t, where are the limitations, what can we combine, bring in. That’s how we come up with the key feel.”

From there Chen explains it was just the matter of testing – a lot of testing – to meld the two diverse parts of the Optomechanical switch together. With just the switch alone. that process included testing the feel and fine tuning it more than a dozen times over.

“Once the switch is done and mounted on the keyboard, we continue to do the testing in terms of the durability, the performance and strength,” Chen says.

Hahn adds: “we even had a hundred million keystroke test, it takes months to run with a machine that can press every single key. Actually while testing, we had to change the motor out because it broke.”

Taking the next step

The Razer Huntsman and Huntsman Elite are far from one-off keyboards for Razer. Hahn and Chen see the Optomechanical switch as the companies new premier switch for its flagship keyboards.

“You can see the innovation of where Razer was before this, we always have membrane and mechanical ,” Chen says. “So, we actually created the Razer Mecha-Membrane, which is a step above membrane, and then now we have Opto-Mechanical, it’s a step above mechanical as well.”

Hahn steps in to note that Chen is speaking about the timeline starting in 2010 and “five years before that, we were doing a bunch of membrane-based gaming keyboards as well; Tarantula, Lycosa, Arctosa keyboards, DeathStalkers.”

“Those are all there, but that time just allowed us to get better and better at keyboards,” Hahn continues. “The BlackWidow mechanical keyboard is really where we took a huge step forward in terms of really starting to create our own implementations of keyboards, key feel and then really taking the next step into the components and not only the product itself.”

“Our whole 10 to 12 years of keyboards certainly play into this Optomechanical switch,” he says. “We didn’t just do this from scratch.”

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Security researchers are arguing that passwords represent an increasingly wobbly method of verification, following the discovery of an exploit that can potentially discern a password using the thermal energy residue left on recently pressed keys.

As spotted by Bleeping Computer, computer scientists from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have named the attack Thermanator, and it involves the usage of a ‘mid-range thermal camera’ to scan the keys and detect the heat residue left on them.

Gene Tsudik, a computer science professor at UCI, observed that an attacker could “capture keys pressed on a normal keyboard, up to one minute after the victim enters them”. He added: “If you type your password and walk or step away, someone can learn a lot about it after-the-fact.”

Of course, this is not a trivial exploit to pull off. The attacker needs to have the thermal camera in place with a clear view of the keys, and there’s a time limit as the heat residue fades, as mentioned. But if the attacker moves quickly enough – i.e. within 15 seconds or so – the thermal imprints left are quite strong.

If the keys used to type the password are discerned, the attacker can later crunch this data and engage in a dictionary attack (repeatedly trying combinations) to brute force the login in question.

The researchers ran laboratory tests, and the paper on the exploit observed that: “Entire sets of key-presses can be recovered by non-expert users as late as 30 seconds after initial password entry, while partial sets can be recovered as late as one minute after entry.”

The researchers also found that ‘hunt and peck’ (i.e. two finger) typists were more vulnerable to this exploit, as the thermal traces they left when typing were stronger.

So is this a good reason to learn to touch type? Well, in all honesty, the odds of you being hit by this sort of attack in a real-world situation are vanishingly slim, at least right now – but it does point the way to the perils of the future.

Mission: Possible

And it’s not unthinkable that this sort of thing could happen in the near future. The researchers noted: “As formerly niche sensing devices become less and less expensive, new side-channel attacks move from ‘Mission: Impossible’ towards reality. This is especially true considering the constantly decreasing cost and increasing availability of high-quality thermal imagers.”

If you’re concerned, one mitigation technique the researchers offer up is simply to run your hands across the keyboard after a password entry in a public place. It’s also a good idea to never leave your notebook unattended in public, too – but that’s just general good security practice.

There are other potential vulnerabilities here aside from laptop or PC keyboards, and thermal imaging tricks could be used to try and discover PIN numbers at ATMs, for example.

Furthermore, there are a range of other exploits to determine key presses and work out passwords, too, such as using the physical vibrations made by tapping the keys. Going forward, the researchers argue that traditional passwords need to be consigned to the dustbin, in favor of more secure methods of authentication like biometric.

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When you sign up for broadband, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will supply you with a modem router for free, and these are usually low-spec devices that don’t have the features you can get from (more expensive) third-party companies such as Netgear and Belkin.

With the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub, TalkTalk is attempting to challenge the notion that for the best Wi-Fi speeds you need to use a third-party router, promising the improved Wi-Fi performance and features you usually see on more advanced routers, such as beamforming and multiple Ethernet ports.

And, while the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub is designed to deliver a performance boost for TalkTalk customers, it can also be bought separately and used regardless of your ISP.

 Price and availability 

The TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub sells for £120 in the UK. This is a fair bit cheaper than the extremely fast and feature-packed TP-Link Archer C5400 v2, and cheaper than mesh Wi-Fi devices such as the Netgear Orbi.

Perhaps its biggest competitor is from TalkTalk’s rival ISP, BT – it offers the BT Smart Hub, which it bills as offering ‘the UK’s most powerful Wi-Fi signal compared to routers from other major broadband providers’, and which retails for £129.99.

The TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub is available to buy right now, and if you’re an existing TalkTalk customer, or you’re thinking of signing up, the price drops to £30.

Design and features

The design of routers has improved dramatically in recent years, with manufacturers making efforts to produce units that look nice enough that their customers don’t feel the need to hide them away (which could potentially affect their Wi-Fi performance).

The TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub continues this trend, with an unobtrusive design that won’t look out of place in a living room. It’s a simple design, with no protruding antennae, and features a grey body covered in perforations, displaying bronze material underneath. It looks good, and while it doesn’t compete with Google Wifi when it comes to design we really appreciate the understated aesthetics. 

The TalkTalk branding is subtle, with a slightly darker grey colour that makes it only visible when viewed from a certain angle. It’s a nice contrast to the BT Smart Hub’s loud and proud design, which includes a prominent BT logo on the front.

There are four gigabit Ethernet ports on the rear of the device, which is a big upgrade over the ports that are supplied with TalkTalk’s older routers, and it means this is a great router for networks with plenty of wired devices.

There’s also a broadband port, which is used when the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub is acting as a modem, and which connects to your phone line via a supplied micro filter. There’s also a WAN port if you’re using the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub as just a router, which will connect it to a separate modem.

We like that the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub has a modem built in, as if you have a compatible fibre connection it means you only need one box (rather than a separate router and modem), while the inclusion of the WAN port allows for some flexibility, for example if you have cable broadband.

There’s also a WPS (Web Protected Setup) button on the back of the router, which allows you to quickly and securely connect devices to the wireless network. It’s a convenient feature, but it’s placed in an inconvenient place, right at the bottom of the router’s rear, which means that, depending on where you place the router, you may struggle to reach it.

A nice touch, however, is that the Wi-Fi name and password are written on a removable plastic tag, which means you don’t have to manoeuvre yourself behind the router when adding a new device. There’s also space for you to write your own network name and password if you change it from the default.

Apart from the placement of the WPS button, this is a very nicely-designed router, especially compared to the basic modem routers we’re used to getting from ISPs.

Feature-wise, the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub comes with 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi, which is currently the fastest form of wireless networking, and according to TalkTalk it makes the new router two times faster than its previous models.

It’s also dual band, with 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for keeping your wireless network from getting too clogged up, and it has a 3 x 3 antenna array for the 2.4GHz and 4 x 4 MU-MIMO for the 5GHz.

The TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub includes features we’ve seen in other advanced routers, but which rarely come with ISP routers, such as beamforming (which focuses the Wi-Fi signal to better reach your devices) and the ability to automatically choose the best Wi-Fi channel to reduce interference.

Installation and performance

The ease of installing the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub will vary a little depending on whether or not you’re an existing TalkTalk customer. If you are, and you upgrade to the hub through TalkTalk, then the process should be as simple as swapping out your existing modem and router for the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub.

You’ll need to add your devices to the new Wi-Fi network, however, or you can change the name of the new network to your previous one, which may be faster if you have lots of wireless devices, and which can be done via the router’s web interface (more on that in a moment).

If, like us, you’re not a TalkTalk customer, the setup is slightly more involved. If the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub is going to replace your modem and router, then you’ll need to get details from your ISP about your username and password. These are different credentials to the ones you use to connect to your Wi-Fi, or to log into your router’s admin page, and some ISPs are reluctant to hand them out, but preserve and you will get them.

If you’re just using the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub to act as a router – and not a modem – then you just need to plug your modem into the WAN port of the Hub.

To set up the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub you need to go into its admin page, which is accessed by typing 192.168.1.1 into a web browser, then entering in the admin username and password, which is printed on the reverse of the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub (not on the removable Wi-Fi username tag, for security reasons).

The web-based interface is clear and simple, and you can expand most sections to see advanced settings that you can use if you know what you’re doing.

During our tests the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub did a really good job of delivering fast and reliable Wi-Fi throughout a three-storey building. In the same room as the router we got 74.1Mbps download from a line capable of 80 Mbps, which is a pretty decent score, with a ping of 11ms.

Moving to the floor above the router, there was a drop in speeds, but not a significant one, with 73.9Mbps download, with a ping of 10ms.

Moving up to the top floor the speeds remained steady with 73.7Mbps, and a ping of 10ms. While the speeds we experienced while using the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub varied depending on what part of the house we were accessing it from, overall we were very impressed with the speed and the coverage of this router, especially considering it doesn’t have external antennae.

Verdict

If you’re a TalkTalk customer and want to boost your Wi-Fi coverage, you should definitely take the chance to upgrade to the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub, as it really does deliver with improved performance. Speeds were impressive and coverage was very good, while we also quite like the new design.

If you’re not a TalkTalk customer you may still be interested in this device, but be warned that the setup procedure is more complicated. However, it is possible to use it just as a router if you have another ISP.

The Wi-Fi Hub certainly a very good effort from TalkTalk, and it’s always good to see ISPs offering more powerful hardware to their customers.

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Timeline was added in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update. It’s an extension of Task View, and allows you to see what you were working on yesterday, or up to 30 days ago, and very quickly load that document, image or website.

There are a few limitations, but on the whole it’s well worth using this useful new tool.

Where can I find Timeline?

Apparently, very few people use the Task View feature that was introduced when Windows 10 first came out. It seems users can’t switch from the Alt-Tab combo they’re so familiar with to the only-slightly-different Windows-Tab shortcut.

If you’re not into keyboard shortcuts, you’ll find Timeline next to the search / Cortana box on the Taskbar:

 

Clicking it, or pressing Win-Tab, brings up Task View. This is really just a giant view of what you get if you press – and hold – Alt-Tab. That means large thumbnails of all the apps and windows you have open.

Timeline is found if you scroll down from Task View. There’s also a slider on the right, which you can click and drag. If your device has a touchscreen you can swipe up to scroll down.

Since muscle memory is a powerful thing, it’s a shame there’s no option to bring up Task View when you press Alt-Tab. That’s unlikely to change, since in the next big update coming to Windows 10 will include a feature called Sets. This will show grouped items when you hit Alt-Tab.

How does Timeline work?

It’s turned on by default, and keeps track of the documents you edit, images you open in apps such as Photoshop, and web pages you look at.

Unfortunately, the whole thing is very Microsoft-centric. So you’ll mainly see documents from Office apps, and websites will appear (as will PDFs) if you viewed them in Microsoft Edge. If you use Chrome or another browser, they won’t.

And unless you’re signed in with a Microsoft account, you’ll only see a few days’ history. Signing in lets you scroll back up to 30 days.

If you want to adjust Timeline’s settings, open the Settings app and go to Privacy.

Select Activity History and there are two main options:

• Let Windows collect my activities from this PC
• Let Windows synchronise my activities from this PC to the cloud

If you disable them, Timeline won’t work.

If you disable the second option, your activity history won’t be synced to other devices signed in with the same Microsoft account.

This is where Timeline can be very useful. If you tick both settings, you’ll be able to carry on editing a Word document on another device if you didn’t have time to finish it before you left the office, for example.

When you click on one of the ‘activity’ tiles, it will open the app and the file you were working on.

Hopefully Microsoft will improve Timeline and allow other apps to feature rather than it being almost exclusive to Windows 10’s built-in apps or Office.

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Serious flooding in the Chinese province of Sichuan has disrupted cryptocurrency mining operations located there, which could potentially have something of a knock-on effect in terms of increased demand for graphics cards, to replace boards which have been damaged.

This could be bad news for the average consumer in terms of GPU pricing, but to explain why, we need to take a couple of steps back, and look at the overall picture.

Essentially, this is another unpredictable variable that is being thrown into the currently complex equation of supply and demand in the graphics card market. Right now, there’s reportedly a big surplus of GPU stock, certainly in Nvidia’s case, as the firm apparently overestimated demand from cryptocurrency miners (and allegedly has something like a million current-gen graphics cards waiting to be released).

Now, this excess has to be shifted before the next-gen cards can come out – otherwise they will be forever gathering dust on the shelves – and as we reported earlier this week, this has led to speculation that GPU prices could drop by around 20% over the course of July, to get that stock sold. Great news for consumers, right?

Well, that’s where this flood could seriously muddy the waters. As the China-based Economic Daily News reports (via DigiTimes), no less than 70% of the cryptocurrency mining systems in China are located in Sichuan, where the serious flooding has occurred.

Apparently ‘tens of thousands’ of mining systems have been damaged, and this can be seen in the global statistics for Bitcoin mining output (hashrate), which has dropped from 43TH/s last week to around 30TH/s (as PCGamesN observes).

That underlines the apparent extent of the effect of this flood, and it means that there is expected to be a short-term surge in orders for replacement ASIC systems (dedicated mining rigs) and graphics cards for those mining using traditional PCs.

And we’ve all seen what spikes in cryptocurrency mining demand can do to the GPU market, as not so long ago, retail prices were massively inflated by such pressures.

Gauging the impact

That isn’t to say this incident will have nearly the same impact. Firstly, we don’t know how much truth is in these reports of damage, although the global Bitcoin mining hashrate would seem to back them up.

Secondly, if it is Bitcoin operations which have been mostly hit – as other virtual coins haven’t seen such an impact by all accounts – then the damaged hardware is likely to be mainly ASIC rigs, which are far more efficient when it comes to Bitcoin, as opposed to PCs bristling with GPUs.

So the net result is that demand might not surge as much for graphics cards, but the worry is there could still be some traction in this respect, and that could put a dampener on the prospect of reduced GPU prices that we reported on earlier this week.

Any effect will only have a bearing on the short-term, however, and who knows – maybe clearing down some of that GPU inventory won’t be a bad thing in terms of potentially seeing Nvidia’s next-gen cards a little sooner than we otherwise might.

Perhaps more than anything, what this episode really underlines is the volatility of the cryptocurrency mining world, not just in terms of wild value fluctuations, but other external forces like natural disasters. And unfortunately, the mining arena is now tied to the GPU market, and its volatility has an impact on the latter, too.

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For an inexpensive dash cam (available on Amazon), the Cacagoo CA03 is impressive. It takes good day video, and sports the looks and out-of-box experience of a much pricier item. That said, the detailing in the dark areas of night video is weak, and there’s no GPS. The latter is hardly surprising given the price, but the former may be a deal-buster if you drive at night a lot. I’m not going to take cheap shots at the name—the product doesn’t warrant it. Just forget that last “o” and think Windy City.

Note: This review is part of our dash cam roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them. 

Design and specs

As I said, the CA03 doesn’t un-box or look anything like how little it costs. The box it ships in is rendered in the “serious” flat-black that many upper-crust product packages employ. It also reads “Car DVR.” I like it. Sounds classier than “dash cam,” though indeed that’s what it is.

Cacagoo

The CA03 is as handsome as its packaging: thin with a raked face, ergonomically recessed buttons, and a 2.7-inch color display. The buttons are labeled as menu, up and down cursor, OK, display on/off, and what seemed in use to be an emergency/manual record button on the lower left side. I say seemed to be, because there was no mention of it in the somewhat limited user’s guide.

Minimal help aside, it’s all straightforward enough. The only oddities are that you can’t access the menu while a manual recording is in progress, and the OK button is used to end a manual recording, rather than a second press on the record button. Go figure.

Included with the camera are an auxiliary (cigarette lighter)-to-USB Type A charging cable, as well as a Type A-to-micro-USB data cable for charging via an adapter or transferring data to a computer.  

The camera itself sports a good 150-degree field of view (its CA07 cousin offers a wider 170-degree field of view for about $30 more and is available on Amazon). Its speed maxes out at 30 frames per second of 1920 x 1080 video. That’s plenty of resolution for most purposes—higher resolutions rarely add significant detail and eat up storage space more quickly. Storage on the CA03 is SDHC, though you’ll need to purchase a card on your own. 

As mentioned before, there’s no GPS. Other low-priced dashcams we’ve tested have the same deficit. Make sure you set the date and time on the dash cam, so if nothing else you can prove when something happened, if not where. 

Hetzner Online is a professional European web hosting provider, based in Germany, which has been providing internet services to private and business clients since 1997.

The company website focuses very much on value, with eye-catchingly low prices everywhere you look. Shared web hosting starts from €1.60 a month (£1.41, $1.87), cloud hosting from €2.49 (£2.20, $2.90), dedicated servers from €34 (£30, $39.60), managed servers from €29 (£26.60, $33.80), and the list goes on. There had to be a catch, we thought – and we were sort of right.

Most products have setup fees, for instance. The baseline shared hosting plan may headline at €1.60 a month, but you’ll pay a one-off €8.32 (£7.35, $9.70) when you sign up. It’s the same as you work your way up the product list, so for example dedicated servers come with at least a €79 (£69.80, $92) setup fee.

The cheapest plans have some important limits and restrictions, too. The ultra-budget €1.60 hosting plan allows only 5GB a month traffic, for instance. There’s also no support for databases, so you can forget about installing WordPress or most other big web apps.

It’s not all bad news. Even the cheapest shared hosting plan includes a free domain and a Symantec Basic SSL Certificate for a year. Plus you can sign up for just a month, without penalty – you don’t need to pay for years of service upfront to get the headline price.

Alternatively, moving up the product range will remove many of the restrictions while still proving good value. For example, the Level 4 shared hosting plan supports unlimited bandwidth, 50GB disk space and up to 10 databases. You can host up to 5 websites on the same account, and yet it still costs a very reasonable €4.12 a month (£4.62, $4.80) plus a €4.12 setup fee.

Web hosting support is available via email and phone, but during business hours only (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm CET), potentially a big problem if you’re running a business or other important site.

If you can live with that, there’s a small environmental bonus in Hetzner’s 100% Green Energy pledge to use energy from reusable sources to power its data centers.

Account setup

Hetzner Online does an unusually good job of presenting its plans clearly, but with plenty of low-level detail for those who need it. For example, we found our chosen Level 4 hosting plan supported MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, PHP5 and PHP7, but didn’t allow Cron jobs, Perl or Python, or support interactive login via SSH. Many users don’t have to know or care about any of that, but this kind of detail is critical for some applications, and we’re happy to see it presented upfront.

This documentation made it easy for us to understand and select our preferred product, and tapping the Order button launched a wizard to walk us through the signup process.

We began by completing a form with our personal details, just the usual name, phone number, physical and email address details. Within a minute or two we had logged on to Hetzner Online’s web console, where we were able to browse a list of products and place our order.

Payment methods available are debit order, bank transfer and credit card. Beware, credit card payments are only allowed for annual contracts.

Moments after parting with our cash, an email arrived with some important details on the service: email servers, FTP credentials, name servers and so on. There was also an odd problem – the email said it was registering our domain, even though we’d said during setup that we owned it already – but we weren’t billed for it and the issue was never mentioned again, so it seems to have been a simple mistake.

Setup complete, the website redirected us to our management console and we were ready to go.

Creating a site

Hetzner Online’s shared hosting doesn’t provide cPanel to help manage your website, instead offering a horribly basic custom control panel of its own.

The plain and text-heavy interface organizes its functions in a left-hand sidebar. An FTP module enables setting up FTP accounts which you can then use to upload and organize your website files, or you can do this from within your browser via the WebFTP file manager. We wouldn’t recommend that approach, though – it will upload your files for you, but otherwise it’s one of the most feeble and underpowered file managers around.

A one-click installer is on hand to install WordPress, but there’s no support for anything else. You can still install other applications, of course, but you must figure out how to do it yourself. That’s a little disappointing, when other web hosts regularly offer platforms such as Softaculous which can install hundreds of apps.

This won’t matter very much if you’re only looking for WordPress, of course, and there’s no faulting the installer’s abilities. We ran the script, it set up WordPress at high speed, allowed us to tweak settings (admin email, username, password) and pointed us to our new WordPress control panel. This is just a default installation, with no custom bundled themes, plugins or anything else, but it’s enough to get you up and running reasonably quickly.

A scattering of other tools enables setting up email accounts, creating and manipulating databases, managing subdomains, tweaking PHP settings and more. There are a few highlights – AWStats gives you quality reports on your website visitors, an excellent DNS Administration tool allows detailed DNS record editing – and we had enough tools to handle most simple tasks, but experienced or demanding users will miss cPanel’s power.

Performance

Hetzner Online’s awkward web interface is often a little confusing, and the chances are that even experienced users will need some support from time to time.

An online help system is available for quick reference, but it’s seriously limited: just a Help icon which displays a popup window with details on the current page. Most of these articles are short, some areas have no help at all, and there’s no way to search or browse the articles independent of the interface. As with the web console, there’s just enough detail to get by, and absolutely nothing more.

Support is available via email and a German telephone number, but only on weekdays from 8am to 6pm CET. That’s going to be a problem if you run into any major issues, but it’s also no great surprise for such low-cost hosting.

To complete the review, we ran some performance and other checks on our website. These confirmed that our server was hosted in Germany, and had an IP address within a range owned by Hetzner Online. The server didn’t seem to be overloaded with websites, although it’s difficult to be certain, and performance was just as we would have expected for a shared server hosted in Germany: we saw decent speeds in Europe, acceptable for the US, but tailing off with distance for everywhere else.

Final verdict

Capable basics-only budget hosting. This is good value for experts who can live within the service specs, but beginners or demanding users should look for a more helpful or powerful provider.

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