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Google One Review | PCMag


Rather than a product per se, Google One is a subscription plan for a bundle of services, including cloud storage, from the online giant. All the tech giants—Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft—now sell subscription packages for their various digital services, most of which include online cloud storage, as Google One does. Google’s package is generous, adding photo effects to its photo editing software, support by phone or chat, discounts on Google products, and now a VPN service for Android phones. None of its individual components is exceptional—you can find better pricing for online storage, more-powerful photo apps, and more-capable VPNs as standalone products, but Google One conveniently bundles the services to make it an appealing deal.


How Much Does Google One Cost?

You can start out with Google One’s Basic plan for the pittance of just $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. That gets you 100GB online storage that’s shared among your Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail services. You also get some handy photo tools in the Google Photos mobile app, and support via phone and text chat from Google staff. Anyone can get 15GB of storage free with any Google account, but that doesn’t get you these Google One extras.

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For a buck more per month, the $2.99-a-month (or $29.99 per year) Standard plan bumps storage up to 200GB and you get a 3% discount in the Google Store on Pixel phones, Next smart home devices, and other products. If you’re interested in the VPN service, you need the $9.99-per-month (or $99.99 per year) Premium plan, which brings 2TB of storage and increases your discount at the store to 10%.

Benefits of Google One


Some extra benefits and discounts are included with a Google One account.

Higher price plans go all the way up to $149.99 per month for 30TB of storage. All plans can be shared among five of your family members and friends. You get a slight discount if you pay annually rather than monthly for a Basic, Standard, or Premium plan.

For comparison, a $9.99-a-month…

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Asus ZenWiFi XD6 Review | PCMag


The ZenWiFi XD6 ($379.99) is a two-piece Wi-Fi 6 mesh system designed for homes of up to 5,400 square feet. It’s easy to install and manage, and the included Asus AI Protection Pro software gives you powerful, lifetime parental controls and network security tools. The XD6 performed admirably in our throughput and signal strength testing, but it couldn’t quite keep pace with its more powerful (though more expensive) sibling, the Editors’-Choice-award-winning Asus ZenWiFi XT8.


Wired or Wireless Backhaul? Why Not Both?

The XD6 uses two identical white nodes to provide wireless coverage for homes of up to 5,400 square feet. They share the same cylindrical design as the ZenWiFi XT8 system, but at 5.1 by 5 by 2.3 inches (HWD), they are much smaller than the XT8 nodes, which measure 6.3 by 6.2 by 2.9 inches.

There are other differences, as well: The XT8 is a tri-band system, while the XD6 is a dual-band system, and the XT8 offers more advanced connectivity options, including multi-gigabit WAN ports and USB 3.1 connectors for plugging in printers or external hard drives. In comparison, the XD6 is limited to a 1Gbps WAN port and three 1Gbps LAN ports, all of which are located around back along with the power jack.

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As with many mesh systems that offer LAN ports, you can use the ports for wired backhaul communications between the two nodes, or you can use the 5GHz Wi-Fi band for backhaul. Interestingly, the XD6 is also capable of switching between the two on the fly, something that not every mesh system offers. You can set up both wired and wireless backhaul, and let the router decide which one will provide better performance at any given time. 

Asus Zenwifi XD6 router ports

There’s a tiny LED indicator on the front of each node. The router node LED glows blue during setup and is solid white when connected, while the satellite node LED blinks blue during pairing with the router and turns solid white when connected to the router. Inside are six antennas, a 1.5GHz tri-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, 256MB of flash memory, and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) circuitry.

The only…

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SecureMyEmail Review | PCMag


When email first evolved out of simple network messaging tools, it was about as secure as tacking your message to the community notice board. Anybody could read it—or even change the message! Likewise, any server transmitting those early emails could intercept them. Modern email is a bit better, but the email providers themselves can still dig into your data. It’s ostensibly for your benefit. “Oh, this email is about a plane flight. Should I put it on your calendar?” But the providers of free email see you as more of a product than a customer. If you really want privacy in your communications, you need an email encryption tool. SecureMyEmail lets you communicate privately both with other users of the product and with outsiders, and it can even be free.

With Private-Mail, ProtonMail, StartMail, and Tutanota, you must create a new, secure email address for your encrypted conversations. That’s a deal-breaker for some. Like PreVeil, SecureMyEmail lets you keep using any existing email address. The only qualifier is that your email account must support IMAP, which most do. Virtru Email Protection for Gmail also doesn’t make you change your address, but it only works with Gmail, and only if you log in using Chrome.

How Much Does SecureMyEmail Cost?

There’s no charge to sign up for SecureMyEmail. You don’t have to supply a credit card, or any personal information beyond your email address. If the email address you want to protect is a Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft account, you can go right on using SecureMyEmail indefinitely, at no cost.

Protecting any other type of account with SecureMyEmail requires a paid subscription, as does using it to protect more than one account. In that case, your signup starts a 30-day free trial. After the trial, a subscription costs $3.99 per month or $29.99 per year. That subscription covers up to eight email addresses, which should be enough for most users.

SecureMyEmail Free Account Verified

The free edition is feature-complete, as is the 30-day trial (until it expires). PreVeil and Virtru are totally free, so they’re likewise feature-complete at the free level.

Private-Mail, ProtonMail, and Tutanota all offer free tiers, but with significant limitations. For free users,…

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