The Yoga Book 9i jettisons the traditional lower laptop deck for a second touchscreen, which opens up some interesting use cases along with some compromises.

Two screens at the same time. That is the whole appeal of Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i in a nutshell, as best as I can tell after using the device for a couple of weeks.

The $1,999.99 9i, for the uninitiated, is a dual-screen clamshell touchscreen laptop that eschews the traditional keyboard deck for a second touchscreen on the bottom half. Lenovo has been experimenting with nontraditional laptop designs for years, from foldable ThinkPads to twisting laptops with E Ink displays and virtual keyboards, and it hasn’t always gone well. High prices, awkward software, and unconventional designs have kept them from really being anything you should buy.

The Yoga Book 9i is not without some of those compromises. Still, it is Lenovo’s best execution of the dual-screen form factor and doesn’t feel nearly as much like an experiment as Lenovo’s earlier ideas. Having two screens at the same time is a very compelling pitch for a lot of people accustomed to working at a desk, and there are certain use cases where the 9i’s unique form factor presents an advantage over other laptops.

Lenovo came up with some clever software and hardware tricks to make this work, and the result is a surprisingly usable first cut at a device with two screens and no built-in keyboard. But it’s not likely to replace your clamshell laptop just yet.

From first glance, the 9i doesn’t look all that different from Lenovo’s other Yoga models or even any other 2-in-1 convertible laptop. It’s about the same thickness as my MacBook Pro when closed, with an extra lip on the top half to make opening it easier and provide room for the Windows Hello-compatible webcam.

It may look like both halves are identical, but the bottom half is thicker and where the actual computing components live. The chassis is a handsome dark blue aluminum with rounded, polished sides and just three ports — all Thunderbolt 4 USB-C. The thing I missed the most from the port selection is a 3.5mm headphone jack; I’m just not ready to give those up on a laptop yet.

Crack it open, though, and the 9i’s difference becomes apparent. The two 13.3-inch, 2880 x 1800 OLED panels with 16:10 aspect ratios light up and give you two equally sized Windows desktops to play with. They’re colorful and punchy like OLED screens should be, and the 400 nit peak brightness is plenty for most situations outside of direct sunlight. Happily, the screens are well color-matched, too.

Like prior dual-screen devices, such as Microsoft’s Surface Duo phone, the Yoga Book 9i is all about different postures. The first one is the default clamshell mode, where you’d try to use it like a standard laptop. This is also the worst way to use this device.

Tapping eight fingers on the bottom screen pulls up a virtual keyboard. Below it is a virtual trackpad that can span the entire width of the screen or be constrained to a typical trackpad size. Typing on the virtual keyboard goes about as well as you might expect: I could make it work at about half my normal typing speed and with a lot more errors. Lenovo built some light haptics into the system to provide some feedback, but it’s not something that replaces a physical keyboard. The virtual trackpad also works and supports the typical multi-finger Windows gestures, but the glass makes it feel sticky, and it isn’t nearly as smooth to use as an actual hardware trackpad.

Swipe down with eight fingers on the keyboard, and it will move to the bottom half of the screen, revealing two widgets above it. These widgets suck: one is an Outlook calendar widget that refused to work with my Google Calendar account, and the other is a chumbox of awful clickbait headlines powered by Microsoft’s News app. Lenovo really needs to make more options to provide some usability here.

This posture also occasionally has software issues: the mouse cursor will sometimes get “trapped” on the bottom screen under the keyboard if you slide it down too far, and you can’t use the trackpad to confirm any Windows security prompts; you have to reach up and tap the screen each time. One time, my whole Slack window got stuck on the bottom screen and I couldn’t find it because the keyboard and trackpad covered it up.

Bundled with the Yoga Book 9i is a Bluetooth keyboard that can sit on top of the bottom half of the computer and take the place of the virtual keyboard. Typing with this is much easier, and it’s cool that the system automatically knows when you’ve plopped the keyboard onto the screen. But it’s not much fun to use on a lap like a typical laptop because the whole thing feels unstable and awkward when typing or shifting your weight since the keyboard isn’t actually attached to the deck. Plus, you still have to contend with that less-than-stellar virtual trackpad.

The most productive posture of the 9i, and my preferred way to use it, involves that Bluetooth keyboard and a folding stand and mouse that also come with the computer. Using the stand, which conveniently doubles as a travel case for the keyboard, you can prop the 9i up almost vertically, allowing you to easily see both screens at the same time.

This turns the 9i into a multi-monitor productivity machine. Windows views it as two separate displays, just like it does with two monitors on a desktop, which opens up a lot of practical use cases. I can have my browser or active window up at almost eye level on the top display while I keep an eye on chat apps or email on the bottom screen. Or I can participate in a video call on the top screen and reference or take notes on the bottom one. It’s like having a separate USB-C portable display built right into the laptop itself. You can even stretch a single window across both screens to look at an especially long document or webpage with less scrolling (though the hinge will obscure some information), but I didn’t really end up doing this in day-to-day work.

The 9i can also be rotated 90 degrees so you have two portrait-oriented screens side by side. Some might find this useful for comparing two documents at the same time, but I much preferred using the 9i with its screens in landscape orientation.

The downside of all of this is it obviously doesn’t work on your lap and requires toting around a bunch of (thankfully included) accessories and setting up the whole workstation with stand, keyboard, and mouse whenever you want to get down to work. If you’re the type of person to already pack a portable USB-C monitor or just use your laptop at the same desk every day, this won’t be much of a problem. But everyone else will find more friction to getting started with the 9i than virtually any other laptop.

Also included with the 9i is a stylus, which can conveniently be stored in a fabric loop on the folding stand. The stylus works on either screen and can be useful for jotting down handwritten notes on the lower screen while on a video call on the top screen or using the space above the keyboard as a scratch pad for to-dos and other things to remember throughout the day.

There are a lot of use cases you can imagine with two screens stacked on top of each other, and I can see video editors wanting to have their editing timeline on the bottom screen and their footage preview on top or gamers hoping to keep an eye on Discord on the lower screen while playing on the top one.

Unfortunately, the 9i isn’t really powerful enough to enable either of those experiences very well. It’s very much still a sub-three-pound thin and light laptop, and its U-series Core i7 chip isn’t designed for those more intense workloads. I had no problem with performance in my day-to-day productivity workflow, consisting of lots of browser tabs, video calls, Slack conversations, and listening to music or watching video, but in our standard benchmarks for gaming and creative work, the 9i scored quite low. (That music and video sounded surprisingly good thanks to the soundbar built into the hinge between the two screens, by the way.)

Battery life, on the other hand, is better than expected given the 9i is powering two full-size screens all the time. I was able to manage between six and seven hours of use between charges, which isn’t much less than I get from most thin and light laptops. And since the best way to use this computer is on a table or at a desk, it’s likely you won’t be far from a power outlet anyway.

Lastly, I have to note that Lenovo loads up this computer with so much bloatware that you will be swatting pop-ups for things like McAfee and Amazon Prime Music trials for days when you start using the computer. These things are gross on any laptop but really tarnish the experience of a $2,000 computer.

The Yoga Book 9i is not the portable computer you buy for focused, intense work. It’s for multi-all-the-taskings, it’s for keeping an eye on that Slack conversation while watching YouTube on the screen above, it’s for not compromising on your multi-monitor setup when you’re away from home. More screens, you demand, and the 9i provides.

But at the same time, it’s hard to recommend it to the typical laptop buyer. The traditional clamshell design has been around for so many years because it works — you can put it on a table or you can use it on your lap, and you have reliable input devices in both positions. The 9i gives you more when you’re at a desk but requires compromises in less formal positions. It’s not as comfortable to use casually on the couch because neither the virtual nor the physical keyboard is practical on the bottom screen, and taking it to a coffee shop or other location requires bringing along a keyboard, mouse, and stand, in addition to the computer itself.

Beyond that, there’s the cost — you’re paying a lot to have these two screens joined together. You can get an excellent laptop plus an external USB-C display and save hundreds of dollars compared to the Yoga Book 9i — and still live the two-screen lifestyle. You’d also have the flexibility of something that works well when you’re lounging on the couch.

Still, the Yoga Book 9i allows me to be nearly as productive from the coffee shop as I am at my desk at home, provided I remember to tote along all the necessary accessories to make it work. That alone might be worth the compromises elsewhere.

Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge

I don’t particularly love editing my photos on a regular old slab phone anymore. Even on something large like the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the aspect ratio demands more zooming and panning than I’d like. Slapping on a quick filter or making some light tweaks is fine, but anything more than that, and I’m itching for my Mac or an iPad. None of this is the fault of software, mind you; Adobe’s been on a run of some phenomenal Lightroom updates this year, and indie developers like the team behind Pixelmator are impressively keeping pace. That aspect of editing has never been better or more capable; it’s having to work within the confines of a small screen that’s the real limitation.

So as I was helping with our Google Pixel Fold review last month, one of my main use cases was testing Lightroom on that large inner display. I was genuinely excited about the notion of having a large editing canvas whenever I needed it and a regular-size phone (albeit a heavy one) when I didn’t. But then I started using the Fold and quickly realized how many apps completely fail to take advantage of the expansive inner screen — and I grew pessimistic about how Lightroom would fare.

To get a little inside baseball for a minute, Google sent along a reviewer’s guide that included a list of Fold-optimized apps including third-party software like Netflix and TikTok. Snapseed, a lightweight photo editing app that Google acquired and has since largely forgotten about, somehow made that list, but there wasn’t any mention of Lightroom. That left me even more cautious as I went to install it.

Thankfully, there was no reason for all that consternation. Lightroom on the Pixel Fold works like a dream, seamlessly switching between both of the device’s forms. And yes, editing on that inner tablet-like screen is just as good as I envisioned. Does the Pixel Fold noticeably warm up when you’re 20 minutes into editing a 40-megapixel RAW file? Absolutely, but Google’s Tensor chips run hot when you’re just browsing Reddit, so I can live with it for the larger real estate. And performance-wise, there’s little to complain about: the Pixel Fold kept up with my adjustments without getting bogged down or starting to fall behind.

Look at all that working space in the screenshot above. One nice little touch is that, as you adjust the sliders, the menu goes transparent, so you can see the effect even in parts of the image that might be obscured.

But this could be even better if the Pixel Fold had some level of stylus support. You know what gets very tedious? Having to use your fingers to eliminate dust or distracting background elements from a shot. I love hunting for those things with an Apple Pencil on the iPad and quickly getting rid of them, but my index finger is just less precise. I know I’d get the benefit of stylus support on the Galaxy Z Fold 4, but that narrow outer display just isn’t practical for my big hands.

Google built hardware integration for USI 2.0 styluses into the Pixel Tablet but surprisingly omitted it on the $1,800 Fold. That’s a mystifying decision to me and something that seems destined to be corrected in the second-gen model — assuming there is one. And this is Google, so... nothing’s ever guaranteed.

We’ve also got to talk about those screen reflections. The Fold’s inner display can be downright mirror-esque if you’re outside during the day. So I’d recommend against post-processing your photos at the park or beach. But anywhere indoors, it’s quite easy to avoid any frustrating glare. It’s easy to fall into 30-minute editing sessions at my local coffee shop, and I’ve been surprised that this doesn’t obliterate the Fold’s battery.

The sensible thing would be to just keep living a multi-device life and stick to tablets or my MacBook Pro when I need to dive into some extensive photo work. But having that glorious larger screen at the ready — and at all times — is super compelling. Is it $1,800 compelling? I don’t think I could justify buying a Pixel Fold with my own money, but I’m still using the review unit as my daily device to see how it progresses in terms of reliability over time. If it holds up, I’d absolutely be in for a cheaper model. Hopefully by then, more apps will embrace the form factor as well as Lightroom has.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

They look like a lazy refresh from the outside, but the noise-canceling Studio Pros include a ton of new features like transparency mode and lossless USB-C audio. And they solidify Beats’ unique appeal as a dual-ecosystem brand.

How long can a headphone design remain iconic? If you recycle it too many times over the years, at what point does it begin to feel stale and phoned in? These are the questions I’ve been grappling with while reviewing the new $349.99 Beats Studio Pro headphones. Pull these noise-canceling cans out of the box, and they unabashedly look and feel just like the Studio 3s (released in 2017) that they’re replacing; Beats’ design language extends back much further than that. This company has never strayed far from the style that has brought it such cultural cachet and high-profile visibility with celebrities and sports stars, and it’s not about to start now.

The form is familiar, but Beats has completely reworked the audio architecture inside the Studio Pro headphones. It has piled on new features like transparency mode, personalized spatial audio, and even lossless music playback over USB-C. And this Apple-owned company is continuing to market itself as a dual-ecosystem solution with native support for both iOS and Android software features.

But none of those things are noticeable at first blush. These are still Beats headphones, meaning there’s some creak to them as you unfold the ear cups. They’re very plasticky minus the metal hinges and headband slider, and there’s still a stronger than normal level of clamping pressure when you place them on your head. In hand, they simply don’t come across like $350 headphones. The new side-loading carrying case is nice, as is the fact that it includes both a 3.5mm headphone cable and USB-C cord with pockets for each. Either can be used for audio transmission, which is a first for a Beats (or Apple) headphone.

There are some improvements to the fit and finish; Beats has switched to a new ear cushion that it’s calling UltraPlush, which combines memory foam padding with an outer layer of “engineered leather” that doesn’t have any visible seams or stitching. The company believes this will lead to improved long-term durability, but for now, we’ll have to take Beats’ word on that. I’ve had issues with past Beats headphones where the synthetic leather top layer would detach and start to pull away from the headphone, so hopefully that won’t be the case here. As a heavy sweater, I’ve already been a tad nervous wearing these around NYC during a hot July. Unfortunately, the UltraPlush ear pads aren’t officially replaceable, and Beats won’t be selling spares. So if something goes awry, you’ll need to get them repaired or seek out aftermarket options.

The Studio Pros have custom 40mm drivers that are “engineered for optimal clarity, with near-zero distortion even at high volume,” according to Beats’ press release, and the goal here isn’t to relentlessly assault your ears with bass, either. Anyone still going by that outdated perception of the company’s sound signature is overdue for another listen. These over-ears aim for “a powerful, yet balanced sound profile crafted to bring out the subtle details of whatever you’re listening to.”

And yeah, pair those revamped drivers with new micro-vents and acoustic mesh inside the headphones and clarity across the volume range is definitely a key strength of the Studio Pros. It’s been ages since I’ve used the Studio 3s, but I remember some fuzziness and imprecision to them. These don’t suffer from any of that no matter what volume you’re listening at. But their balanced tone might disappoint Beats loyalists who are looking for more energy and kick from their cans. And when lined up against audio-first headphones like the $399 Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S2 or $380 Sennheiser Momentum 4s, the Studio Pros fail to measure up in dynamics and overall definition. Beats has crafted a perfectly decent-sounding pair of headphones, but there’s nothing that leaps out as special about them.

They do at least have a strong showing when it comes to active noise cancellation. Just like Apple, Beats claims the Studio Pros analyze your surroundings tens of thousands of times per second — marketing gobbledygook that no average person could ever possibly verify — but the upgraded microphone array did a good job of cutting down the clamor at my local coffee shop in the middle of a weekday. Transparency mode is also quite good. Even if it’s a step below the $200 more expensive AirPods Max, your surroundings come through sounding natural, crisp, and without any noticeable latency. Battery life still tops out at 40 hours with noise cancellation turned off and around 24 hours if you’ve got it on (or are using transparency mode).

Focusing on those elements of the headphones alone, the Beats Studio Pros are a modest upgrade with improved sound and the all-important addition of transparency passthrough. But two other things make this product a little more notable than they otherwise would be.

Apple is using Beats as its first foray into USB-C audio

When connected to a source device over USB-C, the Studio Pros support lossless and high-res audio playback up to 24bit / 48kHz from compatible sources like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and others. Curiously, when USB-C playback is active, you lose all access to noise cancellation and transparency modes. This is by design, according to Beats, but I’m still confused as to why or what technical limitation forces you to choose between ANC or richer audio. Either way, if you’re hoping to have a hi-fi listening session on a plane, be prepared for some background cabin hum to bleed through. Even more strange is that noise cancellation and transparency do work over a regular old headphone jack connection, so USB-C is the odd one out.

But it gets more interesting than that — and this is where I suspect we’re seeing Apple… erhm, Beats, sorry… toy with the possibilities that are unlocked by USB-C audio. When in wired USB-C mode, the Studio Pros can toggle between three sound profiles targeted at different use cases. The default Beats Signature profile is tonally balanced for music playback. But there’s also Entertainment, which widens the sound stage and boosts certain portions of the frequency curve for a more immersive movie-watching experience. And the last, Conversation, adjusts the EQ and frequency response for clearer voice calls and more pleasant, less fatiguing podcast listening. These are only available over USB-C; they don’t work when listening via Bluetooth or even with the 3.5mm headphone jack. (They do work with non-Apple devices, if you were curious.)

You switch between these profiles with a double-press of the power button. Simple enough, and it’s obvious when you’ve landed on Conversation mode because music quickly falls flat. But it can be harder to distinguish between the Beats Signature and Entertainment profiles by ear alone. The only way to know for certain is by checking the circular LEDs on the right ear cup: if the one in the center is illuminated, you’re in Beats Signature mode. If three of them are lit up, that’s Entertainment mode. I really wish Beats would add some actual speech feedback here — just tell me what mode I’m in — instead of using impossible to decipher bloop tones as you cycle through these profiles.

Clumsy execution aside, these sound profiles are a fascinating idea, and it’s not hard to imagine Apple bringing specialized USB-C audio modes to a future pair of the AirPods Max after the iPhone lineup makes that long-awaited transition. It’s a bit weird that they’re not available wirelessly, but at the same time, I don’t hate it — might as well give people a reason to plug in and get better audio quality for the effort.

Beats is becoming Apple’s Android brand — and not being subtle about it

It’s been a recurring theme lately: Beats is highlighting its dual-ecosystem proprietary chip that supports native software features on both iOS (expectedly) and Android (not so expectedly). This isn’t the first Beats product to offer such cross-OS compatibility; the Studio Buds and Studio Buds Plus were the company’s previous experiments. But the Studio Pros take it up a notch — particularly by tacking on even more Apple-centric features without giving up the Google tricks.

For example, these headphones support spatial audio with dynamic head tracking. Until this point, that feature has been reserved exclusively for the AirPods lineup and the Beats Fit Pro (which are powered by the H1 chip) — but not anymore. There’s a gyroscope in the Studio Pros that, when used in conjunction with an Apple product like an iPhone or iPad, tells that device how it’s moving in space. So as you listen to spatial audio on Apple Music or watch a movie on Netflix, the sound will change as your head shifts around. And the Studio Pros even gain personalized spatial audio, where you can use an iPhone’s TrueDepth camera to optimize the performance based on your own head shape.

Here’s a rundown of what the Studio Pros offer from each walled garden:

iOS ecosystem features

• One-touch pairing
• iCloud device synchronization
• Hands-free “Hey Siri”
• Personalized spatial audio
• Dynamic head tracking for spatial audio
• Find My
• OTA firmware updates

Android ecosystem features

• Fast Pair
• Automatic pairing with Android and Chrome devices signed in to your Google account
• Audio switch: seamlessly transition between an Android phone and Chromebook, etc.
• Find My Device
• OTA updates with the Beats app for Android

On the Apple side, you do lose out on certain features like audio sharing, but I’d say Beats has struck a good balance in trying to appeal to both crowds. No one gets everything, but everybody gets a few nice bonus capabilities. And the important part is that these are native features — not proprietary clones that many third-party headphone makers come up with. One frustrating omission regardless of which platform you’re using is ear detection; the Studio Pros won’t automatically pause the music when you remove them or resume when you put them back on.

They’ve got a very similar design to predecessors, but the Beats Studio Pro headphones manage to deliver a unique mix of features and several firsts for Beats and Apple, respectively. Even as it continues trying to appeal to the Android universe, Beats is going deeper into the Apple ecosystem with features like dynamic head tracking. And these are the first Apple headphones to offer genuinely lossless USB-C audio. If either of those appeals to you, the Studio Pros are worth trying at your local Best Buy or Apple Store. But for most general buyers, they don’t excel at sound or ANC enough to lift them above Sony’s WH-1000XM5s.

I understand that this design is iconic and has a cultural legacy, but I can’t help but wonder what a bold reset from Beats would look like. The company is at its best when venturing into new territory, whereas the Studio Pros feel beholden to the past, and in some ways, they come out worse for it. I have no doubt they’ll soon be everywhere on the heads of musicians and athletes — same as ever — but I think it’s possible to get a little more daring while staying true to where you came from.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

Correction, July 19th 11:45AM ET: The article previously stated that dynamic head tracking was a feature exclusively available on the AirPods lineup. But the Beats Fit Pro are also supported. We regret the error.

Oh, the apps you’ll uninstall.

Motorola.

I really want to like your new Moto G Stylus 5G. And I do, on a lot of levels. It has a lot for $399: plenty of storage, 6GB of RAM, a good Snapdragon processor, even a charger and a headphone jack! Who even does that anymore? But the G Stylus suffers from one serious problem I can’t get over: bloatware.

Bloatware is littered throughout the software and onboarding experience. As you set up the phone and go about arranging your homescreen, you will meet multiple prompts to download more apps. Apps, apps, apps. Have you tried apps? Do you like ‘em? Download more of them!

There are the so-called “folders.” They’re named innocuous things like “entertainment” and “shopping.” That’s thoughtful to automatically sort your streaming apps into one place, right? But why does it show an icon for an app you’ve never downloaded? Tap on the folder, and that’s when you’ll find out: it’s not really a folder at all. It is, in fact, an app itself.

It’s part of a service called Swish that Motorola shoves into its budget phones. There are a few of these apps masquerading as folders, which pull in apps you’ve actually downloaded and aggressively prompt you to download even more apps.

Even after you complete the full setup process, you’ll eventually find a notification you can’t dismiss urging you to finish setting up your phone and — you’ll never guess — download some more apps. This one comes from another company called IronSource, and it asks for your age and gender. You can decline to provide either (as I did), and it suggested I download Yahoo Mail, Woodoku, and two different solitaire apps (in addition to many other apps I didn’t want). Reader, I did not download Yahoo Mail.

Then there’s the god-awful MotoHub. It’s another app and bills itself as your new home screen, providing a “daily dose of entertainment” and “the latest news updates.” You’ll encounter it by way of a full-screen widget on one of your homescreen pages. Yeet this widget into the garbage can, please.

If you do happen to open the MotoHub app — and I don’t recommend it — you’ll be met with the words “Your privacy matters.” This is followed immediately by a statement:

“As per our privacy policy, we may collect and share your data with trusted partners within or outside your country to provide and improve our services and targeted ads.”

Really clears things up. It also sounds like my privacy does not, in fact, matter. I opted in to this dumpster fire in the name of journalism, and here’s what I found in no particular order:

• Lots of news stories about extreme weather events
• Deals on Barbie-branded skincare and hair accessories
• An aggressively unfunny joke of the day

Swish is a product of a company called InMobi. According to a 2021 press release, its apps are designed “to make content consumption a rewarding experience for users,” and “Swish monetizes engagement to provide new revenue streams while attracting and retaining more customers for telcos.”

Personally, I do not find it to be a rewarding experience. I’m not alone: there are numerous one-star reviews for Swish apps on the Google Play store from frustrated users. Here’s an excerpt from a review of the Entertainment Folder app that really sums them all up succinctly:

Don’t want. Didn’t want. Didn’t install.

Curiously, there are a couple of four- and five-star reviews, like this one from “Daniel G Hunt.” Here’s what “Daniel” has to say:

Girls 15 you can Inside the house is a good time to get the same thing for the same thing and I love and I will try to get baby to get the same thing for you and you and I think is

To which “Swish Apps” replies: “Hi Daniel, Thank you for the encouraging ratings.”

None of this is particularly new in the cookiepocolypse — your wireless carrier is probably selling anonymized data about your phone habits to advertisers already. But it’s an extremely irritating case for two reasons. For one, it’s only on Motorola’s cheapest phones. The company probably knows it couldn’t get away with including it on high-end devices, so if you can’t afford a $700 or $1,000 phone, you’re stuck in bloatware hell.

On top of that, all of this garbage sits on top of what is otherwise lovely software — sadly, not the first time we’ve seen a nice Lenovo device spoiled by bloatware. Motorola’s custom gestures and helpful peek notifications remain undefeated. I’d like us all to spare a thought for the UI designer who developed Moto’s Android 13 skin only to have this bullshit plastered all over it. Once you delete all of the Swish apps — and you can delete them all, thank god — you’re left with a perfectly good budget phone that runs thoughtfully designed software.

That’s the really frustrating thing. I know how to remove all of this garbage. You probably do, too. But someone less tech-savvy might not recognize the “folders” and full-page widget as things that can be uninstalled and just go on living with them for however long they own the phone. I’m sure this is no accident.

Without all of the bloatware, the Moto G Stylus 5G is a fine device for its price — which is marked down to $299 as I write this if you buy from Motorola. Its 6GB of RAM is on the high end of what you can expect in a budget phone. Likewise, performance is good all around. The camera app isn’t the fastest, and the image preview in the camera app is laggy in low light. The stylus also popped out of its silo on a couple of occasions when the phone was in my bag.

But as a daily companion, the Stylus G 5G comes through. I took it to the splash pad and got some priceless photos of my toddler’s sheer joy playing in the water. I wrote myself a to-do list, which is somehow more satisfying with a stylus. I paid for my coffee with Google Wallet. The battery easily powered me through even the busiest of days with lots to spare. I was generally just happy with it — after I removed the Swish nonsense.

It’s possible that making a deal with InMobi helps Motorola subsidize the cost of this phone and equip it with higher-end components — a Snapdragon chipset doesn’t come cheap. But if that’s the case, how can Motorola afford to sell this thing at a $100 markdown from MSRP? I call shenanigans.

I’m not angry with Motorola, just disappointed. I expect better from them! I told my own mother to buy a Motorola phone, for Pete’s sake. And look at something like the ThinkPhone — a proper, grown-up device! It does what it’s supposed to and doesn’t pester you to give a bunch of your personal information to third-party companies. More of this, please, Motorola.

The G Stylus 5G is nice when you remove the bloatware, but I’ll probably tell most people looking for a budget phone (Mom included) to just get a discounted Google Pixel 6A and save the hassle.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The latest Spectre model is a solid competitor to Dell’s high-end XPS, but there’s one area where it falls short.

If you’re looking to buy a premium, lightweight, 13-inch Windows laptop with top-notch build quality and a recognizable brand name, I will bet that you’ve been recommended at least one of the following two models: the Dell XPS 13 and the HP Spectre x360 13.5. These two laptops are the cream of the 13-inch Windows laptop crop. They’re pricey, they’re lightweight, and they’re pleasing to the eyes.

But what exactly are the differences between them, and which one should you choose? I’ve spent a good amount of time using both of these devices, and I’m here to help you. A brief spoiler: the Spectre is probably the one I would buy, as it has a number of advantages over the XPS (which its higher price reflects). It does, however, have one sizable disadvantage that you should be aware of.

Price

Right, let’s get this part out of the way. You can currently buy a Spectre x360 13.5 with a Core i7, 16GB of memory, and 1TB of storage (the configuration I tested) for $1,434.99. A similarly specced XPS 13 has an MSRP of $1,449 but is currently discounted to $1,299 on Dell’s website. (The 1TB model of the XPS 13 can only be purchased with 32GB of RAM.)

That’s a difference of $135.99, which will vary as discounts change. That extra money doesn’t entirely go to waste, though.

Look and feel

This may be the difference between the XPS and the Spectre that will most impact your daily life. They have very different visual vibes, and there’s no mistaking one for the other.

I prefer the look of the Spectre. It’s gorgeous and sophisticated. The black model I have has gold accents around the touchpad, on the hinges, and in some other choice locations, and while they’re subtle, they give the device a suave C-Suite look. Where the Spectre is built to stand out, the XPS is built to blend in. It has a bit more of a plasticky feel (though it’s not flimsy by any means) and more of a generic aesthetic. It’s not ugly, but I wouldn’t turn to stare if I walked past.

That said, there’s something else that Dell’s chassis has going for it: it’s more portable. The Spectre is just over three pounds, which is a bit on the heavy side for modern 13-inchers. The XPS is almost half a pound lighter, and that’s a difference I feel when carrying both laptops around in my backpack or tote.

The Spectre’s weight has ultimately been the primary reason I’ve been avoiding purchasing it myself despite loving everything else about it. It’s not heavy by any means, but I still like my ultraportables to be a bit more comfortable to lift and carry with one arm. As someone who does lots of commuting to and from the office, the XPS is just much more pleasant to lug around.

I’ve also found that the XPS’s finish scratches more easily, while the Spectre’s is much more prone to fingerprint smudging.

Video calling experience

The XPS’s webcam isn’t great. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great. My backgrounds were often quite washed out when I used it for calls.

The Spectre’s, while not amazing, is better. The image it produces is much less grainy, and it does a better job with bright backgrounds. It also has a physical shutter (controlled via the keyboard), which just gives me some peace of mind when I’m at home.

The Spectre also comes loaded with a suite of “beautification” features that HP calls GlamCam. There’s one that’s similar to Apple’s Center Stage and follows you around if you’re on the move during your call. There’s a lighting correction filter, which never made that much difference in my tests. There’s a hilarious “BRB Mode” that, when you toggle it on, puts “BRB” on your screen if you... get tired of your Zoom call and need to duck out for a nap, I guess? And there’s an appearance filter that “retouches” your face. There’s a separate discussion to be had about whether it’s appropriate for laptop manufacturers to be governing these kinds of beauty standards, but if these effects are something you want, you can get them on the Spectre.

The Spectre also has twice as many speakers as the XPS, and it sounds great, with crisp audio and solid bass. The XPS’s audio isn’t terrible, but it is a noticeable notch down, particularly in terms of volume. I sometimes had trouble hearing my calls in public spaces when using that device.

Screen

HP wins here. The XPS has a 1920 x 1200 IPS panel, and that’s all you can get. If you want a higher-resolution OLED option, you’ll need to look at the more expensive XPS 13 Plus. That device actually has a much higher-resolution OLED display, but it also has an invisible haptic touchpad, an LED function row, and some other odd stuff.

The Spectre I have has a 3000 x 2000 OLED screen, and it’s divine. There’s barely any glare, even in the brightest possible settings. Colors are vivid, and details are crisp. I almost wish I didn’t have to send this unit back to HP because I have such a great time looking at it.

HP’s laptop also has a 3:2 aspect ratio, while the XPS is 16:10. I prefer both of these to the classic old 16:9, but 3:2 gives you slightly more vertical room and is the one of the two that I would choose.

Battery life

Here’s where the Spectre runs into trouble. I averaged just over four hours from continuous use of this OLED device. Even though it has a larger battery than the XPS does, the high-resolution screen is eagerly eating up the battery.

That low battery life, while not necessarily unexpected given the screen’s resolution, is a major hangup for such a pricey device. It’s pretty much my only significant complaint about the Spectre; if I were able to get, say, 10 hours out of it, I’d be seriously contemplating giving it a 10 out of 10 score. It’s a standout across many categories, but the short lifespan makes it a tough sell for folks who may want to use it out and about.

The XPS did much better here, averaging six hours and 42 minutes from the same workload. That isn’t great as XPS models of the past few years have gone, but it is one of the better results I’ve seen from a recent Windows laptop. With Intel’s offerings these days, all-day battery life on my personal workload has become more of a luxury than a staple.

Performance

I don’t want to make too big of a deal about benchmark scores on these two devices, as neither is really designed to be used for long periods of time under heavy loads. Nevertheless, for people who want to know, the scores are above.

The Spectre has a slightly more powerful processor than is available in the XPS. The scores I got are similar but not quite the same, with the Spectre coming out on top in almost every case. If you plan on playing games or exporting video as I did here, you can expect that the Spectre might be slightly faster. But if those are regular tasks for you, neither of these devices should be on your shortlist.

In terms of general use in Chrome, Safari, and such, I didn’t see a difference. For office workloads and home entertainment, both of these computers are — and I cannot stress this enough — fine. One thing I did notice is that the Spectre is quieter than the XPS. Dell’s fans came on quite easily, like after a couple Chrome tabs, during my testing process. The Spectre was cool and quiet throughout my use, with noise only apparent during heavy benchmarking. If you don’t like fan noise, the Spectre is the way to go.

Which should you buy?

Ultimately, the Spectre is a step up from the XPS in many important areas. It would be my hands-down recommendation.

Except for that stinkin’ battery life. Four hours is just unfortunate for a device that’s well over $1,000. And the difference between four and six hours could be the difference between needing or not needing to bring your charger to a coffee shop, making it through a flight, or finishing a school day. That factor alone is a huge point in the XPS’s favor.

Despite that shortcoming, I still think the Spectre offers better value for its price. Its build quality and aspect ratio are fairly unique in today’s landscape. I think it offers a package that’s difficult to find from other manufacturers right now, and HP is innovating with this in ways that Dell hasn’t with this generation of the old-school XPS. That makes me slightly more excited about the Spectre x360 this year.

With that said, I would not fault someone for going for the XPS instead because until HP figures out how to make a high-resolution OLED screen play nice with the 67Wh battery, that lower price and higher battery life are quite attractive. While Dell’s machine is not as exciting or showy of a product, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being a more pragmatic buy for many people.

The iRiver iHP-120 was a gadget nerd’s MP3 player. It had a wired remote, a radio, a voice recorder, two optical ports, and loads of physical buttons. I’ve had it for half my life.

The spring of my freshman year of college, my mom sold my drum set. I used the money to buy an MP3 player. Sorry. A multi-codec jukebox.

There is a certain type of person who, when faced with a sleek, friendly, easy-to-use Apple product, will rail on about all the features it doesn’t have, all the things you can’t do with it, all the ways the walled garden is a trap. This person has existed since the dawn of time. I used to be that guy. I still am, sometimes, but I used to be, too. And so, in the spring of 2004, when the iPod had been out for two and a half years, I spent $330 on an iRiver iHP-120. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

The iHP-120 was so physical. Where the iPod was gray and white, the iRiver was a black brick with silver rails and visible screws. It had a 1.8-inch 20GB spinning hard drive. It had a joystick on the front. It had four physical buttons and a lock slider on the sides. It had an FM radio. It had an equalizer button. It had a 3.5mm headphone jack plus a pair of optical / analog combo jacks: one for line-in, one for line-out, which meant someone else could plug in a second pair of headphones. It came with a lapel mic and a wired remote. The remote had an LCD screen, headphone jack, and three control dials, so you could leave the MP3 player in your backpack, fish the remote out, and clip it to the backpack strap.

Is this too much stuff? Maybe! The wired remote, in particular, tended to add a bunch of static, so I didn’t use it much. Can’t say I ever used the optical ports, either.

But I used the MP3 player constantly. Not just for listening to MP3s (it also supports lossless FLAC and Ogg Vorbis!) but also to record interviews for my journalism classes. I recorded my friends telling mildly scandalous stories (on the record! not secretly). I dragged and dropped whole collections of dubiously tagged MP3s from my friends. Before I had a laptop, I used it to transfer my schoolwork between the library computers and my dorm room desktop.

I got a gummy case for it, with a belt clip. I joined a forum about it. At some point, I replaced the iRiver firmware with Rockbox. Some folks replaced the hard drives on theirs with CF card adapters and later replaced the CF cards with SD-to-CF adapters. I never quite got that far.

Eventually — either in late 2006, when I got one of those Windows Mobile smartphones with the sliding keyboards, or in 2008, when I got an iPhone — I stopped carrying the iRiver everywhere, but I hung onto it. Its hard drive became a fossil record of my musical taste in the years before streaming: a 4GB “various artists” folder, just a ton of Elliott Smith and Mountain Goats albums, a collection of mashups from my first year in San Francisco. The 30 best-rated albums on Metacritic in 2008, regardless of genre. A recording of my friend Bill talking about his time in the Jesus People commune. All those recorded interviews and essays. Every so often, I’d pull it out and let the memories wash over me.

I’d almost forgotten about scarcity. My kids barely interact with physical media, and it’s hard for them to understand the idea of, like, when I was a kid, if you didn’t have a physical copy of something — an album on cassette or CD, a movie on VHS or (later) DVD — and it didn’t happen to be on, you just didn’t have access to it. In high school, I carried a portable CD player and one of those enormous binders of CDs. When I got the iRiver, I filled it with those same CDs, which I’d (very slowly!) ripped to my computer, plus whatever MP3s I’d borrowed from friends’ computers and the dorm network. It was basically a more portable version of that binder full of CDs. I listened to what I had, and what I had stayed on there. It was a totally different ball game than the overabundance we take for granted today.

The other day, I fished the thing out of a drawer and turned it on again. It worked fine, but all the files were gone. I figured I must have deleted them at some point. I felt weirdly sad. Then I hit the “rebuild database” option in the menu. It found a thousand files in the recycle bin. Nothing had been lost at all.

Photography by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

Sometimes you’ve just gotta break the rules and go for it. I attended Nothing’s New York City product drop last week and got my hands on the Nothing Ear 2s and the Nothing Phone 2. Now, I’m a longtime Verizon customer, which seemed like a major hurdle for actually testing out this phone and its flashing glyphs. At one point, Nothing had mentioned “limited” support for Verizon on its website, but the company has since removed the carrier from its tech specs altogether — never a good sign.

But as I’ve come to find out, as long as you’ve got an active SIM that was already in another Verizon-certified phone, you can toss that into the Nothing Phone 2 and get going without any immediate headaches. When I tried doing so, the phone’s mobile data lit up, calls and texts worked fine (including RCS messaging), and I’ve so far avoided any hangups. The automatic SMS scolding me for using an unauthorized device never came.

Over a week or so of trying out the Phone 2 as my full-time device, I’ve noticed the network indicator showing 4G, 4G Plus, 5G, and 5G Ultra Wideband. Even the VoLTE (voice over LTE) icon is present at nearly all times. I’m a little unclear what 4G Plus translates to in Verizon parlance; maybe that’s LTE Advanced, or maybe the phone is just getting confused about what network it’s on. But it’s rolling with the punches either way. I’ve traveled across Manhattan and Brooklyn with no obvious service disruptions so far. But this is NYC we’re talking about; 5G, as underwhelming as it so often is, can be found everywhere.

Screenshot: Chris Welch / The Verge

The experience could be a little more unpredictable elsewhere. And in the case of the Nothing Phone 2, that’s because it completely omits support for band 13. That frequency band is pretty vital to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. For a lot of the country, it’s essential. So if you venture far from a city or crowded suburbs and start drifting away from 5G coverage, that’s where you’ll likely start hitting some pain points and lose signal — and this is the reason why Verizon is unlikely to ever fully certify Nothing’s latest phone.

I’m a tech reviewer and usually have a few different phones at my disposal. So I’m not sweating my time putting Nothing’s $599 phone through its paces around the city. But if I were driving seven hours upstate to visit my father in New York’s “North Country,” there’s zero chance I’d gamble and keep my SIM this thing.

Do I find the glyph system gimmicky? For the most part, yes. I’ve got the upper right LED assigned to Messages, and it’s admittedly nice to know when I’ve received a text if my phone is flipped over. Outside of the lights and network limitations, I’m a fan of this phone overall. The Phone 2 manages what I’d consider excellent battery life, has a very nice and vibrant display — I’m picky about screens, people — and I like the software tweaks that Nothing has made.

Being able to place quick settings toggles directly on the lock screen is surprisingly useful. I’m running pretty basic right now and I’m sure there’s more I could do, but so far so good. The Phone 2 hums along and I’ve barely noticed a single hiccup during my time with it. And the shots I’m getting from the camera are satisfactory more often than not.

All of this is to say that if you’ve got Verizon and are curious about giving the Phone 2 a shot, it’s doable. You’ll get your texts and calls. Data works quite well. But you shouldn’t depend on Nothing’s device in this scenario. Outside of 5G coverage areas, you’re unlikely to have as robust of a signal as you would on other phones that support Verizon’s full range of bands. So keep another, actually-certified phone within reach if you decide to splurge on this new gadget.

Sony’s latest flagship earbuds are excellent on multiple fronts, but the lack of an ecosystem will hold them back in the not-too-distant future.

Have you been paying attention? We’re approaching a sea change moment for noise-canceling earbuds. Any flagship pair you buy today from Sony, Bose, Apple, Samsung, or other reputable brands can accomplish the core task — eliminating distractions and background commotion around you — perfectly fine. They’re all more than competent at that. So now, tech companies are angling for new ways to differentiate by making the experience smarter and more, well, adaptive through the integration of AI and machine learning.

Against that inevitable tide, Sony is releasing its latest flagship ANC earbuds, the WF-1000XM5. Priced at $299.99, the 1000XM5s build upon their popular (and slightly less expensive) predecessor with a smaller, more comfortable design, larger drivers for improved sound quality, and yes, more effective noise cancellation. There’s no single tentpole feature that makes these a must-have upgrade, but Sony is strategically tackling the main downsides of the prior model and hoping that’ll be enough to make these another hit. You’re still getting the company’s higher-fidelity LDAC Bluetooth codec, more flexible onboard controls, and clearer voice calls than any of Sony’s past flagship buds. But there are also reasons to wait a beat and give it more thought before hitting “buy” this time around.

Before we go any further, I need to address something. This is going to sound like one of the more pedantic complaints I’ve ever made, but I promise I’m not nitpicking, and it’s grown to be a legitimate frustration: the glossy finish on these earbuds makes it objectively harder to get them out of the case than it was with the all-matte 1000XM4s. On multiple occasions, I’ve gone to pluck the M5s from their magnetic cradles, and my fingers have feebly slid right over the glossy sides, providing me no grip to get a good hold on them. If your fingers are greasy or sweaty for any reason, forget about it.

This glossy / matte combo unquestionably makes the new earbuds look classier and more stylish than their predecessors. (“They’re really pretty,” The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel said when handling the 1000XM5s at our office.) But I’m telling you, I never struggled with the fundamental action of removing the 1000XM4s — or even the M3s — from their case in the same way. When I miss, I feel like a total nitwit. I’m not trying to paint this as some crisis or major deal-breaker, but taking your earbuds out of the case should be an effortless step. With these, I find myself thinking about it each time I make the attempt. We haven’t quite reached the dog days of summer, and I’m already annoyed by this. My best workaround so far has been pushing each earbud out of its cradle with my thumb instead of trying to pluck them out with two fingers.

When you do get the 1000XM5s into your ears, it’s a much more comfortable and ergonomic fit than the bulky M4s could ever offer. These earbuds are 25 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter than their predecessors, but the improvement feels more significant than that when you’re actually wearing them. Maybe that’s more to do with the fact that the M4s were already a little too oversized and weighty for their time, but Sony has (finally) struck the right balance. The case has also been downsized by 15 percent. The AirPods Pro case is still a bit thinner, but the Sony’s is perfectly pocketable and includes wireless charging.

The company has also managed to upgrade its proprietary foam ear tips. For starters, there’s now a fourth extra-small pair included (joining small, medium, and large). And Sony reduced the amount of firm plastic beneath the foam, making the newer tips more flexible and easier to squeeze down before you slide the M5s into your ears. I was a fan of the foam tips that came with the M4s, and these are a step up. Sony says the material helps to “reduce noise in the high-frequency range,” so the tips serve their own purpose in the grand noise cancellation scheme.

And that noise cancellation framework is even more powerful than before. The M5s contain six microphones and two separate processors that work in tandem to monitor ambient sound and lower the volume knob on the outside world. In particular, Sony says these earbuds do a better job analyzing and blocking lower-frequency noise — think airplane cabins, buses, etc. — and are more adept at cutting down on everyday street noise (cars, construction, and so forth). The M5s chart better than the M4s at lowering human speech, but the difference there is less pronounced. You’ll also notice (as I have) less wind noise while wearing these earbuds; Sony relocated the microphone inlets to make them less susceptible to distortion from the elements.

Throwing more silicon and upgraded mics at the problem has worked well; in my admittedly subjective tests, the 1000XM5s are right up there with Bose’s QuietComfort Earbuds II and the second-generation AirPods Pro. Picking a winner among them is sort of like flipping a coin. Sony bests Bose in other departments like audio quality, but it’s still a smidge behind the other two in how natural and convincing its transparency mode sounds. It’s more than adequate for the intended purpose but a tick or two off from the very best. Overall, it’s by no means a generational leap over the M4s, so you shouldn’t upgrade for ANC alone. But combined with the vastly better comfort, there’s been noticeable progress.

The same can be said for sound quality: it’s not a leap, but Sony has made some strides. The M5s include an 8.4mm driver in each earbud compared to the 6mm unit that was in the M4s. I don’t like to get too caught up in driver size — especially when other manufacturers like Samsung are now using two of them per bud — but Sony claims the swap makes for improved tonal accuracy and better reproduction of the lower bass range. The M5 earbuds also feature a superior DAC and lower harmonic distortion, according to the company.

This is stuff you’re unlikely to notice unless you’ve got a sharp ear, have activated the LDAC codec, and are consistently listening to higher-bitrate audio from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and other services. By default, most Android phones don’t make the most of LDAC, favoring lower bitrates and a more stable Bluetooth connection over pure fidelity. If desired, you can dig into developer settings or use third-party utilities to force maximum performance. Taking a step back, I think the sound signature between the two pairs of Sony buds is quite similar. If you hated the M4s, these aren’t going to magically flip your opinion. But they do feel more dynamic and detailed — standing toe to toe with the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3s and the Technics EAH-AZ80 earbuds I’ve been testing lately.

If you’re looking for a real standout improvement compared to the M4s, it’s gotta be voice calls. Sony says it used over 500 million voice samples to train the AI algorithm in the M5s so that it can recognize and extract your voice from all sorts of environment noise. There’s also now a bone conduction sensor that monitors vibrations for yet another cue that it’s you doing the talking and not someone nearby.

During Google Meet calls with my co-workers (with Meet’s noise-reduction options turned off), my colleagues said I came through clearly. There was a small amount of echo, but they could make out everything I was saying against a fan behind me without any trouble. I’ve done test phone calls from my local coffee shop and heard similarly positive feedback. Many wireless earbuds are often a last resort for me compared to a wired set with an inline mic, but Sony is really establishing itself as a winner in this category between the LinkBuds, LinkBuds S, and now, the 1000XM5s.

Falling behind the ecosystem heavyweights

Sony has never found any measurable success with its Xperia smartphones, and that reality is beginning to put the company at a distinct disadvantage against Apple, Samsung, and to some extent, Google for its earbuds. Those three have enough momentum (and market share) to develop a unique togetherness between their respective phones and earbuds — and to do it natively at the operating system level. The best Sony can do is shoehorn a ton of extra functionality into its companion app, Sony Headphones Connect, for Android and iOS.

But there’s inherently more friction that comes along with this strategy, plus some noticeable limitations. Apple’s upcoming Adaptive Audio feature for the second-gen AirPods Pro will intelligently blend noise cancellation and transparency modes in real time based on your surroundings and activity. There’s nothing to do besides just flipping a toggle and turning it on. Meanwhile, Sony has long had a feature called Adaptive Sound Control that detects different activities — sitting still, walking, running, commuting, etc. — and lets you customize your preferred earbud settings for each scenario. But you’ve got to grant numerous permissions for the system to work, and it can behave a little erratically. Plus, Sony makes you register for an account if you want the app to “learn how you use your headphones while Adaptive Sound Control is enabled, and switch settings at the optimal time.”

Then there’s spatial audio. For Android users, the 1000XM5s have added support for head tracking, something the M4s lacked, with compatible video apps including Netflix and YouTube. Enabling this feature takes a few steps: you’ve got to toggle on head tracking in the earbuds’ Bluetooth settings, and then there’s a brief optimization process in Sony’s app that uses your phone’s camera to make sure spatial audio sounds as it should. It’s easy to completely miss the latter step, which I did until I went poking around. Even after all that, on a Pixel Fold, I couldn’t get head tracking working with Netflix while watching Bullet Train — despite the movie having a spatial audio logo on its details page. Nothing worked in YouTube, either. Again, this is friction that isn’t present with the approaches of Samsung or Apple. I’ve asked Sony what the issue could be.

Sony has thrown the kitchen sink into the Headphones Connect app. There’s a whole damn online manual for the thing. It can track your activity (total listening time, volume preferences, etc.). You can optionally enable silly head gestures for answering calls or activating an autoplay feature. But the app is also loaded with awkward translations and an overwhelming gauntlet of settings / preferences. The 1000XM5s are a fantastic set of noise-canceling headphones, but I get the impression that Sony is flailing to keep up elsewhere. If you don’t care about any of the bonus capabilities or adaptive tricks, none of this will matter. But these features are growing more important as the years pass. Should we be in a world where smartphone heavyweights are gaining a clear advantage with their earbuds and headphones? You could argue not, but that’s the situation we’re in. Sony’s going to have to come up with something.

An important note on battery life

The 1000XM5s promise the same eight hours of continuous playback (and 24 hours counting the case) as the M4s. The only new tidbit here is that they’re faster at quick charging in a pinch; plug them into an outlet for just three minutes, and that’ll net you a full hour of battery life.

But here’s the thing: a lot of people have reported battery reliability issues with the 1000XM4s over time. Take, for example, this giant, well-maintained Reddit thread. This is the kind of issue that only surfaces over extended use and would’ve gone unnoticed in most initial reviews (mine included), so I’m glad to see it being documented and that people are holding Sony to account.

I’ve asked the company for a thorough statement on what it has learned regarding the M4 battery drain problems and whether everything’s been squared away for the M5s. As of publication time, there has been no response. From what I’ve seen, Sony has been good about sending affected customers replacement units, so the predicament hasn’t been bad enough for me to stop recommending the M4s in our best earbuds buying guide. But it’s worth being aware of as the M5s come to market, and it serves as another reminder that the tiny batteries in wireless earbuds are consumable and might not last as long as expected considering the price you’re paying. Sony does not directly offer any kind of extended warranty for its headphones and earbuds, so you might want to consider what’s available from whatever retailer you’re buying them from.

Rounding out the 1000XM5s are other carryover features like IPX4 water resistance and multipoint connectivity. You can still pair to two devices at the same time, but unlike with the M4s, you no longer have to lose LDAC audio on your Android phone while doing so. The controls are slightly more comprehensive with the addition of volume: tap four times on the right earbud and then hold, and the loudness goes up. Do the same on the left, and the volume goes down. That’s a lot of tapping away at your ears, but I can at least say that it has worked consistently in my tests.

Sony’s WF-1000XM5s feel like a natural evolution of the company’s flagship line. Crucially, they’re more comfortable than any previous version in your ears — even if the new glossy coating is testing my patience. The active noise cancellation and sound quality have each been amped up a discernible amount — even if the results aren’t game-changing. And I can confidently take calls while using them without any dread of sounding like a muffled jerk. These are the most well-rounded execution of Sony’s vision yet. But I’ll be keeping an eye on battery longevity.

Beyond that, I’m left wondering whether they’ll be able to hold the same appeal as their predecessors over the next year or two as Apple, Samsung, and Google continue to wield their ecosystem advantage and release software features and new audio experiences that are only possible with deep ties between phone and earbud. Sony is trying its best to keep up, but the execution is falling flat.

If all you’re after is a great pair of noise-canceling buds that sound rich, immersive, and full-bodied, the $300 1000XM5s won’t leave you wanting for more. But if you’re Sony, the real dilemma is that there might be nowhere left to go from here.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

DJI Air 3 comes with two lenses, 46 minutes of flight time, and a familiar look.

The drone world’s worst-kept secret is out. And it’s called the Air 3, and yes, all the rumors have been true. The new $1,099 and up drone from DJI has two cameras, 46 minutes of battery life, improved connectivity with Ocusync 4, a brand-new controller, and a brand-new design resembling the recently released Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Pro. Here’s a question for you: do any of these changes make you super excited? No? Same here.

Before you get mad at me for this hot take, let’s set the record straight: the Air 3 is a fantastic drone. It’s a capable flying camera that improves on a few things from its predecessor but makes do with a smaller image sensor than before. Did DJI sacrifice image quality in favor of some versatility?

That was my first worry here, and it might be for you, too. But don’t fret — the image quality is still great. Both lenses are capable of capturing beautiful airborne images. With a larger f/1.7 aperture lens, the main sensor performs better in low light. It’s similar to the camera found in the Mini 3 Pro, which has the same 1/1.3-inch sensor and the same max aperture.

The second 3x telephoto lens has a smaller f/2.8 aperture, and it is the same telephoto lens that you’ll find in the Mavic 3 Pro that came out recently. And at this point, I think it’s becoming clear why this drone is a bit underwhelming. It’s a combination of old ideas we’ve already seen. But don’t get me wrong: I’d rather pay $1,099 than the $2,199 the Mavic 3 Pro demands, whose third lens, a 7x telephoto zoom, didn’t impress me much.

But I do have two minor complaints about the Air 3’s telephoto camera. It’s just not practical. Let me explain.

For one, the footage can look a bit flat. There is some but not a lot of separation between the foreground and the background. Don’t expect stunning bokeh here. But the compression in the image alone is worth it, and the parallax effect is great. The usual 24mm drone footage started to get repetitive, so I’m glad we’re getting more variety these days.

Secondly, as someone who desperately wants to extract the best possible image quality from any of my cameras, I aim to film at the lowest ISO possible while maintaining proper shutter speed (double the frame rate). That means that once I switch from the main lens with f/1.7 aperture to the f/2.8 tele lens, I’ll likely have to raise the ISO, which in turn introduces more noise into my clips.

It’s a small complaint, but it does take away from the filming experience. What I’d love to see are some after-market ND filters that can compensate for that aperture difference and make switching between two lenses seamless. Or even better, something we’ve all been wanting for oh so long — built-in ND filters. Or, even even better, variable aperture? It’s time, DJI.

The Air 3 can film in 4K 60, and compared to the Air 2S, this drone won’t crop your footage. It takes full advantage of either sensor. In fact, almost every feature works on both lenses (including Active Track, Night Mode, 4K 60, and 4K 100fps), except vertical mode, which is to be expected. And no, this drone won’t flip its camera 90 degrees to let you film in true 4K vertically. Instead, it’s lets you film open gate instead of simply cropping your horizontal footage. A solid compromise, but I really wish it did flip the camera, though.

As for photos, this drone takes 12MP photos, and they look good. You’ll be happy with what you get here, and DJI’s RAW files leave plenty of information to manipulate in the editing process. DJI also lists a 48MP photo mode, but I have not been able to find it in its usual place in the menu. Presumably, it will come later with a firmware update. I have reached out to DJI about this.

And outside of those two lenses, there really isn’t much else to discuss if you’re familiar with DJI’s existing lineup. There’s a new controller, and it’s just as good as the last one. DJI’s OcuSync connectivity system is upgraded, but I haven’t had major connection issues in years. The Air 3 range is rated for 20km (12 miles), but in practice (and legally), you won’t be able to take advantage of that. Battery life is pretty much the same across the whole lineup now, which is to say it’s about 45 minutes, give or take. I haven’t noticed any major issues here, like I did with the batteries during my Mini 3 Pro review.

DJI also replaced its D-Log color profile for a less flat variant called D-Log M. It’s easier to color grade, and it doesn’t require filming at high ISO like the D-Log, but it also has noticeably less dynamic range. I do wish DJI gave us both options. Through a recent software update, DJI quietly replaced D-Log with D-Log M in the Air 2S drone, too. On the company’s forums, a DJI rep said that it was just a “naming convention problem,” but it still got a lot of pilots mad.

Night mode, which was introduced at the end of 2022 for the Mavic 3, found its way to the new Air 3 as well. It lets you increase your ISO up to 12800 from the usual 6400 limit in the normal filming mode. Aside from the filming settings, it seems like there is some in-camera noise reduction applied to the footage as well.

One hardware thing you’ll immediately notice is the drone’s audible noise. It’s rated for 81 dB, which is still loud, but due to the propellers’ larger size, they produce a lower frequency, bassier sound, which isn’t as piercing as before.

And that’s the Air 3. It’s still a very capable drone that does many things right but also just a little bit uninspiring. Between $1,099 (with the new controller) or $1,349 (for the Fly More Combo), it slots in nicely between the Mini and the Mavic 3. But now it’s up to you to decide if you want a sub 250g drone with proper vertical filming like the Mini, the better image quality from the larger sensor in the Mavic 3, or the versatility of the Air 3.

At its core, the Air 3 is just a recycling of old ideas we’ve already seen in other DJI products. There isn’t much new here that would make you incredibly excited to go out and get flying. I’d love to see something new next year. Could we get built-in ND filters? Will 360 cameras make their way here? Or maybe we start with a single backward camera? What about adjustable aperture trickling down from the Mavic 3 series? I’m ready for something new.

Photography by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Samsung’s 16-inch workstation aims to be the go-to for Windows fans with graphics-heavy workloads.

Samsung’s Galaxy Book3 Ultra is a thin and light 16-inch Windows laptop with a GPU inside. That’s like basically all you need to know.

Featuring an Intel Core i7 and an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, the Galaxy Book that we received is targeting a mobile crowd with graphics-heavy workloads. The aforementioned chips aren’t likely to compete with the likes of the 16-inch MacBook Pro or any number of Windows gaming laptops on raw graphics power (and, when it comes to the MacBook, certainly not on battery life). But the Ultra offers two things those MacBooks and gaming laptops do not: the Galaxy ecosystem, such that it is, and a chassis that’s under four pounds.

This has largely been the story with Samsung’s Galaxy Book Pro line, which tends to market itself on the combination of thin chassis, great screen, and interoperability with Galaxy phones. But by equipping the Ultra with an RTX GPU and a $2,399.99 price tag, Samsung has made its first attempt in quite a few years to target a professional audience. That’s a noble goal, but it means that the Ultra is entering a competitive category — and the audience it will find, as far as I can tell, is likely to be fairly niche.

I’m not a Galaxy phone user, so to someone like me, the Ultra’s biggest selling point is its thin and light build. It’s 0.65 inches thick and 3.95 pounds, making it one of the most portable devices you can buy with an RTX GPU inside. It’s lighter than the Dell XPS 15 and nearly a full pound lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Now, I just want to be clear: this doesn’t mean it’s light. By virtue of being a 16-inch laptop, it commands a significant presence in my backpack, and four pounds is not nothing. If you’re looking for a multipurpose laptop for just occasional work with graphics, you can easily get something much thinner and lighter. (I would carry the 3.3-pound MacBook Air 15 over this device any day of the week.) But if you are wed to the premium workstation category and you want the lightest of the light, you are likely one of the few people for whom the Galaxy Book3 Ultra is the ideal device.

The Ultra offers some other benefits that are impressive but not as unique. The screen, in typical Samsung fashion, is luxurious. It’s a 120Hz OLED panel with adaptive refresh rate and 2880 x 1800 resolution. You notice immediately after opening it how smooth the scrolling is. The vivid colors and sharp contrast are stunning; the device covers 100 percent of the sRGB gamut, 98 percent of AdobeRGB, and 100 percent of P3, and it maxes out at a commendably high 434 nits of brightness. The one thing I’ll note is that glare is pretty striking, and having brightness lower than 60-ish percent often meant staring at my own reflection.

Secondly, there’s all the Galaxy ecosystem stuff. Samsung is trying to replicate the seamlessness that Apple’s MacBooks offer to iPhone users with features like AirDrop and Universal Control and is pushing a number of interoperability features across its laptops. The Ultra supports Samsung Multi Control, which allows you to control the S23 with the Galaxy Book’s keyboard and trackpad. I struggle somewhat to come up with use cases for this that would be heavily relevant to the professional creator sphere, but I have tinkered with it on various devices in the past and can confirm that it works fine.

If you like to, for example, shoot on an S23 and edit those files on a computer, there are a few features that might help you out. Quick Share (which is basically AirDrop — I’m sorry, I said what I said) allows users to quickly transfer photos, videos, and other files between Galaxy phones and Galaxy Books. You can also use an Expert RAW feature to automatically upload RAW files shot on an S23 Ultra to the laptop. (This seems particularly handy, as sending RAW files back and forth, I have learned from experience, can take a gosh darn long time.) Many of these features are available across other Galaxy Books as well.

Finally, Samsung continues to offer Studio Mode, which automatically pops up whenever you hop on a video call and is meant to make you look better. This feature seems a bit more refined than it did last year, and I had few hiccups when using it. The Auto Framing, which does what it sounds like it would, had no trouble following me around my room. The background blur did the best it could. There are face effects, but they aren’t the straight-up “beautification” features that companies like HP are now shipping on their high-end laptops; they mostly seem to even out the lighting on your skin to various degrees. I thought they sometimes made me look a bit sickly, but your mileage may vary.

While the effects are fun, I was not overly impressed with the FHD (1080p) webcam itself, which often made me look washed out and blurry. Fortunately, the Ultra doesn’t skimp on ports, and with a USB-A, an HDMI, a microSD, and a headphone jack as well as two Thunderbolt 4, you shouldn’t have trouble finding somewhere to plonk in an external webcam.

The one other oddity I found with the chassis was in the touchpad. It’s massive, which I appreciate, but it occasionally inadvertently clicked when I pressed the palm rest. I wouldn’t say this happened frequently, but it happened enough to be annoying, especially for a $2,300 device.

Of the two Galaxy Book3 Ultra models currently listed on Samsung’s website, the one I have (Core i7, RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 1TB storage) is the cheaper one. The other SKU has a Core i9 and an RTX 4070, and it’s going for $2,999.99. To give you a sense of how much those extra GPUs are costing you, the regular Galaxy Book3 Pro with a Core i7 MSRPs at $1,749.99. While that device has a smaller screen, it’s also close to half a pound lighter and scores higher on the portability benefit scale.

The RTX 4050 unlocks a tier of performance that you won’t find in too many other devices at this weight. (Although, if you’re willing to go to a smaller screen size, you can find lighter models with much beefier GPU options, such as Asus’ ROG Zephyrus G14.) I used the Galaxy for all kinds of regular work tasks and had no performance issues. It’s as fast as any productivity laptop I’ve ever used, and I never heard any significant fan noise or felt uncomfortable heat.

CPU performance under load is going to be a mixed bag; the Ultra edges out the 16-inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench’s single-core benchmark and, predictably, doesn’t come close on multicore. But the main thing to understand is that the RTX 4050, with only 6GB of VRAM, isn’t a particularly high-end graphics card and isn’t something we’d expect to approach the performance of Apple’s M2 Max. It will give you a bump over Intel’s integrated graphics, but it’s far from the best that Nvidia has to offer.

On the other hand, the Ultra does have one pleasant surprise in store: battery life. I was expecting this high-resolution, Nvidia-powered device to be a longevity disaster, and it actually was not that. I averaged eight hours and eight minutes to a charge, and that was with dynamic refresh rate on (which is the out-of-box setting). That’s not too far off what we saw from last year’s regular Galaxy Book2 Pro. While it doesn’t approach MacBook battery life, it is quite good compared to today’s Intel landscape, especially when screens this large and bright are in the picture.

Ultimately, I don’t have too, too many complaints about the Galaxy Book Ultra. It’s a unique device with solid perks for Samsung fans, and my biggest hangups — the touchpad and the webcam — can be fixed with peripherals that a solid port selection allows for.

Nevertheless, I do feel that the Ultra’s $2,399 price is high for what it will ultimately bring to the table (for most people). If you’re part of its target audience — folks who want the best mobile experience possible for photo and video work — it’s worth taking a look.

But it is worth reiterating that Windows fans can find a better GPU and higher-resolution screen for a very similar price in something like the Dell XPS 15. And while the Galaxy Book is more portable than the 16-inch MacBook Pro, it does not deliver the same ruthless multicore performance, multiday battery life, high-end keyboard and touchpad, or exceptional build quality that Apple’s devices do. To find those (aside from the battery life) in the Windows space, you’ll need to look to something like HP’s stunning Spectre x360, which is not, at the moment, available with Nvidia GPUs.

I’m still waiting for the Windows ecosystem to deliver a thin and light machine that combines that premium chassis with all-day battery life and competitive graphics power. The Galaxy Book3 Ultra comes close but doesn’t quite get there.

The Fenix lineup feels a bit superfluous now that the Epix Pro is here. The flashlight still rocks, though.

I’m just going to come out and say it. The $899.99 Fenix 7S Pro Sapphire Solar Edition is an excellent multisport watch, but I’m baffled as to why it exists.

I’ve been wearing this watch for the past month, right after roughly a month with the $999.99 Garmin Epix Pro Sapphire Edition. They are, in many respects, the same smartwatch, so much that it really feels like I’ve been wearing the same watch for two whole months. They’re so similar that I can sum up the difference in a single sentence. The Epix Pro has an OLED screen; the Fenix 7S Pro has better battery life.

As I wrote in my Epix Pro review, this makes Garmin’s high-end multisport watch lineup more confusing. And I’m not even factoring in the standard second-gen Epix and Fenix 7 lineups, which are also very similar to the Fenix 7S Pro. If you count all the various models and options, that’s 22 versions of the Fenix 7 and 12 versions of the second-gen Epix for a total of 34 watches that are only slightly different from each other.

There are scenarios where one watch trumps the other, which I’ll get into below. But, generally speaking, there’s not enough of a reason to justify having 34 versions of the same thing. It’s an issue I’ve had with Garmin over the years, but sometimes, there is such a thing as too much choice.

Fenix 7S Pro vs. Epix Pro: do you want OLED?

There’s very little separating the Fenix 7S Pro and the Epix Pro. Not only did they launch at the same time, but their designs are similar, they both come with Garmin’s upgraded heart rate sensor, they come in the same three sizes (42mm, 47mm, 51mm), and they both have a built-in LED flashlight. (As with the Epix Pro, this flashlight is low-key the best thing about the Fenix 7S Pro.) They have the same smart features! That includes things like alarms, timers, notifications, Garmin Pay, and Spotify compatibility. Both also offer the option of sapphire crystal and titanium for extra durability.

As far as accuracy, wearability, and fitness tracking go, the experience on both watches was identical. I enjoyed the Morning Report — which summarizes your overall readiness and sleep, the weather, and gives you a suggested workout — on the Epix Pro, and that didn’t change when I switched to the 7S Pro. Both were comparable in terms of GPS and heart rate accuracy on my runs compared to the Apple Watch Ultra. Both were iffy at sleep tracking compared to my Oura Ring as well, though not to the point where it had a noticeably negative impact on training and recovery features.

And it almost goes without saying: there are more metrics in the convoluted Garmin Connect app than you’ll know what to do with. Both the 7S Pro and Epix Pro have the new Hill Score and Endurance Score, which tell you how easily you can run up hills or how much endurance you have based on your VO2 Max. In my case, both said I stink at hills and have enough endurance for recreational training. That said, by the time I tested the 7S Pro, my Hill Score advice did sound less condescending. Small wins. The updates to topographical maps are also the same.

What all of this boils down to is whether you want an OLED display. In every scenario, notifications, menus, and widgets were easier to read on the Epix Pro’s OLED.

As I mentioned, the Fenix 7S Pro has better battery life. That said, the Epix Pro has pretty impressive battery life, too, when you consider that always-on OLED displays tend to be power guzzlers. With AOD enabled, the Epix Pro gets roughly 3.5 days on a single charge; without it, it gets about 8-9 days. Either way, it far exceeds what you’ll get on an Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro.

Conversely, the 7S Pro has a memory-in-pixel display, which has been improved since the standard 7S. It’s supposed to be slightly more readable in low-light conditions, emphasis on slightly. I still had to squint quite often when indoors to read the display, and there’s no beating the Epix Pro’s OLED when you’re outside at night. In direct sunlight, the Fenix 7S Pro’s MIP display ought to get you superior readability. In reality, the Epix Pro’s OLED was plenty bright while outdoors. You’d have to be under the most punishing summer sun to notice much of a difference.

Where MIP excels is battery life — and I can’t deny that’s what you’ll get with the 7S Pro. My 42mm unit lasted roughly 9-11 days on a single charge. Solar charging also played a role in this, though it’s hard to quantify exactly how much extra juice you’ll get. Generally speaking, however, you need to spend a good chunk of the day outside for it to make a noticeable difference.

For example, I wore the Fenix 7S Pro during a weeklong trip to Acadia National Park, logging roughly 10-12 hours of direct sunlight on most days. I started the trip with about eight days of battery and ended the trip with five days’ worth. Some days, I’d wake up to find that I had the same amount of estimated battery life as the day before. That’s impressive. But you shouldn’t expect these kinds of results if, like me, you spend most of your time indoors when you’re not on vacation. Solar charging made a negligible impact on weeks where my sun exposure was limited to 30-45 minute morning runs or hour-long walks.

You should also keep in mind that battery life is heavily dependent on your individual usage. These results were based on my settings and activity levels — mainly multiband GPS on, and 30-60 minutes of GPS workouts 5-6 days per week. If you opt for less intense GPS settings or partake in longer outdoor workouts, your battery life could look quite different. The bottom line is for a weeklong trip or an ultra-long day of workouts, you won’t have to worry about battery life.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

In my day-to-day life, the Fenix 7S Pro’s extra battery life didn’t trump the Epix Pro’s OLED display — at least not at the 42mm size. With my bad eyes, I’ll take better readability in all scenarios over a few extra days of battery life. OLED also just elevates the entire experience and feels more modern. Previously, the Fenix 7 lineup had the edge because it came in three sizes, whereas the standard Epix only came in a chunky 47mm size. But the Epix Pro now comes in the exact same sizes, so that edge isn’t exactly there anymore.

For these reasons, I recommend the Epix Pro over the 7S Pro for most people. Price-wise, you’re only looking at about $100 in savings by opting for the Fenix 7S Pro. Head-to-head, 7S Pro only makes more sense if you frequently partake in multi-day endurance sports without having to enable any low-power settings.

Once again, the flashlight rules

But what if you’re trying to decide between a standard Fenix 7 and the 7 Pro watches? Unless you find a great deal — as in $200-$300 off — I recommend the Pro because it gets you the better value.

My biggest reason why is every model of the Pro comes with the built-in LED flashlight, whereas it’s limited to the 7X on the standard lineup. And I cannot overstate this, but the flashlight is probably the best feature Garmin introduced in recent memory. I love this thing.

Its max brightness matches the flashlight on my iPhone 14 Pro Max. I don’t need to give up a hand to use it. Unlike other smartwatches with flashlight apps, like the Apple Watch, you can still access other menus and apps. A real LED light is brighter and more useful than the white screen that typical smartwatches use, too. To activate it, you just have to tap the top left-hand button twice. It’s also adaptable to different scenarios; the brightness is adjustable, you can program strobe patterns if you get injured during a hike, and you can also opt for a red flashlight at night. For nighttime runs or walks, you can also enable a mode where the light flashes white on your arm’s upswing and red on the downswing, so you’re more visible to cars.

I’ve watched too many true crime documentaries to run at night or get stuck in the woods past sundown, but I use the flashlight almost daily. I use it when I can’t see stuff in my car’s trunk or when I’m rearranging cables under my desk. It comes in handy when digging through my nightmare closet. It’s a handy nightlight when I don’t want to wake up my spouse but the cookie jar is calling.

Another reason why the Pro beats the vanilla Fenix 7: it’s more futureproof, with newer sensors and potentially the capability to one day support EKGs. Right now, the Garmin Venu 2 Plus is the only one that is cleared for this purpose, but Garmin says it hopes to one day expand EKG functionality to more watches. If and when it does, the Pro at least has the hardware to support it.

That said, I don’t think software-based features (e.g., Hill Score, Endurance Score, more detailed maps, etc.) are a pro for the Pro unless you want them right now. Garmin tends to bring the newest features to older models, and everything the Epix Pro and Fenix 7 Pro have will likely arrive on the regular Fenix 7 (and several other Garmins) this fall.

To me, the flashlight alone is worth the extra cost, but for the budget-conscious, the standard Fenix 7 can save you $100-$150.

Less is more

If I sound negative, it’s because my brain hurts from trying to remember all the different permutations of Epix and Fenix watches, their accompanying feature sets, and prices. But again, I want to emphasize the Fenix 7S Pro is excellent, and by itself, I have very little to complain about.

I just don’t see how having a Fenix, Fenix Pro, Epix, and Epix Pro lineup makes sense in the long run.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

I get why it’s here now. The Pro watches are the equivalent of an “S” year iPhone. But going forward, it’d do Garmin a lot of good to pare down the options. Maybe stick solar charging with extra long battery life on a higher-end Forerunner watch and condense the Fenix and Epix line into one OLED-happy lineup. You’d still have plenty of choices to choose from, but everything would be more clearly differentiated.

All this reminds me of an Amy Poehler interview I watched ages back. In it, she explains how her kids only get two choices of ice cream flavors because having too many flavor options holds up the line and leads to analysis paralysis. I need Garmin to start doing the same thing — or at least recognize that the level of choice it's providing far exceeds what people actually need. Multiple sizes are great. Having a few lines in the lifestyle, midrange, and premium watch categories is also great. But when you end up like Garmin, with 36 different product lines for sale, many of which are iterations on the same thing? All this choice suddenly becomes not-so-great.

OnePlus’ debut mechanical keyboard, the Keyboard 81 Pro, may be little more than a redesigned Keychron Q1 Pro with a couple of tweaks. But the Keychron Q1 Pro is one of the best mechanical keyboards available today, and the tweaks OnePlus has made to its design range from “inoffensive” to “actually kind of neat.” I wouldn’t go as far as to say the Keyboard 81 Pro is better than the Q1 Pro, but it’s a nice alternative version with its own strengths.

As a reminder, Keychron’s Q1 Pro is a wireless version of the Keychron Q1. It’s made of a solid aluminum chassis, with a gasket-mounted switch plate that gives it a premium typing feel and is packed with extra features like hot-swappable switches (helpful if you want to change its typing feel without needing to solder) and the ability to reprogram it using the powerful customization software VIA.

Depending on which design and switches you’re after, the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro costs between $219 and $239 (the version I’ve been testing), compared to $199 for the knob-equipped Q1 Pro it’s based on. For many people, I suspect that will be the end of the conversation — why pay a premium of between $20 and $40 extra for this keyboard unless you’re a OnePlus superfan?

It’s a fair point, but the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro has more going for it than just the OnePlus branding and color scheme. For starters, there’s its added kickstand, which allows you to adjust its typing angle in a way that’s surprisingly not possible with the standard Q1 Pro. The adjustable bar is reassuringly stiff, and once I set it to the height I wanted, I didn’t feel it shifting over time. It’s a neat addition, even if it’s able to elevate the keyboard to a height that’s past the point of being comfortable to type on.

Second, OnePlus has opted for a more traditional keycap shape compared to the Q1 Pro that I personally really like. As standard, the Q1 Pro comes with Keychron’s spherical-angle (KSA) keycaps, which you could describe as having a retro-inspired look to them. But the OnePlus keyboard instead ships with cylindrical keycaps, which have a more modern look and feel.

The exact style of keycap you get varies depending on which switch type you go for. The $219 tactile switch version (aka Winter Bonfire) gets you largely darker gray double-shot PBT keycaps, while the more expensive $239 model with linear switches that I’ve been using (Summer Breeze) comes with more lighter gray double-shot keycaps made out of a material OnePlus calls “marble-mallow.” Hold one of these keycaps in your hand, and it’s possible to squeeze and flex them before they pop back into their original shapes.

They don’t flex like this when attached to the keyboard, but otherwise, the “marble-mallow” keycaps have the nice matte roughness I’d normally associate with PBT and also feel a little bit tacky like rubber. They’re pleasantly grippy with legends that are good and crisp. The big question is how this material will hold up over time. PBT plastic has a reputation for not developing a shine as it’s worn down with use, but it’s difficult to know if the same is true of this flexible marble-mallow, at least in the amount of time I’ve had with the keyboard. You get Mac keycaps installed on the Keyboard 81 Pro by default, but there are extra Windows keycaps in the box, and like the Q1 Pro, you can switch between the two operating system layouts with a small switch on the top edge of the keyboard.

Third, the Keyboard 81 Pro actually feels quite different to type on compared to the Q1 Pro. They both have switch plates made out of polycarbonate, but OnePlus has opted to use custom-branded switches that correspond to the color scheme of the overall keyboard. So the Winter Bonfire color scheme comes with “Winter Bonfire” switches (which are tactile and have red stems), and the Summer Breeze color scheme comes with linear “Summer Breeze” switches, which have navy blue stems. (Yes, it’s confusing that the keyboard uses blue to denote linear, which is commonly used on clicky switches, and red to denote tactile when it is usually the color used for linear).

The Keyboard 81 Pro’s spec sheet doesn’t offer many specifics on the linear “Summer Breeze” switches that came in my review sample. But they share some similarities with the linear red Keychron K Pro switches in the Q1 Pro. Keychron’s name is printed atop each switch, and they have a similar medium weight and a smoothness. The big difference is in how the keyboard feels when you bottom out a switch, which is less crisp and bright and more of a muted thud. I wouldn’t say it’s better or worse, but it’s certainly quieter, which may appeal to anyone who needs a keyboard for office use or for use on video calls. I can’t speak for the tactile “Winter Bonfire” switches, but here’s a typing sound test of Summer Breeze.

Otherwise, yes, the Keyboard 81 Pro is just a Keychron Q1 Pro with a OnePlus-inspired makeover, and some parts of the redesign work better than others. I like, for example, the overall color scheme, the alert slider-style controls on the top side of the keyboard, the red USB cable, and the shiny raised section around the volume dial, which obscures the messy square cutout you’ll find on the Q1 Pro. But I’m less of a fan of the transparent volume dial itself (it looks a little cheap), and I could take or leave the OnePlus logo on the escape key. I’d love if OnePlus had included an alternative escape key with a standard “Esc” legend.

Although you can get a full rundown of the Keyboard 81 Pro’s features in my review of the Keychron Q1 Pro, here’s a summary of some other specs worth knowing about:

• The keyboard is hot-swappable, meaning you can replace its switches using a simple pulling tool with no need for soldering. You get a combined switch and keycap puller in the box.
• The keyboard is remappable using VIA, an excellent app. The software recognized the OnePlus keyboard immediately and worked as well as with the Q1 Pro.
• Yes, it’s RGB, but the keycaps aren’t shinethrough, so you’re only going to see the light between each keycap, which is relatively underwhelming. I’d recommend leaving the keyboard’s RGB lighting turned off because…
• Using RGB will significantly cut the keyboard’s battery life. Even with its RGB turned to its lowest setting, you’re looking at a battery life of 100 hours versus 300 hours with the lights turned off entirely. Best save them for when you’re using the keyboard wired.
• As you can hear in the typing sound test above, Keychron has done a great job on the keyboard’s stabilizers, which I can’t hear rattling at all.

The OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is neither better nor worse than the Keychron Q1 Pro that it’s based on, nor is it a simple rebadge. It’s quieter, feels different to type on, and it’s height-adjustable for good measure. I’ll leave the decision of whether these changes are worth paying a $20 to $40 price premium up to you.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

I’m a cover screen convert.

Our first flip-style phones with big cover screens have arrived in the US (pipe down, everyone in China and Europe who has options). The Motorola Razr Plus was the phone that converted me to a cover screen believer — I found it useful not just for checking quick info but also running a handful of full apps I use for simple tasks.

So I’ve been especially eager to check out Samsung’s take on a big cover screen on the Z Flip 5. I’m still putting the phone through its paces, but even after a few days with the Flip 5, I’m ready to declare it the cover screen winner — except when it comes to running full-on apps.

From a hardware perspective, the Razr Plus’ screen is nicer. It’s a smooth 144Hz panel with 413ppi, while the Flip 5’s is a standard 60Hz screen with 306ppi — a resolution difference I can see plainly looking at the two side by side. But speaking purely about the software experience, Samsung is way ahead.

There’s a true always-on display, for starters. There are also a lot more ways to customize your cover screen wallpaper. You can use a photo and customize its filter and frame. Choose whether to display your battery percentage and app icon notifications or live a more peaceful life without this information. Motorola’s options are far fewer: pick your wallpaper and whether or not you want shortcuts to your widget panels, and that’s it.

Widgets are also much more functional on the Z Flip 5. Both devices populate the “panels” of the cover screen with widgets that you can swipe between, but Motorola deploys them in a much more traditional sense: they give you specific information at a glance. Samsung’s “widgets” are basically little apps. For example: Motorola’s calendar widget can display a daily schedule view with a few event details or full month — nothing in between. Samsung’s default view gives you a calendar and your daily schedule, and you can tap events to see full details.

Samsung has a real head start here — it’s certainly upcycling some of the ideas found on its smartwatches — and it shows. But despite its disappointing widgets, I much prefer the way the Razr Plus handles running full apps. There’s a menu in the external display settings where you can allow any app on your phone to run on the cover screen, and you can choose whether you want them to transition to the outer screen when you close the phone while running them. Nice and easy! It’s a different story on the Flip 5.

Samsung buries the option to run apps on the cover screen in the Labs section of its settings menu, and once it’s enabled, there are just a handful of apps you can choose from (basically Google Maps and some messaging apps). For anything else, you need to download Good Lock from the Galaxy app store and an additional module called MultiStar. This creates another app launcher panel on the cover screen in addition to the one you already set up with Google Maps and Messages.

Apps are also easier to use on the Razr Plus. The keyboard that pops up has a persistent input field, so you can always see what you’re typing; Samsung’s doesn’t. As a result, you can sometimes lose the input field in an app like Google Translate, where it will disappear behind the keyboard and other UI elements. Kinda takes the wind out of your sails when you’re trying to impress your friends with a quick translation, but it also exemplifies why Samsung really tries to hide this functionality.

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

As much as I love pushing these cover screens to their limits as a flip phone sicko, it’s fair to say that most people who buy a Flip 5 or Razr Plus aren’t looking to run a bunch of apps on the front panel. Hence, it makes sense why Samsung would put the option out of reach for most users — and why the cover screen keyboard isn’t built with most apps in mind. Here’s hoping that these two companies will borrow some ideas from each other and push for better cover screen experiences in the next generation of flip phones for all of us — sickos or not.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The LG 27GR95QE-B is a tantalizing taste of what’s to come.

We’ve come so far. In a year or three, I wouldn’t be surprised if OLED supplants IPS, VA, and high-refresh-rate TN panels as the PC gamer’s screen of choice.

Because the 27-inch panel inside a wave of new monitors, including the LG 27GR95QE-B I’m reviewing today, is almost — nearly — not quite — the best of all worlds.

For years, buying a gaming monitor has meant huge tradeoffs. You couldn’t get amazing color, deep blacks, competitive refresh rates, high resolution, and excellent viewing angles all in a single screen. The rule of thumb was IPS for bright rooms, VA for dark ones, and TN only if you absolutely, positively needed the highest refresh rates — or a budget panel.

But OLED panels can theoretically do it all if you’ve got the cash. They’ve already taken over high-end phones because their true blacks and brilliant organic colors say “premium” like nothing else. I swear by my OLED TV. But as I saw when I tried turning a 48-inch LG OLED television into my desktop monitor for work and play, there’s been plenty holding them back. They need a monitor-like size, controls, and a way to address desktop PC burn-in fears without so much auto-dimming that I want to claw my eyes out.

The $999 LG 27GR95QE-B and friends are most of the way there. These screens are 100 nits of sustained brightness, a warranty update, and a decent sale away from winning me over for good.

The LG 27GR95QE-B, specifically, is a 26.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 OLED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate over DisplayPort 1.4 or either of its twin HDMI 2.1 ports. It supports Nvidia G-Sync, AMD FreeSync Premium, and generic 48–120Hz VRR at up to a downscaled 4K resolution for your PS5, Xbox, or streaming gadget. (I fired up The Touryst, one of the few native 4K 120Hz games for PS5, and it worked smoothly downscaled to 1440p.)

The monitor has a simple USB hub with two 5Gbps USB-A ports; it raises, tilts, swivels, and pivots on its included click-in stand; and it comes with a miniature TV remote to switch inputs, brightness, and adjust volume for its 3.5mm headphone jack. There’s no USB-C port for single-cable docking, I’m afraid — laptop users will need to charge them elsewhere.

The LG 27GR95QE-B is most definitely not the only monitor with this screen inside. In fact, I keep hearing this Asus PG27AQDM, with the same exact LG OLED panel, has a slight edge in brightness and creature comforts (like a built-in joystick to control the OSD). But after replacing my regular 27-inch 1440p IPS screen with LG’s 27-inch 1440p OLED for three whole months, I feel like I need to share with you how few compromises are left.

Until April of this year, my daily driver desktop monitor was a 27-inch Asus TUF VG27AQ. I picked it because Rtings rated it one of the very best all-around monitors at the time — save for crummy HDR and the “IPS glow” that makes blacks look gray in a dark room. It’s long been flanked by two ancient Dell U2412M monitors I stand vertically so I can keep an eye on Slack and Discord and Facebook Messenger and... well, whatever’s replacing Twitter next.

Before, adding OLED meant dismantling that entire setup to fit at least a giant 34-inch monitor on my desk, if not a 42- or 48-inch TV. But with this LG, it’s finally a direct replacement: 27-inch monitor out, 27-inch monitor in. I just had to shove my Synology NAS and mousepad a bit further away to fit LG’s large V-shaped stand.

The first test: would I notice a deal-breaking difference? Could I truly drop this monitor into my Verge-editing, game-blasting battlestation without missing a beat — and without babying the screen to avoid burn-in? I decided I’d never turn off the monitor manually, or hide my taskbar, or any of the things you’re theoretically supposed to do to protect an OLED screen. I would rely entirely on the monitor’s built-in protections and see what would happen.

There was one hitch. A few hours into my very first workday, LG’s auto-brightness-limiting anti-burn-in techniques were already driving me up the wall. I’ll point you to this good TFTCentral explainer if you want to read about ABL, ASBL, and TPC because I’m pleased to say they aren’t as relevant to this review as I feared. The short version is that the more of the screen that’s covered in bright white objects, the more the screen dims — an utter travesty for desktop work because most websites and applications are white even if you enable dark mode in your OS.

But after I installed a firmware update (via LG’s OnScreen Control app), that irritation disappeared. For the past three months, I’ve been working on an OLED screen that never abruptly, infuriatingly dims!

I understand that isn’t the case for every monitor that uses LG’s 27-inch OLED panel. With the Asus PG27AQDM, it’s actually optional: you have to turn on a setting called Uniform Brightness in a settings menu. But with the firmware update, LG made Uniform Brightness the default on the LG 27GR95QE-B, and it’s the key to making OLED the one screen to rule them all.

Here’s the thing: Uniform Brightness means, by definition, that LG is turning down the brightness of the entire screen to a set level... and you may have heard correctly that these LG panels are relatively dim! I’ll lean on reviewers with professional equipment to tell you we’re talking around 200 nits of brightness, a far cry from the 1,000-nit peak you might have seen advertised. (More on that peak in a sec.)

During work hours, this actually didn’t bug me much! I never run my desktop monitors at anything close to their peak — my old IPS screen is set closer to 100 nits as I write these words late into the evening, and I’ll boost the screen to around 200 during the day. But when my wife occasionally opens up the curtains, it’s true that the LG OLED doesn’t have any extra oomph to power through the sheen on its anti-glare screen. And when it’s time to game or watch Netflix, I would often find myself stabbing the bundled remote’s “raise brightness” key only to find out it was already maxed.

There is one other potential wrinkle for desktop work: LG’s WOLED subpixel arrangement, which doesn’t perfectly line up its red, green, blue, and extra white subpixels, can lead to slightly less crisp, occasionally color-fringed icons and text compared to traditional RGB stripe panels. But that was never a problem for me. It wasn’t until I switched back to my IPS screen three months later that I noticed documents were slightly crisper. And frankly, a 27-inch 1440p monitor less than two feet from my face is no Retina display — neither OLED nor IPS can keep me from seeing rough pixel edges at that pixel density (110ppi) and distance, so it feels like a minor tradeoff.

But the OLED was clearly superior in almost every game I played. And when I say “clearly,” I literally mean the clarity. It feels slightly more like looking through a window into another world and slightly less like looking at a screen.

As you probably know, OLED screens have incredible contrast because of their true black levels. Their pixels generate light and can turn off that light entirely; there’s no backlight here, which means less haze in dark scenes. They’re also incredibly responsive, leading to glassy, clear motion that’s beyond all but the fastest LCD screens. (I used Blur Busters’ popular UFO test to check, but any well-engineered game with a high enough frame rate works.) That was true even of the 120Hz OLED TV I tried to use as a monitor; this one runs at 240Hz, and it’s such a smooth experience.

What can amp up that clarity even further is HDR, which I’ve often described as removing a haze from whatever you’re looking at, letting dark be dark and light be light instead of compressing all the colors in between. HDR is also where you can actually access the panel’s nearly 1,000-nit peak. But HDR still has issues on Windows — and some additional ones on this monitor, I’m sorry to say.

With the right game, it’s phenomenal. Gears 5 begins with chrome-covered soldiers rappelling down from a helicopter through a rainbow and past a sunlit waterfall to explore dark caves by the light of a drone with glowing blue repulsors for levitation. Every part of that looks amazing because the majority of the scene is dark, with only those lights I just described — the glint of armor, ripples of sunlight in the moving water, flying sparks from a chainsaw — bursting through the scene.

On my old IPS monitor, those lights simply don’t look real; I can barely see in the dark caves because my old screen makes them muddy gray.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps similarly sees light and dark collide, only here, Ori himself is a being of light whose every action is a flash of blue. But I started to notice that every time Ori’s powers flared, everything else on the screen got slightly darker. And when I started playing HDR games that were mostly already bright like Forza Horizon 5 or The Touryst or Genshin Impact on PS5, it was clear that LG’s 27-inch OLED panel didn’t have nearly enough sustained full-screen brightness to make, say, an island paradise feel properly lit. Firing off a Genshin Impact ultimate attack immediately dimmed the entire screen in a way I’ve never seen on my 65-inch LG OLED television.

(I even had a weird experience in Halo Infinite where throwing a grenade too close to my feet black-screened the entire monitor until I unplugged it and plugged it back in, but I couldn’t reproduce it more than twice, and it might have nothing to do with the monitor or HDR. Perhaps a video driver glitch? I’m only sharing it here in case you have the same experience — I’ve never, ever seen this happen with a monitor before.)

Still, on balance, I’d rather play games on this monitor than even my LG OLED television. It’s just so immersive to have such a clear image so close to my face.

Movies and TV shows are a slightly different story, but that’s not really LG’s fault. Almost every streaming service is still arbitrarily nerfed on Windows. I couldn’t even get my Vudu copy of Blade Runner 2049 to play in HDR, much less 4K, and Netflix was stuck at 1080p HDR during my Windows tests regardless of which browser (or app) I used. Same with Amazon Prime Video. Same with Disney Plus. And 1080p on a 1440p monitor is, well, not the best streaming quality. YouTube works great at 1440p HDR, 4K HDR, and even 8K HDR on this monitor (slightly aliased due to downscaling), so there’s no particularly good reason why the paid subscriptions can’t (it’s because of DRM).

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

But thankfully, the LG 27GR95QE-B twin HDMI 2.1 ports meant I could easily plug in my Chromecast or PS5 and stream 4K HDR video from there. The Witcher’s latest candlelit season looks mighty fine on this monitor in downscaled 4K, even if it’s a slightly better experience in native 4K on my living room OLED.

It’d be nice if I didn’t have to switch devices and modes so often with this monitor, though. I wound up adding a Windows HDR toggle button to my Stream Deck because I never want to deal with the HDR mode’s auto-dimming when I’m using the desktop. I’d probably want to rig up an Nvidia G-Sync toggle, too; I’ve played a few games, like Diablo IV, where the monitor keeps flickering in its variable refresh mode. (LG’s monitor menu actually warns about the flicker, and you can toggle off VRR there, too.)

But these are nitpicks. My only real hesitations are brightness, price, and that LG doesn’t stand behind this screen when it comes to burn-in. Bear with me, because this is going to get a little weird.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Theoretically, we’re at a turning point for OLED desktop monitors. These 27-inch panels will maintain a fixed brightness, if a little low, indefinitely. LG must have figured out they won’t burn-in at that 200-nit mark, right?

But the company wouldn’t confirm that to me. And though LG third-party spokesperson Jordan Guthmann originally told me that the standard two-year warranty does cover image retention “except in very certain use cases,” the actual warranty document that shipped alongside this monitor disagrees. There, LG specifically wrote that “burned-in images resulting from improper usage as described in the user manual” aren’t covered under warranty.

Speaking of improper and proper usage, the user manual doesn’t actually contain those phrases — but it does point out that static desktop icons, fixed windows, menus, and web browser bars are things that could put your monitor at risk of image retention. It sure sounds like normal desktop use is not recommended!

When I brought that up with Guthmann, he told me that LG was in the process of updating its warranty — and that a new version will specifically call out normal desktop features like static images and fixed menus as “not being a misuse case.” Similarly, although the user manual recommends turning Screen Move on, Guthmann says it’s okay that it’s off by default. “The warranty still applies even if it isn’t turned on.”

That new warranty language was supposed to be final in a few days. But 48 days later, the only change LG has made is removing that line about “burned-in images” from the warranty. Today, it’s not clear whether burn-in is covered at all.

Frankly, a two-year burn-in warranty might be the bare minimum. My 65-inch OLED TV didn’t start showing signs of it for closer to four years. After 5,700 hours of use, I mostly only notice it in animated movies and games with lots of color gradients.

Desktop work monitors, meanwhile, can easily be on for many more hours in a row than your average TV. So far, I’ve only put in about 700 hours on the LG 27GR95QE-B, and I haven’t yet found a test image that shows any burn-in at all.

If LG wants my money for a desktop OLED monitor, here’s what I’d like to see: first, 100 extra nits of sustained brightness across the entire screen, something Samsung has mostly managed with the QD-OLED panel you’ll find in the 34-inch ultrawide Alienware AW3423DWF. Second and more importantly, a warranty that actually sets my mind at ease. When those things arrive in a future wave of OLED, I’ll be lining up to put my money down.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Wired or wireless, stripped-down or packed to the gills with buttons or RGB or both, these are the best gaming mice you can get right now.

Finding the right gaming mouse among all the options can be a struggle. There is a dizzying array of mice available, from stripped-down, lightweight five-button mice for shooters to 17-button mice for MMOs. There are a lot of factors to consider: looks, grip style, comfort, sensor quality, wired versus wireless, button selection and arrangement, onboard settings storage, and RGB lighting (obviously), to name a few. These details can have a major impact on your gaming experience. On the other hand, sometimes mice have features that are overhyped and not worth the extra cost for most people.

Between the folks that contributed to this version of our gaming mouse guide, we’ve tested hundreds of gaming mice. As with keyboards, you can technically game with any mouse. But for any game where reaction time and accuracy are factors, there’s a bigger gap between gaming and non-gaming mice than there is between a good gaming keyboard and a good general-purpose mechanical keyboard.

Best wireless gaming mouse

Connection: USB-C, Bluetooth, 2.4GHz / Charging: USB-C, Qi (with wireless charging puck), magnetic Qi (with Mouse Dock Pro) Polling rate: 125Hz (Bluetooth), 1,000Hz (2.4GHz or wired), 4,000Hz (with Mouse Dock Pro) / Sensor and resolution: Focus Pro 30K / Weight: 112g / Inputs: 11 / RGB: Razer Chroma

The Razer Basilisk V3 Pro is a wireless gaming mouse with an incredibly high-res sensor, a 1,000Hz wireless connection — which bumps up to 4,000Hz if you add the wireless charging dock — and 13 RGB lighting zones. It is virtually indistinguishable from the wired Basilisk V3, which we also like, with the same aggressive claw shape and 11 programmable inputs. Less obvious improvements include a ridiculous 30,000 DPI optical sensor and third-generation Razer optical switches.

The V3 Pro’s RGB lighting is more robust than the wired V3’s, and its chassis is more resistant to smudges and fingerprints. The hyperfast scroll wheel automatically switches to smooth scrolling based on how fast you spin the scroll wheel, instead of toggling when you push a button like Logitech’s implementation.

Most modern games recognize all of the Razer’s buttons and inputs, so you can remap them in game settings, but you’ll still want to download Razer’s Synapse software, which lets you program and assign macros as well as customize the lighting zones. The V3 Pro can store five profiles on its onboard storage, which is nice if you use multiple computers.

By default, the V3 Pro uses Razer’s HyperSpeed wireless dongle, which has a 1,000Hz polling rate (about the same as a wired mouse and much faster than Bluetooth). If you have a HyperSpeed keyboard like the BlackWidow V3 Mini we recommend in our gaming keyboard buying guide or a HyperSpeed headset, they can share a dongle. (It also supports Bluetooth and wired connections.)

Photo by Alice Newcome-Beill / The Verge

The V3 Pro can charge via USB-C or with any Qi-compatible wireless charger if you add the charging puck. But you can also buy the Basilisk V3 Pro bundled with the Mouse Dock Pro. Apart from adding magnetic wireless charging, which just looks cool, the charging dock ups the V3’s polling rate to 4,000 Hz, which is faster than most wired gaming mice.

You can expect the Basilisk V3 Pro to last around 90 hours on a single charge if you put some power-saving measures in place, but even with the RGB lighting turned on and 4K polling rate enabled, the V3 Pro can last for well over 40 hours before you need to top it off.

You can get the Basilisk V3 Pro for $169.99, with the Qi charging puck for $179.99, or with the dock and the puck for $202. The dock is $69.99 on its own, so if you want it, you should get it bundled. It’s a tall price to pay for the whole package, but it nets features that you won’t find on other wireless gaming mice.

There’s also a new Basilisk V3 X HyperSpeed, which is $69.99, a whole Benjamin cheaper. It runs on a single AA battery, has nine inputs instead of 11, and doesn’t have wireless charging — or even wired. It does have 1,000Hz HyperSpeed Wireless and Bluetooth, though.

Best wireless gaming mouse you never have to plug in

Connection: USB-C, 2.4GHz / Polling rate: 1,000Hz (2.4GHz or wired) / Charging: USB-C, wireless (with Powerplay mat) / Sensor and resolution: HERO 25K / Weight: 106g / Inputs: 13 / RGB: Logitech Lightsync

The closest competitor to the Basilisk V3 Pro is the Logitech G502 X series. The $160 G502 X Plus is very similar to the V3 Pro, with a claw-style shape, 1,000Hz polling rate, 13 inputs instead of 11, and slightly fewer lighting zones. (It doesn’t support Bluetooth, though that’s not a big omission in a gaming mouse; it’s mostly useful for using the same mouse on non-gaming devices.)

The biggest advantage the G502 X Plus has over the Basilisk is that it works with Logitech’s $120 Powerplay mousepad, which charges the mouse via magnetic induction as you use it. Of course, that does require spending another $120 on a mousepad you have to plug in, but the G502 X Plus can also charge via USB-C if you don’t feel like doing that. Logitech also has the G502 X Lightspeed, which drops the RGB lighting and lowers the price from $159.99 to $139.99. – Alice Newcome-Beill

Best wired gaming mouse

Connection: USB-A / Polling rate: 1,000Hz / Charging: N/A / Sensor and resolution: Razer Focus+ 26K / Weight: 101g (not counting cable) / Inputs: 11 / RGB: Razer Chroma

One thing about wired gaming mice: they never run out of battery! They’re also a lot less expensive! The wired Basilisk V3 has just about all the same features as the wireless one, including that great scroll wheel, for about $50 or $100 less than the wireless version. Its sensor is “only” 26K DPI instead of 30K, its optical switches are second gen instead of third, and it has 11 lighting zones instead of 13, but who’s counting?

Best cheap gaming mouse

Connection: USB-A to Micro USB / Polling rates: 125Hz to 1,000Hz / Charging: N/A / Sensor and resolution: SteelSeries TrueMove Pro 18K / Weight: 69g (not counting cable) / Inputs: Five / RGB: One zone

The SteelSeries Prime isn’t the most luxurious mouse SteelSeries makes. There’s no OLED display, fancy lighting zones, or extra buttons. Instead, you get a wired gaming mouse with five opto-mechanical buttons, one RGB lighting zone, and a sensitivity selection on the bottom for under $40. That’s it.

SteelSeries did cut some corners to bring the price down. The main thing is that it feels like it’s made from cheap plastic — you know, the kind you’d find on a mouse that came bundled with your desktop. It still feels solid enough, though, and its buttons are nicely tactile.

One thing that I was surprised to see as soon as I opened the Prime up, however, was the detachable cable. This is a wired mouse, but it uses a standard Micro USB cable. This is something I’d expect to see in mice twice the cost of the Steelseries Prime, and it means you don’t have to worry about the mouse experiencing an early death due to cable failure.

The Prime is right in the middle of SteelSeries’ Prime lineup; the Prime Plus is virtually identical but adds an OLED screen at the bottom that makes it easier to toggle through the on-device sensitivity profiles. It’s usually between $10 and $30 more than the regular Prime, but sometimes it’s actually cheaper. Depending on the price difference, it’s worth picking up if you feel like you’d use that feature. – Jackie Thomas

Best mouse for MMOs and MOBAs

Connection: USB-A / Polling rates: 125Hz to 1,000Hz / Charging: N/A / Sensor and resolution: Pixart PMW3391 18K / Weight: 122g (not counting cable) / Inputs: 17 / RGB: Four zones

For most people, a gaming mouse only really needs to be good at pointing and clicking on an enemy’s head. But for anyone who plays MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, if you can add a bunch of buttons to your mouse, that’s free keybindings, baby. There are tons of mice out there with an entire keypad’s worth of thumb buttons — the Razer Naga pioneered the genre. I’ve tried all of them, and the Corsair Scimitar RGB Elite is the best. It’s the one that feels best in my hand — partly because you can adjust the position of the number pad — which is important during long raids and dungeons.

The buttons on the side of the mouse are numbered one through 12 and have RGB LEDs illuminating them. By default, they emulate the number row at the top of your keyboard. And to be honest, in the years I’ve been using the Corsair Scimitar and mice like it, I’ve never once changed that default setting. This is because, in games like World of Warcraft, all of your abilities are bound to keys one through = on your keyboard, which makes the Scimitar RGB Elite a plug-and-play affair.

Obviously then, the Scimitar RGB Elite is going to have a huge following among MMO devotees, but even in other games, the number pad on the side is useful because so many games bind weapons or abilities to the number row by default. I have eased off of MMOs over the last year or so, but I still use the Corsair RGB Elite as my daily driver — and have for almost 10 years.

There are a couple of downsides, though. There are two buttons right between the left and right mouse buttons. One of them switches between sensitivity settings. I cannot tell you how many times I have accidentally pressed one of these buttons in the middle of a raid and completely screwed up my performance for like 10 seconds while I figure out what the hell is going on. It’s something that’s easily fixed in Corsair’s iCue software, but it’s still annoying.

But if that’s the only bad thing I can say about a mouse that I’ve been using for years, it must be a good sign, right? – Jackie Thomas

Other good gaming mice

• The $89 Lamzu Atlantis Mini is a great lightweight, no-frills gaming mouse with a high-precision sensor. It works in wireless mode (125Hz) or wired (1,000Hz) and is popular among the competitive shooter set. Unfortunately, it’s frequently out of stock in the US. It’s worth picking up if you can find it, though.
• The Logitech G303 Shroud is a minimalist ambidextrous gaming mouse that works with Logitech’s 1,000Hz Lightspeed dongle. It’s good, especially if you prefer its shape to the more aggressive right-handed claw shapes of the Basilisk V3 or Logitech G502 series, but those two mice are a bit more feature-packed.
• The Cooler Master MM720 wired gaming mouse is lightweight, at just 49g, and cheap — it’s often under $30. But its design is just a little bit more divisive than the SteelSeries Prime, which has the advantage of a replaceable cord.
• The Razer DeathAdder V2 is a good, inexpensive wired gaming mouse, but it’s largely superseded by the Basilisk V3 for not much more money.

Updated on August 3rd 2023 with new selections and testing results.

With sound quality worthy of Technics’ name and unique three-way multipoint, the EAH-AZ80 are a comprehensive package worth their $300 price.

When you’re shopping for new earbuds, it’s easy to live with blinders on and fix most of your attention on the heavyweight brands like Sony, Apple, Samsung, Bose, Sennheiser, and others. That means missing out on some appealing budget options like those from EarFun, Soundpeats, and Anker’s Soundcore division. But it also can lead to you glossing right over some premium earbuds that are worth serious consideration. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reviewing one such product — the Technics EAH-AZ80 — and it’s become clear to me that these have earned a spot in the “best wireless earbuds” conversation.

For $300, you’d hope that Technics (a brand of Panasonic) would be able to deliver something worthwhile. This is a price tier where mediocrity in any one category can doom your prospects. But I’ve yet to run into anything about these earbuds that feels middling or second rate. They sound terrific, offer lengthy battery life, and include genuinely unique capabilities like three-way multipoint; you can pair the AZ80 to three devices at the same time — typical multipoint-capable buds have a limit of two — seamlessly hopping between them as you pause music on one gadget and play something on another.

The buds themselves, available in silver or black, look sharp and would feel at home next to one of Technics’ venerable turntables. There’s aluminum trim on the outer surface, with the Technics logo engraved in concentric circles. But the side that fits into your ear concha has been designed for comfort for extended listening, and I’ve never noticed any soreness or fatigue when using the AZ80. There are seven different sizes of silicone ear tips in the box, which is far more generous than what you’d get from, say, Sony or Apple. Technics is really paying mind to those of you with smaller ears; the tip sizes include XS1, XS2, S1, S2, M, L, and XL. The buds have a water resistance rating of IPX4 — par for the course among flagship earbuds — but the case, which supports Qi wireless charging, lacks any such protection against rain or sweat, so you’ll want to keep it dry.

Jumping right into sound, the AZ80 hold their own against the very best of what’s on the market today, such as Sennheiser’s Momentum 3 Wireless and Sony’s WF-1000XM5. The 10-millimeter drivers produce rich, enveloping audio with a natural warmth to the sound signature even if you never bother touching the EQ sliders or hopping between the presets. Boygenius’ “Not Strong Enough” is a good example of this, with each of the three voices coming through distinctly with excellent clarity during the “always an angel, never a god” bridge. These earbuds shine with multilayered tracks, whether it’s pop (Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire”) or rock (Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s “Death Wish”), the AZ80 produce a detailed and spacious soundstage. These are about as consistently pleasing as wireless earbuds get in terms of dynamics and overall presentation.

Technics also offers active noise cancellation that’s more than respectable. It falls short of the best contenders, like Sony’s latest 1000XM5 or Bose’s QuietComfort Earbuds II, but isn’t drastically behind. And the audio fidelity quality makes up for being a step behind in ANC. The gap is wider when it comes to transparency mode. I feel like a broken record at this point, but the ambient sound passthrough here isn’t as natural-sounding as Apple’s AirPods Pro 2. It’s worth adjusting the level of outside noise that comes through via Technics’ mobile app for the best results. You can choose the standard ambient sound mode or another option that focuses on voices — useful if you want to hear an announcement at a train station or airport.

Battery life is more than sufficient at around seven hours with noise cancellation enabled and upward of eight hours if you’re somewhere quiet and can leave it off. That longevity can shrink if you’re listening at loud volumes or frequently streaming at LDAC quality, but even in those cases, I didn’t feel shortchanged, and the AZ80 never cut out unexpectedly. Voice calls proved satisfactory, and Technics’ JustMyVoice isolation technology can help eliminate a noisy background so other people can hear your voice even if you’re in a loud environment. Your speech can sound a bit clipped when using JustMyVoice at full strength, but it’s a handy tool to have when needed.

The three-way multipoint, which Panasonic claims is an industry first for earbuds, works surprisingly well. I don’t have a tablet currently, so I tested it with my laptop and two phones. The Technics earbuds had no trouble following me along to whatever device had my attention at that moment. The only tradeoff that comes with triple multipoint is that you can’t use the higher-bitrate LDAC Bluetooth codec at the same time; you can stream over LDAC by sticking to regular two-way multipoint or, if you want maximum audio fidelity and connection stability, the AZ80 can be configured to connect only to a single device at a time.

All of these settings are available in the companion mobile app, which is stuffed to the gills with features and adjustments for a range of the earbuds’ functions. The app can let you hear a preview of how your voice sounds on calls with Technics’ JustMyVoice filtering active. You can optimize the noise cancellation for the best performance wherever you are by adjusting a slider that makes it target different frequencies. There’s a slew of EQ options; I stuck with the default, but “dynamic” also sounded very nice to my ears. And the app lets you dial in exactly how much ambient sound you want to pipe through whenever transparency mode is engaged.

Cramming this much into an app can quickly prove detrimental if the software is buggy or has connection issues, but I didn’t run into any problems with the Technics Audio Connect app when testing across both Android and iOS. The deluge of preferences can feel a little overwhelming, but it all works, which is the important part. Still, there’s no denying that just as with other standalone earbud makers that lack a hardware ecosystem, Technics can’t match the seamless cross-device tricks of Apple and Samsung.

Dropping $300 on a pair of earbuds is no small investment. But if you’re looking for something off the beaten path and aren’t feeling enticed by the big-name brands, Technics has produced a worthy set of flagship buds with the EAH-AZ80. They sound wonderful, have ample noise cancellation, and come with enough ear tips that I can’t imagine anyone being left without the right fit. And the three-way multipoint is a wholly unique selling point that not even Sony, Apple, Bose, and other major competitors can match. If you’re a heavy-duty multitasker, that might be reason enough to try something new.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

It’s a big update year for Samsung’s flip-style foldable — and a much larger cover screen makes all the difference.

Being able to declare an absolute category winner is rare in the smartphone space. But in the case of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, it’s actually quite easy: this is the best flip-style folding phone you can buy.

It’s a small category, so that helps. It’s even smaller if you’re looking at options available in the US since your choices are basically the Flip 5 or Motorola’s Razr Plus. They have a lot in common, including the fact that they both offer a much bigger, much more useful cover screen than their predecessors. They share the same $999 price tag, too. But Samsung’s flip phone is more durable, its cover screen widgets are more useful, and its camera system is better overall.

That’s not to say that the Flip 5 is the perfect flip-style phone or the best phone you can buy for a thousand bucks. It’s durable for a foldable, but that big “X” in its IPX8 rating means there’s no guarantee against dust intrusion — and dust in a folding phone spells real trouble. You’ll find better camera hardware on most other $999 slab-style phones, including a telephoto lens, and you’ll struggle to get through a full day of heavy use with the Flip 5 on a single battery charge. If any of the above is a major concern, then a flip-style phone might not be for you. But if you are willing to put up with these tradeoffs, then the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is an excellent device.

The flip form factor is particularly good for someone who wants to get more of the basic chores done on their phone without getting sucked into mindlessly checking app notifications and scrolling through news feeds unintentionally. The bigger, improved cover screen on the Flip 5 makes it possible to respond to a text quickly, glance at walking directions, or check the weather without coming face-to-face with absolutely everything on your phone. It’s a powerful tool in the fight for your attention, and the Z Flip 5 is hands-down the best option in its class.

Let’s start with the main attraction: that 3.4-inch cover screen (excuse me, Flex Window, according to Samsung). That may not sound like much, but it’s more than 3.5 times bigger than the 1.9-inch screen on the Z Flip 4. It’s like getting out of a Smart Car and into a sedan — buckle up because you can go places now. Rather than just checking notifications, you can use a full QWERTY keyboard to respond to texts. You can see your daily schedule alongside a monthly calendar in the same view.

Samsung provides a bunch of handy widgets you can enable, disable, and rearrange to your liking. They’re excellent and take great advantage of the available screen real estate; the weather widget shows you current conditions at a glance, and you can scroll down for the next week’s forecast. Tapping on a calendar event brings up all the details. It’s all as the good lord intended — and a much better experience than on the Motorola Razr Plus.

In no particular order, here are some things I used the cover screen to do in the past week:

• Respond to text messages
• Sign my kid out of daycare
• Check arrival times at my bus stop and note that I am definitely missing the next bus
• Read my Threads notifications (all four of them)
• Dismiss approximately 2,000 spam calls

Widgets are great, but part of the appeal of a flip phone — at least for me — is the ability to run certain apps on the cover screen. You need a bit of a sense of adventure here because lots of apps are unequivocally awful on a small screen. But I’ve discovered a few of the apps I use for quick tasks are actually fine on the cover display. It’s a hassle many Flip 5 owners probably won’t want to go through, but for the adventurous few, it’s a big benefit to owning a flip phone.

For reasons mentioned above, Samsung makes it very difficult to run just any old app on the cover screen. You can enable a handful of preselected apps through the Labs menu, but for anything outside of messaging apps, Google Maps, or YouTube, you need to download Good Lock (and an additional module called MultiStar) from the Galaxy App Store. Then you can add additional apps to the cover screen.

You don’t want to scroll through Instagram posts on a screen this small, but it’s totally suitable for quick-hit tasks like checking transit arrival times or translating an unfamiliar Spanish word to English. Placing a mobile order for your neighborhood Starbucks is a stretch, but I’m happy to report that it can be done.

Some apps don’t work quite as well on the Flip 5’s cover screen as they do on the Razr Plus’ slightly bigger display. I had trouble typing in certain apps since Samsung’s cover screen keyboard doesn’t give you a persistent text input box, and whatever you’re writing is liable to get covered up by other UI elements. But on either phone, there’s a very experimental vibe to using a full app, so proceed at your own risk.

The Flip 5’s cover screen itself isn’t the nicest screen I’ve ever used, but it does the job. It’s a 720 x 748 60Hz panel — not as sharp or smooth as the Razr Plus’ screen. But it does get bright enough for use even in direct sunlight, and it’s not a screen you want to look at a lot of photos or play games on, anyway. One thing it has over the Razr Plus? An always-on display. You can see the time, date, battery percentage, and app notification icons without having to tap the screen. Quite literally, you love to see it.

On the downside, the AOD does seem to drag down battery performance noticeably. The Z Flip 5 has a small 3,700mAh battery, so that’s a legitimate concern. With the AOD enabled, I was able to get through a full day of heavy use with 4.5 hours of screen-on time — but only with a nail-biting 5 percent left in the tank as I was calling an Uber at the end of the night.

On a more typical day with three hours of screen-on time, I had 40 percent left by the end of the night. It’s good enough to get most people through a full day, but heavy users will want to work in a midday top-off to avoid going to phone battery jail.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 For Galaxy chipset is just as snappy here as in the S23 series. It seems to run a little warmer in the Flip 5, maybe because there’s less space for cooling mechanisms, but it never got too toasty in my pocket. The base model Z Flip 5 comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage — a bump up from the Flip 4, which started at 128GB. There’s 25W wired charging (BYO charging brick, of course) and 15W wireless charging with 4.5W reverse wireless charging to top off your earbuds. I have to open the phone and set it juuust so on my stand-style Belkin Qi charger, but it works.

The Z Flip 5 and its bigger Fold 5 sibling are the first Samsung foldables that close flat — previous versions had a visible gap between the two halves near the hinge when closed. The gap is gone, a new droplet-style hinge is in, and there has been much rejoicing. It makes the Z Flip 5 a bit sleeker-looking, though it feels just as chunky as ever in the pocket of my joggers.

The side rails are a flat, polished aluminum that looks nice and feels sturdy. Samsung says that the new hinge’s design can withstand impacts better, but the phone’s IPX8 rating is the same as last year’s. That means it’s resistant to full immersion in water, which is no small feat on a phone with moving parts, but there’s no guarantee against dust intrusion. Samsung’s apparently working on that, but in the meantime, it’s a bad idea to take the Flip 5 to the beach.

The Flip 5’s new cover screen provides a bigger canvas for lock screen customization, and Samsung provides a lot of personalization options. It’s a lot like customizing a smartwatch face — you pick a basic wallpaper style, select your favorite fonts and colors, and save it. From the cover screen itself, you can long press to view and switch between your customized lock screens. As a lock screen enjoyer, I’ve wasted plenty of time trying to get the background color framing a photo of my kid just right. You got me, Samsung.

New to the Flip and Fold this year is an updated flex mode panel — that’s the set of controls that you can enable when you use the phone in an L-shaped laptop mode. You don’t need it in an app like YouTube that’s already optimized for folding phones, but it’s handy for the physical therapy video I follow every day most days that’s only available embedded in a browser window.

I can tap the screen to move the video to the top half of the screen, and the flex mode panel now includes a thumbnail image and customizable controls. This is a very minor update in the grand scheme of things, but it makes the experience of using the phone in this way feel a little more polished and a little less “beta.”

More important than minor software tweaks, the Z Flip 5 continues to come with a strong software support policy: four years of OS updates and five years of security patches. Motorola, on the other hand, is offering three years of OS updates and four years of security patches — and it doesn’t exactly have a great track record for timely updates. Of all the reasons to consider the Flip 5 over the Razr Plus, that’s a strong one.

Generally speaking, folding phones don’t come with the latest camera hardware. That continues to be true of the Flip 5 — same as last year, it comes with a 12-megapixel f/1.8 stabilized main camera and a 12-megapixel ultrawide. There’s a 10-megapixel selfie camera on the inside screen, but one of the nice things about the flip form factor is that it’s easy to use the better rear-facing cameras for selfies, so it’s kind of just there for video calls.

The imaging hardware is run-of-the-mill, and so are the Z Flip 5’s photos. The main camera does just fine in good lighting and turned in a few shots I really dig — give it ample indirect lighting and some vibrant colors, and you’ll be impressed. Portrait mode is good, if not class-leading, like the S23 cameras.

Overall, though, it’s a fairly mediocre camera system for a $1,000 phone. There’s no telephoto lens, and I’m not impressed with Samsung’s digital zoom. Photos from the ultrawide in good lighting are a little flat, and colors look off in dim lighting with plenty of smoothed-over noise. Even low-light selfies with the main camera are hit-and-miss — it chose a shutter speed of just 1/35sec in a dim arena that left me with just one sharp photo out of a handful.

Video clips are fine overall. Samsung says it’s using AI to improve low-light video quality, and I think my low-light video clips look alright. But above all, it’s fun shooting photos and video with a flip phone. You can fold the phone into an L shape and set it down on a table for an instant tripod and hands-free video. You can hold it up camcorder style or move the image preview to the bottom half of the screen like an old-school twin-lens reflex camera and shoot from the hip.

I seem to get the most natural reactions in photos and videos of my toddler when my phone isn’t right in front of my face using any of those methods. I feel a little more engaged in the moment, too. In any case, I’m hoping Samsung upgrades the cameras on the Z Flip 6 so we can get the best of both worlds: good hardware and all that flip phone fun.

There are plenty of ways that the Galaxy Z Flip 5 could be a better flip phone — the cameras could use an upgrade, I’d like to run apps more easily on the cover screen, and dustproofing would be a welcome addition. It’s a bit sleeker with the new fold-flat hinge but still a chunky device that would benefit from some trimming down.

Even though it could be better, it’s easily the best widely available flip phone option right now. For the same price as the Motorola Razr Plus, you get a more consistent camera, robust water resistance versus splash resistance, an extra year of software updates, and much better cover screen widgets. That’s really no contest. The Oppo Find N2 Flip is another option outside of the US, but its cover screen is smaller and less useful, and its durability is uncertain since it lacks any kind of IP rating.

If you’re considering jumping from a traditional slab-style phone to a flip phone, the Z Flip 5 is a great entry point. The cover screen isn’t just a neat party trick — it’s a genuinely useful tool that made my life a little easier in numerous ways while using the phone. It’s a device best suited for someone with a sense of adventure and curiosity when it comes to technology — someone willing to try a new way of doing things and able to roll with it when you inevitably hit a snag. For that kind of person, the Z Flip 5 is a truly rewarding experience.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Samsung focuses on refining a tried-and-true formula, but how much longer can it afford to coast?

For the longest time, Samsung reigned supreme when it came to flagship Android smartwatches. Year after year, it was the easy recommendation for people looking for an Android analog to the Apple Watch. That’s still true with the Galaxy Watch 6 series, but I’m unsure how secure Samsung’s status is heading into the fall product season and beyond.

It’s not because they’re bad devices. Both the Galaxy Watch 6 (starts at $299.99) and the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (starts at $399.99) are great Android smartwatches. But things have shifted a lot in the past two years. Fitbit has been increasingly absorbed by Google, and the Pixel Watch not only exists, but a second one is expected this fall. Mobvoi just put out a good Wear OS watch featuring Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 Plus chip, and it’s likely Fossil will do the same. And yet, the past 10 days or so with the Galaxy Watch 6 series have felt like I was frozen in time.

In almost every way, these are watches you’ve seen before. Depending on your perspective, that could be a good or bad thing. On the one hand, you know what you’re getting. On the other, not much has changed.

What’s new... and what isn’t

The updates this time around reminded me of Vincent Adultman from Bojack Horseman. You’re getting a bunch of tiny updates that add up to one big one, except something doesn’t feel right. Kind of like three kids stacked up under a trenchcoat, pretending to be an adult. I know this isn’t the same exact watch as last year or the year before. And yet... we have the same 40mm and 44mm sizes for the basic Galaxy Watch 6 in familiar colors like black, silver, and gold. The Classic is slightly bigger at 43 and 47mm, but not noticeably so, and it still comes in silver and black. As far as materials go, the base model is still aluminum, while the Classic remains stainless steel.

Visually, the most noticeable thing is the thinner bezels. When you just look at the regular Galaxy Watch 6, however, it’s hard to see the difference. It was only when I fired up my Watch 5 and looked at them side by side that I really appreciated them. Because the bezels are 30 percent slimmer and the display is larger, you get this neat optical illusion that the Watch 6 is significantly bigger than the Watch 5 — even though they both have the same 40mm and 44mm cases.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

On the Classic, the rotating bezel itself is 15 percent thinner, and it gives the Classic a sleeker feel despite the bigger size. The effect is more pronounced on the 47mm version, which helps mitigate the fact that this is the biggest smartwatch Samsung’s ever made. I was a little wary of that at first, but to my surprise, it wears much smaller. (Samsung has pulled this off before: last year’s Watch 5 Pro was also comfy for a big watch.) It didn’t catch on my clothes, the weight wasn’t distracting on runs, and I had no issues wearing it to sleep. Still, it is noticeably heavier than the standard Galaxy Watch 6 due to its use of stainless steel over aluminum.

As an aside, I’m happy to see that Samsung managed to get a bigger display and battery into these watches without turning these into hockey puck-sized behemoths. It often feels like I have to choose between readability on a bigger display or comfort — and I didn’t have to do that here.

The internal hardware hasn’t changed from last year, aside from the slightly larger batteries and the new Exynos W930 chipset. Samsung says it’s 18 percent faster, but functionally, you’re not going to notice a huge difference. You still have the 3-in-1 Biosensor that enables heart rate, EKGs, and body composition analysis. There’s built-in GPS — though multiband isn’t an option yet. There’s a bigger difference coming from the fourth-gen watches (or older). For example, all watches now feature sapphire crystal for extra durability and temperature sensors. The battery size on the smaller watches jumps from 241mAh to 300mAh and from 361mAh to 425mAh on the larger sizes.

Speaking of the temperature sensor, Samsung finally does things with it now. Like the Apple Watch and Oura Ring, temperature data now feeds into advanced cycle tracking. This isn’t exclusive to the Galaxy Watch 6 series; it was actually announced a while back for the Galaxy Watch 5. Skin temperature data is also a metric you can enable during sleep. Perhaps the most novel use case is the third-party Thermo Check app, which allows you to use the sensor to check how hot or cold objects are in your environment. I wrote about what it’s like to use it in more detail here, but the short of it is it’s fun, silly, and not very practical.

For software, the Watch 6 series runs Google’s Wear OS 4 and Samsung’s One UI 5 Watch on top of that. When I first booted up the watches, there were some minor differences I noticed. The Sleep widget, for example, holds more on-wrist data than it used to. There are new watchfaces. When I paired the watches for the first time, I noticed a new prompt for transferring your watch’s data to a new phone. And then, a few days later, I promptly forgot this was new. The bottom line is that so far, Wear OS 4 and One UI 5 Watch feel a lot like Wear OS 3 and One UI Watch 4.5.

This is a running theme with all of Samsung’s software updates this year. Either it’s minor improvements to things that were already there, or Samsung’s catching up by adding features already have. For example, the main new sports profile is a Track Run, where you get more accurate GPS data when at a standard 400m track. If you menstruate, you can opt into temperature-based Cycle Tracking. After a 10-minute run, you can now view and customize heart rate zones. You can also create custom workouts.

These are all things Apple added last year with watchOS 9. Garmin’s had track runs and heart rate zones for ages, too. The Pixel Watch also already supports heart rate zones, though the first-gen device is a bit behind as far as track runs, custom workouts, and temperature data. Fitbit, which powers the Pixel Watch’s health features, does have temperature tracking on its Versa and Sense smartwatches — so it’s possible we may see these on a next-gen Pixel Watch.

I would’ve liked to see improved accuracy on the fitness tracking front, but it’s still roughly the same as last year: mostly great as far as steps and heart rate go, with the occasional wonkiness with regard to GPS distance. I highly recommend disabling the auto countdown in workout settings. A manual start lets you ensure the watch gets a secure GPS lock before you run, which greatly reduced inaccuracies for me. For sleep tracking, I noticed that overnight SpO2 readings were a little better than last year, but I still got the occasional reading of 72 percent... which, again, is cause to visit the hospital.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Samsung Pay is now Samsung Wallet. Emergency SOS has been slightly improved, so now your contacts can be alerted to your exact location. The Galaxy Watch 6 series can now passively monitor for irregular heart rhythm notifications in the background — a feature that was recently cleared by the FDA. Apple and Fitbit also have this feature already.

Catching up to your rivals is objectively good. It ensures these watches remain a competitive option in the market. They’re just not that exciting. In a race, it’s eye-catching to see someone at the back of the pack creep up on the frontrunner. But people don’t get out of their seats until it looks like the frontrunner might get overtaken. With these updates, Samsung’s leveling the playing field, but it’s not making anyone nervous.

Let’s talk about battery life

Last year, I wasn’t too happy with Samsung on this front. Battery life was crap with the Galaxy Watch 4 series, and in the lead-up to the Watch 5 series, Samsung touted bigger batteries and 40 hours of battery life. For the Watch 5 Pro, it promised 80 hours of battery life. When I reviewed these, I got nowhere near 40 hours on the Watch 5 and maxed out at around 50-60 hours on the Pro.

This year, the smaller Watch 6 and Classic have been bumped up to a 300mAh battery. The larger models now have a 425mAh battery. This is slightly larger than last year, but Samsung’s battery estimates are modest — all four watches have an estimated 30 hours with the always-on display, 40 hours without, and eight minutes of fast charging delivers eight hours of battery. Wear OS 4 is still a new thing, but the one thing we know for sure is it brings cloud backups and supposedly extends battery life.

The result is an overall slight improvement in battery life.

I was taken aback when, on day one of a full charge, the 40mm still had 78 percent battery by 5PM. I had a similar result with the Classic. This time last year, under the same scenario, the Watch 5 couldn’t last the whole day. It sparked hope that Samsung had finally fixed its battery issue.

The thing about Samsung smartwatches is your mileage with battery life is going to vary based on the settings you choose. If you disable the always-on display, enable bedtime mode, limit notifications to the essentials, and sparingly use LTE, GPS, or continuous health monitoring? I maxed out at around 32 on both watches. But that’s kind of like not using the watch to do much more than tell time. With AOD on, I topped out around 25 hours.

Once you turn on more power-intensive settings, the battery life takes a hit, particularly with continuous SpO2, snore detection, and skin temperature readings during sleep. Thankfully, the new bedtime mode, which dims the display and switches to the invisible infrared sensors, helps mitigate that. I went from 25–30 percent battery drain overnight to 10-15 percent, similar to the Apple Watch’s battery loss when overnight sleep tracking. As for GPS — another battery-intensive feature — both watches drained about 3–4 percent per mile with AOD across three runs ranging from 30–45 minutes on each watch. That’s a significant improvement over last year, especially since the screen is now a brighter 2,000 nits.

You’re gonna get a little extra from the larger watches just because they have the bigger batteries. On a typical usage day, the 47mm had 88 percent battery when I woke up. I went for a 30-minute run, ran a few tests, had a lot of notifications, and by 5PM, I still had 59 percent battery. I went out for dinner and a show and had 40 percent by bedtime. After enabling bedtime mode, I woke up around 7AM the next day with 28 percent battery left. Not too shabby.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Because I was constantly experimenting with settings, I never got the same battery life day in and day out. But having tried so many scenarios, the bottom line is you’re still going to be charging daily or, at least, every other day. For true multiday battery life, you’re gonna have to get the Watch 5 Pro (or a Garmin).

What’s more important to me is I feel confident these watches can last a whole workday. I haven’t felt that since Samsung switched to Wear OS two years ago — and that’s good enough for me.

Still Samsung’s garden

Like Apple, Samsung products work best within its own ecosystem. This isn’t anything new. In the past, I’ve always paired Galaxy Watches with Samsung phones because most Android users in the US have Samsung phones and because that’s how Samsung intends you to use them. But considering how the Android wearable landscape is changing, I decided to pair the Galaxy Watch 6 series with the Pixel 7 Pro for the majority of my testing. (I also borrowed a colleague’s Samsung Galaxy S9 for a more direct comparison.)

For the most part, the experience is the same, but there’s no doubt this is still Samsung’s garden. Take setup. On the S9, all the Samsung apps were already installed, and it almost instantaneously detected the Galaxy Watch 6 was nearby for pairing. On my Pixel 7 Pro, I had to go download, at minimum, the Samsung Galaxy Wearable app, Samsung Health, and Samsung Pay / Wallet — and all related plugins. That saves a good chunk of time, especially since if you already have a Samsung phone, you likely don’t need to make a Samsung account. I tried the setup process multiple times, and it was always faster on the Samsung phone — though it didn’t take that much longer on the Pixel.

There are also some apps that are exclusive to Samsung phones — like the Samsung Health Monitor app and the Camera Controller app. The Health Monitor app is what you use to take EKG readings, and it’s also necessary for the new passive irregular heart rhythm notifications. If you’re gadget savvy, there are ways to sideload it onto a non-Samsung phone, but that’s an extra hassle that’s just not required with a Pixel Watch.

With the Camera Controller app, it automatically appears in your watch’s app menu if you pair it with a Samsung phone. It’s missing if you pair it with a non-Samsung phone like I did. That’s a shame since I really enjoyed using the Camera Controller app during my hands-on to zoom in and out, as well as switch between photo / video modes.

(Quick note: initially, Samsung told us the Camera Controller updates were limited to foldables but has since clarified that zoom capabilities are available on any Samsung phone running One UI 5.1, and switching modes will be available on any Galaxy S9 or later phone provided it’s running One UI 5.1.1.)

My other pet peeve is that pressing and holding the bottom button is still hard-coded to Samsung Wallet. (You may have to update your version of One UI if you’re still seeing Samsung Pay.) While you can now reprogram the top button to launch Google Assistant instead of Bixby, there’s no way to do that with Samsung Wallet if Google Wallet is your preference. You can program a shortcut with the top button to launch Google Wallet, but it’d be much easier if you could just switch out Samsung Wallet.

Ultimately, these are minor bugaboos. Setup is generally a one-time thing, and with cloud backups, it’s less painful to switch to a new phone. If you don’t care about EKGs or aFib monitoring, you won’t miss the Health Monitor app. There are even third-party camera controller apps in the Play Store, so you don’t necessarily need Samsung’s.

Should you upgrade?

The Galaxy Watch 6 series isn’t the most exciting update, but these are among the best smartwatches you can buy. If you’ve been holding on to a Tizen OS smartwatch, now is a good time to upgrade, as support for the Galaxy Watch 3 is only guaranteed through this month. The same is true if you’ve been holding out for a smoother overall Wear OS experience or better battery life.

What I don’t love is that the price of these watches has gone up. (Thanks inflation!) The base Galaxy Watch 6 starts at $299.99, compared to $279.99 for the Watch 5. The Watch 6 Classic now starts at $399.99 for the 43mm, up from $349.99 for the Watch 4 Classic. Add $30 if you want the 44mm Watch 6 or the 47mm Classic, and another $50 for LTE. Technically, this makes these smartwatches more on par with the Apple Watch and Google Pixel Watch — but who on Earth likes to pay more for the same thing?

That said, if you’ve got a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, I think you’ll be very happy with the current Classic’s extra screen estate, sleeker look, and longer battery life. Especially since it seems like Samsung is updating the Classic on a two-year cycle, it may be a couple of years before we get another one. If you’re on a regular Watch 4 or Watch 5... eh. You could with the Watch 4 if you find a good trade-in deal, but I don’t think it’s worth it for the 5. All you’re really getting is the bigger screen size. Everything else is effectively the same, and you should see further battery-setting improvements once One UI 5 Watch officially trickles down to older models.

Taking a step back, iteration was truly the theme of this summer’s Unpacked announcements. And while I am so, so, so happy the rotating bezel is back, there’s only so many times you can take what’s old and make it seem new. Just as there are now more players in the foldables space, there are more Wear OS watches now, too. At the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world that Samsung chose to stick to what’s tried and true this year. But this time next year? I’m not sure Samsung can afford to coast.

The first PCIe Gen 5 solid state drives (SSDs) are starting to hit the market with big promises of speed boosts. I’ve been testing Crucial’s T700 PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe solid state drive over the past few weeks alongside Seagate’s latest FireCuda 540 in an effort to discover if this latest generation of storage will change PC gaming or how it could improve workflows for those who work with large files daily.

PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs are at the very early stages of life, with Crucial and Seagate part of a handful of manufacturers to actually sell this storage in stores right now. PCIe Gen 5 is expected to deliver theoretical read speeds of 14,000MBps for NVMe SSDs, compared to the theoretical maximum of 8,000MBps on PCIe Gen 4 drives. That’s a 75 percent bump in speed, but it comes at an upgrade cost.

You’ll need a motherboard that supports PCIe Gen 5 and, naturally, the corresponding CPU, both of which are at the pricey end of the PC building market right now. You’re also looking at $179.99 for a 1TB Crucial T700 model (without a heatsink) all the way up to $629.99 for a 4TB model with a heatsink. Likewise, Seagate’s FireCuda 540 is available at $189.99 for a 1TB model or $319.99 for a 2TB version. Considering you can easily get a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro, a well-reviewed Gen 4 drive that’s a few years old, for $79.99, that’s a big price premium. So, is it worth it?

I tested Crucial’s 2TB T700 and Seagate’s 2GB FireCuda 540 against a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro. You might be thinking, why not a 2TB 980 Pro? There can be variations between read and write speeds of 1TB and 2TB models, but the 2TB version of the Samsung 980 Pro only bumps sequential write speeds up to 5,100MBps, compared to the 5,000MBps found on the 1TB model, effectively a wash.

Crucial’s 2TB T700 is supposed to deliver read speeds of 12,400MBps and write speeds of up to 11,800MBps. In testing with CrystalDiskMark 8, I came incredibly close to hitting the maximum sequential write speeds, at 11,789MBps, 99.9 percent of the advertised speed. Even sequential read speeds weren’t that far off at 12,251MBps (98.8 percent of advertised).

Seagate’s 2TB FireCuda 540 is rated at 10,000MBps for both sequential read and write speeds. In testing, I saw just over 10,000MBps for both. Not quite as fast as Crucial’s T700, but sequential read and write speeds aren’t everything.

Compared to the older 980 Pro, both Crucial’s T700 and Seagate’s FireCuda 540 deliver some incredibly impressive sequential read and write speeds that will be ideal for working with larger files. But for ordinary tasks like loading a game, opening documents, or launching apps, we need to look at the random read and write performance. This is far less impressive on the T700 and FireCuda 540 compared to the older 980 Pro.

I saw this play out clearly in game loading times, where it was difficult to spot an improvement with the Gen 5 drives. Loading up Gears 5 was the most noticeable, but in games like Returnal, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Cyberpunk 2077, the results were practically identical.

This latest PCIe 5.0 storage arrives just as Microsoft, Nvidia, and others are trying to push developers to take advantage of SSDs more in PC gaming. We’re finally at the point where it looks like SSDs will become the new minimum spec for modern PC games, with Starfield requiring SSD storage and CD Projekt Red now requiring an SSD for the minimum specs of Cyberpunk 2077, with plans to phase out spinning hard disk (HDD) support.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has also just arrived on PC with the impressive level load times we’ve seen on the PS5. The game can run on an HDD at minimum specs and at a much lower resolution than 4K, but it’s really designed for an SSD and will work far better in a PC that’s equipped with one.

There’s also DirectStorage on the horizon. Microsoft has been pushing the ability to stream big amounts of data from NVMe solid state drives directly to a GPU without having to use a CPU to decompress it. This should speed up load times in games that are designed this way, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen enough examples yet. Forspoken was one of the first games to support DirectStorage and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the latest, but it’ll probably be years until developers really get to grips with designing games specifically for high-speed SSD storage and DirectStorage.

That leaves PCIe 5.0 drives in a weird spot right now for PC gaming. Yes, they’re far faster at sequential read and write, but the more important random read and write performance isn’t a big enough improvement for PC games right now.

If you’re working with big video files or duplicating, copying, or writing big amounts of data, then this sequential read and write performance is important. I saw noticeable speed improvements using 50GB files on the latest Gen 5 drives.

As you can see from most tests, the Crucial T700 just edges past the Seagate FireCuda 540 thanks to its better sequential read and write speeds. The Samsung 980 Pro 1TB scored 2505 on 3DMark’s storage benchmark, with the 2TB Crucial T700 hitting 4262 and Seagate’s FireCuda 540 reaching 4121.

Thermals are also a concern with Gen 5 drives, as they can generate even more heat than we’ve seen with Gen 4 drives. I tested both the T700 and FireCuda 540 without any built-in heatsinks, relying on my motherboard’s heatsink and cooling solution. MSI has a rather solid PCIe 5.0 enclosure for its single slot on the MEG X670E ACE, which seemed to do a good job of cooling both drives and avoiding the thermal throttling you’d see if you didn’t use an adequate heatsink. The T700 hit 60 degrees Celsius max during a workload, while the FireCuda 540 reached 64 degrees Celsius.

If you’re a PC gamer looking to upgrade to PCIe 5.0 drives, I’d say save your cash right now and grab a more affordable PCIe 4.0 drive. If you use a PC for a combination of gaming and professional tasks, then it might be worth looking at PCIe 5.0, but really, it’s only content creators and professionals that should even be considering these drives right now.

And just as we’re looking at consumer-level SSDs that make use of PCIe 5.0, the next generation (you guessed it, 6.0) is around the corner. It took almost 10 years to go from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0, but the gap from 5.0 to 6.0 looks like it’ll be more like two years. The PCIe 6.0 specification was finalized last year, and we’re now waiting on Intel and AMD processors and motherboards that are capable of supporting theoretical read speeds of 28,000MBps for NVMe SSDs of the future. That’s not likely to happen until at least 2024, so if you’re set on a speed bump to Gen 5, then upgrades are available right now.

Photography by Tom Warren / The Verge