When smartphones hit critical mass, every manufacturer of “dumb” phones started leveraging all their designs to add smarts to every phone in their lineup. We’re seeing a similar push with smartwatches. Traditional watchmakers are finding ways to raise the intelligence level of their iconic designs. The latest watchmaker to do so is Citizen, with their C Z Smart line.
OnePlus and T-Mobile know a few things. they know how to make excellent smartphones, they know how to blanket the country in 5G, and they know everyone is crawling the walls because there’s nowhere to go in the middle of a pandemic. They can’t totally fix that third issue, but they’re trying with their new OnePlus Go Farther scavenger hunt!
Home security is no longer only the realm of expensive monthly subscriptions but something you can install and monitor yourself if you wish. Comcast Xfinity has your back with a new program called Self Protection that lets you monitor your front door/back door/dog in the kitchen, all with continuous recording for only $10/month.
The ’90s are coming back in the form of flannel, Saved by the Bell, Foo Fighters on SNL, and now new Nokia phones. But unlike a candy-bar style phone that plays Snake, Nokia has adopted the typical slab design of a 2020 Android smartphone, but with some of that Nokia magic sprinkled on top. Enter the Nokia 8 V 5G UW, the company’s second 5G phone.
Roku prides themselves on their laser focus — it’s all about making streaming the best possible experience for their users. Their interface is simple, their devices are plug and play, and their entire ecosystem is built around offering multiple options at every price point. We took a look at the Roku StreamBar and new Roku Ultra and came away very impressed!
5G is slowly rolling out, and Verizon and TCL are ready to get it into your hot little hands at an affordable price. They’re introducing the TCL 10 5G UW for only $399.99, which is a pretty great value for a 6.5″ Android phone with NXTVISION!
The arms race on laptops these days is all about screens. Big ones, high definition ones, small bezels, touchscreens, and even bonus screens. Asus took a look at a 15in touchscreen with an 88% screen to body ratio and thought, “Needs more screen,” so they swapped out the touchpad for…another screen on the Asus ZenBook Pro 15 UX535LI.
Do you need a new computer? Chances are, with all of us working and learning from home, if you don’t, then someone in your household might. Whether you need a Chromebook, a Windows PC, or some accessories, chances are Acer just announced a product that fits!
There’s a reason I try to wait until I really know a product to do a review — sometimes it takes a little while to grasp what makes something truly succeed or fail. If you asked me three weeks ago what my son and I thought of the K’Nex Architecture Eiffel Tower, you’d want to duck immediately. Now? We can’t wait for more!
Chromebooks have gone from being a novelty to being incredible productivity tools (just ask any student how they’re surviving remote learning!) Lenovo knows that efficient, reliably, and speedy computers are something everyone needs. Enter the new ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook Enterprise!
It’s not a luxury to have high-speed internet all over your home, it’s a necessity for work and school. Xfinity knows this, and they’re rolling out the second generation of their xFi Pod mesh network solution to make sure your whole house has internet. Yes, even that one room no one likes because it’s farthest from the router.
It’s Tuesday, so you know what that means — Lenovo has a new crop of updated laptops and accessories to get you through the long, quarantined winter ahead. Dive in as we look at what’s new in ThinkBooks and ThinkPads, plus some incentive to save your pennies for the world’s first foldable PC, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold!
Streaming is one of the biggest changes to how we consume media, and Roku has been at the forefront of bringing the ability to binge-watch “Great British Baking Show” for an entire lost weekend. For them, streaming isn’t just one business arm out of many, it’s their entire purpose, and Roku is intent on improving and sharpening their streaming services.
Twenty years ago, just having a thin flip phone was the height of technological advancement. Now processors much thinner, and they are giving our phones more power than some computers from 20 years ago! The Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G 5G Mobile Platform is the latest in the giant leaps forward that mobile technology is taking.
I’m going to preface this with the disclaimer that I’m typing it on a MacBook Pro and I own an iPhone, just to head off any accusations of me being an Apple-hater. But I watched Apple’s iPad announcements this week, and then I helped my son with some schoolwork, and I realized Apple is about to lose an entire generation.
If you’ve read the book “Ready Player One” you know it’s extremely uneven, but the main driver of the action is an immersive virtual reality experience. We’re not quite at the point of living a whole life in VR, but it is getting faster and more immersive, and with the new Oculus Quest 2 powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, it’s a tiny bit closer to reality than it used to be!
It is incredible how many aspects of our lives are integrated with AI and connectivity. It’s in little ways, like how CarPlay helpfully gives me directions to the same places I go each week, and in significant ways like how AI is being used for contact tracing and tracking COVID-19. All this requires solid hardware to back up all that software, and Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 Development Kit is designed to keep everything running quickly and smoothly.
Xfinity does a lot more than just provide internet and cable. They’re very integrated into the smart home, as proven by my parent’s Xfinity alarm system that led to some cloak and dagger email deletion. However, your Xfinity-powered home is about to get a lot smarter than just letting you know when someone has opened the front door, thanks to integration with Leviton’s Decora Zigbee smart light switches, dimmers, and modules.
We take for granted that our senses are there to help us navigate the world. If you’re lucky, your hearing works well; you can taste when food goes bad or smell when the garbage has to go out, and you can see and read signs to navigate the world around you. People who are visually impaired don’t always have that ability. OrCam has a pretty amazing solution with the OrCam MyEye, and they’re teaming up with soccer star Lionel Messi to help promote it.
Honor consistently releases impressive devices at wallet-friendly prices. They’ve got two new fitness tracking watches and two new laptops coming to outfit you for whatever the rest of 2020 has to throw at you!
It feels like we’ve been hearing about 5G forever, but it’s for-real happening, and we’re going to be getting all sorts of awesome devices zipping YouTube to us faster than ever. And, sure, we also need connectivity for remote work. But also TikTok. Anyway, Qualcomm is already on their 2nd generation of 5G PC chips, being rolled out this year with Acer!