The first Dyson headphones, the Zone (4/10, WIRED Review), with their attachable air filter for cynical techno-futurists, were so ridiculous and stupid it was hard for me to take the company seriously. Let’s face it: Dyson’s vacuums and hair care products are very nice, but many of its other products have been feeble, design-forward gimmicks that quickly fade behind the media hype. Sure, you’d see a few “fanless” Dyson air movers or purifiers in luxe locales after they first came out, but they never reached the broad-market ubiquity of its shiny plastic-sucking machines.
All this to say: I had low expectations for the new, $499 Dyson OnTrac headphones. With everyone from established brands like Apple, Sony, and Bose to newer brands like Sonos at the peak of their noise-canceling headphone game, it was just hard to imagine Dyson could create a product that competes in anything other than extruded plastic styling. But after a few weeks with my review unit, I think they’re some of the better headphones in the market.
These are visually customizable over-ear headphones with great sound, excellent noise reduction, and 55 hours of battery life. I am surprised to admit I like nearly everything about them.
Sucking Up
A large stately box accompanies the new OnTrac cans, but the hard case you use to protect the headphones between uses leaves a lot to be desired. Much like the case that comes with AirPods Max (8/10, WIRED Recommends), the one that comes with the Dyson cans is a slip-in situation with holes in the bottom and top of the case that allow dust and other dirt in when you throw them in your bag. It does little to protect the headphones from bumps and bruises, which is annoying when you’ve dropped this much on a pair of headphones.
Photograph: Parker Hall
The headphones themselves look a bit like Dyson vacuums: They’re maximalist, plastic, and full of color options. My review units came in a flashy metallic copper with navy blue accents, with the option to swap for different color earpads and earcup caps. Given the price, I actually like that you can swap things like this with such ease, because it means you can change them as they wear out.
Unlike recent competitors like the Sonos Ace (8/10, WIRED Recommends), they’re large and bulky, not sleek and light, with a weight of 451 grams compared to the Ace’s 311 grams and AirPods Max’s 385 grams. That said, a comfortable and well-padded headbands and thick cloth earpads give them a great seal around my ears for good passive noise isolation, and they don’t feel heavy on my head.
Bells and Whistles
When you want to turn the headphones on, press a small physical button on the bottom of the right earcup until you hear the noise and see a small light flashing to indicate they’re in pairing mode. From there you’ll control the headphones with either a joystick (another nod to Apple’s AirPods Max) on the right earcup or by touching the left earcup with your hand to toggle between transparency mode or noise canceling. This mix of touch controls and physical controls is perhaps the only annoying thing I found with the OnTrac; I kept accidentally brushing the earcup and turning off ANC when I was doing yard work. I wish that was just another button on one side or the other, rather than controlled by touch.
The filter bank is what makes the Spectravox unique in Moog’s lineup of midrange semi-modular instruments. It’s a dynamic 10-band filter bank with high- and low-pass filters, plus eight bandpass filters in between. These can be used to simply shape incoming audio like an elaborate EQ. But the bands can also be shifted around with the aid of an LFO for creating phaser- and wah-like effects. If you really crank stuff it can even give you pseudo-ring modulation. Is spending $599 on a desktop synthesizer a little overkill just to play some funk guitar? Absolutely. But it’s a fun little trick the Spectravox has in its back pocket.
The filter bank can also be used to produce sound all on its own if you connect a midi controller or sequencer with CV (control voltage) output. If you turn up the resonance of the filter and patch the EG (envelope generator) to the carrier input, then connect the pitch output of the controller to the spectral shift and the gate to the trigger input, then you can coax interesting marimba-like tones out of the Spectravox without any additional audio input.
The Synth
Photograph: Terrence O’Brien
Of course part of the requirement for a vocoder is a carrier signal, in this case a synthesizer. The Spectravox includes an incredibly simple but pretty decent-sounding single-oscillator monophonic synth. It has square and sawtooth options, with variable pulse width on the square. There is also a noise source that you can dial in to dirty up the single oscillator, but it goes from nonexistent to overpowering pretty quickly, and I generally just left it off.
The synth can be combined with a keyboard or sequencer which has CV output and is played like any other synth. Or, you can pair it with some external effects to create risers, drones, and other sound effects. Similar to using the Spectravox as a phaser though, while it’s a nice trick, you don’t need to spend $600 to get a basic monophonic synth. This is a nice perk but not necessarily a reason for it to jump to the top of your shopping list.
Where Spectravox starts to get interesting as a synthesizer is when you start combining all of its various elements in slightly unexpected ways. For instance if, instead of vocals you ran a drum loop into the program input, it would impart its rhythmic ebb and flow to the internal synth, or whatever you were feeding into the carrier.
Better Together
Photograph: Terrence O’Brien
I think the Spectravox really shows its versatility when you use it as a middleman between two different sources of audio. For one, a monophonic vocoder can feel a little thin. But if you plug another synth into the carrier, you can sing in gorgeous polyphonic synth chords. If I wanted to get some rich vocoder action going I would just plug my Korg Minilogue XD into the carrier input. And using things like drum loops to add rhythmic interest to other synths or even my guitar was always a blast. In fact, one of my favorite tricks was feeding a drum machine into the program input, my guitar (through an amp sim pedal first) into the carrier, and then feeding the output of the Spectravox through some chorus and reverb. The result is something that doesn’t sound exactly like a synth or exactly like a guitar. I don’t know how often I’d use such a strange effect, but I’m dying to put it to the test on a guitar solo.
It’s this sort of experimentation that makes the Spectravox so compelling and fun. In fact, it’s what keeps me coming back to Moog’s line of desktop semi-modular synths like the Subharmonicon (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and the DFAM. I love the sound of a good Mini Moog as much as anyone else, but these all offer some new experimental take on Moog’s legacy. My one major complaint about the Spectravox is that it is noisy. I had to cut a lot of the high end to get it to be usable on recordings.
If you’re in the market for a vocoder you should probably skip the Spectravox. There are better and cheaper options for just traditional vocoding, like a MicroKorg ($429) or Arturia’s MicroFreak ($359). But if you want something more playful—something that can be a vocoder if you need it to be but is really more of a sonic playground—the Moog Spectravox might well be worth the $599.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple’s AirPods Pro must be feeling pretty bigheaded these days. Every year we see dozens of new earbuds aiming to model Apple’s distinctive design, with even the latest revamp of Samsung’s Galaxy Buds joining the party.
Looks aside, most models that come across my desk don’t attempt to directly compete with the AirPods Pro’s high-end performance or breezy iOS usability. Instead, buds like OnePlus’s new Nord Buds 3 Pro go the other way, heavily undercutting Apple’s top buds on price while offering solid baseline performance and features.
There’s nothing like the real thing, especially if you want earbuds that cater to all things Apple. For those on a tighter budget, the latest Nord Buds Pro serve up a comfy fit, extras like multipoint connection and decent noise canceling, and clear, punchy sound for well under $100.
Familiar Form
The Nord Buds 3 Pro’s most stand-out trait may be their exorbitantly long yet unmemorable name. No joke, I’ve had to look up the order of this word salad nearly every time I write it.
Their design recalls the AirPods Pro and their many knockoffs, of course, but it’s particularly similar to a pair I recently reviewed from Soundpeats, the Air4 Pro (7/10, WIRED Recommends), right down to their rounded and speckled charging cases. Both pairs have a budget flair with large swaps of shiny plastic throughout, though the Nord Buds’ more compact stems make them marginally easier to wield and wear.
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
Their weight of 4.4 grams per bud is slightly heavier than the Air4 Pro, but still nearly a gram lighter than the AirPods Pro, which combines with their ergonomic design to do a disappearing act in your ears. Like a lot of budget pairs, they only provide three ear tip sizes, but the default pair worked fine for me, providing a stable fit and multiple hours of comfort.
The buds offer snappy and stable device connection over Bluetooth 5.4, often pairing with my iPhone before I pulled it out of my pocket, and Android users get easy one-touch initial pairing with Google Fast Pair+. Multipoint connection is similarly seamless, letting you pair the buds to a phone and a laptop simultaneously to conveniently swap between the two. To initiate, simply hold down the button on the case’s bottom, no app required.
You will want to download the OnePlus app (bizarrely named “Hey Melody”) before getting too far along because the Nord 3 Pro’s play/pause command is turned off by default. I assume this is to prevent unwanted taps while adjusting the buds, but it’s still a baffling default setting. The buds do offer sensors to automatically pause or play audio when you pull one out, something even my favorite budget buds, Soundcore’s Space A40 (8/10, WIRED Recommends), omit. You can easily assign the play/pause control in the app, alongside volume, ambient audio, and song skip commands for a well-rounded experience via generally responsive touch sensors.
The first time I used the HexClad Hybrid Deep Saute Pan, I burned myself on the “Stay Cool” handle (more on that later). I seasoned the pan with oil per the manufacturer’s recommendations, I cooked some eggs, and they turned out mostly OK—but they stuck to the pan that’s marketed as “nonstick.” This led me down the path of minor inconveniences that culminated in one conclusion: HexClad cookware is like, fine, I guess. But the hybrid technology combining stainless steel and nonstick cookware isn’t all that impactful except in the bad ways, and you should just get a good stainless pan and a good nonstick pan instead.
First Impressions
Photograph: Louryn Strampe
When I’m testing gear, I have a rule for myself: Go in with fresh eyes. That means, as much as possible, I avoid other opinions from people—professional reviewers, friends, my pets, et cetera. I was already skeptical of HexClad due to the marketing around it, and my experience cooking on it solidified my hunch. You know when you’re shopping on Amazon and you choose to purchase gift wrap and the items arrive inside a weirdly tacky fabric bag? That’s what the HexClad pans are wrapped in (inside their boxes) upon arrival. It’s minor, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me of staying at a really nice hotel, only to discover that the sheets have a thread count of seven and the toilet paper is transparent. And then I started cooking on them. Cookware coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), or Teflon, is generally thought to be safe, but if it’s damaged or heated past 500 degrees Fahrenheit, it can be harmful to your health. I tried to scrape the surface of the pan with a fork, and it didn’t flake or scratch. That’s a good thing! But on the flip side, due to the hexagonal pattern on the pan’s interior surface, I don’t know that I would see small scratches or chips as easily as I would on a fully nonstick-coated pan. You know what kind of cookware doesn’t have these problems? Carbon steel and cast iron. You know what doesn’t cost $179? Our favorite nonstick pan.
The $179 12-inch Hybrid Fry Pan is fine. It heated evenly and quickly, just a tad slower than my All-Clad comparison. The same is true for the $179 3.3-quart Hybrid Deep Saute Pan. But when these prices are comparable to All-Clad, which I (and many chefs) consider to be the standard, they’d better work just as well, and in my experience that just wasn’t the case. During my month of testing, I cooked stovetop pasta, eggs, and steak twice in each pan.
Plugging in the soundbar through HDMI (it features eARC) to any modern TV means that you can immediately use the TV remote to control audio volume, but you will want to use the remote on the soundbar itself (unless you own an LG TV), to change settings. It does also support things like Tidal Connect Dolby Vision pass-through, which makes it a great bar to stream music to, or plug your disc player in for full-bitrate video (and audio).
Pressing Play
I had the pleasure of reviewing this system alongside LG’s new C4 OLED, which can add even more channels to the mix, contributing its own TV speakers to boost the center channel and make it sound a bit more like the voices are coming directly from the image.
The huge array of speakers and the volume they can produce means you really get a sense of scale when scenes change, or when you go from one type of thing to another. When playing modern classics like Dune and Mad Max: Fury Road, you feel the immensity of the scenes in the audio profile that the bar, subwoofer, and satellite speakers convey. When my wife switches back over to RuPaul’s Drag Race, I’m immediately sucked back into what’s happening onscreen, with more traditional three-channel TV audio that’s absorbing and dynamic, but much smaller-feeling in your space.
Photograph: Parker Hall
You can adjust sound modes on the bar, but I tend to err on the side of standard settings except when watching a film, where I experimented (and occasionally settled on) the Cinema mode, which passes a bit more sound to the surround and height channels, near as I can tell.
Standard mode essentially listens to whatever the TV is telling it to do, which makes it play super nice with LG’s AI processing inside late-model TVs. With this and the C4, it’s essentially a “turn on and forget it’s there” vibe, which is what I prefer in my home theater systems. There is nothing worse than having to open cabinets and hit buttons and wait for things to turn on and see each other. It really can’t be overstated how well it worked (and how rare an experience this is, oddly, in A/V land).
The direct competitor to this model is Samsung’s Q990D ($1,700), which, I have to admit, I prefer in some ways. The audio profile of the LG can be a bit thinner and more bright than Samsung’s, and I find that Samsung’s model bounces sound off the walls a bit better for a wider soundstage. That said, given how well the S95TR integrates with late-model LG TVs, I’d probably choose this over the Samsung bar if I was buying the LG TV, and likewise buy the Samsung bar if I was buying a Samsung TV.
As far as simple (and, let’s be honest, not heinously expensive) ways to outfit a room with a pretty solid approximation of what they’d experience in an A/V nerd’s cave, I think LG has really nailed it here. If I was buying a C4 and didn’t have a proper sound system to pair it with, I’d really be looking at this.
Now for the interesting part. Where other brands offer masks with a broad spectrum of light colours, The Light Salon claims that “most of these are ineffective at making a visible difference to your skin.”
“Green wavelengths, for instance, penetrate poorly and are absorbed by melanin and superficial blood. They will not reach the dermis where the main cells for healing and rejuvenation are located, and therefore will not stimulate the production of collagen and elastin,” The Light Salon says.
“By contrast, longer wavelengths such as red 633nm and near-infrared 830nm,” which is what the brand uses, “do penetrate well, reach the dermis, and are clinically proven to be optimal wavelengths for skin health and rejuvenation.”
“Whether you have 99 or 199 bulbs in a device, if the wavelength is inaccurate or inconsistent, the light will not hit the targeted area and in turn, won’t have the desired effect on the skin and body. Precision wavelengths are everything,” says The Light Salon.
GLAMOUR Road Test: The routine
Cleanse and pat dry your face as you would normally, but hold off adding any lotions or potions to your skin for now.
If your eyes are sensitive to light, apply the eye shields.
Secure the mask comfortably to your face using the adjustable straps at the top and back of the head.
Attach the controller and switch it on by firmly pressing the button
Relax. The device will automatically time out at the end of your treatment, and in the meantime you can sit and scroll on your phone or read a chapter of that new book you’ve been meaning to pick up for a while…
After your 10 minutes are up you can go about performing the rest of your skincare routine (i.e. serum, moisturiser and SPF if it’s the daytime), and don’t forget to clean your device by using a water-based wipe or damp clean cloth when required.
Can you use it after Botox, fillers or surgery?
Yes. LED will actually help to take down the swelling in a day, too, but bruising tends to take longer to treat. The best practice for that is to use the mask consistently for 2 days prior, as that will lessen your chances for bruising, and then continue for the week after.
For best results, treat your skin a minimum of three times a week.
The Light Salon Boost LED Face Mask
GLAMOUR Road Test: The verdict
The Light Salon’s Boost LED Mask is an investment device, there’s no denying that. At £395 I can see why it’s been dubbed as couture skincare – but my honest take? It’s worth it. While I may need something a bit more chemical-grade to help with my older and more stubborn acne scars, I have definitely seen a vast improvement overall. My complexion is much less angry, and even the fine lines on my forehead have smoothed out.
The Light Salon offer everything from devices (for the face, neck, chest and body) to haircare, optimised skincare, and even salon treatments. As a bride-to-be, I’ve got my sights set on their Bridal Facial packages next…
GLAMOUR Road Test: TLDR
Let’s recap…
What do you get? The Light Salon Boost LED Mask, control unit, power supply and country specific adaptors, 2x head straps, protective bag, eye wear.
What does it do? Stimulates collagen and elastin production cells, improves blood flow and tissue oxygenation.
How do you use it? Wear over clean, make-up free skin. Firmly press the button until the lights turn on and wait for the mask to turn off automatically after 10 minutes.
How often should you use? 3-5 times a week or daily if preferred.
Is it worth it? It’s comfortable and easy to use and shows good results with consistency, but it is one of the more expensive options in our best LED face masks edit.
Cat Quest 3 has just about everything I want out of an indie RPG. Gorgeously vibrant visuals and a whimsical atmosphere to lose myself in? Check. A unique premise and satisfying progression? Check. Meaningful exploration that encourages me to complete as much as I possibly can? Check, check, and double-check.
The icing on this bright and colorful pirate-themed cake is its relentless and unwavering commitment to the feline species. With seven years of catspertise under their belt, The Gentlebros have created a brilliant pirate-themed setting that serves as a brilliant set dressing for a world inhabited by cat heroes and rat foes. The tone is as bright and whimsical as its gorgeous visuals. If you’re as enthralled by cats as I am, you’ll be easily won over by Cat Quest 3. If not, there’s still an incredibly rewarding action RPG to get stuck into.
Image Source: Kepler Interactive via Twinfinite
Similar to previous entries in the series, Cat Quest 3 wears its Torchlight and Zelda inspirations on its sleeve but adds a piratey twist for some extra flavor. As an honest-to-goodness swashbuckling purrivateer, you get to hop into your very own pirate ship for the first time in the series. It helps to sell the pirate fantasy reasonably well as you sail across the open seas in search of treasure across the Purribbean’s many Pi-Rat-infested islands.
The game’s premise is as simple as you’d expect from a Cat Quest game – don’t expect a deeply complicated tale of branching storylines, meaningful relationships, or political intrigue here. You are a washed-up cat, trained by your little feline ghost pal to be the best pirate around. You’re ultimately looking to get your paws on the famed North Star treasure in the hopes of granting your deepest wishes. Hopefully, you’ll also get the chance for a spot of satisfying payback against the villainous Pi-Rat King while you’re at it.
It’s a simple tale that won’t win any awards, but does a decent job of providing enough setup to get you from point A to B. Some of the game’s most memorable aspects are the various adorable characters you’ll meet along the way, such as a no-nonsense milk tavern owner and a kitty blacksmith that references past Cat Quest games. If you follow the side stories and quests of these adorable NPCs, you are rewarded with surprisingly heartwarming and touching interactions that will put a smile on your face. It’s a sweet game, not just in looks but also in its tone.
It’s also pretty funny if you can stomach the downright absurd amount of cat puns The Gentlebros have stuffed in here. As a self-confessed lover of dad jokes and puns, I must admit that it grew a tad tiresome near the end of the game’s 10-15-hour runtime. However, whether you’re a fan of the overuse of cat puns or not, the game is a joyous experience that evokes childlike wonder.
Image Source: Kepler Interactive via Twinfinite
Nothing encapsulates Cat Quest 3’s delightfully whimsical tone more than its gorgeously realized colorful 2.5D visuals. Like a mix between Paper Mario, Cult of the Lamb, and Zelda, Cat Quest 3 is an absolute delight to explore. From the get-go, you hunker down on a humble little island, with the entire world tantalizingly tempting you to set sail off into the distance.
It helps that the impressive draw distance allows you to see faraway islands, dungeons, and towns. It gives a decent sense of scale that has you excited to explore as soon as you hop in. I was particularly impressed with the striking sea blue hue of the water and the gorgeous sunset effect of the northern part of the map. Thankfully you get a ship to sail through these beautiful open seas on your search for treasure and pirate glory.
Hopping into your ship is the speediest way to get about in Cat Quest 3. With the press of a button, you can boost and zoom your way through open water in no time at all. It’s a satisfying way to get around, but ship combat can leave a little to be desired. While it can feel good to blast your way through enemy ships with your basic and special cannons, I often found myself fighting to control it.
Image Source: Kepler Interactive via Twinfinite
As the ship has such a wide turning distance, it can be difficult to steer it exactly where you want it to go, often leading you straight into the receiving end of an enemy cannonball. It’s not so much of a problem early on, but can become very frustrating when facing much tougher enemy ships later. Thankfully, you have the option to upgrade your ship’s health and firepower to negate this control issue, but it’s still disappointing nonetheless.
Your ship is most likely going to explode from enemy fire if you stray too far from the beaten path in the game’s early stages. While sailing merrily away and happily bopping my head to some great pirate-inspired romps, I strolled right into an area I clearly wasn’t supposed to. I was aghast to see several terrifying enemy ships that were 20 levels above me. When I managed to disembark on a nearby island, I was also greeted by several over-leveled enemies on foot and was quickly and easily dispatched.
The Gentlebros have level-gated content until you level up your character, upgrade gear, and complete quests. While understandable, I did find this a little frustrating, as I simply wanted to explore as much of this gorgeous map as I could. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.
Image Source: Kepler Interactive via Twinfinite
Other than the frustrating level-gating in the earlier portions of the game, Cat Quest 3’s open world is an absolute joy to explore. The sun-kissed Purribbean has a ton of content to discover, including countless chests to loot, secrets to find, and dungeons to delve into. With so much to explore, my inner completionist was thankful for the map’s helpful green check marks that denote when you have fully cleared an island.
There are plenty of secrets to uncover in Cat Quest 3 which encourages you to dutifully turn over every stone and check behind every bush in case you miss something. Sometimes you will stumble upon a side quest that leads you down an intriguing rabbit hole that will take you on a mini adventure. The dungeons feel different from the open world, sometimes giving a more 2D perspective compared to other 2.5D you find outside. They often contain high-level enemies that reward you with gear and loot for completing them.
That brings me to one of the main things you’ll be doing in Cat Quest 3: combat. At first, the combat system presents itself as fairly basic, with only one button for melee, ranged, and spell attacks, and another for dodge rolls. There isn’t an option to parry enemy attacks (Dark Souls, this is not), which means you need to pay attention to enemy attack animations and dodge out of harm’s way.
The minute-to-minute feel of the combat is pretty simple and standard indie fare, but it’s your character’s level, weapons, and gear that you need to pay attention to. These add significant complexity and variety to your builds with plenty of options for melee, ranged, and magic play styles.
Image Source: Kepler Interactive via Twinfinite
You can increase the stats of weapons, armor, and spells at certain Vendors in the main hub area. You’ll want to do this earlier rather than later, as you’ll later find duplicates of these items that will increase their level each time you stumble across them, making it cheaper in the long run. Upgrading gear is particularly important in Cat Quest 3 as combat can get pretty difficult fairly quickly.
In addition to spells and melee and ranged weapons, you also get to equip Trinkets. These each increase specific stats and add a unique passive ability that changes up gameplay in a significant way. These are where you can truly experiment and specialize your build in Cat Quest 3. Whether you want to be a swashbuckling melee pirate or a damage-dealing mage, there is a nice amount of freedom on offer to allow you to choose how you want to play.
Despite appearing simple on the surface, difficulty will ramp up quickly. You’ll need to use a variety of tactics and make sure your stats are at a decent level. Early on, I had my butt handed to me and saw the game over screen more than I’d care to admit. Thankfully, the potential for build diversity and strategy had me beating enemies back with ease in no time.
More than 10 hours in, combat became a cakewalk with my overpowered lightning-focussed build that had me stun-locking foes and defeating them before they could get a chance to retaliate. It saw me through most of the game’s content and made boss fights an absolute breeze. Despite the initial basic feel of the combat, what you can do with your builds and how you can vary your strategy is what’s most interesting here.
Image Source: Kepler Interactive via Twinfinite
Though the game isn’t purrfect (puns are back on the menu) by any means, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Cat Quest 3. It doesn’t have the most sophisticated story or combat system, but its fantastic potential for exploration and build diversity results in an experience that is hard to peel away from. The feline-inspired whimsical charm and gorgeous sun-kissed visuals make it a world I want to be in far beyond the 10-hour runtime. Whether you’re a cat lover or not, Cat Quest 3 is an all-around good time and is an undeniably charming and wonderful pirate adventure.
Cat Quest 3
Despite a basic story and simple combat, Cat Quest 3 is a charming adventure that you’ll want to spend as much time as you can exploring.
Pros
Gorgeous vibrant visuals
Great potential for build diversity
Exploration is satisfying
Content-rich
Charming tone
Cons
Bare bones story
Basic minute-to-minute combat
Finnicky ship controls
Frustrating early level-gating
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review. Reviewed on PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch.
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When my husband and I swapped out our Vizio OLED for Roku’s Pro Series QLED and switched it on, both of us gasped. Even my two children (7 and 9) were mesmerized when they turned on Steven Universe. “Why does it look so much better now?” my daughter asked.
The difference between OLED and QLED is palpable (as you can also read in our How to Buy a TV guide). OLED technology is beautiful, but it lends itself to truly black blacks; it’s best if you’re watching movies or gaming in an optimized, dark, home-theater-like environment. A QLED is just … brighter. That makes a huge difference when you’re 7 and 9, watching cartoons while jumping on the couch and waiting for dinner, or when you’re a mom who is trying to catch a bit of the Copa America games on the couch with her dog while working.
This is the first of Roku’s in-house-made TVs (Roku TVs made before last year were made by other companies, just with a Roku brain). My colleague Parker Hall tested the entry-level Roku TV, the Plus Series, and was very impressed. For a month now, my family and I have been testing the upgraded Roku Pro Series and have also been thrilled.
User Friendly
Specs and performance aside, one of the main reasons you buy a Roku anything is because of how easy it is to use. I really liked my Vizio OLED and just accepted that every time I turned it on, I’d have to spend five minutes sorting through the Vizio Smart interface and fiddling with cables if I wanted to play on my gaming PC.
Photograph: Adrienne So
It was with a deep sigh of relief that I plugged in my Sonos soundbar, PS5, and gaming PC into the Roku TV and watched everything just … show up in the Roku interface. (It has two HDMI 2.1 ports, HDMI eARC, USB-A, USB-C, and cable inputs.)
Although you can mount it, I just placed it on our console table with the two included feet and it fit easily. Adding all your apps—Netflix, Disney+, Fubo—takes about as long as clicking on the Add Channels button and signing in on your computer, which is basically zero time unless you’ve forgotten your login information.
Having an easy-to-navigate interface also makes it much easier to figure out other things to watch. Vizio’s interface was so cluttered that my kids often just went straight to Steven Universe. On Roku’s, the CuriosityStream and PBS Kids tiles are so easy to find that they ended up watching more educational content just out of, well, curiosity. That was an unexpected gift in summer, when all the neighborhood kids just end up watching TV at our house in the air-conditioning.
The beauty of an iPad is its versatility. You can use it as a tablet for entertainment, as a drawing pad for sketching, or as a laptop to do some light work. But that also means you need the right accessories. Apple sells a ton of first-party options, but they’re fairly limited, not to mention downright expensive.
Take, for example, Apple’s Smart Folio. It’s great for watching TV or sketching, but you need to provide a keyboard and mouse if you want to use the tablet as a laptop. The Magic Keyboard case, on the other hand, doesn’t detach from the keyboard, and it’s top-heavy, so it’s not conducive for anything other than getting work done. The only ideal choice is Apple’s Magic Keyboard Folio. The top half protects the back and has a built-in kickstand. The bottom half is a detachable keyboard with a trackpad. It‘s my favorite iPad case Apple ever made, but unfortunately, it only works with the 10th-generation iPad. Why Apple hasn’t expanded support to the rest of its iPads is baffling.
Thankfully, there’s a solution in the form of the Logitech Combo Touch. It’s almost identical to Apple’s Magic Keyboard Folio, but Logitech has been making it for several years in a row. The latest version is designed specifically for the 13-inch iPad Pro, but other versions are available for the iPad and iPad Air. As someone who is constantly switching between using the tablet to get work done during the day and to watch TV at night, it’s a must-have iPad accessory.
Adaptable All-Around
There’s not all that much to the Combo Touch. It’s comprised of two pieces. The first half is the actual case—it’s made of a soft-touch fabric with raised bumpers around the display for extra protection. The right side has a slot to store and charge the Apple Pencil Pro (or to just store it if you have the USB-C Pencil). On the back is an excellent kickstand that can be angled in a variety of positions. It’s super sturdy too, never wobbling when I tap on the display, when I place it on my bed to watch TV, or when it’s on my lap.
Photograph: Brenda Stolyar
The bottom half is the keyboard and mouse. It’s made of low-carbon aluminum and feels just as premium as the redesigned Magic Keyboard case (if you have an older iPad, the case has a fabric texture instead). Both pieces connect via Apple’s Smart Connector, so you don’t have to worry about Bluetooth connectivity and, therefore, having to charge the case. This mechanism also makes it easy to quickly attach and detach both pieces.
The keys come with an adjustable backlight too, along with built-in function row keys to quickly brighten or dim them right from the keyboard. In addition to the basic keys like brightness, playback controls, and volume controls, there’s a Do Not Disturb key and Screenshot key as well. The scissor keys are comfortable to type on all day, and this is coming from someone very particular about my keyboards. I use a mechanical keyboard at my desk, so I thought it would be tough to adjust to the Combo Touch, but I find it satisfying—I’m writing this review on it.
This case also makes the entire iPadOS experience far more tolerable for work. I can set the display at a variety of angles, the keys are large and clicky enough to type on for long periods without feeling fatigued, and the trackpad is responsive (despite being a bit too large).
Insta360’s Go 3 was an incredibly fun action camera. It could morph from a more traditional GoPro-like camera to a unique, pendant-style wearable. It made shots possible that you just couldn’t get with more traditional GoPro-style cameras.
This year, the company released the Go 3S. The updated camera adds support for 4K video, higher bit rates for smoother video, and improved battery life.
Sensor Improvements
Externally the Go 3S is difficult to distinguish from the Go 3. They’re the same size, the rear flip-up screen is unchanged, and the USB-C port is in the same spot. The main visible difference is the lens guard, which is bigger and thicker. I like this change because it makes it much easier to pull the lens portion out of the Action Pod, as Insta360 calls the body portion of the design.
The only other minor external changes I found are the more-textured, easier-to-grip edges for the camera lens portion and the power and Q buttons on the side. Otherwise, all the significant changes in the Go 3S are inside the camera.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
The headline feature of the Insta360 Go 3S is undoubtedly the 4K video. I said in my review of the Go 3 that “I never once noticed the 2.7K footage from the Go 3 being 2.7K, which is to say, unless you shoot side-by-side with a [4K camera], most people would never be able to tell the image quality difference.” I stand by that. But when you are putting 2.7K side by side with 4K in the same video, you can tell the difference. For instance, I always found it difficult to mix footage from the Go 3 with footage from my GoPro, which I often shoot in 5.3K. This is where the real appeal of the new Go 3S lies. The 4K footage does objectively look better (though again, you need to put it side by side to see it). More importantly, it mixes naturally with 4K footage from other cameras like the GoPro Hero 12 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) or the Insta360 Ace Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends).
What impressed me most about video from the Go 3S wasn’t so much the additional sharpness, which is there, but the lack of pixelation, particularly in motion shots. Where the Go 3 tended to get quite pixelated in motion shots (e.g., while riding a bike), the Go 3S does not. This improvement is likely due more to the Go 3S’s higher bit rate (120 Mbps versus 80 Mbps) than the 4K video, but either way it’s a welcome improvement.
That said, there is still a good bit of pixelation at higher frame rates, so I recommend avoiding them. Shooting at 120 fps isn’t too bad, but the 200 fps mode is often unusable. (The quality of the footage depends a lot on lighting, but even in pretty good light, 200 fps is too much for this sensor and lens to handle well).
Sports cars tend to be less common, and more aspirational, than SUVs or people-carriers. Headphones with planar magnetic drivers tend to be less common, and more aspirational, than headphones with dynamic drivers. In some ways, the reasons for this are very similar. Planar magnetic drivers, which use thin pieces of metal held between magnets—are a bit like sports cars: They’re designed for uncompromised performance. Like sports cars, they’re also trickier, more expensive, and more time-consuming to produce. They tend to make the headphones that feature them bigger and bulkier than the dynamic driver alternative, which is the only place where my clever sports car/SUV analogy rolls into a wall.
The broad point still stands. Planar magnetic drivers tend to be the preserve of specialist brands and tend to be fitted to headphones costing a great deal more than those alternative designs that feature dynamic drivers. But no one, it seems, has mentioned any of this to Edifier.
Edifier was established in Beijing in 1996 and hit the ground running where loudspeakers and headphones are concerned. By 2012 it had wholly acquired the venerated Japanese headphone brand Stax, which, in terms of prestige, is a bit like the time Fiat acquired Ferrari. (I promise, this will be the last of my auto industry comparisons.) Now Edifier has launched a new pair of wireless over-ear planar magnetic headphones called the Stax Spirit S5 that are no bigger or more expensive than some of the leading dynamic driver designs. They’re fantastic headphones that bring music and films to life better than dynamic drivers can, and they are well worth considering for audiophiles who may otherwise have purchased wired headphones.
That’s the Spirit
The Stax Spirit S5 are not, it’s worth noting, Edifier’s first affordable planar magnetic headphones to go wireless. Where pricing and specs are concerned, with one notable exception, it’s hard to dispute that they’re the company’s most ambitious.
So yes, planar magnetic drivers: Unlike the far more common dynamic driver alternative, which produce sound via a conical diaphragm driven by a voice coil within a magnetic field, planar magnetic drivers use a tremendously thin, flat diaphragm with implanted wires. It’s suspended in a gap between two magnets that vibrate the diaphragm to produce sound. The magnets need to be big enough to cover the entire surface area of the diaphragm, which is why this type of design tends to be bigger and heavier than the dynamic alternative. It’s a more power-hungry arrangement too.
Photograph: Simon Lucas
In the case of the Stax Spirit S5, the diaphragm is a mere 2 microns thick and is embedded with the second generation of Edifier’s “EqualMass” wiring. By connecting different numbers of wires of the same width in a symmetrical structure, uniform driving force can be achieved; the diaphragm will move back and forth with the same momentum across its entire surface, keeping distortion to a bare minimum.
The esoteric nature of their drivers aside, the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 feature most of what the market tends to demand at the price. They use Bluetooth 5.4 for wireless connectivity, and thanks to the Qualcomm QCC5181 SoC they have codec support up to and including LHDC, LDAC, and aptX Lossless. With an appropriate source of music, they can deliver a lossless 16-bit/44.1-kHz resolution, as well as “lossy” 24-bit/96-kHz. AptX Voice is onboard in an effort to deliver optimal call quality, and multipoint connectivity is available for the multitaskers among us.
Battery life is a very impressive 80 hours from a single charge, and if you’re negligent enough to run out of power, a 15-minute pit stop will hold you for another whopping 13 hours. If you’ve an Android device running Marshmallow or newer, Google Fast Pair is available.
The USB-C socket on the right ear cup can be used for data transfer as well as charging the battery, and there’s a 3.5-mm input on the left ear cup for the same hard-wired purpose. Edifier provides both cables in the S5 packaging.
The 9i offers excellent usability with gently concave keys that have plenty of travel, a responsive touchpad, and the flexibility to flip the screen around and put the laptop in an inverted-V tent shape or lay it flat for the full tablet experience. A simple stylus is included for those looking to do more detailed work. I found typing to be a breeze, and nothing has changed about the chassis design either, which is all rounded edges and corners, weighing in at a svelte 2.4 pounds and measuring 18 mm thick.
As for performance, Intel’s latest chip is giving all manner of laptops a leg up, but as has been the case with most of the devices I’ve tested of late, power hasn’t exactly shot through the roof. My benchmark scores were mixed across the range of general business and graphics-focused apps, ultimately turning in slightly above-average numbers compared to the field of similarly equipped devices.
Photograph: Best Buy
Battery life, however, is a significant concern. While Gilbertson achieved double-digit hours of running time in 2023, my YouTube test saw the laptop dying after just under seven hours. This is a real disappointment for a machine of this size, so much so that I ran the test a couple of times to verify I hadn’t messed something up. The score held. Bizarrely, the 9i is also quite slow to boot; I clocked a lengthy 38 seconds to reach a state of usability—more than double the typical booting time for a 2024 laptop—and that doesn’t include the time it takes to figure out where the power button is.
At $1,450, the 2024 Yoga 9i is fairly priced, though I wouldn’t be averse to suggesting you keep your eyes open for a sale or two. Still, even at list price, it remains, just like Lenovo itself said, as tried and true as ever.
I used tolove Samsung’s wireless earbuds. They came in all types of magical shapes and sizes, with designs that genuinely seemed to embrace the new frontier that totally portable listening devices offered. Why on earth the brand shifted course and began imitating Apple (badly) for its third generation of wireless buds, I honestly can’t say.
The new Galaxy Buds3 look (and mostly act) like a Cybertruck version of standard AirPods, rather than an updated version of the Buds2 that I gave a 9/10, WIRED Recommends badge a few years ago. They cost more than the AirPods, are even less comfortable, and sound worse.
What’s particularly baffling isn’t that Samsung is bobbing for Apple’s designs, it’s that it had perfectly excellent earbuds to begin with. The Galaxy Buds3 sound worse than their predecessors, work worse than their predecessors, and cost more than their predecessors. They aren’t very good at all, even when compared to AirPods (which also aren’t very good).
Back in the Box
It gets embarrassing as soon as you start unboxing them: The case is a rip-off of the rounded rectangular thing you get with the AirPods Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends), but with a clear plastic top that makes it look and feel cheaper. The case works fine, with wireless and USB-C charging so you can place them on a mat by your door so you don’t forget them when you head out.
The buds themselves look as though AirPods took a flight to Austin, Texas, with nearly identical rounded plastic upper ear tips that transform into silver triangles as you go toward the tip of the elephant trunk. (They also come in white, where they look so much like Apple’s product that you probably would mistake them if you saw someone wearing them.) There is a bright red accent on the right earbud (and inside the case) to tell you which bud is which, which is admittedly a nice addition over Apple’s drab white nothingness, but otherwise these look like Cybertrucked AirPods in every sense of the word.
Photograph: Parker Hall
They’re larger and more cumbersome to insert than standard AirPods, especially thanks to said triangular design: Gripping a triangle to adjust an ear tip is significantly harder than gripping a rounded cylinder, which makes putting them in and out of your ears a test of dexterity.
Same goes for the controls, which use the same squeeze and swipe controls that AirPods offer, except the shape of the buds means I always messed up the way they were sitting in my ears whenever I wanted to adjust volume or change tracks. What happened to the simple touch controls and shockingly comfortable design of the Buds2?
On the Go
The main feature Samsung is touting for these new buds is that they have AI onboard, so you can use voice controls to change songs, adjust volume, answer calls, and even do real-time translation. The voice controls work fine, but Samsung’s AI-based translation isn’t great; I asked my wife, who is fluent in Spanish (the most likely language to be used for this here in the United States), to speak a few sentences, and the app missed all context and translated poorly. Stick to Google Translate.
The app is full of all sorts of other unhelpful features too. The headphones will, for some reason, remind you if your neck has been bent over for too long. If you’re bent over for so long you’re getting neck pain, I’m not sure a pair of headphones cheerfully chirping at you will solve the problem.
Then there is the active noise canceling: Because the headphones have such a poor seal, it’s like putting an air conditioner next to an open window. Sure, the ANC does what it can to remove outside noise, but without a physical barrier (like ear tips) to seal out the world (or place it through some sort of venting like Apple does with the AirPods Pro and Samsung used to do with the older Galaxy Buds), its abilities are limited. All this to say: You won’t get silence wearing these buds, even with ANC cranked and your music blasting along with it.
Say what you want about the creative power of AI in the new Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, with its new EliteBook Ultra G1q, HP says, “Why not take it to the office?”
This is a laptop that’s all business—an “atmospheric blue” (not black) 14-inch clamshell, with nothing in the way of design frills aside from a silvery HP logo on top and a row of half-height function keys that are a bit lighter in color. Oh, and there’s a baby blue power button! Never accuse Hewlett-Packard of not knowing how to have a little fun, even in the corner office.
The feature list here is a familiar one for the Copilot+ PC market, though the specs on this machine are surprisingly entry-level. The slower Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 serves as the CPU, backed by 16 GB of RAM and a 512-GB solid-state drive. The 14-inch touchscreen resolution sits at an oddball 2,240 x 1,400 pixels, a step down from the 2,880 x 1,800 resolution that has become the prevailing standard for machines with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Port selection isn’t impressive either, with two USB-C ports (one specified at Thunderbolt-class 40 Gbps, the other at 10 Gbps) and a single USB-A port. Contrast that with the Asus Vivobook S 15, which has two fast USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI, and a microSD card reader.
Photograph: Christopher Null
At 18 millimeters thick, the machine cuts a svelte profile, but its 3-pound weight is on the high end for 14-inch laptops. That’s surely in part due to the tough aluminum chassis—50 percent recycled, and the keycaps are made of 50 percent plastic—and it’s also clear that the laptop has been designed to be beaten up a little bit: tossed in a shoulder bag, abused on an airplane’s tray table. If nothing else, the EliteBook certainly feels sturdy enough to hit the road with you without worry of damage.
Alas, the fairly low-end specs under the hood beget disappointing performance, and across the board, the EliteBook turned in the lowest benchmark scores among Copilot+ PCs I’ve tested to date. The delta isn’t huge—2 percent slower than the Microsoft Surface Pro on broad CPU-focused workloads, and slower by up to 10 percent on most graphics tests—but it’s measurable, and sometimes noticeable on tasks such as Live Captions, which had trouble keeping up with faster-moving speech. As expected, the EliteBook has the same lingering compatibility issues as other Qualcomm Snapdragon-based laptops that utilize the ARM architecture, which I explain in broader detail here.
One major omission from this model is a backlit keyboard, which is disappointing if you want to use it in the dark. Older CX34 models came with a backlit keyboard, so, curiously, Asus opted not to ship one on this updated version.
The good news is that, despite the lack of a backlight, the keyboard is comfortable to use for long periods. It has a solid amount of travel and never feels onerous to type on. If I had to name one quibble, it’s the small size of the home-key ridges on the “F” and “J” keys, which make it a little harder to touch-type.
The trackpad is large and spacious, though the material it’s made of creates more drag on your finger than I’d like. I also encountered one bug with the trackpad during testing where it was unresponsive after waking the CX34 from sleep. This seemed to be a one-off and was remedied by a restart (a quick process for Chromebooks), but it’s worth noting.
For everyday work and web browsing, the touch display on the CX34 is fantastic. It’s a 14-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 pixel panel that looks crisp and cuts down on a decent amount of glare with a matte finish. It isn’t the brightest display out there though, and it can struggle when working outdoors on a sunny day.
Photograph: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster
While the 16:9 screen ratio is pretty standard for laptops, I would have liked to see Asus go for a slightly taller 16:10 display here. The increased vertical space on a 16:10 screen is great for the productivity work the CX34 is targeting. You can see this in action on competitors like Acer’s Chromebook Plus Spin 714.
Port selection on the CX34 is pretty good, with two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, an HDMI slot, and a standard headphone jack. The USB-C ports can charge the laptop with the surprisingly compact 45-watt charger Asus includes in the box, but they can also be used for DisplayPort over USB-C connections to external monitors.
At this point there’s little to say about Teenage Engineering that hasn’t been said. Every review of the sleek Swedish audio brand’s gadgets commences with a hot take that ultimately underscores the same points: While their gear is quirky and astonishingly expensive, it’s tough to hate what they’re doing when they do it so well.
Within the synth space, and the broader realm of Very Online People who make music between bouts of doomscrolling, the Swedish gearmaker functions somewhat like comedian Tim Robinson’s Netflix series I Think You Should Leave. The final product is proudly defiant concept art that’s brilliant but also kind of annoying. It’s critically acclaimed, yet clearly not for everyone. And the memes that swirl in its wake are pure gold.
When compared to its brethren in the brand’s “Field” series of ultraportable musical devices, the TX-6 makes a compelling case for being the most useful and worthy of its hefty $1,199 price tag. At its core the TX-6 is a mobile USB-C interface and standalone mixer, with an impressive six stereo ⅛-inch inputs packed into a sturdy, handsome little unit that’s smaller than a deck of cards. Plug an audio source into one of the top-mounted jacks and the small black-and-white display asks whether you’re using a stereo or dual mono source. Adjust highs, mids, and lows with the cutest little trim pots you’ve ever caressed, and the vertical sliders below adjust each track’s volume, which outputs to a ¼-inch jack at the bottom of the unit.
A white knob under the display screen steps gently as you turn it left or right to adjust the master output volume. A click of the knob opens up an expansive menu of options like tempo syncing, Bluetooth connectivity, and defaults settings for the channel knobs. A pair of color-coded FX buttons toggle effects like reverb, delay, and EQ, and the shift button unlocks a world of menu diving that lurks beneath the TX-6’s small but mighty surface. The USB-C port offers a driver-free, class-compliant connection to an iPad or the desktop device of your choice. It even works seamlessly with an iPhone through USB-C to Lightning, via an MFi-certified connection. Insert a thumb drive in the USB-C port and you can record a live stereo track directly to the drive from the TX-6’s master mixdown channel. You’ll need to furnish your own mic to capture audio on the fly with this method, but it’s a tad more practical than the similar workflow you’d find on the TP-7.
Photograph: Pete Cottell
A Teeny Tiny Mixer
It’s no surprise the unit’s diminutive size necessitates significant tradeoffs that a traditional studio-based musician will find annoying. Plugging in a guitar or a traditional microphone requires a converter, and the plastic housing of the average ⅛-inch connector you’d find at Amazon or Guitar Center is a tight fit next to the other inputs. Pair that with the lack of 48-volt phantom power for condenser mics and your best bet is either a cheap lavalier mic with a built-in ⅛-inch output or a newfangled influencer mic like the Tula or the Austrian Audio MiCreator. Teenage Engineering sells its own connectors, of course, with prices ranging from $12 for a simple ⅛-inch to ⅛-inch cable, to $19 for a stereo ⅛-inch to dual-mono ¼-inch cable.
To test the Galaxy Watch Ultra, I had to take off the Apple Watch Ultra 2 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) with a mere two days left to go before completing my 28-day preliminary Training Load analysis. Training Load is a new feature in watchOS 11 that takes cumulative, calorimetric data like heart rate, pace, effort, and age to gauge whether your efforts are improving your fitness performance or not. It was annoying to be so close and not finish. However, it was not as annoying as it might have been, since I’ve tried this feature before. Garmin has had a Training Load feature for years.
In the race to create the most fully-featured outdoor smartwatch that works well with your phone, Apple is clearly winning. The Apple Watch Ultra’s design is more visually distinctive. The software is better, with more sports like diving, better algorithms like Training Load, and a better UI. It’s also hilarious how closely the Galaxy Watch Ultra’s design mimics Apple’s, with a safety orange band that looks exactly like Apple’s Ocean Band ($99) and a Quick Button on the side where you can assign a function, like Apple’s Action button. There’s even a gesture-based feature very similar to Double Tap, which is called (still laughing) Double Pinch.
With all that said, Samsung has the resources to catch up quickly, and I found no major flaws. If you’re pretty happy as an Android user and would like the experience of wearing an Apple Watch Ultra, this is a decent start. It can only get better.
Add It Up
The Galaxy Watch Ultra is very pretty. It’s not as visually distinctive as the Apple Watch Ultra, but its design does echo the look of a high-end Garmin or Coros watch. It’s a 47-mm smartwatch, which makes it slightly smaller than the Watch Ultra’s 49-mm case, but it feels bigger because it’s square instead of rectangular.
It has a titanium case with a sapphire glass face that is rated to 10 ATM (which means it can withstand the pressure exerted by 100 meters of water) and IP68, and can withstand elevations as high as 9,000 meters and temperatures as high as 131 degrees Fahrenheit. I didn’t have the opportunity to bag a Colorado 14er while testing, but I did stupidly go biking to run errands with temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a heat wave, and the watch operated well (I did not).
Photograph: Adrienne So
Battery life is my main issue with these smartwatches turned extreme fitness trackers. The Watch Ultra can last a little longer than two days, which is great for a smartwatch but far below what you’d need for your average weekend camping trip. Every other morning, it took three hours to charge the watch back up from 10 or 15 percent. With Power Saving mode on, the watch could last up to three to five days. I like being able to tinker with the settings to figure out what to turn off or keep on to extend the battery life.
Samsung notes that the watch has a new enhanced BioActive sensor, which increases the accuracy of the heart rate sensor and other new health metrics. It’s remarkably consistent with what I track on my Oura ring—for example, if the Oura said my heart rate was 69, the live reading on the Galaxy Watch Ultra was 70.
The other new feature is the AGEs index. According to Samsung, the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra can measure your advanced glycation end products (AGEs). (Diagnoptics is the company that powers the tool, which takes readings via a light source that excites specific fluorescent moieties, or molecule parts, on your skin). Your AGEs index is important because it can help predict the risk of diabetes and stroke; the way most people do this now is by taking a test called an A1C, which is a more invasive blood test.
I have an almost irrational desire to avoid moving my hand from my keyboard to my mouse if I can avoid it. The minor interruption is an inefficiency that bothers me. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit counting exactly how many times I have to press tab to navigate menus and learning keyboard shortcuts so I can do things faster without interrupting my flow.
While using the Clevetura CLVX 1 keyboard, I can only imagine the folks who designed this are just like me. This keyboard has a built-in touchpad directly on top of the keys itself. A small section just above the space bar and between the two Shift keys has a rectangular outline, indicating that, at any moment, the keys you’re touching can turn into a trackpad.
I was deeply skeptical at first. I’m not a big trackpad person (I’m the type of person who uses an MMO gaming mouse for work), but I thought it would be nice to be able to at least move my cursor or click on something quickly. If it works. That last thought had a sarcastic tone.
Then I tried it. And I was pleasantly surprised. It works.
Seamless Touch
The CLVX 1 can connect to your computer via one of three Bluetooth channels (each with their own button for easy swapping) or a USB-C cable. After pairing it to my laptop, I expected that I would need to download some proprietary software or something to get full use of the device, but to my delight, I accidentally moved my cursor with the trackpad mere seconds after pairing was done.
The keys are flat and fairly close together, which is a mild annoyance while typing, but in my experience, it wasn’t that much different from some chiclet-style laptop keyboards. More importantly, it meant swiping across the touchpad area felt so smooth I occasionally forgot that I was touching a keyboard.
My biggest concern, of course, was whether I would accidentally trigger the touchpad. The only way this concept works is if the cursor moves the instant I swipe across the touchpad area. If there’s any delay, or if I have to activate any buttons to swap, I may as well grab my mouse. Impressively, the CLVX 1 managed to intuit exactly when I was trying to move my cursor, and distinguish when I was merely resting my fingers on the keyboard.
Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft
There were a couple of minor hiccups early on as I was getting used to it. I have a tendency to hover my fingers over my keys as I think about what to type next, and this sometimes meant that I lightly tapped one key, which would cause my cursor to click. Suddenly, I was typing three paragraphs above where I intended. However, I adapted to this pretty quickly by either taking my fingers all the way off the keyboard or just committing and resting them all on the device.
It took some time to adjust my muscle memory, but the benefits far outweighed any annoyance with the adjustment period. I truly cannot stand having to grab my mouse just to click one button, and the convenience was astounding. Over time, my mouse started to feel more and more like an unnecessary afterthought.
Customizable Clicks
The one thing that felt a little off for me, however, is that I don’t particularly like lightly tapping to click on things. This is an annoyance I have on laptop trackpads as well, and your preferences may vary, but I often turn off tapping to click. I much prefer trackpads that support pressing to click.
In fact, I prefer this so much that I was surprised by my own muscle memory when I tried to click on something using the keyboard’s trackpad by just pressing a random key. Clevetura anticipated people like me and gave the keyboard a Keytap mode. In this mode (activated with the Keytab button, located just above the PgUp key), you have to press the Type key (located next to the right Ctrl key) to switch to the trackpad. In this mode, you can click on things by pressing whatever key your finger happens to be on top of. When you’re done with the trackpad, press Type again to switch back to your regular keyboard.
Sitting in front of MSI’s Mag 341CQP gaming monitor is almost intimidating. The 34-inch curved, ultrawide display engulfs my field of vision, but it’s not the size that strikes me so much as the clarity. The monitor uses a quantum dot OLED panel that’s so clear and vivid that it’s hard not to get sucked into the games I play.
MSI’s curved gaming monitor is one of a few recent displays that have brought QD-OLED panels to the desktop gaming space. A couple of our top picks in our Best TVs guide use the tech, but monitors that use it have only recently started to dip below the four-figure price point. This relatively new type of display brings some of the benefits of quantum dots—like more precise colors and less wasted light—to OLED panels, which only light up the pixels you need, leading to perfect blacks.
Starting at $900, this display from MSI is shockingly affordable for what you’re getting (and it’s worth noting that even at the time of writing this review, I was already seeing it on sale for less than $800). On top of all the benefits of QD-OLED, it has a 3440×1440 resolution, 175Hz refresh rate, HDR support, and some nifty features to prevent burn-in that all add up to a premium monitor.
Pixel Perfection
I’ve preferred OLED displays since the very first time I laid eyes on one, but this display from MSI still managed to impress me. Naturally, it has those characteristic perfect blacks, and in HDR mode, it can reach a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, which is convenient for me since my desk is right next to a window that gets a lot of sun in the afternoon. Once evening sets in, though, the maximum brightness can be almost blinding.
When I was playing games like Overwatch 2, this contrast helped lend itself to an extra level of immersion. The blast from D.va bombs going off feels intense, as the bright flash from the explosion lights up my face. The vivid red outlines of enemies pop, making it just a touch easier to spot that Widowmaker from across the map.
MSI claims the display reaches 99.3 percent of the DCI-P3 color space, though in my testing using my trusty Spyder X2 Ultra, it got closer to 95 percent, leaning a tiny bit more on the reds. It was even further off from AdobeRGB, with MSI rating the display at 97.8 percent of this color space, but my test results showing it at closer to 86 percent. If you want to use this display for professional photo or video work, this might be a concern for you, but for most people it’s still fine.
On the color accuracy front, the panel reached an average delta E level of 1.23. For reference, a delta E of less than 2.0 is barely perceptible to the human eye if you look closely, and less than 1.0 is difficult for humans to tell the difference at all. To put it simply, this MSI monitor reproduces colors incredibly accurately, so you’re less likely to notice any off hues or tints unless there’s a software problem.
Enveloping Entertainment
On a 16:9 monitor, the darker parts of this image aren’t visible, compared to the view on this ultrawide
Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft
When I play Overwatch 2, I’m often playing characters that could benefit from an enhanced field of view. Whether I’m a Mercy watching over my shoulder for a flanker that’s going to end my life, or a Wrecking Ball trying to scope out the enemy team before diving in, the more I can see, the better. I’m kicking myself for not playing on an ultrawide monitor sooner.
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