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  • Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review: Biggest Is Best, Except If It’s Not

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    This past April marked the 10-year anniversary of the Apple Watch. Those early aluminum, stainless steel, and—yes—18k gold models launched without a clear idea of what they were for. Apple wanted its smartwatch to be a fashionable timepiece, a fitness tracker, a cellphone, a music player, a turn-by-turn navigator, and more. It seemed obvious that the Apple Watch could eventually replace the iPhone. A decade later, that is not only not the case, it’s looking like it may never be, though the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is ever closer (but still a far way off) from that dream.

    Starting at $800, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is not cheap. That’s the same price as an iPhone 17—a whole damn computer with great cameras, not an accessory for your phone. The first Apple Watch Ultra targeted adventurers and outdoorsy types like divers, justifying the price and large size as fitting for these groups of people who want a bigger screen, longer battery life, more precise GPS, and a customizable Action button.

    Apple Watch Ultra 3

    The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is the biggest and most feature-packed smartwatch that Apple sells, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to upgrade.

    Pros

    • Big screen
    • Satellite connectivity is useful for emergencies
    • Even longer battery life
    • Rugged and durable
    • Sleep Score is great

    Cons

    • Too still huge
    • Still $800
    • Only two colors

    Fast forward three years, and I see people donning Apple Watch Ultras on their wrists even if they’re not going mountain climbing or scuba diving. My sister gifted her husband an Apple Watch Ultra because he’s got a big wrist. I have several friends with dainty wrists, and yet they don’t seem to care that the Apple Watch Ultra looks massive because the screen is large and the battery lasts for 2 to 3 days on a single charge. The Apple Watch Ultra is no longer just for enthusiasts; Ultra just means you get the most features in Apple’s smartwatch lineup.

    That pretty much sums up the Apple Watch Ultra 3. It’s still the same design as the first and second-generation Apple Watch Ultra, except now it has some more stuff. Do you need all the new features? Read my helpful little guide here. Otherwise, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is just a better version.

    Same Ultra design, now 3D-printed

    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    I am not an Apple Watch Ultra user. I understand its appeal and, hell, I even like some chonky watches like G-Shocks, but I find the Apple Watch Ultra just too bulky; the case is too thick and the screen is too big. More power to you if these are things you want. The 49mm titanium case—in natural or black—is rugged, and the display is big by design. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is better at surviving unpredictable outdoor weather and conditions compared to non-Ultra models, but anybody who simply wants the durability or easier-to-see display could appreciate it. Who am I to tell you that a smartwatch is too big if you want it? For the same reasons some people prefer the tank-like iPhone 17 Pro Max over the super slim iPhone Air and its tradeoffs, I’m more a regular Apple Watch “Series” guy than Ultra.

    Invisible to the naked eye is how the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is produced. This time, instead of being CNC’d out of a block of aluminum, Apple is 3D-printing the cases using 100% recycled titanium, which not only wastes less of the metal, but is more environmentally friendly since it doesn’t require new mining. I’m not out here bashing my ​​Apple Watch Ultra 3 review unit against rocks, so I can’t confirm the rigidity of the 3D-printed case, but I did have some startling contact with my kitchen cabinet doors and a pile of 40-pound cat litter boxes, where I thought I might have scuffed or chipped the black case. But nope, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 suffered no damage. Not even a scrape.

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 7
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    On the whole, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is virtually the same smartwatch as the Ultra 2. The screen is so minimally bigger because Apple thinned the black bezel around it that it’s not even measurable with a ruler. Nor does Apple even have an official display size spec for it. All of that’s to say you won’t be seeing more content on the sapphire crystal display. The screen is also equally as bright as the Ultra 2. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 display uses a more advanced LTPO 3 display technology versus LTPO 2, but that’s really more for power efficiency than making the screen any more visible.

    There’s a new “Waypoint” watch face with a compass that I like the look of, even though I don’t need to know which direction I’m facing riding on the subway from Queens to Manhattan or Brooklyn. The watch face is also not exclusive to the Ultra 3; Ultra and Ultra 2 owners can get it with the watchOS 26 update.

    Inside is a new S10 chip, but nobody is begging for more performance in the Apple Watch Ultra 3. watchOS 26 is as zippy and responsive as on my Apple Watch Series 9. If there’s anything the S10 chip enables, it’s 5G and satellite communications—two firsts for Apple Watches.

    If you cannot entertain the idea of a big smartwatch on your wrist, even with the upsides of a larger screen and longer battery life, Apple is happy to sell you an Apple Watch Series 11 or an SE 3. Smartwatch size, after all, is a matter of personal preference. Though, you will only get the highest water-resistance rating (100m) on the Ultra models.

    More health tracking features

    Apple Watch Se 3 Series 11 Ultra 3 Sleep Score Hypertension 4
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Even though the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is mostly a spec bump update, there are two features—hypertension notifications and Sleep Score—that may sway you if you have a first-gen Ultra or an Apple Watch model that isn’t getting the two features via watchOS 26.

    I went into more detail on hypertension notifications and Sleep Score in a previous write-up. I’ve found both features to be very useful. Hypertension notifications work in the background after initial setup and are something you hope to never receive. Essentially, your Apple Watch Ultra 3 will send you a notification if it detects signs that you may have high blood pressure. The smartwatch isn’t measuring your blood pressure (it’s not a medical diagnosis), but merely using data from the optical heart rate sensor to correlate it against a “machine learning-based algorithm” for patterns typical of hypertension. The feature is FDA-cleared, which is different from FDA-approved, and means that Apple has demonstrated that hypertension notifications are safe and effective compared to other similarly marketed devices.

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 6
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The same way I hope my Apple Watch will never have to call emergency services to alert them that I’ve fallen down, there is no reason not to turn on hypertension notifications. It’s a precautionary feature that could mean the difference between life and death. Since Series 4, Apple has positioned the Apple Watch not as a healthcare provider replacement, but as a health guardian. Hypertension notifications are just another addition to the Apple Watch’s, er, watchful eye.

    Sleep Score is also the sleep tracking function that I think everybody has been waiting for. It’s catching up to other wearables and smartwatches, but in typical Apple fashion, presented better in every way. Sleep Score automatically kicks in when you fall asleep while wearing your Apple Watch Ultra 3. It measures duration, bedtime, and interruptions, and then presents them in a donut-shaped sleep ring along with a score. You’ll see your sleep classified as very low, low, OK, high, or excellent. You can scroll to see more detailed sleep data or open up the Health app on your paired iPhone to get even more in-depth metrics. All of this information is presented very clearly and in easy-to-understand charts.

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 4
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    I likened Sleep Score to Activity Rings. Seeing a “low” Sleep Score every morning really did make me want to achieve “OK” or even “high.” I’ll be impressed if I ever see “excellent,” given how erratic my sleep is. But that’s the whole point of Sleep Score—to help you build daily routines that improve your sleep. We commoners may think burning the midnight oil is the way to get ahead, but sleep is health, and health is wealth. Billionaire Bill Gates and multimillionaire Arianna Huffington attribute good, consistent sleep as the secret to living longer and healthier lives. Huffington even wrote a whole book on sleep and its unappreciated powers. (My cats, Lemons and Kiwi, who sleep 12+ hours every day, also corroborate that good sleep is essential to happiness.)

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 5
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Now, am I saying the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has been successful at bullying me into winding down at my set schedule every night and getting enough shuteye? I wish it were, but I’m only human, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t prone to ignoring my Sleep Score on some days to stay up and rot my brain with Netflix and Switch 2. Maybe you’re more disciplined than I am. I have tons of friends who are addicted to closing their Activity Rings because it’s gamified in a way. If seeing a number and a donut that gets thicker or thinner helps you sleep better, then why the hell not?

    You don’t need to buy an Apple Watch Ultra 3 to get hypertension notifications or Sleep Score. Hypertension notifications are free in watchOS 26 for Apple Watch Series 9 and later, or Ultra 2. If you have an Apple Watch Series 6 and later, SE 2, or Ultra and later, the update also adds Sleep Score.

    Peace of mind with 5G and satellite comms

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 2
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Some half a decade after 5G promised to revolutionize smartphones with wicked fast data speeds and make poor connections a thing of the past, the cellular connection is finally available on all three 2025 Apple Watch models. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really translate to any noticeable real-world benefit. Cellular connectivity on the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is not considerably faster than on my Apple Watch Series 9. Built-in 5G is more for futureproofing. One day, 4G networks will be turned off the same way 2G and 3G networks were sunset. But that’s many years ahead, and who knows if the Ultra 3 will even be functional by then.

    However, the new wireless connection exclusive to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 that you might appreciate is satellite connectivity. Like the feature on iPhones, the satellite connection on the Ultra 3 works the same. You can use it to communicate with emergency services (Emergency SOS), send messages to contacts, or share your location via Find My app. How you access satellite services on the Apple Watch Ultra 3 tells you how Apple intends people to use the feature: not often, and likely only when you can’t connect to a 4G or 5G cell tower. There’s no satellite app on the honeycomb “home screen.” Instead, you access satellite services by adding a shortcut button within Control Center.

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 3
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Using satellite services on the Ultra 3 works just like on a supported iPhone. First, you need to be outside to establish a connection to a satellite in the sky. Then, you move your wrist left and right to connect, which can take a few seconds depending on where you are and what your line of sight to the sky is. Once connected, you can tap through buttons for the three features; you don’t need to keep your wrist aimed at the sky anymore. It works well, and contacts you send messages or your location to will see a label that you communicated via satellite. This is for them to know that you’re out of civilization range and may need aid if you haven’t made it safely back.

    Again, the fact that satellite services is an opt-in setting, not an app, that you need to turn on within Control Center tells you it’s for either emergencies or just check-ins. You won’t be using satellite services daily, unless you’re living off the grid all the time. But even then, satellite connections are not as fast as cellular. It’s a nice feature to have for those just-in-case moments, but you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth buying a gadget with reassurance features you’ll hopefully never need to use.

    Apple’s biggest and best smartwatch, but it may not necessarily be yours

    Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review 9
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The same way an iPhone 17 Pro Max is just a newer iPhone with improved features, an Apple Watch Ultra 3 is still just an Apple Watch. You get some new stuff because it’s the shiny new smartwatch, but it’s fundamentally the same device. It’s no longer like the early days of the Apple Watch when new features felt foundational with each generation or two.

    Do you really need a big, thick smartwatch with all its features? Could you make do with fewer features to save some money? The Apple Watch Ultra 3, specifically, has everything that Apple could fit into a 49mm case design. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right fit for your needs and wrist size. If my Apple Watch Series 9 didn’t work just fine (and get hypertension and Sleep Score with watchOS 26), I would consider the Apple Watch Series 11 over the Ultra 3 simply because of its smaller size (I don’t need an Action button or up to 42 hours of battery life). The Apple Watch SE 3 is an incredible value for $250 if you want just the basics, but it’d be a downgrade from my model. Before I picked up a Series 9, I had a Series 4, and before that, the original “Series 0.” That’s the thing about Apple Watches—they last several years until software updates make them too slow or incompatible with iPhones.

    The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is an excellent smartwatch if its size and feature set appeal to you. But you absolutely don’t need to upgrade if you have a model from recent years. Get the Apple Watch size that literally fits your wrist best or has the features you want the most. As for Android users, you’re out of luck again since you still need an iPhone to set up any Apple Watch. Fortunately, there are great Wear OS options like Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8, Google’s Pixel Watch 4, and the OnePlus Watch 3 series.

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    Raymond Wong

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  • Nothing Ear 3 Review: Super Sounding Wireless Earbuds, Not-So-Super Mic

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    From the start, Nothing was designed to be an antidote to Apple and its omnipresent AirPods. While Apple focused on a sort of all-purpose minimalism, Nothing adopted a hallmark transparent look that, if not altogether disparate (both pairs of wireless earbuds have a similar stem design), at least gave its Ear products a unique design language. That quest for being different extended into features, too. In 2023, Nothing introduced personalized EQ, giving it a visual and technological difference over Apple’s AirPods and eventually a ChatGPT integration, which was a first in the category.

    But a lot happens in a few years, especially in a space as saturated as wireless earbuds, and while Nothing’s Ear are still a solid pair of earbuds, they feel… a little less of an earful. Apple now has its AirPods Pro 3 with high-tech features like real-time translation and heart rate monitoring, while non-Apple competitors in the same price range, like OnePlus and Google, aren’t pulling any punches with their own entrants into the space that offer personalized EQ, AI features, and noise-canceling that compete with pro-level gadgets.

    Nothing Ear 3

    The Nothing Ear 3 have solid sound, but flub the one thing that makes them unique.

    Pros

    • Great sound
    • Solid ANC
    • They look very cool
    • Case feels premium

    Cons

    • Super Mic is a super letdown
    • May not be worth the premium over last gen

    But just in the nick of time, as Nothing’s flagship wireless earbuds seem to be falling behind, the company is back with its $180 Ear 3 that offer a new look and one truly unique feature for improving voice calls. As usual, Nothing is taking some chances, and not just in the visual department. For me, some of those risks are really paying off, but others… well, they’re not so super.

    Nothing Ear 3 gets a visual update

    © Adriano Conreras / Gizmodo

    So much of Nothing is about looks. That’s not a knock on the company. This is technology that you wear, and because of that, appearance can be make-or-break. Chances are, if you’ve bought Nothing products in the past, you agree, which also means, if you saw Nothing teasing its Ear 3 wireless earbuds before its release, your eyebrows may have been raised.

    I’m going to get straight to the point: the Ear 3 look great. I was worried at first that the Ear 3 may scale back on the transparent part of its wireless earbuds, but that’s not the case here at all. Sorry for the alarm bells, anyone who reads my blogs. Instead of a homogeneous black look on the outside of the stems, the Ear 3 goes with a metallic silver that really makes them look like a capital “G” Gadget. As Gizmodo’s Senior Editor, Consumer Tech, Raymond Wong, noted to me, this thing has big Talkboy vibes (shout out to Macaulay Culkin). There’s still a transparent shell that lets you see the internal components through the sides and back of the earbud stems.

    Nothing Ear 3 07
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The case also adopts the same metallic look, shedding the white version (there’s also still black) for an aluminum that both looks and feels genuinely different. The “Talk” button (more on that later) is also nice and shiny, inviting you to push it. This case now has some weight in your hand, and I really love that. No one wants to carry around heavy gadgets, but Nothing did a good job here of balancing the weight to make the case and buds feel premium without making it feel chunky.

    The design language also feels more aligned across flagship audio products now, bringing together the Ear 3 and the Headphone 1, which have an aluminum finish. If you’re a fan of the Headphone 1, or prior Nothing buds, you’ll love the look of the Ear 3. Another thing you’ll love? The sound.

    A much-needed audio upgrade

    I thought the Ear were nice wireless earbuds when I first listened to them in 2024, but I’ve tested a lot of newer earbuds since then, and in that testing, my opinion has shifted. The Ear still hold it down, but the sound and ANC aren’t quite as premium as I’d like them to be, especially with a slight cost premium over brand new buds like the OnePlus Buds 4. In short, it was time for an upgrade.

    According to Nothing, the Ear 3 now has a redesigned 12mm dynamic driver and “patterned diaphragm surface” that is meant to “lower total harmonic distortion from 0.6% to 0.2% versus the previous in-ear generation.” Nothing also says that the redesigned architecture increases bass response and delivers a wider soundstage. That’s all rhetoric, though, and at the end of the day, what you really want to know is, “Do these sound better than the last generation?” and in my anecdotal testing, they definitely do.

    Nothing Ear 3 11
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    I tested the Ear 3 back to back with the Ear (which is actually newer than the Ear 2) and found that there was a lot less distortion when listening to C.W. Stoneking’s “Desert Isle”. There’s more spatiality in the Ear 3 than the Ear, making guitars and vocals sound like they’re in their own place instead of muddled together competing. Vocals in particular sound clear and natural, which is great if you’re like me and tend to listen to a lot of rock music. One vast improvement over the Ear is in the bass department. As I’ve said many times, I don’t particularly care about having a ton of bass in wireless earbuds, but I do appreciate a pair that can still provide low end without sounding over-compressed or super simulated. I’d say the Ear 3 do just that, especially after testing bassier music by listening to Daft Punk’s “Da Funk”.

    As usual, I also dove into the Nothing X app and used Nothing’s personalized audio test to tune the Ear 3 to my specific hearing. I can’t overstate this enough: stop sleeping on your wireless earbuds’ companion app. There’s a big difference in the sound before using the personalized EQ and after, and while this won’t be the case with everyone, I’m 33 years old and a couple of decades of going to shows and listening to loud music means I could probably use a little assistance in the hearing department. The Ear 3 sound great out of the box, but personalized EQ really sends the audio over the top. In short, Nothing is still holding it down with its flagship-level sound, and the Ear 3 is an even bigger improvement generation-to-generation than its jump from Ear 2 to Ear.

    Active noise cancellation (ANC), however, I found a little less improved generation-to-generation. Though to be fair, Nothing isn’t touting better noise canceling this time around. I gave the Ear 3 the obligatory subway test, and while they passed, they weren’t quite as formidable as my favorite noise-canceling wireless earbuds, Bose’s Quiet Comfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen). They’re still much better than the similarly priced Galaxy Buds 3 FE from Samsung that I recently tested. I do think they’re slightly more noise-canceling than the last generation, though that could be due to Nothing’s redesign of the buds, which are meant to provide a better and more comfortable fit in your ears—that could create better passive noise cancellation and the illusion of stronger ANC.

    Battery life is also only slightly improved. Nothing says the Ear 3 will get 5.5 hours of listening with ANC on, while the Nothing Ear was rated for 5.2 hours. This is nowhere near the best battery of wireless earbuds in this class; in fact, it’s a little under. Six hours is generally the standard nowadays. In my testing, I went from 100% to 80% battery in a little over 1 hour of listening at 70% volume with ANC on high.

    So, that’s the good, pretty good, and just okay news about the Ear 3. But there are some things I really don’t like, so let’s talk about them.

    Super Mic? More like soupy mic.

    There’s one aspect of the Ear 3 that can’t be compared, since Nothing is the only company really trying it. I’m talking about the “Super Mic,” a new exclusive feature in the Ear 3 that lets you use microphones in the case for clearer calling and voice recording. By pressing the “Talk” button on the case, you can activate the feature and get recording or calling—one push activates the feature until you release the button, while a double-tap will turn the feature on until you turn it off.

    According to Nothing, there are two Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) mics inside the case that use beamforming to zero in on your voice and cancel out environmental noise at the same time. The Ear 3 also take advantage of bone-conducting capabilities that detect “microvibrations” in your jaw that are meant to detect speech. The process of relaying the results of your Super Mic voice is a bit convoluted. Nothing says your voice is “sent to the case antenna, relayed to the earbud antenna over Bluetooth, then passed to the phone.”

    Nothing Ear 3 01
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Per Nothing, Super Mic “focuses on your voice, cutting through surrounding noise (up to 95 dB) for clearer calls and voicenotes.” In theory, I love the idea. Wired earbuds are a big thing again, and a major part of that (outside the superior audio quality) is that they usually come with an on-cable mic for clearer calls. This theoretically makes the Ear 3 a best of both worlds situation, giving you wired earbud-level mics for calling (or better) while not having to deal with annoying wires.

    The only problem is… the Super Mic doesn’t work as advertised. I ran the feature through a few different tests, and the results were varying degrees of muddy. At first, I played background music while using Super Mic to record my voice through my iPhone’s Voice Memo app. Instead of canceling out the background music (lo-fi beats playing at 75% volume from a Chromebook about a foot away from me), it mixed my voice and the beats together, creating a kind of muddled amalgam that wasn’t very pleasant to listen back to.

    Nothing Ear 3 04
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Similarly, I simulated subway noise (something more “environmental”) on YouTube at the same volume and distance, and the results were similar. My voice was still mixed in with the ambient sound that I hoped it would filter out. Super Mic did seem to work better out on the street near my office (a fairly busy part of downtown Manhattan), though I still wouldn’t describe the results as “super” in any way. Even when Super Mic effectively filters out environmental noise, I find the fidelity to be choppy and compressed-sounding at times. It’s nowhere near as pleasing to listen to as recording through the native mic on my iPhone 13.

    Super Mic did filter out noise effectively while walking on the street next to ongoing construction and in a fast casual restaurant that was playing music, but it still picked up other people’s voices in settings where people were talking nearby, which would make using the feature in an environment with other people potentially problematic.

    There’s also the issue of compatibility. Nothing says Super Mic is designed for voice calling in apps like Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, WhatsApp, WeChat, and is also supported in native voice memo apps on iOS and Android. However, Nothing makes it clear that the feature “isn’t optimized” for in-app voice messaging through third-party apps like Snapchat or native voice features in iOS Messages and the like. This is a long way of saying that your mileage may vary when it comes to Super Mic, and while compatibility can’t be blamed on Nothing—it’s up to Apple and Android to allow third-party mic access, and in what apps—it still limits the Super Mic feature, making its use a lot more restricted than it ought to be.

    I reached out to Nothing about the issue I had with Super Mic, but haven’t yet determined if there’s an issue with the wireless earbuds or a problem with the feature. (Yes, I was using the right firmware and Nothing X build). Other reviewers have reported their own issues with Super Mic, too.

    Good buds, but a little (ear)itating

    When you make a big bet, you might lose a little money—no risk, no reward. No matter your rote idiom of choice, that sentiment tends to be true. Super Mic could be a cool feature if it’s refined, but for now, I would file it firmly in the “undwhelming” folder. Maybe it will improve with future software, but I can’t really guarantee that, so all I have to work with is what we have right now, which is to say a Super Mic that seems to be plagued by a serious case of Kryptonite.

    Nothing Ear 3 05
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The annoying part is that everything else about the Ear 3 is pretty solid. They look great, they sound great, and ANC is sturdy. The battery life leaves something to be desired, but it’s not so bad that it’s disqualifying. But this is what happens when you try to do something different sometimes, you gotta take the hits with the misses. Alright, I’m done with the corny euphemisms now, I swear.

    The Ear 3 might falter out of the gate with a shoddy Super Mic feature, but if you like the way Nothing wireless earbuds look and you want solid sound and ANC, the Ear 3 are still worth a look. Just don’t expect to be taking any Zoom calls from a construction site with these things just yet.

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    James Pero

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  • The Lowdown Ambles Toward Glory

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    A spiky character study of Ethan Hawke’s dirtbag “truthstorian” Lee Raybon reveals itself as a surprising showcase for Sterlin Harjo’s creative vision.
    Photo: Shane Brown/FX

    Ethan Hawke’s face, an angular, beautiful cinematic presence since Dead Poets Society, gets put through the wringer on The Lowdown. In the closing minutes of the pilot, we see him behind the wheel, bloodied and gashed, left eye swollen shut, teeth smeared with red. The image grips you, but its gnarliness is undercut by absurdity: He’s laughing maniacally, having cheated death through no effort of his own. Creator Sterlin Harjo’s follow-up to his pantheon-great Reservation Dogs for FX, debuting this week, riffs on mid-century noirs and hard-boiled detective fiction, in which snooping protagonists are routinely roughed up, shaken down, and driven to the brink of madness. So it goes in The Lowdown, but Harjo filters the genre through his distinct sensibility, equal parts comic, hopeful, fatalistic, and regional. Hawke’s character is not the smooth, trench-coated detective of yore but a mangy dirtbag, repulsive and charismatic. Imagine plucking one of Richard Linklater’s Slacker oddballs and dropping them into a Raymond Chandler novel: familiar yet skewed, in a noir world refracted through Harjo’s sly humor and lived-in specificity.

    Hawke plays Lee Raybon, a self-described “truthstorian” who runs a rare-books shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but moonlights as a citizen journalist — or is it the other way around? — filing longform investigations for a scrappy local magazine, The Heartland Press. The series kicks off when Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), a member of a powerful Oklahoma family, pens a suicide note, hides it inside a book on his shelves, and then shoots himself in the head. His death comes just after Lee’s exposé into the Washbergs’ long, sordid history in the state, but Lee doesn’t buy the cause-and-effect implied by the suicide. “Everything is connected,” he says. “Darkness is always afoot.” Could there be a cover-up? To him, the bigger picture is suspicious. Dale’s brother, Donald (Kyle MacLachlan), is running for governor, and he seems a little too intimate with Dale’s widow, Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn). At the same time, Lee is digging into Akron Construction, a company buying out Black-owned businesses in the region. He suspects a coordinated effort to strangle competition, which would hurt the local economy. Akron’s owner, Frank Martin (Tracy Letts), a power broker with deep pockets, is unamused by Lee’s prodding, as is the quiet, menacing Allen Murphy (Scott Shepard), who works for Martin.

    So that’s the board as it’s set. But in true pulp-noir fashion, it’s not long before the pieces scatter to the point where the game becomes unrecognizable. Only five of the season’s eight episodes were provided to critics, and by the end of the batch, I still couldn’t quite tell what we’re supposed to be paying attention to. Not that it matters. The Lowdown isn’t powered by its central mystery so much as the shaggy-dog pleasures of watching Lee stumble through a Tulsa rendered with such vivid texture you can practically smell the Plains dust. It’s the kind of show that rewards kicking back and basking in its world. Lee’s shop sits in an unassuming row next to a tax lawyer with whom he lunches and stores his valuables; a record shop his daughter frequents; and a diner called Sweet Emily’s, where he does his thinking. His odyssey takes him to estate sales, livestock auctions, hidden islands, and a rowdy, violent, surreal kegger for law-enforcement officials. It also detours into his own history, when an old friend (Peter Dinklage) resurfaces midway through the season to check in, commiserate, and spar: “Do not quote David Foster Wallace to me, my brother.”

    At its core, The Lowdown is a loving, spiky character study. Harjo — who serves as showrunner, wrote the pilot, and directed the first two episodes — harbors real affection for Lee, and you feel it in the density of quirks, contradictions, and traits packed into the role, all of which Hawke carries with ease. Lee is a pest and a scoundrel, chronically broke and overconfident, maybe a talented writer or at least one who’s quick with literary references. He’s conspiratorially minded, the sort who keeps one of those murder boards in his ratty apartment above the bookshop. He drives a sketchy white van so conspicuous that another character naturally dubs him a “pedo,” the back doors scrawled with the words You’re doing it wrong. Seen through a contemporary lens, Lee feels like a guy who’s one or two degrees away from a QAnon crank, except there’s a pure, humanistic engine in him. He’s earnest rather than angry, lost but charming in his pursuit of his purpose. “Don’t be scared for me,” he tells his worried daughter, Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). “Be scared for the people sleeping away their lives. I’m doing exactly what I want to do. I’m living.” You believe he believes what he’s saying, but you doubt the argument as Lee belongs to TV’s ever-expanding fraternity of sad dads (see also Task) and lonely deadbeats. (Francis’s mother, whom Lee’s no longer with, is played by Kaniehtiio Horn, memorable as the Deer Lady on Reservation Dogs and Tanis in the underrated Letterkenny.)

    On the surface, The Lowdown may seem like a curious project to succeed Reservation Dogs. After the latter’s sheer triumph of Native storytelling, Harjo’s choice to center his next project on a sad white guy, a prestige-television staple, may feel to some like an odd reversal. But Harjo circles a fascinating and mischievous idea with Lee. For all his idiocy, brilliance, and noble intent, it’s hard not to notice how easily Lee moves through spaces where anybody who isn’t a white dude likely wouldn’t survive. Over the course of the series, Lee impersonates a white supremacist to enter the home of another white supremacist’s mother and later poses as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer to break into a private space to jack some rare books. He’s often saved by his own gift of gab; at one point, he talks his way out of torture and possibly death at the hands of a criminal outfit he blunders into. The show doesn’t frame this as a critique so much as a matter of amusement. Lee is grating and unquestionably benefits from the privileges of his whiteness, but he also weaponizes those advantages for some notion of good — even if it’s self-serving, even if it ultimately leads to his own ruin. Hawke is splendid in the role, which makes deft use of his chatterbox charisma, the very same that can come off as annoying yet attractive in films like Reality Bites and the Before trilogy, or menacing in something like Black Phone. For all the things Lee gets called (“a narcissistic cowboy with a penchant for thinking they’re a good person”) and the things he calls himself (“I’m a good guy, that’s what we do, we call up bad guys and make them answer the phone”), perhaps the truest description comes from Cyrus Arnold (a scene-stealing Michael “Killer Mike” Render), the publisher of a local crime rag: “A fucking white man that cares. Sad as hell.”

    The Lowdown is also quite the showcase for Harjo’s creative vision. His world-building is lush enough to smooth over however you may feel about Lee’s rough edges, and his gift for seamlessly weaving together his expansive cultural appetites gives the show a kind of referential heft that feels inviting as opposed to alienating. It draws on and echoes the great noirs (The Long Goodbye comes to mind) but also the paranoid fictions of someone like Philip K. Dick. You feel the echoes even if you’re not familiar with the reference. Jim Thompson, the Oklahoma crime writer whose reputation flourished only after his death, surfaces as a touchpoint in the notes Dale leaves behind, and hearing the name makes you curious enough to pick up one of his novels. The show sparkles with wit, sharp dialogue (“a faint heart never fucked a bobcat”), and a gallery of memorable, organically diverse characters populating Harjo’s Tulsa. And it finds real magic in small moments. Midway through the pilot, Lee meets Marty (Keith David), a stranger with as much literary flair as Lee has himself. They parry verbally until Marty tilts the encounter toward reflection. “Something brings us to Sweet Emily’s at this hour,” he muses, regarding the other insomniacs in the diner. “Look around.” The camera lingers: a cup of coffee, a man reading his Bible, rain streaking the window — a portrait of nighthawks. Lee shrugs it off. “Just a bunch of night owls, that’s all I see.” Marty corrects him: “No. You see poetry.” In this beat, the show’s essence is crystallized.

    In more ways than one, The Lowdown deepens and extends Harjo’s sensibilities. If Reservation Dogs found beauty in the embrace of community in the margins, The Lowdown draws its spark from what happens when someone in the margins starts to poke back at entrenched power. Both shows wander and amble toward something more than the sum of their parts, and both find beauty and meaning lingering in the details. The heart of noir tends to be nihilism, its abyssal mood a veil that invites you to glimpse the darker machinery of a world ruled by insurmountable powers where resistance leads only to ruin. But Harjo complicates that. “The way you write about Tulsa — there’s bad things about it, but underneath, it’s really good,” Francis tells Lee. He may be a fool, but he’s also a lover who continues to believe in the truth. It may yet end badly for him, but for the moment, he makes you believe there’s still glory in the fight to fix a broken world.


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    Nicholas Quah

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  • ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ Review: The Switch 2’s Game Ports Have Reached Their High-Water Mark

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    The Nintendo Switch 2 is not the most powerful game console, not by a long shot. Instead, it is powerful enough to give developers the breathing room to port modern games to it. Where the original Switch forced developers to pare back visuals, Star Wars Outlaws, which launched on Nintendo’s handheld on Sept. 4, signals what players should come to expect with Switch 2 ports. It still has the best parts of what made the game beautiful in 2024. On handheld, it may finally be worth slogging through the Ubisoft open-world formula.

    Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2

    It’s one of the best ports I’ve seen to a handheld, though some may enjoy the game more than others.

    Pros

    • Stable 30 fps in all environments
    • Ray-traced lighting effects even in handheld
    • Beautiful environments and effects
    • Minute-to-minute gameplay is fun

    Cons

    • Disjointed story
    • Relies on the open-world Ubisoft formula
    • Uses game-key card

    I’m still floored by how well Cyberpunk 2077 runs on Switch 2, and Star Wars Outlaw is a very well-optimized port. The game maintained a stable 30 fps frame rate throughout the hours I spent playing the game over the past week. I never experienced a hitch or a dip. Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, which boasts excellent ray-traced lighting effects, is still in full effect on the Switch 2 version of Star Wars Outlaws. The neon lights of the game’s many cantinas bloom off the polished bar tables while outside lights beam in through broken slits of saloon windows. There are so many great effects to enhance the gritty tone of the game, such as the faux dirt bespeckling the screen—as if you were filming each scene in a dustbowl.

    A Galaxy far, far away in handheld form

    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    No, it doesn’t look as good as the game running on a full desktop PC with a high-end gaming CPU and a discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU. There are subtle fluctuations and an odd, blurry aura around Outlaws’ protagonist Kay’s hair. The anti-aliasing, which reduces jagged edges in scenery, is less smooth than the game running on a high-end PC. I also experienced multiple instances of flickering shadows. That, I would attribute to issues caused by the game relying on DLSS, Nvidia’s version of AI upscaling that renders the game at a lower resolution and uses AI to make it appear at a higher resolution.

    All these issues are minor compared to the spectacle of the game running so damn well, both in 1080p in handheld mode and at 1440p when docked and connected to a TV. In handheld mode, I could see a few more jagged outlines and more flickering, which is likely due to the game rendering at a much lower 540p resolution before being upscaled. The draw distance is also scaled back slightly, and you’ll see more textures and shrubbery “pop in” as you roll across these open environments. In either case, I was amazed at the number of effects still present in the game, especially when the wind shuddered the grass in long waves in the game’s open-world sections. The game suffered a bit more during cutscenes, where I spotted some instances of odd textures when we got too close to some characters. Regular gameplay proved much smoother.

    Some commentators online seem to think that the game running this well is a small miracle. It’s not. It’s an effect of what happens when developers put effort into a port. Star Wars Outlaws was built first for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC. The game cannot run well on a Steam Deck. It’s a title that will prove difficult to maintain stable frame rates on more powerful handheld PCs like the Asus ROG Ally X, even at 25W or 30W TDP, or thermal design power. The game relies on ray tracing by default, which means it will also lean on upscaling technology such as AMD’s FidelityFx Super Resolution 3. Even then, Outlaws was not built for small devices. It can’t maintain a stable frame rate.

    The Switch 2 runs at a much lower TDP than high-end handheld PCs and even lower than the Steam Deck’s max 15W. And still, it looks damn good. Developers at Massive Entertainment, who created the first game, worked with Ubisoft Red Links for the port. The extra time and attention paid off. There are a few extra features included, such as touchscreen support in some Wordle-like puzzles. You won’t miss much playing in docked or in handheld mode, anyway.

    Sorry, no physical edition

    Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 4
    © Ubisoft; screenshot by Gizmodo

    Nintendo has the pull to push publishers and developers to design games around the handheld hardware, even if it means losing out on 4K assets available for higher-end consoles. However, it comes at the cost of game preservation. There is no physical version of Outlaws like there is with Cyberpunk 2077. It’s either a game-key card or digital download for a mere 21GB (the PC version is closer to 60GB). Massive Entertainment may have an excuse for why there’s no physical version. Rob Bantin, the audio architect for the Snowdrop engine, wrote on Bluesky that the game relies on fast disk streaming for its open worlds, and the flash storage on Switch 2 game cards isn’t fast enough. “I think if we’d designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up, it might have been different,” Bantin said.

    It’s a Ubisoft game in Star Wars clothing

    Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 2
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The game is a looker. If that’s all that matters to you, it’s worth the trip to the outer rim to see the sights. Whether Star Wars Outlaws is the game for you should depend wholly on how well you can stomach the prototypical “Ubisoft formula” of open-world game design. The protagonist, Kay Vess, is a strangely naive scoundrel who seems to stumble from big-name job to big-name job like a drunk confused about how they ended up working for the galaxy’s largest and most dangerous crime syndicates. In usual Ubisoft fashion, players are forced to interact with all the game’s many, many systems slowly over time in what can only be described as extra-long tutorials.

    One mission asks you to upgrade your speeder—the main way players zip around the open world. That mission requires players to travel to three separate points on a map, and then when you finally find the lone speeder mechanic who can install the most basic upgrade to your device, you then have to crawl around an Imperial base to get a lone part just to trudge back and finally fix up your bike. All the while, Kay “ummms” and “uhhhs” her way through conversations in a way that makes her seem like the most alien creature in a universe filled with blue-skinned Chiss, humanoid guinea pig-faced Chadra-Fan, and a literal talking fish in a jar that you break out of prison. It doesn’t help that the lip syncing often doesn’t match up to characters’ speech. Kay grows more confident over the course of the game, but in an effort to shoehorn players into the main gameplay loop, Outlaws loses a chance for players to grow alongside Kay in more than mere upgrades to her blaster or spaceship, the Trailblazer.

    It’s the kind of game that will fill your journal with enough quests and missions to play for dozens or hundreds of hours, but I can only stomach so much of the game’s quest design. Star Wars Outlaws can feel overburdened with choice and still all too simple when each quest revolves around the same “go here, sneak into base, steal object, leave” quest design. They’re similar problems for Ubisoft’s other open-world series, from Far Cry to Assassin’s Creed. Cloaked in Star Wars’ high-tech, low-society aesthetic, Outlaws feels familiar in two ways that gel together but never truly stick.

    On the Switch 2, where I can take Outlaws with me for short stints of sneaking and stealing, the game feels at home. It also marks a high-water mark for Switch 2 ports. Now with Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws running so well on the system, other developers have less of an excuse if we end up with titles that can’t hit playable framerates. This sets high expectations for upcoming ports of games like Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Elden Ring. Borderlands 4, which is facing a small player rebellion over performance issues on both consoles and PC, is set to hit Switch 2 on Oct. 3. It will be up to developers to make sure their games play well on the handheld.

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    Kyle Barr

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  • 1Password Is Still the Gold Standard for Securely Managing Your Passwords

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    Password managers are spotty on Android and iOS in general, and 1Password isn’t above that issue. I’d estimate somewhere around 10 to 15 percent of the fields I encounter on mobile just don’t register with 1Password, sending me out to the app to copy my password over manually. This is more of an issue with how apps categorize different fields and expose them to other apps running, and less of a 1Password-specific problem.

    1Password at least attempts to get around this with linked apps. As you start signing into apps using entries in your vault, 1Password will connect your login to whatever app you’re logging into. That doesn’t eliminate autofill problems on mobile, but it helps in the cases where 1Password is looking for a specific URL to autofill, and the mobile app isn’t operating with that URL.

    Outside of autofill, using 1Password on Android and iOS is a breeze. You can enter your account password each time you unlock your account if you want, but 1Password supports biometric authentication on Android and iOS, including Face ID support. After a certain amount of time has passed (you can change the amount of time in the settings), 1Password will ask you to re-enter your account password. Thankfully, if you don’t want to use biometrics, you can set up a PIN or passcode, as well.

    Quick access is important because 1Password is extremely limited on mobile, and that’s a good thing. Even switching to another app or locking your phone will also lock your account, and if you swipe through your list of open apps, you’ll only see the 1Password login screen.

    You’re free to change these settings, from the amount of time you need to re-enter your account password to when 1Password should clear your keyboard history. The defaults work well, but if you can’t be bothered, you can turn these extra security measures off.

    Unique Security

    1Password may function similarly to other password managers, but its security design is unique. The company has a white paper you can read through for all the gory details, and it maintains a list of certifications and recent penetration testing. The core of 1Password’s security, however, is a zero-knowledge approach. It’s designed in such a way that, even if 1Password wanted to, it has no means to decrypt the contents of your vault.

    This works due to what 1Password calls two-secret key derivation, or 2SKD. It takes your account password and a secret key that’s generated on your device when you first sign up for 1Password, and uses them to derive a key encryption key (KEK). Also on your device, 1Password generates a public-private key pair. Your private key is encrypted with the KEK, while your public key is shared.

    There are several layers of nested encryption beyond this, but what’s important is that 1Password doesn’t have a copy of your private key, nor a copy of your account password that’s necessary to derive the KEK. And when you authenticate, everything happens locally on your device, including encryption and decryption. Your KEK, master password, and private key never leave your device.

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    Jacob Roach

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  • iPhone 17 Review: The Best iPhone Value in Years

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    Next to the ultra-thin iPhone Air and the packed-to-gills iPhone 17 Pro/17 Pro Max, the iPhone 17 looks unremarkable—boring, even. The three new colors other than black and white are less vibrant than the shades the iPhone 16 came in. But peel back a few layers and things become clear: the iPhone 17, starting at $799, is in fact a remarkable value, providing a ton of bang for your buck.

    Besides the slight growth of the screen from 6.1 inches to 6.3 inches, the iPhone 17 is cosmetically similar to the iPhone 16. If the iPhone Air is the new premium model and the iPhone 17 Pros are the most powerful, then the iPhone 17 is the everyman’s iPhone. It has more than enough solid upgrades over last year’s model, but not as many as the iPhone 17 Pros.

    The iPhone 17 is not going to wow anyone with its industrial design, but underneath it all, it’s a trooper that goes the distance. It’s the iPhone you get if you want the Goldilocks experience.

    iPhone 17

    The iPhone 17 offers the best bang for buck in an iPhone. It’s a value proposition that’ll last for at least five years.

    Pros

    • Finally 120Hz, always-on display
    • Nearly A19 Pro-level performance
    • Great Center Stage camera for selfies
    • 48-megapixel ultrawide camera
    • Excellent battery life

    Cons

    • Dull colors
    • Only USB-C 2 speeds

    Basic design

    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Take the iPhone 16 design, stretch it a teensy bit up, and you get the iPhone 17. That may sound harsh, but it’s true: the iPhone 17 is 5.89 inches tall versus the 5.81-inch iPhone 16. Somehow it’s 0.01 inches narrower, though. It’s unlikely you’ll feel that it’s 0.24 ounces heavier, either; I didn’t.

    If you were hoping for more material change, you’re gonna be disappointed. I don’t think it’s worth fretting over since the iPhone 17 feels great in the hand. Not that most people will care since they’ll slap a case over it.

    Apple has stuck with an aluminum frame and gently curved sides that melt into the cover and back glass. The back has a vertically aligned pill-shaped bump for the dual cameras. What you can’t see with the naked eye is the improved scratch resistance for the screen. Apple is using Ceramic Shield 2, its second-gen cover material with increased durability, which Apple claims is 3x more scratch resistant than the iPhone 16’s first-gen Ceramic Shield screen. Apple also says Ceramic Shield 2 cuts down on glare. It doesn’t eliminate reflections from what I could see, and any reduction in glare is minimal at best. Still, I’ll take the increased scratch resistance. I asked Apple if Ceramic Shield 2 now means that keys or sand or pocket lint won’t easily scratch it, but the company clarified that its durability claims are not for a single instance where there’s unfortunate contact with some scratchy objects; it’s over time. Take that for what you will.

    Colors are subjective, but if you ask me, I think the iPhone 17 colors are dull. Besides black and white, there’s lavender, sage, and mist blue. Sage looks the best to me, but it’s still a muted green. I think it’s time for Apple to bring back red or coral or pacific blue. Give the regular iPhone some soul to stand out between the iPhone Air and iPhone Pros.

    A more “pro” display

    iPhone 17 in Sage green
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    That 0.08 inches of extra height means Apple was able to squeeze in a slightly larger 6.3-inch screen versus the 6.1-inch display on the iPhone 16. This is the same screen as the iPhone 17 Pro, with the same resolution, same 3,000 nits of peak outdoor brightness, the same 120 Hz “ProMotion” refresh rate, and the same always-on display. At last, Apple’s regular iPhone series isn’t saddled with a 60Hz refresh rate.

    To my eyes, there’s no visible difference between the screen on the iPhone 17 and the 17 Pro. Both Super Retina XDR displays look crisp, have excellent and wide viewing angles, and get more than bright enough indoors and outdoors. I neglected to mention this in my iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pros review, but I really wish Apple would include something akin to the “Aqua Touch 2.0 technology” in the OnePlus 13 that makes the touchscreen more responsive when there’s liquid on it or your fingers are wet. The slightest droplet of water on the iPhone 17 still confuses the screen into thinking you’re touching it when you’re not.

    Nearly pro performance

    Unlike Android phones, where performance can take a major downturn if the chipset maker (Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, etc.) has architecture or production problems, Apple’s A-series silicon just steadily gets better year after year.

    I’ve long stopped putting too much emphasis on synthetic benchmarks like Geekbench 6, but just to see how much less powerful the iPhone 17’s A19 chip is compared to the A19 Pro in the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pros, I ran the CPU test. The results truly shocked me. Using the average of three tests taken on the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 17 was 1.6% more powerful than the Air and 1.3% less powerful than the 17 Pro for single-core tasks.

    iPhone 17 in Sage green, iPhone 17 Pro in Silver
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The A19 Pro chip pulls ahead of the A19 for multicore applications, but not by much: the Air is 5% more powerful and 17 Pro is 9.48% more powerful than the iPhone 17. I thought for sure with one less GPU core (five instead of six) that the iPhone 17 Pros would be more powerful by a larger margin, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

    That’s great news if you’re worried about getting FOMO from not having the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17. But there’s another thing to consider: thermals and sustained performance. Compared to the iPhone 17 Pros, which have a vapor chamber that keeps temperatures down and spreads heat across the phone more uniformly when apps push the GPU hard, the iPhone 17 gets warmer a lot quicker. And if it gets too hot, it takes a little longer to cool down. Generally, my iPhone 17 review unit never got toasty, but if you’re planning to play 3D games like Genshin Impact or shoot a lot of 4K video with the phone or do either under the sun in hot environments, you may run into the infamous “”iPhone needs to cool down” sooner.

    The Center Stage camera is legit

    iPhone 17 in Sage green
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The iPhone 17 has some solid camera upgrades, too. The dual rear camera is now a “Fusion” camera consisting of a 48-megapixel main camera and now a higher-resolution 48-megapixel ultrawide (up from 12 megapixels on the iPhone 16). Photos look about the same to me compared to the same shots taken with my iPhone 16 Pro. Even the ultrawide shots look nearly identical; okay, they’re slightly brighter, but that’s nothing dialing up the brightness slider in the Photos app couldn’t easily handle. There’s no telephoto lens on the iPhone 17; if you want that, you’ll need to step up to the iPhone 17 Pros, which have a 4x telephoto lens that’s also capable of 8x “optical-quality” shots. You do get the 2x “optical-quality” lens from the main 48-megapixel image sensor, but that was already a feature on the iPhone 16.

    As I said in my iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pros review, the Center Stage camera is the biggest upgrade for photography and video since Apple first added a front-facing camera on the iPhone 4. The 18-megapixel Center Stage camera is a square image sensor, which can capture horizontal selfies even if you’re holding the phone vertically. You can also take vertical photos if you hold the iPhone 17 horizontally. The feature also works for video recording. It’s a very cool feature that everyone is going to appreciate, not just Gen Z TikTokers. The Dual Capture mode that records from the front and rear cameras is also very fun, especially for reaction-type videos.

    Since the iPhone 17 is not a “pro” iPhone, it doesn’t have the more advanced recording features found in the iPhone 17 Pros, like ProRAW for stills, ProRes for video, Apple Log 2, or genlock. Slow-motion video recording is also limited to 1080p at 240 fps compared to 4K at 120 fps on the 17 Pros. Lastly, you don’t get the “studio-quality” microphones found in the 17 Pros. I don’t think any of these “missing” features makes the iPhone 17 a dealbreaker, but it does feel like Apple could have included them if it wanted to, other than to feature-lock them to the higher-end iPhones.

    And just like I said in my iPhone 17 Pros review, I think Camera Control is still largely wasted. It’s there, but not more useful than as a shortcut to launching the Camera app. I much prefer the camera shortcut on Android, which has been a thing for over a decade: double-clicking the power button.

    More battery to doomscroll

    iPhone 17 in Sage green
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    No amount of battery life is ever going to be enough, but I’ll gladly take more hours gen-over-gen. In the iPhone 17’s case, battery life has increased by 8 hours compared to the iPhone 16—up to 30 hours versus 22 hours (for local video playback, which is how Apple measures battery life). It’s 3 fewer hours than the iPhone 17 Pro, which gets up to 33 hours.

    Using the iPhone 17 like a normal human being (because who is insane enough to watch local video for 30 hours straight), I found the iPhone 17 lasted about as long as my iPhone 16 Pro, which Apple says gets up to 27 hours for video playback. Give or take, I was able to go from off the charger at 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on a single charge with around 20 to 25% left in the tank. That’s great battery life and you can easily go two days with light usage.

    More for the same money

    iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    If all of that doesn’t sound like a good enough value, how about double the storage (256GB versus 128GB) versus the iPhone 16—for the same $799? That’s a good deal. Yeah, inflation and all that, but that’s still a damn good deal for everything that you get.

    There’s a $300 difference between the iPhone 17 and the 17 Pro this year, which is $100 more than last year. For most people, the iPhone 17 has more than enough, and the extra $300 can be pocketed or put towards an accessory like the new $250 AirPods Pro 3.

    I truly couldn’t find much to complain about on the iPhone 17. iOS is iOS. If you don’t like the “walled” Apple garden, there’s nothing new to report here, since it’s the same deal. Apple Intelligence, unfortunately, is still underwhelming and we’ll have to wait until next year to see the new AI-powered Siri. If there’s anything to really gripe about, I wish the USB 2 transfer speeds for the USB-C port were the faster USB 3 on the iPhone 16 and 17 Pros.

    If you’ve reached this far and you’ve been nodding your head at all the new stuff and don’t feel an urge to jump up to the 17 Pros, congrats, maybe the iPhone 17 is for you. If you still have an iPhone from recent years and it’s not having any issues, just update to iOS 26 (unless you really hate Liquid Glass). The best thing about iPhones is that they last a long time and Apple supports them with annual software updates for at least five years, and security updates for a few years after. You get a lot with the new iPhone 17, but you also may not need one if yours works just fine. For people switching from Android—you’re either gonna love Apple’s ecosystem or hate it and crawl back.

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    Raymond Wong

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  • The iPhone Air’s Battery Life Isn’t as Bad as I Thought It Would Be

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    The iPhone 17 Pro felt like a brick. I had just gotten used to the featherweight feel of Apple’s new iPhone Air after several days of use, but it was time to switch to the iPhone 17 Pro. Suddenly, I didn’t want to let the Air go.

    It’s amazing how a couple of grams and a slimmer profile can drastically change the feel of a phone. There isn’t much to grab on the edges, but the Air’s design is whimsical and somewhat paradoxical. It feels like a twig that can snap in a heartbeat, but the sturdy titanium frame dispels any notion of fragility.

    I was prepared to hate the iPhone Air. Why make a thin phone with lackluster battery life? A single-camera system for $999? After spending some time with it, I’m pleasantly surprised. I still don’t think most people should buy it—it’s for early adopters who want to experience Apple’s thinnest iPhone to date—but it’s a promising blueprint of what’s to come.

    Thin Air

    Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

    The iPhone Air is just 5.6 millimeters thick and 165 grams; contrast that with the iPhone 17 Pro, which has a smaller screen yet weighs 206 grams and is 8.75 mm thick. It’s a palpable difference. Initially, you might feel like the lighter weight makes the Air seem “cheap,” but that notion quickly disappears. This phone feels strong, durable, and rigid.

    I watched Apple perform a bend test on the iPhone Air, and it was able to withstand more than 130 pounds of force with no damage. I gave it a good bend test myself, but it didn’t flex. We’ll need to see how this phone performs in the hands of a wider audience, but I think you can put your pitchforks away—no #bendgate here. This durability stems from the use of titanium for the frame, along with Apple’s new Ceramic Shield 2 protecting the display, and Ceramic Shield 1 layered over the back. Apple says this mixture makes the Air more durable than any prior iPhone.

    I can’t imagine buying this ultrathin phone and putting a case on it, but I didn’t mind Apple’s bumper case. The phone still feels light and thin, but the slightly thicker edges of the bumper make it easier to grasp. Annoyingly, despite using a horizontal camera bar like Google’s Pixel phones, the camera still sticks out enough that the Air rocks on a table when you tap a corner—a small nitpick.

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    Julian Chokkattu

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  • Do You Really Need a New Apple Watch If You Already Have One?

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    Reviews for the Apple Watch SE 3, Series 11, and Ultra 3 came out today. I’m in the process of reviewing them. I only have two wrists, and there are three Apple Watches to review—so yeah. Besides, I need to collect more health data before I feel comfortable pushing reviews. If you’re reading reviews and asking yourself whether or not you should get any of the new models when they become available this Friday, Sept. 19, maybe I can help you make a decision.

    As I said in my hands-on with the Apple Watches after the Awe Jawdropping event last week, Apple’s trio of new smartwatches are a relatively straightforward refresh. All three models are available in GPS-only or GPS + cellular models, come with 5G connectivity (for cellular models), have S10 chipsets, and include 64GB of internal storage.

    Get the Apple Watch SE 3 if you don’t need the latest and greatest that Apple has to offer in a wrist computer and only need the basics like excellent health and fitness tracking, an always-on display for telling the time (finally), and you don’t want to pay too much. The Watch SE 3 is a terrific value starting at $250. The SE 3 gets up to 18 hours of battery life with a single charge.

    The Apple Watch SE 3 is a stupidly good value for $250. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Get the Apple Watch Series 11 if you want some more bells and whistles like slightly larger and brighter displays, a little bit of thinner design, ECG, blood oxygen tracking (via the iPhone app), and a more advanced optical heart rate sensor for more accurate health and fitness tracking. The Series 11 also comes in titanium finishes, whereas the SE 3 is available only with aluminum cases. The Series 11 gets longer battery life compared to the SE 3—up to 24 hours with a single charge.

    The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is the most feature-packed smartwatch that Apple sells. It’s got everything the Series 11 has, plus an even bigger display, satellite connectivity (emergency SOS and messages), and the longest battery of any Apple Watch at up to 42 hours with a single charge.

    That all sounds self-explanatory—options for good, better, and best—but what if you already own an Apple Watch? Should you upgrade beyond getting longer battery life? Because let’s be real, if you’ve had your Apple Watch for even a year and you’re consistently using it to track workouts, the battery is dying at a faster rate than if you’re just using it to tell the time and get notifications. Also, the batteries in Apple Watches aren’t going to last forever; they’ll inevitably go kaput one day or just not hold as long of a charge with time.

    If you’re in that boat, you really have to ask yourself this: do you care about hypertension notifications and the new Sleep Score?

    Hypertension notifications

    Hypertension, also known commonly as chronic high blood pressure, is a life-threatening condition that can oftentimes cause heart attacks or damage your organs. It’s called the “silent killer” because you typically won’t see symptoms. That’s where hypertension notifications come in. The feature received FDA clearance on Monday and will be made available in over 150 countries. The Series 11 and Ultra 3 can send hypertension notifications using data collected from their optical heart sensors, which is then processed through a “machine learning-based algorithm” designed from studies that included over 100,000 participants, according to Apple. “Apple Watch looks at your heart data and searches for patterns associated with hypertension,” reads the hypertension notifications setup screen within the Health app. The Apple Watch is not measuring blood pressure; it’s merely looking for the patterns that may match with hypertension victims.

    Apple Watch Se 3 Series 11 Ultra 3 Sleep Score Hypertension 4
    Hypertension notifications will only notify you if you’re at risk. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Setting up hypertension notifications is simple enough, but it’s not something you’ll be able to fire up on command on your Apple Watch. “The algorithm works passively in the background reviewing data over 30-day periods, and will notify users if it detects consistent signs of hypertension,” Apple states in a press release. Basically, if you’re 22 years or older and you’re not pregnant, there’s no reason not to turn it on. Ideally, you’ll never get a hypertension notification, which would indicate you’re a healthy human and have nothing to worry about. But if you do, at the very least you can take some preventive care if it’s not yet serious. The notifications could potentially save your life.

    Apple Watch Se 3 Series 11 Ultra 3 Sleep Score Hypertension 3
    Sleep Score is a terrific way to get a good overview of your sleep health. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Sleep score

    The other big Apple Watch feature that Apple announced last week is Sleep Score. This is a feature for all three of the new Apple Watches, including the SE 3. For me, it’s a big finally moment, as I’ve long found the sleep tracking on Apple Watches to be lacking compared to wearables made by other companies. Similar to the Activity Rings, Sleep Score is a way to measure three sleeping metrics: duration, bedtime, and interruptions. These three pieces of data are represented in a ring or “donut” as Apple told me (see photo at the very top), and they appear thicker or thinner based on how you achieve each one. You’re then assigned a score and one of five classifications (very low, low, OK, high, and excellent). The idea is that, at a glance, you can quickly see how well you slept and potentially make changes to improve any of the three metrics. In a way, it’s almost like gamifying sleep by guilting you into improving your Sleep Score and then maintaining it.

    I’ve been an insomniac for the past year and admittedly my Sleep Score has been ranking “low” the past week. Has the Sleep Score made me feel shameful that I have not corrected my sleep? 100%. But I’m also very good at ignoring it even when I know I have sleeping problems. Of course, that’s just me; I also ignore my Activity Rings more than I should and don’t stand when my Apple Watch tells me to. Like just a few minutes ago when I saw the notification and just blew it off! Most people I know who own an Apple Watch are more disciplined than me when it comes to getting nudged by their smartwatch to move or stand up or do something. Setting my own bad habits aside, Sleep Score is thoughtfully designed.

    Apple Watch Se 3 Series 11 Ultra 3 Sleep Score Hypertension 5
    Do you really need an Apple Watch Ultra 3? Not if you have an Ultra 2 and don’t need the longer battery life and satellite comms. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Now, back to the question of whether you should buy any of the new Apple Watches for these two features. If you want the latest and greatest Apple Watches, then by all means. But there’s really good news! If you own a Watch Series 6 or later, SE 2, or Ultra and later, you get Sleep Score for free in the just-released watchOS 26. If you have an Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or an Ultra 2 (sorry, OG Ultra owners), you get hypertension notifications for free in the same software update. So check your Apple Watch model and think a little bit about whether these features appeal to you or not. You may be able to save a few hundred bucks just by downloading the new update.

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    Raymond Wong

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  • Insta360 Go Ultra Review: This Tiny Action Camera Got Swacked by a Sword, and Survived

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    My brother punched his rapier toward my head. The blade missed me by inches, but the clever duelist swiped down and chopped at my crown, sending the $450 action camera attached to my fencing mask spinning away. The magnetic pod for Insta360’s Go Ultra tumbled to the floor, the light still blinking red, still recording. His sword left a gash along the side of the lens and a scuff on plastic. The camera still works, so if you were wondering how durable the Go Ultra is, know that it passed the “getting hit by a sword” test.

    Insta360 Go Ultra

    You won’t find a smaller action cam that’s this portable with video quality to stand up to your favorite GoPro.

    Pros

    • So light and portable
    • Records at 4K/60 fps
    • Magnetic mount with wide variety of uses
    • Durable against sword blows
    • Fast charging

    Cons

    • Battery doesn’t last too long
    • Overheating issues
    • No internal storage

    I had been looking for a camera light enough to stick on my fencing mask without rigging up a mount for a much larger recording device, and I think I found it with the Insta360 Go Ultra. The pricey action camera looks like your average GoPro when both of its main parts—the “Standalone Camera” case with the flip-up display and “Action Pod” with the image sensor and lens—are connected. But its detachable design means you can stick the smaller practically anywhere, so long as you rig up the right mount for the appropriate situation.

    The Go Ultra doesn’t have all the capabilities of its contemporaries. It’s not the best for slow-motion footage or shooting at the highest possible resolution and frame rate. But because of its light and idiot-proof design, the Go Ultra is now my favorite little device to take on adventures or whenever I next enter the dueling pit.

    An action camera for ants?

    The Standalone Camera and Action Pod serve as the two pieces to the Go Ultra’s whole. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The Action Pod can communicate with the Standalone Camera up to about 30 feet away, which helps you compose a shot when you can’t physically see the camera’s orientation. Whereas the average rugged action camera, such as the GoPro Hero 13 Black or DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro, can take a hit and keep on filming, the Go Ultra is still durable and can adhere to any magnetic strip or ferromagnetic metal (though you still want the strongest mount to keep it from going astray). However, if you’re planning to attach the Go Ultra’s Action Pod to any moving object, you’ll want a strong magnetic attachment to keep it secure. Compared to the Insta360 Go 3S from 2024, the Go Ultra’s Action Pod is much larger with longer battery life and a bigger sensor that makes it better for low-light shooting.

    The Insta360 Go Ultra contains a 14.27mm focal length lens with an f/2.85 aperture and the ability to shoot up to 50-megapixel still photos. With those specs, the lens fits somewhere in between higher-end action cameras and a simple point-and-shoot video camera for recording your family’s antics. It can shoot in a max 180Mbps bitrate with a variety of preset video modes, though most of the time you’ll stick with either “Video” in daylight or “PureVideo” for low-light environments. With a wide-angle lens, you’re more likely to get the shot without having a death grip on a selfie stick.

    The Go Ultra comes packed with a magnetic clip and a necklace you can wear under your shirt. The necklace will sit center-mass on your chest, which I found good for doing point-of-view shots when I was reporting on the ground from IFA 2025 in Berlin. The clip can help your lens hitch a ride on a hat or helmet and still feel light enough you may forget it’s there. I clipped the Go Ultra Action Pod on a thin tree branch and managed to get a shot without needing a tripod. The Action Pod is light enough I never had to worry about it weighing down anything it was attached to.

    The older Insta360 Go 3S may be lighter, but it’s to such a small degree that the trade off is worth it. Speaking of changes from the older Go-series action cameras, the Go Ultra doesn’t come with any internal storage, unlike the Go 3S. Instead, it records to a microSD card that slots into the Action Pod. I would have appreciated some buffer of internal capacity in case I ran out of storage on the memory card while shooting, but I vastly prefer SD cards to being stuck with limited built-in storage.

    Depending on what kind of bundle you buy, you may end up with more attachment points. The Standalone Camera housing can attach to a Quick Release Mount with your traditional GoPro two-pronged threads, a tripod, and a Pivot Stand with a suction cap. There’s even a $17 “Toddler Titan Hat Clip,” which Insta360 implies parents will hang from a child’s cap facing toward the body to take extra-close shots of the tyke’s wide-eyed expressions. I would not blame any toddler who takes that camera and chucks it across the room. Inevitably, it will be up to innovative camera aficionados to create their own magnetic mounts for their needs. To that end, the Action Pod allows for more creativity in how and where you set up your camera.

    Better than most for low-light shooting

    Insta360 Go Ultra Action Camera 10
    Insta360 sells several magnetic and non-magnetic mounts, such as its Pivot Stand, but you can DIY your own mounting rig with a little ingenuity. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    We all want to believe our action cams can take footage as beautiful as those slickly-produced GoPro promotional videos. The true footage you can get from such a small lens will inevitably disspaoint. The Insta360 Go Ultra shoots at 4K resolution at a max of 60 fps, though the camera will default to 30 fps in most scenarios. If you want to shoot with HDR—aka high-dynamic range for better contrast—you’re also limited to 30 fps. For my amateur hour fencing video that I published straight to Instagram, that’s perfectly acceptable. For those hoping for video footage requiring minimal editing, just know you’ll never get the quality you’ll see in all the promotional video that Insta360 shares to its social feeds. You’ll find that your phone may present better-quality footage for quick and dirty POV feeds.

    Still, I would put the Go Ultra’s quality up there with the expensive action cameras I’ve used. Small sensors often struggle with low-light scenarios, a problem that has plagued action cameras since the beginning. The Go Ultra’s “PureView” mode does a fair job brightening up images to make them more visible. I could spot a little bit of noise from the video once I brought it to my PC, but for my purpose the footage was good enough to flip over to my socials. As for the shots I took in the dim halls of IFA, the quality was a mixed bag. Some clips still appeared dark without great contrast. Overall, there’s only so much you can expect from a small sensor.

    The Go Ultra may not be your first go-to choice for extreme sports, especially if you were planning to shoot in slow motion. You can choose to film in 60 fps, but if you want automated slow-mo video, 4x slow-mo at 120 fps is limited to 1080p recording. Like Insta360’s 360-degree cameras and its upcoming Antigravity A1 drone, the Go Ultra also includes options for automatic dewarping to correct the fisheye effect of the rounded lens, but you may end up going for “Ultra” setting to capture as much of the scenery in one go. The video above used the standard “Ultra” wide field of view, which felt on the money for hands-on shots. With any of these modes, the camera’s automatic FlowState stabilization did a good job even as I was whipping a sword at my fencing partners.

    The action camera can shoot in both vertical and horizontal just by changing the orientation of the lens. The default 16:9 shots are when the camera lens is positioned in the top right. When rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise and the lens is on the top left, it will shoot in 9:16. There’s nothing on the Action Pod to mark when it’s vertical or horizontal, and there were times I would lose the Action Pod, reattach it, only to realize I was now shooting in the wrong orientation. This wasn’t a problem on older Go models with the oval-shaped pod compared to the square on the Go Ultra. A small indicator arrow on the Action Pod itself may have resolved this small headache.

    Not the longest battery, but it charges up real quick

    Insta360 Go Ultra Action Camera 08
    The Insta360 Go Ultra is about the same size as a GoPro Hero camera, though the detachable Action Pod is much smaller and lighter. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The Go Ultra can’t last you an entire afternoon’s worth of continuous shooting. Filming in 4K at 60 fps, I found it would last a little over 40 minutes before I needed to shove the Action Pod back in its case to let it recharge. In those cases, the Standalone Camera housing essentially acts as a way to give the Action Pod a little extra juice. But after depleting the Action Pod, the Standalone Camera and its limited 500mAh capacity battery won’t be enough for more than 1.5 hours, especially if you’re shooting in low-light or higher frame rate modes.

    Though the battery isn’t the best, the more concerning hurdle you’ll run up against is heat management. The Go Ultra alerts users as soon as they choose the 4K 60 fps mode that this could cause overheating, which would also hinder battery life. Outdoors, in the shade, the Action Pod didn’t feel hot to the touch, but it still alerted me about overheating after an extended shoot. A few minutes set aside in its Standalone Camera case eventually let continue recording.

    The latest GoPro Hero 13 Black lasts a little more than 2 hours of continuous recording at higher resolutions. The Go Ultra Action Pod should last longer—closer to 2 hours if you drop the frame rate down to 30 fps and only shoot at 1080p. I wouldn’t suggest you limit resolution for the sake of battery life unless it becomes absolutely necessary. To make up for the limited battery, Insta360’s small action camera supports fast charging. I could recharge up to 80% from empty in around 15 minutes. A full charge takes about 40 minutes for both the Standalone Camera and Action Pod.

    Most amateurs looking to post their snowboarding tricks to their TikTok won’t have any complaints with image quality. Those with more professional setups could find extra use for a small-form camera. Since the Go Ultra’s Action Pod is so compact, it becomes another arrow in the quiver when you need to get POV footage. It won’t have all the enhanced zoom, resolution, and frame rate options as other action cameras, but in my time using the Go Ultra, I didn’t miss 5.3K resolution or any of the other features, especially when the Action Pod is so damn light. It’s so small I don’t need to duck into a full head or chest mount to get quality shots.

    Those imagining all the action shots they can take with the $450 Insta360 Go Ultra need to remember what they may be sacrificing for the sake of portability. The Hero 13 Black’s costs $430 while Insta360’s Ace Pro 2 demands $400. At the very least, the move to smaller magnetic cameras is pushing the industry forward. Multiple leaks have implied DJI is planning to launch its own pod-based action camera. Until somebody comes along and does it better, the Go Ultra has just the right balance of camera quality and portability.

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    Kyle Barr

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  • The Apple Watch Series 11 Has Better Battery Life and Satellite Messaging

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    For years, Apple has tried to extend the battery life of the Apple Watch. For as many years, the company has only succeeded by half measures. Features like Low Power mode or faster charging help you keep the watch on your wrist for longer, but Apple has not significantly improved the watch’s 18-hour battery life—even at last year’s much-hyped decade-versary of the Apple Watch.

    I say this to give the context of why such a little thing was so shocking. After wearing the new Apple Watch Series 11 for a full afternoon and wearing it to sleep, I woke up in the morning and discovered that I still had 58 percent battery left. 58 percent! I can wear the watch to sleep, get up, get my kids to school, and charge the watch when I’m at my desk! Constantly fussing over battery life was a major pain of the Apple Watch, and it’s been fixed.

    Longer battery life also makes it significantly easier to use Apple’s newest health features as well. If you have a Series 3 or 4 and have been waiting to upgrade, this is the year to do it. Too bad Apple couldn’t pull this off last year.

    In a Heartbeat

    Photograph: Adrienne So

    First things first: The new Series 11 comes in 42- and 46-millimeter case sizes with aluminum and titanium finishes in a variety of colors—Gold, Natural, and Slate for titanium, Rose Gold, Silver, Space Gray, and Jet Black for aluminum). It has the same slim case as last year’s Series 10, along with features like fast charging and a new, more scratch-resistant glass.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook has long contended that the Apple Watch is meant to save your life. In accordance with this, the newest features on the watch (or more accurately, the watchOS 26 update that applies to all Apple Watches, Series 6 or later) are health-related. First, the watch now offers hypertension, or high blood pressure, notifications.

    Undiagnosed high blood pressure now affects as many as one in three people worldwide and can lead to heart attacks, stroke, or other long-term health conditions. The optical heart rate monitor on the watch purports to check how your blood vessels respond to your heartbeats; Apple says that the feature was developed with data from a series of studies that totaled over 100,000 participants.

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    Adrienne So

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  • AirPods Pro 3 Review: Skating to Where the Puck Is Going, Not Where It Has Been

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    Almost three years after Apple introduced the original AirPods Pro 2 (updated with USB-C in 2023) with category-defining sound quality and active noise cancellation (ANC), I can safely say that just about every company making ANC wireless earbuds has caught up or surpassed them, and often with buds that are sold for less than $250. Basic wireless earbuds features—good audio, good ANC, and good battery life—are table stakes, and each of these is improved on AirPods Pro 3. Apple’s third-gen ANC wireless earbuds are an excellent gen-over-gen upgrade and an even bigger leap if you’re coming from first-gen AirPods Pro.

    But what’s more interesting is seeing how Apple transforms the AirPods Pro 3 into a health and fitness-centric wearable and a vessel for AI features like Live Translation. To borrow a quote that’s often misattributed to Wayne Gretzky, AirPods Pro 3 “skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

    AirPods Pro 3

    Apple’s third-gen ANC wireless earbuds improve all the basics and lay the foundation for going beyond audio with health and AI features.

    Pros

    • Even better fit
    • Terrific sound
    • Improved ANC
    • Longer single-charge battery life
    • Simultaneous heart rate tracking and music
    • On-device Live Translation works
    • IP57 rating

    Cons

    • Less total battery life with case
    • Heart rate tracking only works with Fitness app
    • Live Translation only supports five (six if you count UK English) languages at launch

    Design and comfort

    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    I’ve never had complaints about the comfort and fit of AirPods Pro 2, so I was skeptical whether I’d feel any difference with AirPods Pro 3, which feature smaller buds with a more angled design, and foam-infused eartips. I’ve been using AirPods Pros almost daily since the originals came out in 2019, so I have a pretty good idea when the little white pieces of plastic that I stuff into my ears feel off—in a good way. AirPods Pro 3 sit deeper in my ears (your ears might be different), and the stems are just slightly farther away. I’ve been using the preinstalled medium-sized eartips on AirPods Pro 2 without issues, but just to see whether I’d get more noise passive noise cancellation from the new foam-infused eartips, I tried the small size tips, and lo and behold, they seemed to block out just a bit more environmental noise. So definitely try a size down if you’re feeling like ANC could be better. Apple also includes an XXS size eartip (for a total of five sizes) this time around. (There’s no USB-C cable in the box anymore, though, but who doesn’t have a dozen of them lying around?)

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 1
    AirPods Pro 2 (left) vs. AirPods Pro 3 (right). © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    There are other subtle external changes, too. The inner vent is smaller; the outer vents are larger; and there’s one more covering the heart rate sensor next to the eartip. The buds are also rated IP57 sweat- and water-resistant, which means they can be immersed in up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes and can survive heavier rain and dusty conditions. AirPods Pro 2 are only IPX4-rated, which is good for only splashes, and light rain and sweat.

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 2
    AirPods Pro 2 case (left) vs. AirPods Pro 3 case (right).  © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The charging case is largely the same, save for some small tweaks. Most people won’t notice this (I almost didn’t), but the case is a teensy bit larger in all directions. Apple told me that the redesigned geometry of the buds required a slightly bigger case to ensure they’d slip in with the same satisfying clicks and snaps. Loose-fitting cases for older AirPods Pro should still be compatible with the AirPods Pro 3, but the ones that are snug might not, and you may need a new case. I don’t do cases for my AirPods, so I’m fine sticking a cute keychain on the cases’ built-in lanyard loop. The case also no longer has a physical button on the backside. Matching the AirPods 4 (with and without ANC) case, the AirPods Pro 3 case has a touch-sensitive button just below the battery indicator LED. Double-tapping it puts the wireless earbuds into pairing mode, and double-tapping it three times factory resets it.

    Sound quality and active noise cancellation

    Like any tech company, Apple takes every opportunity to boast about how it reengineered its products to offer even better this or that. For AirPods Pro 3, Apple says the wireless earbuds use a “new multiport acoustic architecture” for better sound across all frequencies—highs, mids, and lows. I’ll leave the scientific tests to the audiophiles at SoundGuys and RTings, but to a regular Joe like myself, they sound virtually the same compared to AirPods Pro 2. That’s not a knock—AirPods Pro 2 sound great—but we’ve reached a ceiling for sound quality in wireless earbuds. If there’s any discernible difference, it’s that the lows are just a bit cleaner, especially if you’re using the AirPods Pro 3 in motion like running. Many of the bass-heavy tracks in the Power Hour playlist on Spotify sounded deeper with less distortion, and vocals sounded just a smidge clearer. I thought some of my favorite new songs from Linkin Park’s latest album, “From Zero,” including “Stained” and “IGYEIH,” would sound miles better, but alas, they sound about the same. There wasn’t much that Apple needed to improve in terms of sound quality, so I’m not surprised at all that any audible differences are minor. I’m fine with not messing with the already great sound. It’s better than Apple forcing some kinda AI enhancement to remaster songs for the modern age and potentially ruining them.

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 9
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Transparency mode is also more natural-sounding. Compared to other similar modes on other wireless earbuds that I’ve tried, like the Pixel Buds 2 Pro, Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, and Nothing Ear, I’ve always found Transparency mode on AirPods Pro 2 to sound the cleanest. Background noise is blended with music in such a way that it doesn’t sound like a synthetic mode with tinniness or reverb that I’ve noticed on other wireless earbuds. On AirPods Pro 3, I could hear voices and ambient sounds mix more seamlessly with my music. It’s subtle, but very nice!

    ANC is a different story. Apple says it improved active noise cancellation by two times compared to AirPods Pro 2, and by four times compared to the first-gen AirPods Pro and AirPods 4 with ANC, which have the same level of noise cancellation. I don’t have the tools to measure and verify that ANC claim, so again, I’ll let the audio experts tackle that, but I can tell you the ANC (with the best-fitting eartip for my ears) is noticeably stronger in blocking out background noise. As I type this, I can’t hear the whir of the Dyson Airblade fan from 10 feet across the room or even the battery-powered pocket fan on my desk. I didn’t hear my cat, Kiwi, meowing like a maniac earlier when it was her dinner time. Outside, on the subway, the screeches and rumblings of the train were more drowned out compared to my AirPods Pro 2; I felt less irritated not having to hear a guy singing bad karaoke for two stops. All of this is to say, the ANC on AirPods Pro 3 is indeed better than on any other AirPods. Is it the best there is in any wireless earbuds? Better than the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2nd Gen) that my colleague James Pero says have “amazing ANC” and are best in class? Probably not—AirPods Pro 3 don’t completely eliminate external sound—but they’re gonna be more than enough for most people. Crank the volume up past 50% when you’re listening to music and you’re gonna hear less environmental noise.

    Heart rate tracking

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 5
    AirPods Pro 3 have a built-in heart rate sensor. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The biggest new addition in AirPods Pro 3 is the heart rate sensor. If you don’t have an Apple Watch, you can use it to track your heart rate and calories while using the Fitness app. The Beats Powerbeats Pro 2, released in February, were Apple’s first pair of wireless earbuds with a built-in heart rate sensor, but they fell short of being useful because you couldn’t simultaneously track your heart rate and listen to music. Many reviewers also found the heart rate readings to be inaccurate compared to an Apple Watch, chest strap, or even smart rings like Oura.

    Apple confirmed to Gizmodo that the heart rate sensor inside AirPods Pro 3 is completely different technology compared to the Powerbeats Pro 2 and wasn’t based on it. Weird, how Beats is owned by Apple, but developed its own inferior tech. You’d think there would be more synergy between the two companies internally.

    Either way, I’m happy to report that you can listen to music and get a real-time heart rate reading while using the AirPods Pro 3. I didn’t have a chest strap monitor to compare the AirPods Pro 3 with, but there’s a low deviation between the heart rate sensor in the wireless earbuds compared to an Apple Watch Series 9 and Series 10. Before, during, and after three outdoor walks and two 2-mile runs, I did back-to-back checks on the heart rate readings between the three wearables and found there was generally a beats per minute (bpm) difference between 1 and 5. Sometimes the AirPods Pro 3 and Apple Watches recorded the exact same heart rate. This heart rate variability is considered normal; anything higher than 5 bpm would have been reason to worry about the accuracy of the sensor in the AirPods Pro 3. Of course, there’s always going to be some difference when you’re measuring heart rate in your ear versus on your wrist or chest. There’s also the matter of making sure the heart rate sensor on the AirPods Pro 3 is properly covered by your ear’s front flap, or tragus. A poor fit could result in inaccurate heart rate readings, so keep that in mind.

    Heart rate reading on Apple Watch Series 9 vs. AirPods Pro 3
    Heart rate reading on Apple Watch Series 9 vs. AirPods Pro 3 © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    You’re probably thinking: if you have an iPhone, then you probably have an Apple Watch, so why would you need a heart rate sensor in AirPods Pro 3 as a duplicative feature? First, not everyone who has an iPhone owns an Apple Watch. Not everyone wants a smartwatch, though the new $250 Apple Watch SE 3 is gonna be a value that’s too good for fence-sitters to refuse. Second, the heart rate sensor in the AirPods Pro 3 is just a single stream of heart rate data. Apple says that combined with an Apple Watch, you’ll get multiple readings and the Health and Fitness apps will log whichever is the more accurate one. It’s not an average of multiple connected heart rate sensors, Apple says. I pressed the company on what exactly “more accurate” means, but it seems the company is keeping that info secret, only stating that the activity and calorie tracking reading is determined based on an AI model that was trained from over 50 million hours of data from its Apple Heart and Movement Study.

    Live Translation

    Companies have been trying to figure out how to shove real-time translations into wireless earbuds for years. Google first attempted live translations with its original Pixel Buds in 2017. To review them, I brought in two professional interpreters who had translated for UN conferences to help me test the accuracy and speed of Google Translate running on the Pixel Buds paired to a Pixel 2 XL. The results were not unexpected: the Pixel Buds were no replacements for live translations from humans. The live translation feature was convenient and helpful in a pinch, but clearly too literal in translations, and oftentimes incorrectly translated certain words or phrases. The professional interpreters were able to translate five times faster than waiting for Google to beam the translations from the cloud. Eight years later, Apple may have cracked it.

    AirPods Pro 3 Live Translation
    © Screenshots by Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Live Translation on AirPods Pro 3 is the same feature, but it actually (mostly) works—and in near real-time—from what I could gather. The number of supported languages at launch is short—English (UK), English (U.S.), French, German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain)—but Apple says it plans to add Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese (Simplified) by the end of the year. As somebody who’s been learning Mandarin Chinese and starting on Japanese, I was bummed I couldn’t try out either. I’ll have to revisit Live Translation when those languages are added.

    I tested Live Translation in Spanish and French, though in most cases the Spanish was of the Mexican variety. Turning on Live Translation is easy, and there are several ways to do so. You can squeeze the stems of both buds, and your iPhone will launch the Translate app. You don’t need to have the app open, but you’ll get live transcriptions for both the language that’s being translated and that you’re translating into. You can use a Siri Shortcut and map it to the Action button on a supported iPhone. Or you can simply say, “Siri, start Live Translation.” I found this to be the worst of the three ways, with the voice assistant constantly translating “live translation” into a language after the command. Siri also repeatedly got confused about where the start and end of a sentence I asked to be translated was. Clearly, Siri is still not as intelligent as it could and should be by. Google’s Gemini seems to misunderstand me a lot less on the Pixel 10 and Galaxy Z Fold 7.

    I first tested translating Spanish with my friend Christian, who speaks it as her first language. We had a brief conversation about what types of food and activities there are to do in my neighborhood. She said the translations were about 95% accurate. There were some instances where the AirPods Pro 3 microphones failed to pick up on a few words that both of us said. For example, I tacked on “Thanks, honey” at the end of the convo and the buds just didn’t hear that part. I don’t know if I spoke too quickly or too softly or what. It’s not a dealbreaker unless you’re mentioning something really important.

    In classic Apple style, Live Translation has its nice attention to detail. When activated, ANC turns on and the beamforming mics in AirPods Pro 3 kick in to isolate the voice of the speaker directly in front of you so you can focus on what they’re saying. If the other person is wearing AirPods Pro 3 (or Pro 2 or AirPods 4 with ANC), they’ll get the same experience.

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 4
    Squeezing both stems turns on Live Translation. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Then, I tried Live Translation with a fruit stand seller speaking Mexican Spanish, while Christian monitored the live transcriptions on my iPhone. I asked, “Can I get some fresh orange juice?” and the AirPods Pro 3 read back (and transcribed in the app), “¿Puedo conseguir un zuma de naranja fresco?” Christian told me that while that was correct because Live Translation was translating English to Spanish (Spain), she would have gone with “jugo” for juice instead of “zuma”, which is more common in conversational Spanish. Maybe one day, Apple Translate and Live Translation on AirPods Pro will be able to automatically detect accents and regional vocabulary, and personalize translations to them. For now, Live Translation seems to work mostly as advertised.

    The best part of Live Translation is that it all works on-device—no internet connection is required. I tested it with the Wi-Fi turned off and translations worked just as quickly. Of course, you will need to download the languages to your iPhone, so you will eat up some storage, but also your conversations (audio and transcriptions) are never saved on the device or anywhere in iCloud or the cloud, and Apple promises that it doesn’t use any Live Translation data for training its AI models. That’s a relief, because I don’t need Apple or any AI knowing the very stupid conversations I like having with my international friends.

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 3
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Another fun way I found to use Live Translation was while watching YouTube videos. I loaded up a video from a Spanish-speaker and turned the volume loud enough for the AirPods Pro 3 to pick up the audio and translate it back in real-time. All of a sudden, videos in Spanish became more accessible without having to glance down at the bottom of the screen and potentially missing what was happening. I compared the voice translations coming through the buds and the Translate app to the on-screen subtitles and auto-dubbed version from YouTube, and they seemed to track closely. AI voice translations are rapidly breaking down language barriers for video content and I’m all for enabling more people to view and connect with videos regardless of their native tongue. What I’m not sure about just yet is using AI to deepfake or reproduce a person’s voice (and sometimes even sync it to lip movements). Google’s Pixel 10 phones have a feature called Voice Translate that does real-time voice translations (also on-device) during phone calls, but it clones your voice with near pitch-perfect tones and inflections. It’s cool, creepy, and a month after reviewing the devices, I’m still not sure whether it’s necessary. Google frames Voice Translate as “hear the voices you love, not a robot,” but this is gonna be something consumers will decide whether it goes too far. Fortunately, you don’t need to worry about deepfaked voices with AirPods Pro 3 and Live Translation—you get two female voices and a male one to choose from.

    Battery life

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 8
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    There are two ways to look at battery life for wireless earbuds: you can get longer battery life from a single charge for the buds and fewer hours total with the charging case, or less continuous listening time with the buds and more total hours with the charging case. On AirPods Pro 2, the buds could last up to 6 hours with ANC and get up to 30 hours total with the case—that’s five additional charges. On AirPods Pro 3, Apple bumped up the buds an extra 2 hours to 8 hours on a single charge, but reduced the total amount of battery with the case to 24 hours—so you only get two extra charges.

    That’s an upgrade if you prefer more continuous listening time, like for a long-haul flight. But it’s a downgrade if you want more battery life on the go. This split between continuous listening battery life and total battery life with the case is equal to Sony’s WF-1000XM5 wireless earbuds. Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) get up to 6 hours with ANC and only 24 hours total with the case.

    This change may mean trips to the outlet sooner than before. I really wish Apple had sped up the fast charging. A 5-minute charge still provides only 1 hour of listening time, just like on AirPods Pro 2.

    Still great for audio, but the future is health and AI

    Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review 11
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    There are some other features that are nice, like the ability to press the stem of a bud to click the shutter when you’ve got the Camera app open; good if you’re a vlogger or want to snap a photo with your iPhone propped up from afar. AirPods Pro 3 also have a newer Ultrawide band chip inside the charging case that lets you find them using Precision Find My from 1.5x farther away, according to Apple. I’ve maybe used Precision Find My only a handful of times with my AirPods Pro 2, so it’s not a big addition for me, but if you’re always misplacing your wireless earbuds, it could come in handy.

    Apple is also doing more for hearing health and assistance, with the hearing test that you can take during setup for the AirPods Pro 3 now being scientifically validated.

    Combined with the upgraded basics for sound, ANC, battery life, and durability, AirPods Pro 3 are an even better wireless earbuds package than the AirPods Pro 2. The price is still the same $250 MSRP, but if the deep sales on AirPods Pro 2 in the past years are any indication, AirPods Pro 3 may drop drop $200 or $150 this holiday season. Yes, there are probably better-value ANC wireless earbuds out there, but they’re not buds that are designed to pair and switch seamlessly between Apple devices. Nor will other wireless earbuds have the same tight integration with Apple services, like the heart rate tracking and Live Translation that are only possible with iPhone and the Fitness app. If you’ve got an Android phone, you’ll get all the better core wireless earbuds features, but you won’t get the health and AI stuff, and that’s where the puck is going. With AirPods Pro 3, you’re getting a front-row seat to where things are headed. I would bet money that once Apple gets its Apple Intelligence-powered Siri back on track, that’s when we’ll really see AI in AirPods open new doors.

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    Raymond Wong

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  • Galaxy Buds 3 FE Review: Samsung’s ‘Fan Edition” Wireless Earbuds Are Just Enough

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    If you’re a Samsung fan and you see “FE” branding, you probably think a few things. The first thing that comes to mind is probably, “I’m saving some money.” For those not fluent in Samsung lingo, FE, which is actually short for “Fan Edition,” is the equivalent of SE in Apple-speak, meaning it’s a more budget-friendly alternative to the flagship-level gadgets. But it’s not just savings you want when you’re seeking something FE-branded—you want quality, too. Maybe you’re not expecting every bell and whistle in the wheelhouse, but you want a lot of it.

    I want a lot of the good stuff, too, and I don’t want to pay for it, which is why when I got my hands on Samsung’s recently released Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 FE, my expectations were elevated. And at $150, they might be even more elevated than usual. It’s not that $150 is too much money in the world of wireless earbuds, it’s that there are a ton of competitors in that range, and a lot of them punch above their weight class—the OnePlus Buds 4, Nothing’s Ear, and Google’s Pixel Buds 2a, for example.

    So, the next logical question is how do the Galaxy Buds 3 FE hold up against competition, and if we already know there are compromises built in, what exactly are they? On that front, I’ve got good news and bad. Let’s start with the good stuff.

    Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 FE

    Samsung’s newest Galaxy Buds 3 FE wireless earbuds sound good but lag in some key departments.

    Pros


    • Good sound

    • Same blade design as Buds 3 Pro

    Cons


    • ANC is middling at best

    • Not as feature-rich as competing buds

    • Blade design looks nice but isn’t great to touch

    FE price with flagship sound

    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    I won’t mince words; I really like how the Galaxy Buds 3 FE sound. For wireless earbuds in this price range, they sound (at the risk of hyperbole) shockingly good. They don’t have as much bass as some competitors like OnePlus and its recent pair, the OnePlus Buds 4, but I personally don’t mind that at all—I don’t key in on bass when it comes to wireless earbuds. I’m more likely to appreciate buds that mitigate distortion, and I would describe the Galaxy Buds 3 FE as pleasantly unmuddled.

    See Galaxy Buds3 FE at Amazon

    See Galaxy Buds3 FE at Samsung

    I find that, despite being less bassy, the Galaxy Buds 3 FE have a really natural soundstage, with clear mids and highs, which make vocals feel audible and present, and accompanying music distinct. I tested the Galaxy Buds 3 FE back-to-back against the OnePlus Buds 4, listening to the new Gorillaz single, “The Happy Dictator,” and the experience was kind of jarring, but I think I prefer Samsung’s audio tuning. I could hear vocals upfront, background vocals felt artfully tucked away, arpeggiated synths occupied their own rightful space in the mid and high range, and I didn’t detect much distortion even with the volume turned almost all the way up. If you emphasize bass, you’ll most likely disagree with me, but the Galaxy Buds 3 FE are my preference.

    What’s the FE catch?

    Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Fe 5
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    So, there’s the highlight—the sound. But what about the stuff you may not like? For me, it’s the active noise cancellation (ANC). As much as I like listening with the Galaxy Buds 3 FE when I’m in a relatively quiet environment, I find that the appeal withers slightly in the cacophony of New York City living. One of the biggest tests you can put a pair of ANC wireless earbuds through is New York’s subway system—a gauntlet that I send almost every pair of wireless earbuds and headphones through—and in this case, I would say the Galaxy Buds 3 FE barely pass the test. When a train arrives, I basically can’t hear what I’m listening to, and even while I’m riding the subway, I’m still getting a decent amount of ambient noise from my environment.

    I don’t think that it’s a passive noise cancellation issue—the default eartips feel comfortable—but even if it were, the Galaxy Buds 3 FE also only come with two tip sizes, which is notably less than other similarly priced competitors, which offer between three and five sizes. I’ll give Samsung a little slack here if just because the last pair of ANC wireless earbuds that I tested are Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), which cost $300 and are designed specifically to cancel the heck out of all the noise around you. They’re the best at noise cancelling of any wireless earbuds I’ve put in my ears. But still, I was expecting more from Samsung, especially when I had no such complaints about the OnePlus Buds 4.

    While the Galaxy Buds 3 FE are fine for mild instances of noise cancellation—they’re mostly fine on the sidewalk in New York when I’m walking place to place—they’re not the wireless earbuds I would spring for on an airplane or during a loud New York City subway commute.

    Things that are fine with the Galaxy Buds 3 FE

    Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Fe 2
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    You’ve got the good and the not-so-good, but what about the in-between? There are levels to this stuff, after all. I think the best encapsulation of things that are just fine in these wireless earbuds is the squeeze and touch controls. They’re not the best I’ve ever used, but they’re very okay. Interestingly, Samsung includes two types of controls on the Galaxy Buds 3 FE. To adjust volume, you swipe up or down on the buds, while skipping tracks, pause/play, and turning ANC on and off are done through squeezing. Like any squeeze controls, you’ll have to adjust to the sensitivity at first, but once you do, they work fine for the most part.

    I say “the most part” because I do find—because the Galaxy Buds 3 FE are so light—that squeezing them does jostle them in my ear a bit. They’re not flying out mid-commute or anything, but squeezing does feel marginally more tenuous than on other pairs of wireless earbuds. Adding to that tenuousness, I think, is Samsung’s “blade” design, which is borrowed from its flagship Galaxy Buds 3 Pro for this version of the FE. My complaint doesn’t have anything to do with how the blade design copies AirPods—I actually like the look of the Galaxy Buds 3 FE—but one thing I don’t like is how it feels on my fingers.

    Because of the way the buds are situated when they’re in your ears, the edge of the blade faces forward, which means when you go to squeeze, you may actually be squeezing a sharp angle, which (while not the biggest problem in the world) just doesn’t feel altogether right. I’d much rather squeeze a flat surface (a flatter stem with a bigger surface area). It’s a small tactile detail in the scheme of things, but as long as we’re getting nerdy about this stuff, it’s worth mentioning.

    Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Fe 1
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Though I don’t love the feel of the blade design, I do actually like the look. They’re plain in the scheme of things, but I find them kind of elegant. I also like how they appear when they’re in my ears, though the blade is a decent length and can sometimes end up sticking out if I don’t properly put them in my ears. Haters will say that the blade design is just an AirPods ripoff, and congrats, haters, you’re right. That being said, AirPods look nice (if a little boring), in my opinion, and I think that Samsung does a good job of putting a little twist on the Apple minimalism.

    In keeping with the theme of the section, the battery life of the Galaxy Buds 3 FE is also just okay. The buds are rated for 6 hours of battery life while ANC is activated and 8.5 hours when it’s turned off, and with my usage, those estimates seem accurate. With the charging case, the total hours of battery is up to 24 hours with ANC on and up to 30 hours with it off. That’s about the same battery you’d get with most wireless earbuds in this price range, give or take a half hour or so. Sorry folks, if the longest battery life is a priority, you’ll just have to spend more money on wireless earbuds.

    Feature-wise, the Galaxy Buds 3 FE are decently equipped but not brimming. You get adaptive ANC, 360 audio (Samsung’s version of spatial audio), transparency mode, and you can choose EQ presets in the Galaxy Wearable app, but there’s no personalized tuning test like there is on the OnePlus Buds 4 or Nothing Ear. That last one is a bit of a bummer since personalized EQ can dramatically change the sound quality in my experience.

    Feature-rich or not, the Galaxy Buds 3 FE are still nice-sounding buds at a fairly affordable price. I think Samsung has room to improve in the ANC department, though, and if you’re looking for the most of anything, going FE just isn’t the way. But if you like Samsung’s Galaxy products and you’re more focused on quality sound over anything else, these might be your pick without costing too much.

    See Galaxy Buds3 FE at Amazon

    See Galaxy Buds3 FE at Samsung

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    James Pero

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  • Razer’s BlackShark V3 Pro Are the Best High-End Gaming Headphones

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    Despite including Bluetooth and ANC, I don’t think of this at the type of do-everything headset you might replace noise-canceling headphones with, and not just because the person next to you will wonder if you’re secretly talking to the pilots. These are so bulky and obviously for gaming that you probably don’t want to wear them outside the house. You’d certainly get some weird looks walking the dog or working from your local coffee shop.

    Comfort and Fit

    Photograph: Brad Bourque

    In order to fit all those features inside, the BlackShark 3 are noticeably heavier than some of the other headsets I’ve tested recently. The Pro version with ANC comes in at 367 grams, a full 100-plus grams heavier than the Arctis Nova 3 at 260 grams. If you opt for the non-Pro model without ANC, it’s much closer to the SteelSeries at just 270 g, which is very appealing if you mostly game alone at home instead of in front of a crowd of adoring fans.

    That weight doesn’t make them uncomfortable, at least for a few hours at a time, largely thanks to the ear cups, which have a pleasant mesh exterior and squishy interior padding. Razer says there’s a layer of pleather underneath to help the noise canceling, but I couldn’t tell it was there, which is a good thing, because I hate how hot pleather can get.

    Still, I miss the ski-goggle band found on most SteelSeries headsets, which distributes weight more evenly across the top of the headband. Especially during long sessions, and on bigger craniums, it can help a lot with comfort. Even the similarly heavy Arctis Nova Pro, my previous upgrade pick, has a softer top-of-head feel.

    Extra weight also means a bigger battery. I measured close to 50 hours with the active noise canceling on, and right around 60 with the feature turned off. In practice, I only had to plug in the BlackShark V3 Pro once a week or so to keep them topped up. The one time they got low in the middle of a WoW raid night, I was able to charge them up on our 8-minute break from about 4 percent to 11 percent, which was more than enough for the rest of the evening. They got a little confused if I plugged them into the computer just to charge, but an external charger worked just fine while playing.

    The Best Microphone

    Razer BlackShark V3 Pro Review HighEnd Gaming Audio

    Photograph: Brad Bourque

    I rotate through a lot of gaming headsets, and most of the time I have to ask for feedback on my microphone quality. Some are better than others, but most are just gaming headset microphones, with a recognizable, slightly tinny vibe. The moment I sat down for my weekly Dungeons and Dragons game, my party members noticed how sharp and clear I sounded.

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    Brad Bourque

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  • I Found the 4K Monitor Almost Everyone Should Own

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    At one time, having a 4K monitor felt like a luxury. Now, thanks to the power of modern computers and the dramatic price drop, 4K monitors are no longer unattainable upgrades. They’re becoming the standard.

    The Dell 27 Plus 4K is the best example of this trend I’ve seen so far. It might not have all the bells and whistles of a Dell UltraSharp monitor, nor the mind-blowing image quality of the Dell 32 Plus OLED. But for my money, this is the best monitor the average person working from home should buy—especially when it’s on discount. I’ve seen it dip as low as $254, and that’s a steal for what you get.

    The Dell Difference

    Photograph: Luke Larsen

    Dell monitors have always been pretty, and the Dell 27 Plus 4K is no different. The bezels are thin, and the base and stand aren’t overly large. The “Ash White” color looks clean on my already-white desk. It might not look as professional as a silver or black model, but for home use, I prefer the white. The design is worth noting, too, since at this price, some monitors tend to look really cheap. Despite the plastic exterior on the Dell 27 Plus 4K, the stand and base have metal inside, so they feel sturdy.

    Setting up this monitor is simple, with no tools required. Compared to most monitors, it does have an extra backplate that must be tightened into the stand (with a thumb screw), but it only takes a minute or so to pull the various pieces out of the box and have it ready to go.

    The back of the monitor has a standard VESA mount, making it perfect for connecting to a monitor arm if that’s your jam. The stand gives you a full range of adjustments, including 5 inches of height, tilt, rotation, and swivel. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go high enough to rotate it completely into a vertical monitor, which is a shame. (You can still use it vertically with a monitor arm.)

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    Luke Larsen

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  • All-Clad’s New Outdoor Pizza Oven Comes With a Very Smart Feature

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    This pizza oven goes to 11. At least it says it does. A mere 20 minutes or so after firing up the new All-Clad Gas Pizza Oven—the beloved pot-and-pan brand’s first real foray into outdoor cooking—the oven’s temperature gauge has gone deep into uncharted territory.

    The dial’s markings top out at around 900 degrees Fahrenheit, but the thermometer’s needle is somewhere in no man’s land, well above what might register as a thousand if its thermometer weren’t busy shrugging. My infrared temperature gun seems inclined to agree, depending where I point it inside the oven, though the surface of the All-Clad’s thick 16-inch pizza stone is still hanging manageably below 900 degrees.

    Consider this an announcement: All-Clad did not come to play.

    Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

    The propane-powered, 16-inch All-Clad is a powerful new entrant in the still young world of accessible backyard pizza ovens, a landscape whose first decade was mostly a scorched-wood duel between the English and the Scots—Ooni and Gozney, respectively. (See WIRED’s guide to the best pizza ovens.)

    All-Clad is making a case that new ideas are still out there. The oven’s big sell, aside from its gaping 16-inch maw, is a rotating pizza stone that’s meant to take a lot of the fuss out of cooking pizza evenly. (The All-Clad isn’t alone. The lower-cost Versa 16 from Halo, which I’m currently testing, also offers a rotating stone.)

    In the process, the All-Clad places itself as a genuine contender among top pizza ovens. Once I cooled the oven back down into more reasonable temperatures, I have used this All-Clad to make pies both neo-Neapolitan and New York, baked pies from fresh and frozen alike, seared a handsome ribeye steak, and cooked veggies that ranged from charred to even more charred.

    Spin Me Right Round

    Video: Matthew Korfhage

    I’ll get into the specs later. But first, I want to talk about the oven’s most salient feature: that rotating pizza stone. Is it really as exciting as all that? In short, yes. Yes, it is. It’s likely to be especially attractive to first-time pizza makers, and those who turn out a lot of pies rapidly.

    Most pizza ovens heat from a single primary source. And so pizza brands like Ooni have devoted considerable effort to modeling the interior domed shape of their ovens. With propane models that heat from a rim of fire in the back, the idea is to entice flames to lick up and over the dome, creating even heat around the oven, thus heating the stone evenly.

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    Matthew Korfhage

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  • These Odd-Looking Earbuds Rival the Best From Apple, Sony, and Bose

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    The Pro X, like the Between 3ANC before them, use multiple drivers: a dynamic unit for the lowest frequencies paired with a dual set of Knowles balanced armatures for the upper-mids and highs. Just like in a tower speaker that has a woofer, a midrange, and a tweeter, multi-driver earbuds divide and conquer by sending specific frequencies to a driver that’s been tuned to handle them.

    Out of the box, the earbuds are set to Status Signature—the Pro X’s default tuning. It’s a nicely balanced EQ that boosts neither highs nor lows, yet still possesses a warm tone. There’s effortless detail in the midrange, and the highs have excellent clarity. Bass is tightly controlled; even when pushing the Pro X to 95% volume, Billie Eilish’s bass-tastic “bad guy” sounded perfect, with no discernible distortion.

    Switching to the Knowles Preferred preset gives a big bump to the upper mids and highs to show off what those balanced armatures can do. Normally, this kind of tuning doesn’t do it for me, but on the Pro X, I was impressed by how enjoyable it was. If you’ve found yourself drawn to Bose’s high-energy sound signature in the past, this preset gets you very close.

    If you can’t find your favorite balance from among the five available presets, you can roll your own. In fact, one of the best features is creating custom EQ presets by starting with an existing one. I goosed Status Signature’s low-end just a tad, and got exactly the mix I wanted. On that note, I have to give Status props for its app; it’s super clean and very easy to use.

    The soundstage isn’t especially wide—I’d place its extremities about 3-6 inches outside my head—but it’s got excellent precision. Individual elements stand out from each other so clearly that you can mentally point at the various musicians playing in front of you. A jazz classic like Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” benefits a lot from the Pro X’s clear separation of sounds, letting you appreciate each instrument in its own space.

    I did most of my listening on an iPhone 16, but it’s worth noting that the Pro X support Sony’s high-quality LDAC Bluetooth codec. If you’re on Android, make sure you’ve got it enabled for an even smoother, more refined performance.

    Against the Crowd

    Photograph: Simon Cohen

    I swapped the Pro X with Sony’s WF-1000XM5, Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 4, and Technics’ EAH-Z100. The Status Pro X more than held their own on sound quality. I personally still prefer the XM5’s sound signature thanks to its more resonant bass response, but that’s more about my taste than any shortcomings of the Pro X—they’re excellent.

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    Simon Cohen

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  • The New Bose QC Ultra 2 Are the Best Noise-Canceling Headphones Right Now

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    When it comes to cutting out annoying outside noise, there is no brand in history that has denatured more decibels than Bose. The pioneers of noise-canceling haven’t been without challengers in recent years, including Sony, Apple, and others, but Bose has maintained the crown for generation after generation. Perhaps no product showcases this iterative talent more than its latest earbuds, the QuietComfort Ultra 2.

    There wasn’t anything wrong with the first pair. I liked their ergonomic fit, excellent noise reduction, and bold low end, not to mention their excellent microphones, angled toward your mouth in an homage to Apple’s popular AirPods Pro.

    With the new QC Ultra 2, we get wireless charging, more customizable sound, better immersive audio, and improved noise reduction. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re a business traveler or someone who wants a compact pair of headphones that truly removes the sound of the world around you, these are—once again—the best you can buy.

    Generation 2

    Photograph: Parker Hall

    I find it very hard to fault Bose for its rubber-stamped design approach; the previous pair were very comfortable and functioned extremely well. The slight changes that appear on the new model are welcome, and I’m not mad at the lack of physical changes.

    You now get wireless charging in the clamshell case and a guard to prevent earwax buildup, and you can toggle the included touch controls in the app, which is very helpful when doing activities where you might brush your ear.

    Places I don’t find improvements include the weight (the new buds are about a gram heavier but still perfectly fine in your ears) and battery life (the new buds have the same six hours with ANC on, 24 hours in the case as the old model). Bose has even opted for the same drivers in this new generation of buds, with slight tuning adjustments that I’ll get into in a bit.

    Features Galore

    Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Excellent Buds

    Courtesy of Bose

    If you’re new to the world of wireless earbuds or are coming from a more basic pair, the amount of customization that you can do with Bose’s latest buds can feel daunting. You can choose various “modern traditional” adjustments like EQ and noise canceling/transparency modes, but the buds also allow you to dial in two kinds of immersive 3D upscaling (one for staying in place, one for while you move around), among other wild and fantastical new settings that take advantage of modern processors and machine learning tech.

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    Parker Hall

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  • I Used a $400 Smart Toaster to Make Pop-Tarts and All I Got Was a Tummy Ache

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    As much as I love my makeshift smart home, the idea of a house where everything is internet-connected sometimes borders on the absurd. In today’s age, we have smart everything: smart fridges, smart ovens, smart vacuums, smart microwaves, smart coffee makers, and, of course, the venerable smart toaster. It’s tales of this last one that I’m going to regale you with today, since I know you’re simply burning up inside (pun intended), not knowing whether you should throw your tried-and-true toasting machine of choice in the trash and take one giant, crumb-laden step into the future.

    To help us explore said future, we have before us Revolution’s R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster. Like any smart gadget worth mentioning, the R180 centers around a giant touchscreen slapped on the front of the toaster. This is where the smarts come in. Here you’ll find all sorts of options for toasting that include an eye-watering 38 bread types, all with seven levels of doneness displayed in varying shades of brown. To be honest, I didn’t even realize how many different things there were to toast until I started tapping through the pages on the R180. There’s an option for white bread, of course, but also waffles, hamburger buns, English muffins, bagels, and (my favorite) LARGE bagels. There’s even an option for pancakes, which I’m told can be bought frozen at the store, a fact I did not know. And speaking of frozen stuff, there are options when you’re getting toasty to cook something that’s fresh, frozen, or to reheat.

    Revolution R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster

    You don’t need a smart toaster. No one does.

    Pros

    • It toasts bread!
    • Lots of settings
    • No more jump scares with toast

    Cons

    • It’s $400!
    • Some smart features don’t pertain to toast

    It’s hard to say what separates all of these options from one another, but it’s clear that Revolution did actually focus on the heating element of the R180 and not just the flashy screen stuff. That’s evidenced by the fact that this toaster has a copyrighted heating tech called InstaGLO, which Revolution claims “heats in seconds” and sears bread rather than roasting the life out of it. The subtlety of the R180’s heating coils is meant to toast the outside of the bread without drying it out, according to Revolution, and I will say, at first glance, the coils do look different than your run-of-the-mill toaster. Namely, they’re more slight and spindly, which may be how they get so hot so fast. And as to the claim that it toasts bread without drying it out, I think it does a decent job, though not all the time.

    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    For your bread-and-butter white toast (I’ll see myself out for that double entendre), it does a good job. The brioche I cooked with the “white bread” setting was nice and browned on the outside using the default doneness setting, but was actually a little steamy on the inside. When I switched that setting to “gluten-free,” however, it kind of burned the crap out of the bread, though maybe that’s more to do with the bread than the toaster. It did an okay job with Pop-Tarts, but let’s be honest, that’s pretty hard to mess up. Unrelated to the toasting process, I did wind up with a tummy ache, but I think that’s what’s supposed to happen when you put that many preservatives in your body. This level of variability between toast outcomes, while not ideal if you don’t choose the right setting, is kind of a sign that the toaster is working. There are differences in the preset toast settings, and they have a demonstrable difference on the final product. I’ll give you an example.

    For shits and giggles, I decided to try and toast a piece of the brioche bread under the artisan bread setting. I mean, what is “artisan,” anyway? How do I know who made this bread? Maybe it came from a family of bakers in Brooklyn. Maybe there’s an independent bread seller going door-to-door trying to grow their gluten empire. Whatever. Maybe I was bending the rules. The important part is I tried it, and the results were… smokey. Trying to toast the brioche under the artisan bread setting was not a good idea, since it started to burn the toast to the point that I cancelled the function early for fear that I would smoke my office kitchen out. On one hand, yikes, but on the other, there’s clearly a major difference in heat and timing between settings that makes presets more tailored to certain things. And that’s the whole damn point.

    R180 connect plus smart toaster.
    The top toast was toasted using the “artisan bread” setting, while the bottom was just “white toast.” © James Pero / Gizmodo

    Altogether, I tested three different things: Pop-Tarts (since there’s a specific pastry setting for that), gluten-free bread (there’s also a setting for that), and brioche white bread. It did a pretty decent job toasting all three of those and was responsive when I selected the browness level. I’m not sure who needs to optimize their Pop-Tart toasting, but if that’s your jam, then your time has finally arrived. An unexpected perk of toasting with this thing is that there are no jump scares. When you press “start” on the screen, the bread descends into the depths of the toaster like Han Solo post-carbonite. Similarly, when the toast is done (there’s a circle countdown on the screen, and it flashes the last 10 seconds like the ball in Times Square is about to drop), it rises, born again as slightly burned bread.

    Revolution Toaster 8
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    Again, as with any proper smart appliance in 2025, there are lots of things you absolutely do not need, but since the internet is inside this thing… why not, I guess. One of those things that you don’t really need is the weather. By entering your city into the toaster, you can get local weather. Revolution claims that this toaster does not collect data on you, though I can’t verify if that’s true or not. If you’re buying this smart toaster, you’re going to have to just take their word for it. Another frivolous but fun (I guess?) smart feature is a digital photo album that you can set to cycle through pics when you’re not busy toasting stuff. I uploaded some of myself to the toaster using the provided QR code, and, honestly, this screen is kind of nice? No one needs this, but this toaster panel is not total garbage. Good job, Revolution!

    One thing I don’t love about the smart features is that there’s no way to do certain stuff via an app or some kind of web-based interface. Using the touchscreen works surprisingly fine, but sometimes there are things you’d rather do on your phone, like enter your Wi-Fi network. When I went to enter my office Wi-Fi into the toaster, it said that it was connected, but I couldn’t actually go online because of added security. With a phone, I may have been prompted to enter the necessary credentials and would have been able to get online without using my colleague’s hotspot. That’s a minor complaint, to be clear. Most people won’t encounter that problem since they’ll be setting these things up at home, but the option to use a phone or another device would have been nice.

    Revolution Toaster 3
    © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what anyone wants out of a smart toaster or if anyone wants anything at all. There are mostly two camps of people when they witness the R180. One of them is intrigued (i.e., wow! what is that?) and then mildly entertained by the existence of a smart toaster. The other is near-viscerally offended that smart appliances have gone this far (i.e., did we really need to reinvent toast?). One friend of mine told me he “had to go to the doctor” after seeing me post about it on my Instagram. No matter which camp you belong to, both share one thing: they’re equally as disgusted by the price.

    This, at the end of the day, is a $400 toaster, and there’s just no getting around that. For everything that it does right, or does uniquely, no one needs a smart toaster, and no one needs to spend hundreds of dollars toasting bread. Okay, maybe if you buy one of those fancy Japanese ones that steams at the same time (those are notably $100 less than this, by the way). But if you want one, who am I to stop you? You can tap and swipe your way into a bready bliss. I’ll be on the sidelines turning bread into that nice crumbly stuff the old-fashioned way, one toasty jump scare at a time.

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    James Pero

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  • A New Espresso Machine From China Offers a Couple of Bold Leaps Forward

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    Alongside grinding and dosing by weight, the steam wand likewise allows for a bit of added control, with settings from mild to strong. “Strong” means strong, for big cappuccino froth: Heed the warning and keep your milk level low in the frothing cup, or you’ll probably have cleanup. But especially, the steam wand offers an automatic shutoff at your desired temp, so you don’t accidentally burn off milk sugars. In practice, it’ll probably stop a few degrees lower than you set it, so plan accordingly.

    Jump into the custom settings and you can also add a pre-infusion—a lower-pressure water infusion, for more gentle soaking of the grounds. And of course you can adjust the temperature of your water to account for lighter or darker roasts. It’s all pretty easy to do. More espresso machines should do these things. All of these things. But few do.

    A Fine Grind

    So far, so good. So how’s the espresso that results? This depends in no small part on the grinder, of course.

    I have put the Meraki’s pentagonal conical burr grinder through the paces, on light, medium, and dark roasts. And it does give the Baratza Encore ESP a run for its money, according to taste tests, coffee extraction testing, and particle size analysis I conducted using a device called the DiFluid Omni.

    Omni via Matthew Korfhage

    Meraki Espresso Machine Review Fine Grind Loose Fit

    Omni via Matthew Korfhage

    At the finest grinds, the built-in Meraki grinder actually came in a bit more tightly dialed than the ESP, with fewer large particles that might indicate clotting and cause channeling. It also fared well with light-roast grinds that often overtax integrated grinders. And according to particle size analysis, it maintained good consistency. (This said, I tend to increase dose on light roasts, rather than grind so finely I feel like I’m playing the choking game with my espresso machine.)

    Which is all to say, the Meraki’s built-in grinder handily rivals the Breville Oracle Jet’s grinder in raw specs, putting this machine in rarefied air when it comes to espresso machines with built-in grinders. This is true especially because the grinder is stepless, meaning you don’t have large gaps between grinder settings.

    Another potential fun feature is an RFID scanner that allows you to scan a coffee roaster’s bag and load up the ideal grind settings for each bean. This said, only one US roaster, Dark Horse, is listed on Meraki’s site as of now. So this feature remains mostly theoretical.

    Caveats and Quibbles

    Meraki Espresso Machine Review Fine Grind Loose Fit

    Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

    This all said, the grinder settings do seem to “float” a bit as the machine operates, perhaps because of vibration or perhaps just while grinding. The Meraki’s grinder may migrate a full setting between one day’s grind and the next—meaning that if you don’t pay attention, tomorrow’s shot may not be the same as today’s. I also have minor quibbles with the tamper and puck leveler, whose tops have a tendency to unscrew while you’re preparing your portafilter.

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    Matthew Korfhage

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  • Lovense’s Panty Vibe Is Shockingly Comfy and Can Be Remotely Controlled

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    This part of the toy is flat and smooth, so much so that you can’t feel it, and when it’s lined up with the magnet on the inside, the two magnets immediately lunge for each other. The magnetic pull is so strong that even with the Ferri’s cardboard packaging between the two magnets, they came together securely. In other words, I’m not just talking about a comfortable fit physically, but there’s a mental comfort in not having to worry about the Ferri going anywhere it isn’t supposed to; it’s absolutely locked in place.

    A Great Couples Toy

    Courtesy of Lovense

    Although the Ferri requires that at least one partner has a vulva, if that’s your relationship situation, then it makes for a fun way to explore different ways to enjoy pleasure. Thanks to the Lovense app, the Ferri can be controlled across the bedroom, from the other side of a club, or even an ocean away.

    The app takes a bit of getting used to because it offers so many vibration modes. Once you master it, controlling the toy is fairly easy. But at this point, the issue becomes what patterns and intensities the person with the vulva in the equation likes best, which makes for a fun afternoon of trial and error for those with patience. For impatient folks, the Lovense app offers recommended and popular patterns. That way, you can get down to business.

    The Ferri takes about an hour to charge and allows for three to four hours of playtime, depending on how dialed up you have the power levels. It’s 100 percent waterproof, should you want to wear it in your bathing suit, and is extremely quiet for those who like to take their sex games into public spaces. The Ferri can also be synced to music in case you ever wanted to see what the bass of your favorite song felt like as clitoral and vulval vibrations.

    While the Lovense Ferri comes with a magnetic proprietary charging cable, which can be problematic if you lose it, this particular cable is actually compatible with 25 of Lovense’s products, including the Gemini nipple clamps and the Osci 3 rabbit vibrator. So if you already have a Lovense product, you might be OK on the charging front. If not, backup cables are available on the site. Now go forth and have a party in your pants.

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    Amanda Chatel

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