Tag: reviews

Rarebird Px Promises Alertness Without the Jitters

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Come 3 pm or so, I need my afternoon pick-me-up. While my heart wants a shot of espresso, my head knows it’s not a good idea so late in the day if I want to knock out at a normal hour. I usually settle for a matcha latte because it has less caffeine.

Then I was introduced to Rarebird Coffee, which allows me to brew that afternoon cup without it impacting my sleep. But it’s not decaf—Rarebird’s preroasted beans are infused with paraxanthine, which the company brands as “Px.” Px is a bit of an enigma, but we humans actually produce it every time we consume caffeine; caffeine is metabolized by enzymes and then converted into paraxanthine. With a shorter half-life than caffeine, Px is cleared out of the body much faster, which is why it’s unlikely to have a negative impact on your sleep like caffeine often does.

In a way, you can think of Px as the middle sibling of caffeine and decaf. It provides the alertness we desire from caffeine without the side effects like the dreaded crash, jitters, and anxiety that often follow. I am always highly skeptical about functional claims like this, but Rarebird does the trick. It’s real coffee that respects its tradition while carefully evolving the ritual.

Java Without the Jitters

Rarebird currently comes in two forms: a bag of ground beans (4 ounces, 12 ounces, or 2-pound options) and K-Cup pods, in medium or dark roast (dark roast is available only in 12-ounce bags). Each serving (6 grams of grounds, or one K-Pod) contains 60 milligrams of paraxanthine. I easily consume about two servings at once when I drink it in the morning. I tested the grounds by brewing them in a French press at home, but you can brew them just as you would any coffee grounds. I’ve been drinking it black to experience the most natural taste of the coffee. The infusion of Px does not impact the taste. The medium roast works well as a balanced roast with wide appeal and notes of chocolate and citrus. I personally like the dark roast more—it has a subtle hint of toasted marshmallow, which is warm and balances the roast very nicely. I would not know that this coffee was any different from traditional coffee aside from the way it made me feel afterward.

Photograph: Andrew Watman

The company recommends drinking it for at least five days in a row to feel its effects more fully. Honestly, I felt many of the positive effects after my first cup. I felt focused and got a lot of work done, certainly more than I would have if I didn’t have any coffee at all, and I got absolutely none of the heart-racing, jittery feeling I do with regular coffee. Even if you drink a lot of this, you’re not going to feel cracked out, but your attention span will likely increase. It’s a weird biohack, but it works. Another bonus—I didn’t feel it rush through my digestive system as I do with good regular coffee, if you know what I mean.

Not Your Average Bean

Rarebird Px Coffee was founded by Jeffrey Dietrich, a scientist who earned his PhD from UC Berkeley studying genetic engineering. His cofounder, AD Andracchio, is also no stranger to bringing innovative products to the market—she was part of the team that introduced Burger King’s Impossible Whopper.

The team has a patent pending on “green” Px coffee beans, which are first decaffeinated and then infused with Px prior to the roasting process. On the other hand, Rarebird’s current patented grounds are made from beans that get infused after they are roasted. The company’s future intention is to sell these green coffee beans to roasters to roast however they wish. For example, you may one day see your favorite coffee roaster sell a Px option that’s been engineered by Rarebird, in the same vein as seeing a decaf option on the menu. No other company would be able to do this due to Rarebird’s other patent on Px coffee. This all proves Rarebird is really a beverage tech company rather than just another coffee roaster due to its patent-pending infusion technology.

There are no added ingredients in the coffee—the only items on the ingredients list are Arabica coffee and paraxanthine, which is a synthesized version of the chemical (it’s not like they’re extracting it from peoples’ livers). The product has received a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) designation from the FDA.

An Excellent Addition

You cannot purchase whole beans from Rarebird at the moment. I’m hoping the company comes out with this option soon, because grinding your own beans is one of the simplest ways to elevate the taste and freshness of your coffee. The bag the grinds come in is a fresh, modern take on packaging. The matte white pouches have blue accents with Rarebird’s bird logo on the sides. They’re also recyclable and zippable, so they seal well, unlike most coffee bags.

Those jitters I get from regular coffee were nonexistent for me after drinking Rarebird, which was a huge bonus when I drank it late in the afternoon. As a caffeine drinker, though, I often like that feeling; it’s kind of what I’m looking for when I get my day started, so I personally am not going to be drinking Rarebird every morning. But come afternoon? This is when I really think this product is going to be great for every coffee-drinking consumer, no matter your sensitivity to caffeine.

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Andrew Watman

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October 7, 2024
The Sony Theatre Quad Is a Pricey but Discreet Way to Enjoy Dolby Atmos

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The Voice Mode feature is similarly effective, using Sony’s Voice Zoom 3 to elevate dialog. Like the Sound Field, it’s not always useful and can create some balancing issues between the central channel and side-channel effects (more on that below), so you may want to keep it off until necessary.

Diving deeper into the settings lets you adjust things like compression for volume balancing, add or remove your Sony TV as the center channel, and even adjust the overall soundstage height, useful if you need to raise or lower the speakers due to setup limitations. I also appreciate the top window that reveals your current sound format (e.g., Dolby Atmos, 5.1 surround).

There are some missing features, both in the app and the hardware itself. On the app side, I was surprised to find no controls for EQ or individual channel levels. I think that’s by design, and with so much virtualization, I was happy to let Sony software take the wheel for channel balancing. Still, I’d love the ability to tweak the treble or raise the midrange to warm up the sound signature.

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

There are lots of available sound sources, but once again, there are some missing pieces. You can stream music over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi with Spotify Connect and AirPlay, but there’s no Chromecast support–odd for a company that makes Android phones. Sony also drops the optical port, opting for HDMI ARC/eARC only, and there’s not a single analog input. There’s reasoning behind each decision; optical is an older digital connection that doesn’t support 3D audio. On the analog side, Sony likely wanted to keep the system all digital, opting not to add an analog-to-digital converter in the small plastic control box. The takeaway is you can never add components like a CD player or turntable.

The single HDMI input also seems skimpy. Most top soundbars have at least two or three, while a traditional receiver might have five. On the plus side, the lone input supports HDMI 2.1 for gaming features like VRR (variable refresh rate) in 4K at 120 Hz, HDR and Dolby Vision pass-through, and more for connecting modern gaming systems. These features are becoming more common, but the Quad is among the first all-in-one setups to support them.

Hello From the Dome

The Quad is the best system of its kind I’ve ever heard when it comes to reproducing the spherical “dome of sound” for which 3D audio formats like Dolby Atmos are prized. It’s particularly good at height sounds, which are often the most difficult for smaller speakers to reproduce. The pouring rain in the “Amaze” scene from my Atmos demo disc was stunningly realistic, seeming to cover the entire room in pounding droplets.

Just as impressive is the system’s expansiveness and precision with 3D effects. Strafing starships and helicopters can be almost perfectly traced in space. Effects centralized behind me felt like I could reach back and grab them. Sound editors are given free rein with 3D formats, meaning they can move “sound objects” virtually anywhere in space, and the Quad takes full advantage of stellar test films like Ant-Man and Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s not on the same level as traditional systems with mounted speakers, but it scratches that itch well.

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Ryan Waniata

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October 5, 2024
Asmodee’s first Lego board game, Monkey Palace, is a collaborative art project disguised as a competitive builder

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When I’m playing board games, I have a habit of photographing the table at the very end, just before we put everything up. There’s something intrinsically rewarding about capturing how a game went from box to setup and then from setup to a full game — to capture how busy and frenetic everything got, as seen through token-laden boards and stacks of cards in various states of disarray. It’s not that we’ve built anything permanent or long-term impactful, but I love to take time to capture a memory of that experience nonetheless.

Monkey Palace seems designed for someone like me, someone who’s compelled to treat the end of the game like a chance to photograph some collaborative creation. Co-designed by David Gordon and TAM (aka Tam Myaing) and retailing for $39.99, Monkey Palace puts players in the role of highly intelligent monkeys working together in the jungle to build a tower out of Lego bricks. Only by reaching high up into the canopy can the monkeys get the most bananas, represented in endgame scoring as having the most banana points. Lego is the centerpiece of it all, and the result is something very rewarding — sometimes frustrating, yes, but overall very rewarding.

The concept for Monkey Palace is fairly straightforward to explain, but the devil’s in the details. Each turn, your monkey uses a combination of arches and support blocks (both 1×1 bricks and, more rarely, taller 3×1 columns) to build a path from the jungle floor as high up as they can go. There are distinct rules for how this works, but the gist is that the structure must always go higher with each piece that gets added, and that players must, at least in part, build on top of the existing structure.

Photo: Ross Miller/Polygon

The height and the length of your makeshift staircase that turn determines how many monkey points you get. They’re a short-term, use-it-or-lose-it currency that players quickly exchange to purchase cards from a shared marketplace, and here’s where the strategic layer really starts to kick in. Cards have immediate benefits as well as long-term rewards, and only by choosing the right mix of cards from the marketplace can monkeys come out on top. Perhaps you’ll snag a few more arches in the short term, with the promise of additional support pieces flowing in on future rounds. Or maybe you feel confident in your supplies and opt to purchase big fat bundles of bananas instead. Thankfully, the marketplace refreshes automatically with every purchase, so new mechanics are constantly entering the game.

When you first open the box, it actually seems like something is missing — like you’ll run out of Legos before the game is over. But the beauty of Monkey Palace is that it naturally goes vertical very quickly, with the pieces creating a dense, architectural shape that coalesces around one or two tall points, only to gently slope down from there. It’s a rather beautiful system that seems to come together organically between the players by mandating everything stay connected and rewarding verticality. Additionally, the number of bricks you pick up each round grows exponentially as you purchase more cards, which in turn allows you to create longer and more elaborate structures.

Tactically, I found a need to strike a balance between placing arches — which is the only piece that nets you monkey points — and the support beams that allow you to overcome particularly tall blockers. These monkeys, to be sure, just need the staircase you build to go up with each step — they don’t need it to go up gradually, and more often than not in the late game you’ll find yourself cashing in a lot of support bricks all at once to get just one more arch built near or at the top of the makeshift tower.

There are a handful of special rules that complicate this system and can shake up the dynamic between the players. Decoration bricks — an assortment of leaves or a shiny golden column — are added to the end of every path and determined by the type of ground you start your pathway on. Depending on the decoration and the height, you may be able to call forth the monkey piece, which you can use to block the path of your opponents. We especially liked the butterfly piece, which essentially blocks the topmost spot from being used until another tallest point takes the mantle. This had a knock-on effect of breaking us out of just one vertical tower and looking for other “backup” spires to build around, ultimately making for a more interesting final set-piece.

Photo: Ross Miller/Polygon

But Lego is both Monkey Palace’s biggest boon and also the biggest point of contention among those we playtested with. When planning out a turn, most players think first about the highest point they can reach and then work their way backward to figure out if that’s possible. The problem here is that, with Legos, you literally can’t build this way — they have to start at the bottom and work their way up, lest you find yourself trying to squeeze connective pieces from your aspirational staircase to the preexisting support structure you’re building upon. Far too often, a player would try to go this way, only to risk breaking parts of the structure. We eventually found ways to think about how to play from the “bottom up” — to find the right patterns that we could somewhat confidently start to build over and hope for the best — but this method proved counterintuitive.

In an odd way, many of these mechanics and scenarios reminded me of Scrabble, but for STEM kids. Many of the same gameplay patterns are found here: The need for a good balance of high-score-value tiles (arches) with low-value support ones (columns); the time spent during other players’ turns planning out your staircase; and the subsequent pain of all your plans going awry when another player takes your spot.

But that pain is more a testament to how invested we got in the game — even if we honestly stopped caring about who won. There’s a tangibility in Monkey Palace that supercedes even the desire of winning. Sure, we kept score and celebrated our wins as much as rued our losses, but ultimately what we enjoyed more than anything was the 3D creation at the end — something organically co-created together. I suspect after several games the shapes start to feel similar, such is the case with how the system encourages a gradual slope, but we still appreciated having something that we built together. And unlike other board games, I didn’t find myself immediately tearing down the board and putting everything away. In fact, our most recent game remains intact, a temporary centerpiece for our kitchen table.

That Monkey Palace is fueled by Lego pieces, a brand almost viscerally associated with building recklessly for fun, is only more apt.

Monkey Palace was reviewed with a retail copy provided by Asmodee. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

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Ross Miller

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October 3, 2024
We Staged a Debate to Test the Bluetooth Earrings Kamala Harris Didn’t Wear

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Just a few weeks ago, certain people in a particular corner of the internet decided they had cracked the reason Kamala Harris was doing so much better than Donald Trump in the presidential debate. Not that she was better prepared, nor that she was a better debater. No, she must be wearing a Bluetooth earpiece, carefully disguised as a pair of pearl earrings. Obviously.

As it turns out, earbuds like this really do exist. The Nova H1 audio earrings put forward by the conspiracy theorists do bear a decent resemblance to the earrings Kamala was wearing on the night. Of course hers were, in fact, from Tiffany & Co. and not from a Kickstarter campaign from 2021, but the concept piqued our interest all the same.

Could this so-called audio jewelry be the perfect crossover product for anyone who wants to make calls or listen to music, without a bulky pair of headphones or earbuds hanging out of their ear? We slapped them on our ears for a week to find out.

Stylish … to a Point

When I receive them, first impressions are promising. The Nova H1 arrive in what feels a bit like a jewelry box, a stylish detail we’re sure is no accident. Pull the inner packaging toward you, like a drawer, to slide the outer cover away, and the headphones appear against a rather striking yellow backdrop, the pearlescent square charging case adorned with Nova’s branding.

The case is plasticky though, and the earrings sit on an equally plasticky panel that rises up to present them to you as you open the lid. That’s a nice touch, but it all looks cheap and doesn’t feel in keeping with the premium look the Nova H1 is trying to present.

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The earrings themselves are not exactly subtle, either. The pearl, to my surprise, is actually a real freshwater pearl connected to your choice of clip-on or stud earring, but delicate it ain’t. Still, when clipped onto your ear they do at least look like jewelry—more costume jewelry than fine jewelry (our British readers may appreciate a Pat Butcher reference here), but they don’t look out of place. I have the silver ones to test, but there is also a gold option that will set you back a little more (more on that shortly.)

The clip-on version I’m testing offers exactly the right clamp force to be secure without causing any discomfort, which is indeed impressive. I could genuinely forget I was wearing them, meaning they can simply be worn as earrings, while being ready to jump into audio action whenever you need them.

That’s helped by the fact they will go into a dormant mode when they don’t detect any playback, and offer up to six hours in active use. That means you can pretty much get a full day’s wear out of them, plus the case offers three full charges.

Can You Hear Me?

When you take them out of their case, they jump into pairing mode automatically. My phone finds them without issue, and within seconds they’re paired.

I immediately head to a playlist in Tidal and get to listening. It quickly becomes clear that audio quality is not a reason to buy these headphones—so much so that it’s almost impossible to critically evaluate the sound at all.

Bass is weak, and music has a somewhere-in-the-distance quality, almost as if someone has the radio on across the office. It’s a unique experience, not unpleasant by any stretch but not at all as engaging as the sound quality you’ll get from something like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds.

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Verity Burns

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October 1, 2024
The Asus ProArt PZ13 Is a Detachable and Affordable Copilot+ PC

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Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro is the standard-bearer for detachable 2-in-1 Copilot+ PCs. But as I noted in my review at the time, it suffers from several issues—most notably a sky-high price of $1,950 as it was configured for our tests. No matter what you think about the detachable keyboard concept, this device comes with an awfully hard price to swallow.

Enter Asus with a suspiciously similar concept, albeit considerably cheaper. I wouldn’t quite call this the Wish version of the Surface Pro, but at $1,100, the ProArt PZ13 may at least take some of the sting out of the cash outlay should you venture down this road.

Photograph: Christopher Null

To trim the price, Asus has made its fair share of sacrifices. Certain elements remain the same, including a 13-inch touchscreen, 16 GB of RAM, and a magnetically attached keyboard, which comes included with your purchase. Otherwise, the ProArt comes across as a slightly different animal. It starts with the stripped-down CPU: The ProArt uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P42100 instead of the more capable Elite that dominated the first wave of Copilot+ PCs. The aspect ratio and resolution of the two screens are slightly different—2,880 x 1,920 pixels on the Surface versus 2,880 x 1,800 on the ProArt—and although the ProArt screen isn’t nearly as vibrant and bright, I had no complaints with it through several days of use.

Surprisingly, there are a couple of upgrades on tap from Asus over what comes on the Surface Pro. Instead of Microsoft’s 512-GB SSD, Asus packs in a 1-TB drive by default. It also enhances the two USB-C 4.0 ports—one required for charging on the ProArt, unlike the Surface Pro—with a full-size SD card slot. Oddly, the card slot and one of the USB-C ports are hidden under a rigid plastic flap that’s difficult to open and does little more than get in the way.

Photograph: Christopher Null

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Christopher Null

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September 30, 2024
Nier: Automata Ver1.1a is the sleeper hit of the anime season

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After being left feeling deflated by the first episode of Nier: Automata Ver1.1a, an adaptation of the outstanding video game from Yoko Taro and PlatinumGames, I didn’t think I’d return to it. It played like what a cynic would expect: an almost one-to-one recreation but with uglier 3D animation; it felt like it was missing something. It didn’t get much of a chance to make a case for itself; even with its sparks of promise, the first half of the show was plagued by multiple delays. But now, thanks to its sharp handling of the game’s overlapping tragedies, well over a year later, the show is leaving me feeling deflated — but in a good way this time.

Like the game, the anime is set in the distant future. The Earth has been abandoned by humanity, now living on the moon. The Council of Humanity sends android soldiers to fight in their stead in a war against machine life-forms, themselves sent by alien masters. The androids look human (and eerie in their beauty), the machines look like rusty wind-up toys. The story follows 2B (Yui Ishikawa / Kira Buckland, reprising their roles) and 9S (Natsuki Hanae / Kyle McCarley, likewise), special forces androids working for the rather ominous organization YoRHa, which operates out of a space station — its operatives all dressed in doll-like finery.

From the YoRHa androids’ multiple lives to these cycles of endless war, to the multiple playthroughs required to complete the game, Nier is all about iteration, repetition — which is part of why an anime retelling immediately makes a certain sense. It was already a multimedia project; it’s been proven that the story can work when taken out of its original context. There are novels and a play that are both canon, using those other mediums to get a new perspective on Nier’s consistent heartbreak.

But anime adaptations of games can be a tricky prospect. With anime adaptations of manga, obviously each medium has its own drawbacks, but the former uses voice performance and music as well as animated acting to (ideally) add unique interpretation where the reader’s imagination would fill the spaces between panels. Games are already operating with that toolkit, and moving to the more passive medium of television removes player agency.

Image: SQUARE ENIX/Council of Humanity

So what’s added for people who have already played the game? Some shows get around it by using the world of the game as a springboard into new stories in its faraway corners, leaving the directors, writers, and designers a little more room to play (take, for example, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners or Arcane). Nier: Automata is a tricky case in that it’s one of the most video game-y video games in recent memory, as player input and video game language is intrinsically tied in with its storytelling. The best example is the ending of the game, a direct confrontation with the player which, vaguely speaking, asks them to place their experience of playing on a set of scales. It remains to be seen how that moment will translate; there are still some awkward bumps in the move from game to episode. One storyline in the second half sticks out because of how close it feels to being a video-game objective (“go collect these three things”) but the cruel drudgery, and the acting in response to that, sells it anyway.

While some frustrations persist, Ver.1.1a made a case for itself once it started capitalizing on the new things that this medium can do over what it can replicate. Some of the best elements from the very beginning are its end credits stingers made with puppets — using that goofy, whimsical animation to both address minor pieces of world-building and reenact the game’s silly alternate endings, which included things like 2B dying from eating mackerel.

Another of those things is rather simple: how editing changes the delivery of this narrative. One of the most affecting examples is “broken [W]ings.” It opens with a small montage of 2B’s memories of encounters with 9S, broken up by inter-titles of words 2B associates with each of those occasions. Writer Yusuke Watanabe and episode director/storyboarder Satsuki Takahashi (no stranger to war stories with their time on 86) then flip this to a mirroring sequence from 9S’ perspective, compressing their relationship into a striking, anguished summation that puts their points of view in direct contrast with each other. Thinking back to how it started, this episode felt like a realization of the show’s actual potential — using the change in mediums to find new routes into the characters’ subjective perspectives, elaborating on the nuances of relationships that are, to say the least, incredibly thorny.

Ver.1.1a’s interest in exploring the multimedia sprawl that Nier has become, rather than just a straight adaptation of the games, also keeps things fresh. The show can zoom out and paint a more detailed picture of the supporting cast. This was true of earlier episodes before the (very long) delay cut them off: an encounter with the disembodied head of Emil, a character from the first Nier game (since rereleased as Nier: Replicant), then triggers a flashback to characters from that story. The episodes “[L]one wolf” and “bad [J]udgement” adapt the YoRHa stage play, which itself is an expansion on the game’s Pearl Harbour Descent lore entry, a tragedy about a failed mission which informs both A2’s and Lily’s backstories. Written lore connections squirreled away in the game also get dragged to the surface: “just y[O]u and me” begins with a live-action shot of a storybook, a lore recap from Drakengard, which is Yoko Taro’s precursor series to Nier. The sequence then draws the line from this to Replicant. These connections existed in Automata the game, if you searched for them. But the elaboration makes the show feel special and expansive, even though you can’t control what is being explored and when.

It’s an approach that I wish something like The Last of Us had capitalized on more in order to make it less of a simple narrative retread of the game. Especially considering how many little written side stories from the game the show left by the wayside, save for its most critically acclaimed episode. Regardless of its flaws, Ver 1.1a’s best quirks shine through when it’s clearly thinking about how to make itself different from its source material, something that seemed to be an objective of Yoko Taro and series director Ryôji Masuyama from the very beginning. The best parts of Automata Ver 1.1a didn’t land right away. And now that the show has had a chance at airing in an unbroken run, those qualities have more consistently appeared in sharper relief across the stories’ more dramatic second act — one that has placed it in my highlights of this anime season.

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Kambole Campbell

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September 28, 2024
Vizio’s 4K TV Has Dolby Vision for Under $500

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Basically every major product category has seen massive inflation over the past decade. Every category, that is, except TVs. For some reason, year in and year out, brands compete not only to make the best and brightest but also the best cheap models.

The new Vizio 4K TV (its literal model name) costs $328 for a 55-inch model, has excellent built-in casting and every app you could possibly want, and does Dolby Vision high dynamic range. It doesn’t have fancy backlighting for perfect black levels, but if you need a screen for cheap for a bedroom, office, garage, vacation home, corner bar, what have you, there really isn’t much this one can’t do pretty darn well.

Five years ago, a TV with specs like this would have been around a thousand bucks. Reverse inflation sure is nice for average viewers. Now you can get the massive 86-inch model for under a thousand bucks.

A New Black Box

TVs have gotten so good that the vast majority of us really don’t need to follow trends on the high end anymore. For well under $500, this model has all the features we’ve come to expect from higher-end TVs, including fit and finish.

Photograph: Parker Hall

It’s a simple black box with legs on either side of the screen. I’d prefer a pedestal mount, but I can’t get picky at this price, and you may or may not have a wall mount or other type of mount planned. The legs keep it steady enough on my TV stand, and a nice 2-inch thick case makes it easy to move the TV around without fear of breaking it.

Like all modern TVs, this one has super-thin bezels and is nearly all screen when turned on. It runs on Vizio’s SmartCast operating system, which is one of the better in-house smart TV interfaces we regularly test. It makes for easy casting between both Android phones (thanks to Chromecast) and iPhones (thanks to AirPlay 2), and it has its own variety of decent built-in apps for everything from Netflix to Apple TV. All of them work just fine in my testing, though I prefer my trusty Roku interface when given the choice.

Setup is quick and painless. Just plug in the TV, log in to your apps, and it’s off to the races. It comes with three built-in HDMI ports (one eARC for soundbar or receiver setup), which is more than enough for most modern homes. I plugged in my Nintendo Switch and Panasonic 4K Blu-Ray player and was watching Ferris Bueller in no time.

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Parker Hall

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September 28, 2024
Google’s Pixel Buds Pro 2 Are Better AirPods Pro for Android

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Switch between your computer and cell phone, and the headphones are smart enough to know it. You can answer a call on your phone while also connected to your computer, which is super helpful for multitaskers.

One thing I find underwhelming, as I have with all voice assistants so far, is the Gemini integration. You press the buds to ask every question to standard Gemini, including follow-ups, which is very annoying if you have multiple questions at once. Google has also integrated a wake phrase (“Hey Google, let’s talk”) to open its Gemini Live conversational AI.

The prompt opens Gemini Live, and you can ask it anything you can think to ask an AI for—from restaurant reviews to a good workout schedule based on your current day’s activities. You can even interrupt it if you think it’s missing your point, and it will follow context.

I’d rather use this functionality in the Gemini Live app on my phone, so I don’t have to speak them out loud, but if you are hard of sight or simply hate typing, the wake word and Gemini Live might be more impressive to you. I’d note that as long as you have the Gemini app, you can open Gemini Live and use it with any other pair of headphones. You don’t need Pixel Buds Pro 2 to use Gemini Live, it’s just to have the wake word.

I would trade these features in a heartbeat for the myriad hearing assistance tools Apple is adding to its AirPods Pro via a software update. After all, almost any headphones with Android can connect to Gemini Live. If you’re looking for a pair of buds that might also help you hear a little better, those are still what I would choose.

As far as a pair of headphones that do everything else you’d ask of them in all contexts, there are very few earbuds I can recommend as highly as the new Pixel Buds Pro 2. They have excellent noise canceling, work great on calls, and have long enough battery life to last an entire workday. I can see why Google raised the price by $30 over the last pair, and they’re worth the extra cash. These are probably the best high-end earbuds for Android that exist right now.

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Parker Hall

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September 28, 2024
Thermacell’s LIV Mosquito-Repellent System Is Effective but Expensive

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So I have one of those unfortunate blood types that makes me extremely susceptible to mosquito bites. To give you a sense of how bad it is, I got attacked three times while installing the mosquito repellent system I’m reviewing here. Big, nasty, red welts that lingered for days.

I usually take extreme measures to avoid mosquitos, including topical products like OFF! and visits from a professional mosquito control company that sprays citronella all over my backyard every three weeks. Tragically, none of this has been of much help. For most of the summer, I look like Patient Zero for some kind of pox.

This summer I decided I’d had enough. Enter Thermacell’s LIV, an installed mosquito blocker system that can scale to fit your deck or yard, regardless of shape and size.

Invisible Force Field

LIV is not a mosquito-killing system—you’ll need zappers and poisons for that—but rather a repeller technology. It works based on a chemical called metofluthrin, which gives off a vapor that mosquitos apparently hate when heated. Metofluthrin isn’t unique to Thermacell; it’s also the active ingredient in OFF! mosquito lamps and wearable devices, among other products.

Photograph: Christopher Null

LIV is a wired system composed of two main components: a base station, called the Smart Hub, which calls the shots, and as many satellite Repellers as you need. The Smart Hub plugs into wall power and communicates via Wi-Fi with your home network. The Repellers are also wired, daisy-chained to the hub one after another via included cables.

If you’re imagining a low-voltage lighting system, you’re on the right track—only LIV isn’t quite as flexible. Each cable is a fixed 24 feet long—though shorter 10-foot cables are available as a separate purchase—since Repellers must be positioned about 20 feet away from one another. This is because the range of the vaporized metofluthrin is only 10 feet. With a ring of Repellers around your safe zone, you create an invisible anti-mosquito force field as a perimeter, with each Repeller’s coverage zone slightly overlapping.

Setup isn’t difficult, but it is time-consuming and requires some attention to detail. You may not have a lot of flexibility as to where to place the Smart Hub because it needs to reside near an electrical outlet and within the Wi-Fi range of your router—plus it has to be mounted on the wall. Since most homes have few exterior power outlets, finding the Goldilocks spot for the hub can be tricky.

Photograph: Christopher Null

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Christopher Null

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September 26, 2024
Xiaomi’s Updated 14T Phones Are Solid but Aren’t Sold in the US

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Xiaomi’s 15 flagship range won’t arrive in most of the world until early 2025. In the meantime, we get a midyear update to the 14 range in the shape of the 14T and 14T Pro, though neither bears much relation to the Xiaomi 14 or 14 Ultra. The Chinese manufacturer overtook Apple in August to become the world’s second-biggest smartphone brand by sales, and its expansive (if slightly confusing) range is no doubt part of the reason.

The T range packs some high-end features from Xiaomi’s flagships, but there are usually a few omissions to bring the price down. You may struggle to spot the difference between the 14T and 14T Pro because these phones are practically twins, but there are some subtle refinements to justify the 14T Pro’s higher price. Both come with Google services and are available in the UK and across Europe, but will not officially go on sale in the US.

Nice but Dull

At first glance, you will struggle to tell the 14T and 14T Pro apart. These are ultrasize phones with 6.67-inch screens. They have relatively thick, flat frames, textured power buttons underneath the volume rocker, and quad camera lenses (one is actually the flash) in stepped, square modules on the back. Pick them up, and you immediately feel the weight of the heavier, more metallic Pro, with its subtly curved back (the 14T is flat on the back).

The only other design difference that jumps out is the colors. Both come in blue, black, or gray, but only the 14T comes in Lemon Green. Why are fun colors always reserved for cheaper phones? The 14T Pro feels nicer and reminds me of an old HTC phone (in a good way), but there isn’t much to separate them.

Photograph: Simon Hill

The 6.67-inch display is the highlight of the 14T and 14T Pro and is the same in both. It is sharp at 2,712 x 1,220 pixels, gets bright enough to see outdoors and to display HDR details at up to 4,000 nits, and supports a variable refresh rate of up to 144 Hz for smooth action. It also hosts a responsive fingerprint sensor at the bottom.

Stereo speakers that get plenty loud round out the design, and both phones score an IP68 rating, meaning they can survive a dunk. I prefer the feel of the 14T Pro, but these are big, chunky phones, so they might not suit everyone. While they look classy, the designs are a bit boring.

Classy Camera

Photograph: Simon Hill

One of the main reasons to opt for a Xiaomi phone is the camera hardware, and this is also where the 14T Pro shows its superiority. The Pro has a 50-MP main camera with the same 1-inch image sensor as the excellent 14 Ultra and a large aperture (f/1.6). It is paired with a 50-MP telephoto shooter, offering up to 5x optical zoom. There is also a decent 12-MP ultrawide camera.

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Simon Hill

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September 26, 2024
De-Fi’s Platform Studio Desk Puts Aesthetics Before Ergonomics

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Nine years ago I decided to get back to making music after a very long hiatus. In the beginning, my setup was extremely humble, featuring an aging ThinkPad and a cheap MIDI controller. I didn’t even have an audio interface for properly recording my guitar.

Since then, well, things have gotten a bit out of hand. My synth collection grew from a couple toys (a Casio VL-1 and a Stylophone) to well over a dozen instruments. I have more MIDI controllers than any human could ever need. I picked up decent studio monitors, an audio interface, and even some ADAT expansions so I could keep more of my ever growing gear collection permanently connected.

One thing that didn’t change, however, was my desk. Up until just a couple of weeks ago, I was still making do with the same cheap Ikea Lagkapten/Alex combo ($220). It was a large desk, but it didn’t give me a lot of flexibility for laying out my setup. Now that I’ve had an opportunity to check out the updated version of De-Fi’s Platform Studio Production Desk, which has dedicated mounting points for rack gear, space for speakers, and a pull-out keyboard tray, I don’t know that I can ever go back. If you’re in the market for an affordable studio desk for your music-making and are trying to decide between cheaper options and a dedicated desk like this one, read on.

Getting Settled

For all of its aesthetic angles and recording studio glamour, the Platform Desk, which was originally made by a brand called Output that has now rebranded to De-Fi, still goes together like Ikea furniture. It’s a piece of flatpack that you need to assemble with the aid of a screwdriver and an Allen wrench. It’s definitely more substantial than your average Malm piece (what with it being made out of plywood instead of particle board), but the basic concept is the same.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

As hard as it is to believe, one area where Ikea does have a leg up on De-Fi is the quality of the instructions. There is a video walk-through of the assembly that is OK, but it could be more detailed. The “print” version, well, don’t bother printing it. For whatever reason, it’s formatted as a single-page PDF when it should clearly be five or six. When you try to print it out you end up with a narrow, illegible strip down the middle of a single piece of paper.

The parts list also failed to mention that there was a power drill bit for the hex screws in one of the bags. I only discovered it halfway through assembly, after my hands were aching and I’d stripped a few screws with the Allen wrench.

It’s also worth mentioning a couple of small quality-control issues I encountered during assembly. The shelf pin holes for the top level were missing on one side, and I had to drill them in myself. And some of the edges weren’t particularly neat. I even got a pretty nasty splinter from the lip of the desktop.

Living in Tight Spaces

There was one pretty obvious con once everything was fully assembled: the size of this desk. I live in NYC, so space is at a premium, and fitting the 60-inch-wide by 38-inch-deep desk was difficult. Folks with a lot of space won’t have the same issue, but it’s worth looking into the size before ordering. My home studio is also my office and my guest bedroom; it was a bit cramped to begin with. Previously there was enough room to walk between the unfolded pullout couch and my desk. Now even my chair won’t fit between the desk and the foot of the pullout. In order to make room for the desk, I had to ditch my monitor stands (the desk has elevated spaces for monitors to be placed).

Another immediately obvious con is that the Platform Desk has no drawers. Granted, studio desks generally don’t, but it did mean I had to keep around the Alex drawer unit from my old desk for typical desk-y storage. The total floor space taken up by my revamped recording area had suddenly exploded.

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Terrence O’Brien

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September 26, 2024
The New Google TV Streamer Is Faster and Better Looking Than Ever

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There are a few products in our lives we want to use all the time and never have to think about. Faucets come to mind—you want your faucet to turn on and off, not leak. That’s about it. Google’s new Google TV Streamer is an Android-powered TV faucet that never leaks. Once you log into your various accounts and start streaming, you hardly notice it’s there, but you’ll have easy access to all your favorite shows and movies. You can even use the remote to control connected devices in your home, like lights, speakers, and plugs.

Casting from phones is simple and easy, and this new $100 streaming device lacks the sometimes jittery performance we saw on last-generation devices like the Google Chromecast and some current-gen TVs powered by Google’s TV operating system. If you dislike your current TV interface or want to make sure you’re streaming from well-maintained apps on a device that supports Dolby Vision and a wired internet connection, this is an excellent choice.

Simple Setup

The flat, cylindrical streaming device and its pill-shaped remote are about as plug-and-play as things can get, but it’s worth noting this design is a dramatic change from the Chromecasts of old. No longer does Google’s TV dongle dangle off the side of your TV. This Streamer is meant to be displayed loud and proud on a media console.

Photograph: Parker Hall

There is a single HDMI 2.1 port, a USB C port for power, and an Ethernet port for wired internet. On the back next to the ports, you’ll see a tiny little button that can make the remote beep and reveal its location; my forgetful brain thanks the engineers at Google for this. I wish the Streamer included an HDMI cable, as I had to fish one out of my closet. This wasn’t an issue with its predecessors, which had a built-in HDMI cable.

The remote is large enough that you’ll want to find a cell-phone-sized flat spot to put it—not the most convenient thing ever but not the most annoying either. The buttons aren’t backlit, but they’re easy enough to see even in low light thanks to grey-black text on a white background. It’s a simple layout with volume buttons on the right side of the remote for easy access, and the home button in grey just above so you don’t accidentally press it in the middle of a movie.

Once you turn on the Google TV Streamer, log in to your Google accounts (and whatever other streaming accounts you have these days) and you’re good to go. You can do all this via the Google Home app if you don’t want to use the onscreen TV keyboard to enter passwords. I was watching Netflix in under five minutes. (It also supports all the major apps, like Max, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, and Pluto TV).

A Smart Home Controller

The Google TV Streamer can act as a smart home display to easily control lighting, security cameras, thermostats, and more if you have that stuff connected via Google Home. It pulls up a screen on the right side of the TV screen, called the Home Panel, and it shows you what you have connected and allows you to control it. This experience is similar to the Home Panel on the lock screen of the Google Pixel Tablet or even on many Android phones.

I’m not a smart-home guy; I use a few Alexa speakers to set alarms and play Spotify, but the rest of my house is woefully unconnected. I asked fellow WIRED reviewer and connected-home guru Nena Farrell to test the smart home features for me, and she reported that they work very well. Voice commands to Google Assistant are responsive, and she liked using her TV screen for smart home control. She successfully used the remote to turn off her lights even when the TV was off. It can also be used to monitor smart doorbells and cameras, something WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu says is very handy, as you can check for motion alerts without having to find your phone in the dark during movie night.

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Parker Hall

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September 26, 2024
Apple’s iPhone 16 Is Cuter and More Practical Than the iPhone 16 Pro

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In recent years, Apple started giving the iPhone Pro models a significant chip upgrade to increase the performance gap between the phones, but this year they’re all on the same starting point: the A18 chipset. The iPhone 16 Pro devices have the A18 Pro, which features larger CPU cache sizes and an extra graphics core for slightly better overall performance. That said, in my benchmark tests, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are just behind the Pros and still more powerful than any other phone on the market.

I played AAA games like Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, though I did run into a few more stutters than on the Pro models (and just as many crashes, though this could have been because I was running a developer beta of iOS 18.1). I want to note that these games are currently the cream of the crop in graphical fidelity, so I’m purposefully stress-testing. Most of the titles you’ll play will run perfectly. The Pro models this year have improved thermal performance, but Apple made some tweaks to improve the heat dissipation on the standard iPhones too, and I have not noticed the phones getting significantly hot.

More importantly, every iPhone 16 model will be capable of running Apple Intelligence, the suite of artificial intelligence features coming in an update in October. I go over exactly what’s included in Apple Intelligence in my iOS 18 guide, and have broadly evaluated the current experience in my iPhone 16 Pro review. There are some helpful day-to-day features, like real-time transcriptions in Voice Notes or call recordings, but we’ll have to wait until Apple brings the full kit.

Battery life is a high note. I eked out better battery life on the iPhone 16 Plus than on the Pro Max, hitting more than seven hours of screen-on time with 36 percent left in the tank at 1 am. The iPhone 16 is no slouch, giving me six hours of screen-on time with around 20 percent remaining. And that’s with a mix of doomscrolling on Instagram, picture-snapping, navigation, and music streaming. These devices will get you through a full day and then some. Speaking of the battery, it’s easier to replace on the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus (not the Pro models), and iFixit gave it a 7/10 in overall repairability, which is a huge improvement over prior years.

It’s a shame Apple did not bring an updated spec for the charging port. When Apple switched to USB-C last year, it kept the same data transfer speeds for the iPhone 15—480 megabits per second. The Pro, on the other hand, has USB3 speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second. It’s a massive difference (and an unnecessary one), but this only matters if you find yourself moving files from your iPhone to another device with a cord.

Good Cameras

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus hold their own in the camera department. I found no significant differences even in low light when shooting with the main camera and the ultrawide. The Pro phones edge them out here and there, but the gap is small. Autofocus is new in the 12-MP ultrawide, so you can take macro photos. I can’t stop taking close-up shots of my pup’s nose. Boop!

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Julian Chokkattu

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September 23, 2024
Sony’s Dazzling Bravia 9 takes LED Screens to New Heights

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The Bravia 9 also offers new “Calibration” modes for Amazon Prime and Netflix. The Amazon version makes some interesting changes for different programming, though the Netflix version seemed to mostly just mirror the dimmer Dolby Vision Dark picture mode in the HDR content I watched.

Mostly Solid Digs

The TV is pretty well stocked on the feature front, starting with audio that rises above the crowd. This is one of the few TVs where I don’t mind cutting my audio system (with the A95L being another prime example). Sound is generally full and clear without getting super tinny. There’s some noticeable soundstage movement, and even effects like explosions come out all right.

I thought Sony’s new Voice Zoom 3 dialog booster was mostly marketing hype, but it works pretty well. At one point, I passively heard the entire story of a Sylvester Stallone anecdote in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 which I’d missed in about 7,000 previous viewings, including with soundbars and speakers. Dialog remained mostly clear and out front over several days, even when things got chaotic.

As expected, you’ll get the latest gaming features, including support for ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) at up to 120 Hz via HDMI 2.1. There’s a dedicated gaming mode for quick adjustments and PS5 optimization features like Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode. I’m no competitive gamer, and some have noted that the TV’s input response is relatively high for its price, but I adored playing my favorite RPGs. The shading, the colors, and the overall brightness brought the best out of games like God of War Ragnarok.

It’s frustrating that Sony continues to offer HDMI 2.1 support across only two of the TV’s four inputs, unlike most TVs at this level (and below)—especially since one of those is for eARC where you’ll likely connect a soundbar or receiver. The TV’s great sound means some may not add an audio device, but the potential need to swap cables for multiple consoles is silly at this price.

The Bravia 9 also omits one of the two main dynamic HDR formats, HDR10+, offering only Dolby Vision. If you can only pick one, I’d take the more common DV every time but it’d be nice to get both as you’ll find in midrange models from TCL and Hisense. That’s surprisingly common right now; LG and Panasonic TVs don’t support HDR10+, while Samsung won’t pay for Dolby Vision.

Sony is more inclusive on the audio side, offering both DTS:X and Dolby Atmos support. Other notable Bravia 9 features include AirPlay 2 and Chromecast streaming, and Google Voice search via the remote’s built-in microphone.

Sensibly Surreal

The Bravia 9 is an unadulterated brightness powerhouse. Yet, with Sony’s measured hand at the wheel, it doles out its power judiciously, providing subtlety where warranted and dazzlement when the moment strikes. Utilizing a new proprietary system that dims its backlighting with impressive accuracy, this TV is less a blunt force weapon as a mini LED laser beam, striking with white-hot precision. The result is fabulous contrast mixed with next-gen brightness for serious thrills.

Training the Bravia 9’s fire on one of my go-to test films, Moana, felt like proof of concept for a backlighting system some have clocked at nearly 3,000 nits peak brightness (or around double many OLED TVs). I’ve noted before how realistic the film’s Polynesian sun and surf can look with the best TVs, but here things pushed into the surreal. The sun blazed to near eye-squinting levels which, when mixed with the TV’s quantum dot colors and the stark clarity of Sony’s processing, gave me an almost hallucinatory sensation that I was actually at the beach with Moana and Maui. Other scenes like the glittering golden crab or the molten lava monster rose to exhilarating new heights as the light seemed to nearly bore through the panel.

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Ryan Waniata

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September 22, 2024
‘His Three Daughters’ Is One of the Best Dramas of the Year

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At the start of Azazel Jacobs’s new film His Three Daughters (on Netflix now), one worries about what’s to come. The dialogue is delivered in stilted fashion, the camera close and static. It all feels like a dubious adaptation of a stage play, stiff and presentational. The film’s stars, Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen, are all welcome screen presences, and yet it seems it would have been preferable to see them do this material on an intimate stage downtown.

Soon enough, though, Jacobs’s film relaxes, begins to breathe at a lulling rhythm. The reality is still somewhat heightened—do people in real life talk quite this expositionally, in monologue form?—but that slight artifice engages rather than alienates. His Three Daughters gradually blooms into one of the most stirring dramas of the year, a sad little family story that concerns a vast universal human experience.

Coon, Lyonne, and Olsen play the titular daughters of a dying man, unseen for most of the film, as they wait for him to slip away in his cozy-cramped Manhattan apartment. They, too, are worried about what’s to come, though they know it is inevitable and imminent. Coon is Katie, a brittle Type-A who lives across the river in Brooklyn but has not been terribly present during her father’s illness. This frustrates her ne’er-do-better-than-okay stepsister, Rachel (Lyonne), who still lives with their father and has been with him through every agonizing step of his decline. Katie is judgmental of Rachel’s habits (smoking weed in the house, gambling on sports), and the two seem spoiling for a fight.

Attempting to calm the house is youngest sister Christina (Olsen), who lives far away on the west coast in contented early mommydom. She’s a former Deadhead free-spirit who has settled into more basic, traditional routine; she balances the woo-woo with the practical, though something rebellious and hungry still glows in her eyes.

Each character is carefully and precisely drawn, carried past archetype into the wonderful, scratchy detail of real personhood. They credibly register as a family half-estranged from one another, now struggling to hold together as they face the same impending grief. The pleasure of the film is simply watching them negotiate and bicker, revealing ever more facets of their personal histories as Jacobs calmly observes.

The trio is occasionally interrupted by a palliative care nurse, or by Rachel’s sorta boyfriend, Benjy, played with quiet warmth by Jovan Adepo. But mostly it is just them, grappling with what it means to close a huge family chapter, unsure of what a new one might look like—if one will exist at all.

Rachel feels she is the outsider, as the dying man, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), is not her biological father. But in all other senses he is very much her dad; she’s closer to him than either of his “real” children are. That tension could be leveraged for cheap and obvious drama. Jacobs, though, approaches the topic head-on while finding shading in the approach; we get the sense that a conversation is finally being held out in the open after years of unspoken resentment. It’s startling and sorrowful and cathartic at once.

In this scene, and throughout the film, Coon, Lyonne, and Olsen are superb, rounding Jacobs’s more formal stretches of dialogue with the stutter and tic of everyday speech. The flashiest role, if you can call it that, is probably Lyonne’s—she is the ragged heart of the film, tempering her usual pepperiness with dashes of weary melancholy. Coon, meanwhile, convincingly plays a woman masking her insecurities with tense haughtiness.

On second viewing, though, I found Olsen’s to be the most affecting performance. She delicately paints a portrait of a person clinging to the soothing but insufficient balm of positive thinking. There are moments when one wonders if she might actually be the saddest of the three—but maybe the wisest, too. A scene in which Christina explains what being a Deadhead really was all about is not just a compelling excavation of a character, but maybe of a whole culture.

In that scene and many others, the power lies in specificity, the ways in which Jacobs draws us into an understanding of this small and particular huddle of people. We ache for them as individuals, but then, too, for ourselves, for our fears and losses and senses of helplessness as time gradually reclaims all it has given us.

Jacobs’s film is mostly spare and unadorned. Toward its end, though, he allows for one fanciful reverie, in which a final moment of connection and exchange is imagined. Jacobs halts mid-sentiment, evoking the curt endings of pretty much all lives. There is so much we will never know about the people we love. His Three Daughters insists with a bleary sigh that to have known them at all will have to be enough.

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Richard Lawson

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September 20, 2024
iFixit’s Portable Soldering Iron Deserves a Space on Your Work Bench

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The right-to-repair movement has a catchy name, but before you can worry about the right to repair, you need the ability to repair. If you don’t know how to take your device apart, there’s no sense worrying about whether it’s legal to do so. Without basic repair skills and a helping of innate curiosity, the right to repair is useless.

This is where iFixit’s new Hub Soldering Iron enters the fray. iFixit, a longtime supporter of the right to repair, has thousands of tutorials online to help you actually repair things. Now the company has made a soldering iron to help you roll up your sleeves and get into the physical world of repair.

The Right to Solder

I grew up around soldering. My father built his own tube-powered ham radio gear, but for whatever reason I never actually did any soldering until rather late in my repair life. An electrician friend of mine was appalled that I didn’t solder on a regular basis and gifted me a bare-bones soldering iron, which was all I had for an embarrassingly long time. Later I bought a Pinecil, mostly for the small, portable form factor, but that cheapo soldering iron was all I had for years.

While a cheap soldering iron is better than no soldering iron, I’ve come to think the reason many people are intimidated by soldering, or have problems when they first try it, is due to cheap soldering pens. Cheap tools are the source of many a problem, but with soldering irons the big one is that they don’t get hot enough, which makes the solder stick to the tip rather than flowing nicely where you want it. Cheap irons also lack interchangeable tips, which make soldering easier by fitting exactly where you want them to go.

iFixit, which made its name in the repair world creating guides, tutorials, and more all designed to help consumers be more than consumers, has launched a new store called the Fix Hub. The first product is a portable USB-C soldering iron.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

iFixit’s new soldering iron is actually several products. The core is the Smart Soldering Iron for $80. It’s powered by USB-C and comes with a beveled, 1.5-mm tip. (There are six tips available, and iFixit plans to have more.) Then there’s the Portable Soldering Station for $250, which includes the iron and a battery pack designed for the iron. The final option is the Complete Toolkit for $300, which includes everything from the soldering station package, plus useful tools like wire strippers, flush cutters, solder, flux, a wire holder, cleaner, and more.

The thing that jumps out at you the most when first opening the kit is the magnetic cap. This is a thing of genius. It not only covers the tip, but you can put it on even when the tip is hot, and it will automatically power down to the idle temperature (which you can set in the app). Every soldering iron should have a cap like this. This feature alone makes iFixit’s soldering iron great for beginners. The cap also has a wire attachment that allows it to be mounted on the battery pack.

There are other user-friendly features, like an LED system that warns you when the iron is hot and motion sensors to detect when you set it down for a while (which cause it to automatically shut off). The motion sensors can also detect if you drop it and will shut it off automatically. I tested all three of these features, and they worked without issue.

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Scott Gilbertson

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September 19, 2024
Agatha All Along Casts a Spell, Eventually

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To this day, the strangest thing about WandaVision is that Marvel never bothered to make anything else like it. Emerging from the anxiety-fueled chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 hit was a surprise even for Marvel skeptics. The superhero factory’s first TV effort delighted early on with its nostalgic trip through the medium’s history, suggesting that the studio had more to offer than record-setting comic book epics. Unfortunately, that delight was short-lived, as the series eventually devolved into the usual Marvel fare, skipping a proper ending in favor of a tease for the next MCU film.

This is the first hurdle facing Disney+’s new series Agatha All Along, which premieres Wednesday: A baffling three-year gap between the initially-promising series that spawned it. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is also in a very different cultural position than it was in 2021; it’s currently struggling to bounce back from multiple creative and commercial setbacks, as well as the general fatigue that comes naturally from any serial enterprise lurching into its second decade. Was audience affection for WandaVision a shared delusion, a Tiger King-style blip? Or was there really something there?

Judging by its first four episodes, Agatha All Along indicates the latter—provided viewers are patient, and not afraid to get burned again.

It’s best to treat Agatha All Along as a sequel to WandaVision. Also created by Jac Schaeffer, the new series assumes familiarity with the first Disney+ Marvel show, but blessedly little else in the MCU canon. Picking up where things left off for Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the show drops viewers right where they left her three years ago: trapped in a magically-induced delusion in a New Jersey suburb (another pandemic metaphor?) before a jilted ex (Aubrey Plaza) rips her out of it, eager for revenge. Talking her way into a stay of execution, Agatha embarks on a journey down the Witch’s Road — a metaphysical path towards reclaiming her lost powers. But first, she’ll need to form a coven of witches and solve the mystery of a teenaged boy (Joe Locke) whose name no one can say.

There’s fun to be had with a premise like this. Unfortunately it takes a while to get there. Agatha All Along‘s debut pair of episodes are not terribly representative of the show. In fact, the premiere spends half its runtime on a Mare of Easttown parody that starts funny but wears out its welcome at triple the length of an SNL sketch. The crew of witches is not assembled until the second episode; their journey down the road does not begin until the third, which streams a week after the premiere. It feels like creative malpractice to demand such patience from viewers who by now must be actively convinced to watch a Marvel production, with nothing but its star’s considerable appeal to carry them through.

Hahn gives it her all—but as with WandaVision, Agatha is at her best when there is a cast of characters for her to bounce off of. As is usually the case when a scene-stealing supporting player becomes a lead, Agatha All Along does a lot to bring the witchy fave back down to Earth, stripping her not just of her powers but of her chaotic streak. The series immediately improves when the cast is rounded out by the likes of Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and Patti LuPone (!) — in fact, the show doesn’t feel like it truly begins until the other witches are present.

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Joshua Rivera

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September 18, 2024
Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro Gets a Little Smarter With Apple Intelligence

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Creating summaries seems to be a thing everyone wants to do with AI, and Apple Intelligence is ready to do the same. You can have your emails summarized, messages summarized, and even your notifications from third-party apps summarized. Some of this can be handy, like when the Mail app calls out an urgent-sounding email in its summary, which I would have missed had I just glanced at the giant collection of emails. But more often than not I just swipe away the summary and dive into all the notifications.

Speaking of, there’s a summarize feature built into Safari, but you have to put the web page into Reader mode. It’s these kinds of things that make it hard to find these smart features and remember that they exist. At the very least, I was able to summarize an 11,000-word story and get the gist of it when I didn’t have time to sit down and read it. (Sorry.) I’ll forgive you if you summarize this review.

Arguably the most helpful Apple Intelligence features for me as a journalist who attends multiple briefings a month are the new transcription tools in the Notes, Voice Memos app, and even in the Phone app. Hit record in Voice Memos and Notes and the apps will transcribe conversations in real time! If you’re on a phone call, tap the record button and after both parties are notified, it will start recording the call, and you’ll get a transcription saved to your Notes app.

For all of these, much depends on the microphone quality for the person on the other end. Either way, it’s certainly better than no transcription at all. It’s too bad there are no speaker labels, like on Google’s Recorder app. You also can’t search these recordings to find a specific quote. (Technically, you can if you add the transcript to your note in the Notes app, but you cannot jump to that part of the audio recording once you find it.)

The Photos app is getting an Apple Intelligence infusion too, and the highlight here is the Clean Up feature. Just like with Google’s Pixel phones that debuted Magic Eraser more than three years ago, you can now delete unwanted objects in the background of your iPhone photos. This works pretty well in my experience, though I’m a little surprised Apple gives you so much freedom to erase anything. I completely erased my eye from existence in a selfie. I erased all my fingers off my hand. (Google’s feature doesn’t let you erase parts of a person’s face.)

Next, I erased my mug, which was in front of my face as I went for a sip, and Clean Up tried to generate the rest of my face that was previously hidden to some horrifying results. (For what it’s worth, I tried this on the Pixel 9 and the results were just as bad, though Google did give me more options.) As my coworker said in Slack, “They both seem to have been trained on images of Bugs Bunny.”

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Julian Chokkattu

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September 18, 2024
I found peace at this otherworldly luxury hotel in Iceland

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There are also submerged treatment options, with in-water massages and ‘float therapy’ providing the opportunity to to soak up all the expertise of ‘bodyworkers’ without having to leave the lagoon.

If that all sounds far too relaxing, you can call on any member of the infinitely-attentive – yet in no way intrusive – team of hosts to book you on one of the many external excursions, ranging from helicopter tours of the Reykjanes Peninsula to guided photography tours, volcano tours, snowmobiling, snorkelling among the subaquatic hot springs at Kleifarvatn lake and ATV adventures.

We opted for the latter one morning, and quickly found ourselves motoring across lava fields, black sand beaches and insanely lunar-like mountainscapes before stopping-off to warm our freezing hands in one of those puffs of volcanic steam; the unmistakably eggy sulfur smell being the only thing to bring you back to reality during an otherwise entirely otherworldly experience.

Whether you spend your days white-knuckling your way around the island’s outdoor activity scene or soaking the day away in the lagoon, your worked-up appetite is in no danger of being left wanting.

With a cosy, universally dressing gown-clad breakfast served in the sunken lobby seating pre-sunrise (fear not the lie-in was safe – sunrise isn’t until 11am in December) and afternoon tea served daily in the same spot, other mealtimes offer up the impressive choice between the spa restaurant (serving an exceptional burger), Lava restaurant (relaxed dining with stunning views out onto the shores of the Blue Lagoon) or the jewel in the crown: Moss restaurant.

Having been awarded a Michelin star earlier this summer, Moss, led by Head Chef Aggi Sverrisson, sees 5 and 7-course set menus take you on a diverse tour of the heritage of Icelandic cuisine.

Switching effortlessly between food from the mountains to the farmlands, via rivers and oceans, dishes are almost Oscar-worthy in their visual theatrics, with dry ice tumbling over salt-fresh prawns and perfectly-seared beef served atop a smoking lump of authentic volcanic rock.

After heading back through that vast-yet-cosy lobby to our room on the final night, we received our first much-anticipated ‘wake-up call’ while packing. The Northern Lights had finally appeared.

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Charlie Teather

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September 18, 2024
The Plucky Squire Review – A Joyous Leap off the Pages
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The Plucky Squire on PC

There is a kind of magic when reading a good book, where you find yourself transported into the worlds created by the author and wishing that the characters, setting, and the narrative could come alive right in front of your very eyes. That is precisely what you’ll get from The Plucky Squire. However, this irresistibly charming action adventure casts the storybook characters in the limelight instead of playing out from a reader’s perspective, and thus begins the page-turning journey of Jot and friends, one that proves quite hard to put down.

Image Source: Devolver Digital via Twinfinite

Like most fairytales, the story of Jot, the titular Plucky Squire himself, always ends with him on the winning side, saving the day by defeating the evil sorcerer Humgrump. But after discovering that there was an entire world outside of the storybook, the villain casts out our hero in a bid to rewrite his ending, and it will be up to players to right that wrong to ensure a happy ending.

Even before the action begins, the art direction and lovely design of The Plucky Squire instantly jump out at you, putting forth a vibrant world that is full of life and made better with the hand-drawn style. And when the action comes off the pages and into the actual world, I couldn’t help but smile at seeing everything in place. Everyday objects took on a whimsical sheen, becoming larger-than-life and yet being perfectly in place as they should be, and making any trek outside of the book enjoyable and exciting.

It doesn’t hurt that the colorful cast of characters is full of personality as well. While we have to make do with just the narrator’s masterful delivery, the likes of Jot, the mountain troll Thrash, trainee witch Violet and everyone else exude delightful magic at every turn with the writing and character design. There is clearly much love put into creating these characters as well as the various regions they reside in, and it makes your time spent there all the more pleasant. A shout-out to Moonbeard for his enchanting takes on breaking the fourth wall.

Image Source: Devolver Digital via Twinfinite

Of course, an action-adventure like The Plucky Squire has to have gameplay that matches up to the high visual bar, and thankfully, developer All Possible Futures is more than up to the task. Throughout Jot’s perilous trek to defeat Humgrump, players will be presented with plenty of platforming, combat, and puzzle-solving opportunities, elements that are familiar to the genre.

Yet, it doesn’t feel anything close to being textbook, thanks to unique tweaks that constantly amaze and change how you approach the challenges ahead. Standard sword swings soon evolve to powerful spinning attacks and a boomerang-like sword throw, side-scrolling sections can tip over to become vertical platforming sequences, and not to mention the environmental puzzles that make full use of the realm-changing formula of The Plucky Squire. They are all excellent ways to shake things up.

From switching out keywords on the prose to transform the world literally to jumping out to use objects and powers to manipulate the book and affect the things on a page, it is such an inventive use of the storybook concept that it is hard to fathom that no one else has done it before. Venturing into the real world also gives players a chance to live out their Toy Story fantasies, and to appreciate the out-of-the-box thinking from the creators when creating platforming sequences out of actual objects, with the verticality involved a pleasant surprise too.

Image Source: Devolver Digital via Twinfinite

Furthermore, there are special mini-games thrown in for good measure in each distinct region. Think along the lines of a boxing fight, a turn-based roleplaying experience, or even a rhythm challenge—they all tie into the current predicament the crew find themselves in, helping to enrich the adventure rather than feel like they were forced additions. Therein lies the only issue with this astonishing action adventure. These magical interludes only last for that short while, and although the game has many of such gifts in place, it always left me wanting more throughout the 10-odd hours I spent in The Plucky Squire.

Hooking me right from the start and eliciting pure joy all the way to the end, The Plucky Squire has gone the extra mile in rewriting what should be expected out of an action-adventure such as this. By drawing from classic inspirations and adding its own spin on things, this is a game that leverages its creativity in all the good ways and ultimately writes a happy ending not just for Jot and his friends, but hopefully, also for the future of its creators.
The Plucky Squire

Hooking me right from the start and eliciting pure joy all the way to the end, The Plucky Squire has gone the extra mile in rewriting what should be expected out of an action-adventure such as this. By drawing from classic inspirations and adding its own spin on things, this is a game that leverages its creativity in all the good ways, and ultimately writes a happy ending not just for Jot and his friends, but hopefully, also for the future of its creators.

Pros

Excellent art direction and design

Charming characters and storytelling

Brilliant use of realm-swapping mechanics in level and puzzle design

Smart mini-games to spice things up

Cons

Unique mechanics are only used once

Adventure over too soon

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review. Reviewed on PC.
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Jake Su

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September 17, 2024