Author: News Room
Robot vacuums are impressive devices that will clean your floors well and — thanks to bigger batteries and better robot brains — rarely get tired of doing their job. Over the last few years, they have gone from being utilitarian devices that sweep your floor to full-fledged home robots that can vacuum and mop your home and then trundle off to clean themselves to be ready for the next run.I’ve been testing robot vacuums for seven years and have run over 70 robot vacuums all over my house. These are my top picks if you’re looking for the best: a…
Back in 1971, KEF’s range of Coda speakers brought hi-fi sound to the masses – and it might just have pulled off the same trick again with the KEF Coda W. More affordable than KEF’s other active stereo systems such as the LSX II LT and LS50 Wireless II, the Coda W still has 100W of amplification inside each speaker to drive the 5.25in Uni-Q drivers, which combine the woofer and tweeter in one in an effort to sound more natural. There’s no Wi-Fi but you do get Bluetooth 5.4 with support for both aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless codecs,…
Here on Decoder, we’ve talked a lot about generative AI, which is a very big idea that is causing quite a few problems. One thing we keep hearing about over and over again is that generative AI is causing a lot of problems in schools.A lot of people out there, including many of the listeners of this show who email us, are worried about the obvious problem: students using ChatGPT to cheat on assignments — and yes, some students definitely do.But when our team poked at the story, we found that the issues with AI in education go a lot…
Last year I did the thing I’d been dreaming about for a decade: I bought a van. After twenty years of tech journalism, creating a mobile test platform for remote work was just as exciting as having an adventure vehicle to pursue my outdoor hobbies. For that I’d need lots of battery capacity to power it all.Originally I wanted to buy an EV to use as a giant rolling power plant for all the gadgets I own and get to play with as a product reviewer. Unfortunately, the charging infrastructure isn’t quite ready in the far-flung destinations where I travel,…
Casio’s latest creation proves there’s still room to surprise, even after four decades of G-Shock innovation and rugged watches. The DWN-5600, also known as the ‘G-Shock Nano’, is a full-featured G-Shock watch shrunk to ring size, and it’s now available to buy. The G-Shock Nano was announced last month, and it’s everything you’d expect from the brand’s toughest line, only miniaturised to an almost ridiculous degree. At about one-tenth the size of the original DW-5600, this tiny timepiece manages to squeeze in genuine G-Shock DNA. It’s shock-resistant, waterproof to 20 bar, and houses a fully functional digital module that displays…
Hi everyone! I’m John Higgins, the new senior reviewer of TVs and audio here at The Verge. I joined the team just over a month ago, and am raring to go. I’ve been in tech publishing in some capacity for a little over 20 years, starting at Home Theater Magazine back in 2003 as I finished up my masters degree in piano at USC in LA. After freelancing for many years, most recently I was senior editor of AV at Digital Trends and, before that, managing editor of tech at Reviewed. I’ve covered TVs, projectors, speakers, headphones and earbuds, soundbars,…
After teasing its development last year, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has now launched BeeBot: an AI-powered social app for iPhones that talks to you about what’s happening nearby. In his blog announcement, Crowley says BeeBot behaves like a “personalized radio DJ” that provides location-based audio updates through your headphones, telling you about what friends are up to, local news, and events occurring in the neighborhood as you walk around.“Audio updates are meant to be short and sweet (a few sentences here and there), tailored to your interests and your social graph, and designed to both inspire and inform you,” Crowley…
These days, smart home goodies are rapidly filling up people’s houses, but apartments have been somewhat left behind. That all changed with the Ring Intercom that lets you speak to visitors and buzz them in, which I scored a full five stars in my review. I said “Impressively reliable, Ring’s latest goodie brings the smart home experience to apartments solving a major bug bear.” Now, the second-gen adds a huge new feature fans were begging for. The new Ring Intercom Video lets you see and chat with whoever’s ringing your flat from your phone before letting them in. It pairs…
Introduction Playing it safe won’t always get you noticed in the mobile world. While a lot of flagship phones feel like cookie cutter replicas of one another, Nubia prefers to go against the grain – both on hardware and price. The Z80 Ultra is the latest in a line of dark horses that hopes to tempt you away from more well-known names. It builds on last year’s Z70 Ultra with the latest Qualcomm silicon, an even bigger battery, and a revised set of rear cameras. But don’t worry, the lead lens keeps its unusual 35mm focal length. More importantly, it…
Ikea just announced a bunch of super cheap, colorful Matter-over-Thread devices that will work with any platform, and it feels like Christmas came early for the smart home.The 21 new products include a line of smart bulbs starting at just £4 and two new remote controls that start at just £3 (US pricing is not yet confirmed). Ikea also officially updated its Dirigera hub to a Matter controller and Thread border router to support the new products, which will start to arrive in the US in January.It’s a big shift toward a simpler, more open smart home, a vote of…
If your criteria when shopping for an engagement ring are smaller, lighter and cheaper, people will accuse you of being a cheapskate, but when it comes to the Insta360 X4 Air those are exactly the qualities that make it stand out. Compared to Insta360’s flagship X5 it ticks all of those boxes. The X4 Air weighs just 165g and is a touch more compact, but still has a pair of 1/1.8in sensors that can record 360-degree 8K videos at 30fps. You can also put it into single-lens mode, which uses either the front or back lens to shoot 4K video…
Another year brings another iOS update for your Apple iPhone. I’ve been digging through iOS 26 since its earliest versions to bring you loads of new iOS tips and features – and one absurdly tall clock. Below, you’ll find the best iOS 26 tips I’ve found so far, fully updated for iOS 26.1 iOS 26 runs on all iPhones released this decade and some more besides. Read our guide to iOS 26 system requirements if you need to know whether it will work on your iPhone. And if you’re wondering why Apple decided not to call this version iOS 19…