Author: News Room

The Dreame L20 Ultra isn’t the company’s newest model, but it’s still a great robovac / mop hybrid that offers strong performance while requiring very little day-to-day maintenance thanks to its included trash bin and AI obstacle avoidance. Verge readers can get for its best-ever price right now. Originally $1,400 when it launched in 2023, it’s down to $279 from Wellbots with code L20VERGE.What makes the L20 Ultra so great at this price is that it can do a lot on its own — so much more than other robovacs at this price point. The included base station automatically empties…

Lego has unveiled two new helmet display sets celebrating McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, timed to coincide with a landmark moment in motorsport history: McLaren‘s 1000th Formula 1 race, taking place this weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix. Both drivers will also take to the streets of Monte Carlo this weekend wearing real helmets directly based on the new Lego sets – a co-creation between the drivers and the Lego design team. Daniel Meehan, Creative Lead for Lego F1, said the team worked closely with both drivers throughout the process. “They had some great ideas, which we cannot…

Amazon’s updated search bar will now show you AI-generated images of products as you describe them. For now, the in-app feature only surfaces AI images of clothing and home goods, allowing you to tap on the image that best matches what you’re looking for and search for similar-looking items.In a blog post, Amazon positions the feature as a way to help you search for items if you can’t remember the name of a specific texture or style, like describing a “shirt with a draped collar” if you can’t think of “cowl neck.” The feature seems like it might come in…

A few months ago, Meta effectively handed Supernatural, a popular VR fitness game on the Meta Quest, a death sentence. As part of overarching VR layoffs, the company announced the game would no longer get any new content, enraging its tightly knit, devoted community. Now it looks like Supernatural is getting a second chance. Today, Meta announced in a community post that the game is being spun off into an independent company later this year.The new entity will be called Supernatural Health, and will launch as a separate app on the Meta Horizon Store. While Meta did not comment on…

Lots of us use smartphone apps like WhatsApp and Messenger to get responses from customer service people. And more and more companies are also been using AI to triage interactions with customers and – hopefully – point you in the right direction for help. Also read: WhatsApp Plus arrives on iPhone – will you pay for it? Now Meta is launching a ‘Business Agent’ feature. Boring name, but what it means is that even small companies will be able to use Instagram DMs as well as WhatsApp and Messenger to help you with queries 24 hours day a, 7 days…

At Microsoft’s annual Build conference on Tuesday, the company announced a slew of new or expanded AI initiatives, including a super app, in-house reasoning models, a cybersecurity tool, and OpenClaw-esque AI agents. All this news added up to a clear message: Microsoft is positioned to be one of the biggest players in AI, and it’s finally acting like it.For years, Microsoft’s AI business leaned hard on its early and exclusive partnership with OpenAI. But the drama-filled marriage slowly devolved into a situationship, and the pair effectively separated in late April (though Microsoft is still OpenAI’s primary cloud partner — for…

Multi-room speaker specialist WiiM is gearing up to make the jump into home cinema territory. The firm has just revealed its first ever soundbar at the High End Vienna show, with one key feature being carried over from its distinctive WiiM Sound smart speaker. The 1.06m WiiM Bar will be right at home under a 55in TV and won’t look out of place beneath a larger 65in set, unlike the rival Sonos Beam Gen 2. The Sonos doesn’t have a funky circular touchscreen sitting front and centre, either: the colour display can show album art as well as handle playback,…

Microsoft has two new Surface devices arriving later this year, both powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark chips. I got a chance to take a closer look at both the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at Microsoft’s Build conference this week, and while both have the same chip inside, they’re utilizing Nvidia’s RTX Spark in different ways.The Surface Laptop Ultra looks and feels very much like a 16-inch MacBook Pro. There are no transforming hinges, detachable displays, or any other tricks — this is a clamshell laptop built with performance in mind. Microsoft has opted for a…

Finding your way around Apple News is ridiculously simple to navigate around. Along the bottom in the iOS app you’ll see five menu items: Today, News+, Audio, Following and a Search icon. Of these, Search will be your initial best friends, essentially continuing the work you started during set-up. Explore serves up suggested channels and topics based on the preferences you’ve already expressed. Search strips things back and lets you, um, search for specifics. There’s nothing cryptic going on here. Subscribe to channels and topics Like the look of any channels and topics you come across on your travels and…

Smart lighting company Nanoleaf has been acquired by OneRobotics, the parent company of SwitchBot. In an exclusive interview with The Verge, Nanoleaf CEO Gimmy Chu says the company will remain independent and that he and his cofounder and COO, Christian Yan, will continue to run it. “Nothing is changing operationally,” says Chu, adding that there are plans for product integrations between the two smart home companies.The sale, which Chu characterized as “more of a merger,” will provide Nanoleaf with significant resources, including a cash infusion that will, among other things, help the company grow its team at its Toronto headquarters.…

Tudor just dropped the most fun watch of the year so far. Meet the Black Bay Chrono 39 “Bumblebee” – a bright yellow sports chronograph that can’t be ignored. Forget the colour for a moment though, the big news is the case size. The Black Bay Chrono has gone from 41mm down to 39mm, which, in watch terms, is a sizeable shrinking. It also sits at just 13.1mm thick (shrunk down from 14.4mm), which is impressively lean for a full chronograph. It’s a size Tudor fans have been begging for for years. The dial is where Tudor has gone off…

Introduction If, like me, you feel like noise-cancelling headphones have gotten a lot more expensive of late, the Momentum 5 Wireless will be a breath of fresh air. While rivals keep pumping up prices – almost certainly because Apple set an unwelcome precedent with the AirPods Max – Sennheiser has shown a little more restraint. At $400/£330 they’re hardly a pocket change purchase, but they handily undercut the Sony WH1000-XM6, Bose QC Ultra Headphones gen 2 and Bowers PX7 S3. The firm has also played the long game with generational updates, waiting four years between the (already very accomplished) Momentum…