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It may be more difficult for hackers and other intruders to grab your iCloud data. Apple is introducing a trio of security measures that include Advanced Data Protection, an optional feature that applies end-to-end encryption to more iCloud data. While Apple was already protecting 14 data categories, the new offering protects 23 — including iCloud device backups, photos and notes. Your calendar, contacts and iCloud Mail are still unencrypted to support global systems.

Advanced Data Protection is available to try in the US today as part of the Apple Beta Software Program. Americans will have broader access by the end of 2022. Other countries will have access sometime in early 2023. You'll have to set up an alternative recovery method if you enable the technology, as Apple won't have the keys needed to salvage your data.

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Amazon is facing more legal trouble for allegedly robbing delivery drivers of their tips. The District of Columbia has sued Amazon over claims the company was "stealing" tips from Flex drivers. As the Federal Trade Commission argued last year, DC claims Amazon changed its policies in 2016 so that it would use large portions of drivers' tips to cover base pay and operational costs. The company not only used "misleading" language in its response to worried couriers but falsely told customers that 100 percent of tips would go drivers, according to the District's Office of the Attorney General.

DC acknowledged that Amazon had paid $61.7 million as part of a settlement with the FTC. However, it said the federal deal helped Amazon elude "appropriate accountability" that included punishment for the damage done to consumers. The Attorney General's office is asking for civil penalties for every violation of the District's Consumer Protection Procedures Act as well as a court order barring Amazon from implementing similar practices in the future.

In a statement to Engadget, Amazon maintained that the lawsuit is "without merit" and reflects policies changed in 2019. The tech giant already paid the tips to drivers as part of the FTC deal, according to a spokesperson.

Legal battles like this aren't unique to Amazon. DoorDash faced a DC lawsuit in 2019 over comparable accusations. The food delivery service reportedly used tips under $10 to replace couriers' guaranteed pay, but still implied that these were bonuses. DoorDash revised its rules earlier that year to address the complaints.

The timing of the lawsuit is less than ideal for Amazon, to put it mildly. The company just launched a "thank my driver" feature that lets Alexa users in the US share their appreciation for the courier who dropped off their latest package. While it's supposed to motivate drivers, the gratitude will only be verbal in most cases — Amazon is only handing out $5 rewards to drivers for the first 1 million "thank yous." As you might imagine, that might not go over well at a time when Amazon has been accused of shortchanging drivers and imposing difficult working conditions.

Construction has forced Formula E to relocate its US race next summer from the Red Hook terminal in Brooklyn to Portland, Oregon. The all-electric racing series filled the final spot in its Season 9 calendar on Wednesday as the 2023 slate of races is set to kick off in Mexico in mid-January. The Portland event will take place on June 24th, sandwiched between doubleheaders in Jakarta (June 3-4) and Rome (July 15-16).

Formula E has held a race in the US every year since it began in 2015, except for the COVID-shortened season in 2020. In addition to New York City, the series has also hosted events in Long Beach and Miami. The move to Portland now means four new cities will have all-electric racing in 2023 as Hyderabad, India; Cape Town, South Africa and Sao Paulo, Brazil were already announced as part of the Season 9 calendar. Formula E also says its hopeful to return to Seoul in Season 10. Construction that the Season 8 venue forced the series to cancel that event in 2023 as it wasn't able to find an alternate location. 

While Formula E didn't offer many details in its announcement, The Race reports that the Portland event will be held at IndyCar road course Portland Raceway. According to the report, some modifications to the circuit will be made for the EV racers, including the possibility of added corners. The Race also reports that Formula E considered hosting the North America race in Toronto next year.

When Season 9 begins next month, Formula E will debut its Gen3 electric race car. In addition to an overall design change to a body style that's more akin to an F-18, the new vehicles pack an electric motor that can deliver 350kW of power (470BHP) to reach top speeds of 200MPH (320 km/h). The cars are also incredibly efficient, converting over 90 percent of their energy to mechanical power. This will be the first Formula car ever with both front and rear powertrains and that setup will be more than double the regenerative abilities of the Gen2. That's significant since about 40 percent of the energy cars will use during an E-Prix will be produced by regenerative braking. While pit stops aren't a thing in Formula E just yet, the series will test 30-second charging breaks during select races. The stops are mandatory and will offer drivers two "enhanced" Attack Mode with extra power for overtaking during the race. 

Instagram’s latest update aims to help creators better understand one of the most frustrating aspects of the app: the dreaded “shadowban.” The app is updating its account status feature to help creators “understand if their account’s content is eligible to be recommended to non-followers.”

With the change, Instagram will allow anyone using a “professional” account to see when one of their posts has been blocked from recommendations. The notice will appear in the app’s “account status feature,” and tell users why the post has been blocked from non-followers. It will also offer creators the chance to appeal the decision if they think Instagram made a mistake.

For now, the feature only covers specific posts that have been blocked from recommendations in Explore, Feed and Reels. But the company says it’s working on expanding the feature so creators will know if they are blocked from suggestions at the account level as well, such as in search or “suggested accounts.”

Though Instagram avoids using the word “shadowban,” the change is clearly meant to address long-running complaints from creators about why their posts aren’t being distributed in the way they expect. To diffuse these concerns, the company has tried in recent years to better explain how its algorithm works, and pointed to its recommendation guidelines to help creators understand the inner workings of the app.

By now showing users exactly why their content is being removed from recommendations, the company is hoping creators will be able to take steps to “fix” their mistakes. At the very least, it could give creators some satisfaction to see an acknowledgement that their content has indeed been reduced in visibility, and provide the opportunity to ask for a second look. An Instagram spokesperson said review teams will work “as quickly as possible,” but didn’t say how long the step could take.

In a video posted to Twitter, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the company was making the change in the “spirit of transparency” and said the company was on a “longer path to try and be more transparent” with users. Additionally, he said Instagram is also testing a feature that will alert users when the app is experiencing a bug.

The company has talked about notifications for service outages in the past, but the latest version will also alert users if there are bugs affecting specific features like Stories, according to images shared by Mosseri. He cited past bugs with “unfortunate timing,” that cause people to “assume the worst,” about the company. The feature will be only a test within the United States to start.

It’s been a bumper year for gaming on the go. For a spell, it kinda felt like Nintendo was the only name in town, but it’s since become one of the more exciting corners of gaming. Today, there are handheld options for everything from AAA to Indie to retro and beyond. Whatsmore, the current generation of mobile processors means we’re seeing surprisingly capable hardware. The main problem, now, is that the software side of things hasn’t quite caught up. There’s perhaps no better demonstration of this than the Ayaneo Air Pro: a stellar example of what can be done, and what needs improving, in the burgeoning handheld PC world.

If you’re not familiar with Ayaneo, that’s understandable. The company hasn’t been around all that long, but it’s already making a name for itself thanks to remarkably good hardware that brings PC gaming into the portable realm. If you imagine a Steam Deck, but with Windows and a fraction of the size, you wouldn’t be far off.

Before we dive into the gaming experience, the hardware itself is worth a closer look. The Air Pro is impressively well made. It has a similar footprint to Nintendo’s Switch Lite, but it’s thicker (.85 vs .55 inches) and heavier (.88lbs vs .55). In terms of build quality, honestly the Ayaneo feels far superior. The Hall effect analog sticks and triggers are smooth with a nice amount of travel. The D-pad is responsive and the buttons are the right kind of snappy. The centerpiece is the stunning 5.5-inch OLED display - a first on Windows gaming handheld Ayaneo is fond of reminding us. It’s a delight to hold and feels premium in almost every regard. Even the fingerprint reader in the power button somehow adds a dash of sophistication.

James Trew / Engadget

As this is basically a PC, there are quite a few different configurations available. Some using AMD’s 5560U chipset and others running the 5825U with assorted amounts of RAM and storage depending on your budget. And you will need a sizable budget as you’ll soon find out.

The Air Pro doesn’t quite have the grunt of Valve’s venerable Steam Deck, but it does run Windows 11 out of the box and can run a surprising amount of high-end games in a more-than-playable fashion. And while the Steam Deck outguns it in terms of processing power, the Air Pro is legitimately portable without too much of a performance tradeoff.

Beyond size and the internals, the other main difference is price. Valve’s handheld tops out at $650 for the 512GB version while the Air Pro starts at $699 (5560U/16GB RAM/512GB storage). You can bring that figure right up to $1,399 if you want the faster silicon, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage - that’s obviously quite spendy. The model we tested was somewhere between middle and top with the superior processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB storage (though all models have expandable memory via a microSD card slot).

There are other gaming handhelds that run Windows, but many are too underpowered to handle a lot of bigger games. Anbernic’s Win600, for example, runs on an older AMD Athlon Silver 3050e chipset with Radeon Vega 3 graphics. This is a significant step down, but then the Win600 only costs $375. Ayn’s Odin can also run Windows, but the ARM-based version which brings with it some compatibility issues. GPD has been in this space for a while, but its Win 3 is looking a little underpowered now (though its Win 4 is coming this month and it looks suitably beefy).

Perhaps most tellingly there are manymore handhelds in the works from companies like Ayn, the aforementioned GPD and others. There’s even a new flagship from the company itself, the Ayaneo 2, that really should cause potential Steam Deck buyers some headaches. These un-released models all have something in common: AMD’s 6800U chipset. It seems there was always an appetite for PC gaming on the go, just we didn’t quite have the required hardware to run it. Until recently.

Technical limitations are one thing, but there’s another more philosophical question that needs answering: Why make a pocketable PC when you can stream a lot of AAA games without the need for expensive, power hungry dedicated hardware? While it’s true streaming is more viable than ever, that approach requires that you have a console or gaming PC in the first place or a subscription to something like GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud which isn’t economically favorable for many folks (not to mention the libraries might not have what you want). Not to mention its dependence on a network connection - good luck with that on in-flight WiFi.

James Trew / Engadget

Which brings us back to the real issue: Windows isn’t ready to be used on tiny screens and neither are many of the games that run on it. Ayaneo has tried hard to ameliorate this issue by adding its own launcher called Ayaspace. It serves as a front-end for all your games and manages to provide a vague console-like experience. But it’s not long before the spell is broken and you find yourself using an analog stick as a mouse trying to log-in to Steam and then using a tiny onscreen keyboard to peck out your credentials.

Ayaneo has at least tried to solve some of these inevitable problems. The Air Pro, for example, has two buttons along the top (between LB and RB) that will pull up the onscreen keyboard, double for ESC and other essential Windows shortcuts to make navigating bearable. But you will likely need to plug in a mouse and keyboard at some point just to get something simple done.

It’ll also soon become apparent that AAA games weren’t necessarily made with a small screen in mind. For the most part, games look incredible on the Air Pro’s OLED display. Even when playing games at 720p (the display is 1080p) they still look incredible - but it’s often a necessary tradeoff for performance. You will likely find yourself wishing that display was just a little bit bigger. Not least to get rid of those bezels, but just for general quality of life.

Not least for games where there’s a lot of text. Titles like Disco Elysium, for example, have a lot of written dialog - and while it’s easy enough to read for the most part, it’s noticeably more fatiguing than if you were on a desktop. Thankfully, the display is sharp and the resolution is high enough that it’s all still very legible, but there’s just that vague sense of a UI that wasn’t built for a display of this size.

James Trew / Engadget

If you’re thinking “Why not just run SteamOS on it” you wouldn’t be alone. It’s been done with varying degrees of success. The bigger issue might just come down to the practicality (millions of games available, wide hardware support) and reach of Windows. There are some more mundane challenges with SteamOS that don’t make it a shoo-in replacement for these handhelds. Primarily, game compatibility. If it’s not available on Steam, you can probably still install it on SteamOS but it might involve flipping to desktop mode or other workarounds which breaks the “console” experience you might have been seeking in the first place.

More importantly, some users are actually reporting better battery life with Windows on the Steam Deck despite expecting it to be worse. The claims are that it’s broadly equivalent but in some cases even better than Valve’s native operating system thanks to a combination of factors. PC gaming has a lot of variables, so this isn’t necessarily that surprising. This isn’t always going to be the case, but it’s at least not a strong incentive for making SteamOS the go-to platform for portable PC gaming.

Battery life is especially important with a handheld and it would be a lie to say it’s something that the Ayaneo Air Pro excels at. Or even does adequately at. Depending on what you’re playing and the power drain - usually called TDP – required for it to run satisfactorily. More demanding games will need a TDP of 12 Watts or above and you can hope for about an hour and 45 minutes battery life at this intensity. Some games can run just fine at 8W which will extend play time to around 2.3 hours. You can get over three hours of life on the lowest 5W setting but this won’t be enough for anything but the lightest of games but it’s good for general setup tasks and the like.

Needless to say, this isn’t ideal for a handheld, especially as your battery pack likely won’t cut it - unless it can deliver 65W, which most can’t.

In short, the Ayaneo Air Pro represents a lot of hope and shines a light on some challenges. Hope in that true PC gaming on the go in a pocket-friendly format and on fantastic hardware, feels like it might finally be here. It’s the challenges that are a little more complicated. Windows has a lot of advantages, but also plenty of practical drawbacks. Whether it’s a case of adapting the hardware around these, or just a matter of a smart software overlay is being figured out in real time it seems.

James Trew / Engadget

Making a truly “console” experience will require some clever thinking and equally clever software. Ayaneo, for its part, is also working on its own Ayaneo OS that’s Linux-based like SteamOS. Whether this will resolve some of the challenges remains to be seen, but it’s clearly something that’s being worked on. But that just accounts for one company. With other manufacturers with ties to Windows like GPD there’s a risk of ending up with a mishmash of approaches. Hopefully, though, with more competition comes more innovation (or more ideas to be “borrowed”).

For some, the exciting part is to finally have more options to enjoy high-end gaming away from the PC. Not everyone is looking to spend more time at a desktop, or maybe you just want to scratch that Elden-itch while waiting for a flight. Whatever your preference, things are about to get a lot more interesting.

Blue Origin has made another attempt to secure a contract to build a lunar lander for NASA's future Artemis missions. It teamed up with several other companies for the proposal, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Draper. Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics are also involved.

In 2021, NASA gave SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to use a version of Starship as a lunar lander. Blue Origin challenged that move, claiming that NASA's "decision eliminates opportunities for competition, significantly narrows the supply base and not only delays, but also endangers America's return to the Moon."

Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos wrote in an open letter to NASA administrator Bill Nelson in July last year that his company was willing to waive up to $2 billion in payments in exchange for a fixed-price lander contract. Bezos also complained that the decision to award a single contract gave SpaceX "a multiyear, multibillion-dollar head start” and claimed it "broke the mold of NASA’s successful commercial space programs by putting an end to meaningful competition for years to come."

NASA had intended to award two lunar lander contracts, but it opted to only issue one due to funding concerns. In August 2021, Blue Origin filed a lawsuit against NASA over its handling of the Human Landing System program. However, a Federal Court of Claims judge ruled against Blue Origin. The lawsuit held up work on SpaceX's lander and delayed a crewed mission to the Moon until 2025.

Earlier this year, NASA said it would again accept proposals for a second lunar lander project. Now, Blue Origin is taking the agency up on the offer. As The Wall Street Journal notes, Blue Origin will face competition from Northrop Grumman and Leidos Dynetics. Northrop Grumman worked with Blue Origin during the first round of contract bids.

At its core, Mario Kart is a game about trolling your friends. So what better way to ratchet up the hijinks than by allowing players to decide what power-ups spawn during races? Nintendo has released a free update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe that adds custom item selection for offline VS races and select online modes. Want to be a monster and force blue shells on all your friends? Go right ahead. It’s even possible to set specific items for each team in team races and battles.

The free update is the latest show of support for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a five-year-old rerelease of a nearly nine-year-old game. At the start of the year, Nintendo announced it would continue to support Mario Kart 8 Deluxe until the end of 2023 with paid DLC. The company plans to release a total of 48 remastered tracks, all of which can be obtained through the $25 Booster Course Pass.

A US government attempt to compensate publishers for web links has fallen apart, as Congress has cut the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) from the annual national defense spending bill. The measure would have made temporary exceptions to antitrust law letting media outlets negotiate revenue sharing deals, such as receiving a cut of ad money from links to news articles in search results and social media posts.

The removal comes after extensive resistance from tech firms. Just this week, Facebook owner Meta warned it would "consider removing news" from its platform rather than submit to government-required negotiations for revenue sharing deals. As with the social media giant's objections to similar legislative efforts in Australia and Canada, the company argued that the JCPA would force companies to pay for content whether or not they wanted to see it. This would supposedly create a "cartel-like entity" that made one company subsidize others.

Two industry groups, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, also said they would launch extensive ad campaigns to oppose the JCPA. Both groups include major tech companies like Amazon, Google and Meta. Google has been a vocal opponent of link revenue shares in the past, and only reluctantly agreed to them in countries like France.

Advocacy groups have taken more varied stances. Public Knowledge and its allies were concerned tech companies could be forced to carry extreme content, and that the JCPA favored larger media producers over small publishers. Political critics across the spectrum, meanwhile, have worried that the Act could alternately strip away moderation tools or fuel biased reporting.

It's not certain what will happen to the efforts behind the JCPA. Lead proponent Sen. Amy Klobuchar said politicians "must" find a way to improve compensation for news. However, it's safe to say the media companies that supported the bill won't be happy. The Los Angeles Times, Fox News owner News Corp. and others had argued that the would-be law was necessary to counter years of declining ad revenue in the shift toward online news coverage. For now, at least, they won't have that potential help.

About three hours into my preview of Diablo IV, I stumble upon the body of a dead priest. The discovery adds a quest to my journal to visit nearby Margrave. A short while later, I find a small village worn down by constant snowfall and all the monsters and bandits that lurk outside its palisade walls. Despite the town’s desperate state, there are signs of warmth and humanity everywhere.

By the south entrance, I find a woman praying for her deceased husband. She tells his gravestone how she can’t sleep now that no one is snoring at night. Nearby, a man tells his adopted son not to venture outside the town’s walls. I love these details. They remind me of some of my favorite moments playing Diablo II.

Whenever I went back over the years to revisit the action RPG on my own, I would listen to everything the non-playable characters had to say. The game doesn’t have much dialogue by modern standards, but if you pay attention, it says a lot with very little. Looking back at my time with Diablo III and, more recently, Diablo Immortal, what stands out is that those games rarely, if ever, slow down to take a breath.

Blizzard

Diablo IV feels different. It feels like a game that was designed by people who love the history of this franchise as much as I do. That might not seem like much, but it’s refreshing when you consider Diablo III’s original lead designer called his Diablo II predecessor a “loser.”

“Certainly, there are a lot of things about Diablo II that we think are really cool and need to be in Diablo IV, particularly when you look at the depth of systems and itemization… and, as you noted, there are things about Diablo III like the smooth and seamless combat that we wanted to bring forward to Diablo IV,” game director Joe Shely tells me during a roundtable interview. Shely took over leadership of the Diablo IV team in the fall of 2021 after the game’s previous director, Luis Barriga, left Blizzard when California’s fair employment agency accused the studio of systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment. “We think Diablo IV can be a place that welcomes players from any previous Diablo game and people who have never played a Diablo game.”

Blizzard

Diablo IV existing as a project that takes all the best aspects of past entries in the series and iterates on them in meaningful ways is a theme Shely and his boss, Diablo franchise head Rod Fergusson, repeat early and often. At first, I dismissed it as marketing, but after playing the game for about a dozen hours, I started to believe them.

Take combat, for instance. Carrying over a change Blizzard made for the console release of Diablo III, each class comes with a dodge ability built into their kit. At first, you can only use your dodge once before it goes on cooldown, but as you level your character, you’ll find magical and rare boots that give you additional charges.

The potion system, meanwhile, represents a hybrid of the systems that existed in Diablo II and III. When you first start playing, your character can carry a maximum of five potions on them. There’s no cooldown after you use one, and you gain refills by slaying enemies or bringing a boss down to certain thresholds of their health. Walking over a potion when your character is at max health won’t automatically heal you as it did in Diablo III, so there’s more strategy involved. As you might have guessed, you can upgrade the potency of your potions and find ways to carry more as you progress through the game.

Blizzard

On the surface, these are minor changes, but they add some much-needed tactical depth to Diablo’s combat, so you’re not just mindlessly clicking and spamming your skill rotation. Most larger enemies have a windup attack in their arsenal to stagger your character. Combine that with elite and champion variants of enemies that can use abilities like frost to trap you in place, and combat encounters feel more involved in Diablo IV than in past games. Playing on the game’s veteran world tier difficulty, I had the most success when I used my barbarian’s leap ability to close the distance quickly on ranged enemies and monsters like fallen shamans that could bring their comrades back from the dead.

All of that made for a fun and satisfying combat loop enhanced by how much the game encouraged me to experiment with my character’s build. Diablo IV sees the return of Diablo II’s skill trees, but this time around, you’re not limited to respecing your character once per difficulty. Instead, you can at any time refund a single skill point or all of them simultaneously to tweak your build. At first, doing so only costs a few gold coins, but the price increases as you level your character. The beauty of this system is that you’re free to experiment early before settling on the build that will take you through Diablo IV’s endgame activities.

Unfortunately, I only had enough time to play through the demo with the barbarian. The preview also came with access to the rogue and sorcerer classes. At launch, the final game will feature five classes, adding the druid and necromancer to the mix.

I wish I could write about the story, but Blizzard asked those of us taking part in the preview not to spoil anything. What I can say is that once you complete Diablo IV’s prologue, you can tackle its primary acts in any order you want. The preview build only came with access to act one and the Fractured Peaks zone where that part of the story takes place. When Blizzard revealed Diablo IV in 2019 by sharing the game’s gruesome “By Three They Come” intro cinematic, I was worried the story would end up being edgy instead of mature and dark.

The little I’ve seen of the plot has done a lot to address those concerns. Part of that has been thanks to the smart, restrained writing I saw and Diablo IV’s willingness to give its narrative time to breathe, but the thing I think that’s going to surprise a lot of people is how atmospheric Diablo IV can be in its best moments. All of the trailers Blizzard has released so far don’t do nearly enough justice to all the great work the art team has done with the environmental, lighting and particle effects in the game. When my barbarian first began his adventure on a mountain beset by a blizzard, I reached for a blanket.

One thing the demo didn’t include was a preview of Diablo IV’s monetization system. Blizzard provided an overview of those this past summer. The short version is that the game won’t include pay-to-win microtransactions. Instead, an in-game cosmetic shop will allow you to buy items you can use to customize the look of your characters further. Seasonal battle passes will allow you to earn additional cosmetics. From the moment you create your character, the customization systems are robust, offering you plenty of options to alter their physical appearance, including things like skin tone, head and facial hair, as well as jewelry.

Blizzard

Additionally, the way you can modify the appearance of items is as fleshed out. For instance, if you use the transmog system to make a piece of armor look different, and then an item with better stats drops for you, you can match it with your previous set directly from the character sheet. By level 10, my barbarian had already started to look menacing.

If there’s one worry I have about Diablo IV, it’s the same one I’ve had with every Blizzard game in the past decade or so: Can the studio stick the landing? To say Blizzard’s recent output has been all over the place would be an understatement. I’m still disappointed with how it handled remastering my favorite RTS of all time. The studio will have the chance to reassure fans in early 2023 when Diablo IV’s open beta begins ahead of the game’s official launch later in the year.

If you've been looking to pick up a smart display, today looks like a decent time to take the plunge, as Walmart has our favorite option on the market, Google's Nest Hub, down to $39. That's the lowest price we've seen to date for the second-gen model. Notably, the discount includes a basic Philips Wiz smart bulb for no extra cost. For context, the 7-inch smart display technically has an MSRP of $99, though we frequently see it on sale for $50. The deal covers both the "chalk" and "charcoal" versions of the display, but the former looks to be out of stock as of this writing.

We gave the second-gen Nest Hub a review score of 89 when it launched last year, and it's currently a top pick in our guide to the best smart displays. Like Amazon's Echo Show devices, it's mainly there for those who like using a voice assistant to pull up the weather, control smart home gear, stream music and videos, display recipes in the kitchen and so on. Its chief advantage over Amazon's devices is, unsurprisingly, its tighter integration with Google services: If much of your life is organized in Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Photos, or if you use other Google-owned gear like Nest doorbells and thermostats, using the Google Assistant to access those things here will be far more convenient. We've also found the Google Assistant to be a little more capable than Alexa at answering web queries.

As a piece of hardware, the Nest Hub isn't blazingly fast, nor is its 1,024 x 600 resolution display especially sharp. Still, its built-in speakers and microphones do the job, and its soft fabric design should blend naturally into most rooms. Its 7-inch frame is a natural fit on a bedside table or bathroom counter, and while it lacks a built-in camera, that may be a good thing for those who want an added sense of privacy. The device can also provide a modicum of sleep tracking, though we wouldn't call that necessary for most, and Google plans to charge extra for the feature in the coming months. Nevertheless, the Nest Hub provides a strong mix of price and functionality for those who aren't already hitched to Alexa, and this deal only furthers that.

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