Sony has been putting a bigger emphasis on accessibility in its first-party PlayStation games over the last few years with the inclusion of extensive options in the likes of The Last of Us: Part II, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Horizon Forbidden West. When it eventually arrives, God of War: Ragnarok will be no exception. To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Sony has detailed some of the options.
"Not only have we redesigned our UI to allow for more flexibility and readability, but we have also rebuilt controller remapping from the ground up and added more customization to our combat and interaction systems," Santa Monica Studio lead UX designer Mila Pavlin wrote in a PlayStation Blog post. "We have retained all our accessibility features from 2018's God of War and expanded upon them to include more than 60 ways to adjust gameplay to best suit your style and needs."
Among the settings is a customizable high-contrast mode. Players will be able to add a color layer to characters, targets, enemies and various items to make them stand out from the background. You'll be able to adjust the individual colors for each category and desaturate the background to help make the objects more visible. Pavlin notes that the visibility of traversal paint (perhaps referring to the environmental markers that show players where to go) and special effects can be enhanced in this mode too.
Some of the accessibility options added to the PC version of God of War will be included in the sequel. Those include auto sprint, an always-on reticle (which can reduce motion sickness by providing a persistent focal point) and a way to toggle aiming and blocking.
Subtitles and captions are being upgraded with more size and color display options and a way to blur the background behind the text box. There will be expanded captions for sound effects and directional indicators for critical gameplay information, including for puzzles that have sound cues.
The features also include settings for other UI text elements and icon sizes, in-depth controller remapping (including the ability to set shortcuts for more complex moves on the touchpad) and traversal assistance. A new feature for the God of War series, and one that's been included in games elsewhere, is a way to reorient Kratos toward the next story objective while not in combat with the press of a button.
These are just some of the accessibility settings that will be included in the game. "We can’t wait to tell you details about our other categories of accessibility features like combat/aim assists, puzzle/minigame assists, HUD adjustments, camera tuning, auto pick up and much more," Pavlin wrote.
To underline how important the accessibility features are, Sony has revealed them before even announcing the God of War: Raganrok release date. It's expected to arrive on PS4 and PS5 this year. Showing the accessibility options now suggests those are at least close to being finished. Hopefully, that means Sony won't have to delay the game again.
In the meantime, Sony has released an audio description version of the God of War: Raganrok reveal trailer from last year's PlayStation Showcase. If you're interested, you'll need to go to YouTube to watch it due to the age restriction settings.
As part of Cooking Week, we set out to test some of the most niche (and, in some cases, ridiculous) kitchen gadgets we could find. We wanted to know if these impressive-looking appliances actually do what they claim and if they’re worth the splurge. These are our findings.
There’s no denying the appeal of an induction burner or cooktop. They have some key benefits – with the biggest two being speed and efficiency. Whether it’s a single burner or a full cooktop, they heat faster than regular stovetops and offer more precise temperature control. They also have the added perks of not giving off as much residual heat, which is nice during the summer, and the surrounding cooking surface doesn’t get hot to the touch, which lessens burn risks. You can find a standalone burner for under $100 while a full replacement for your stove can run you a few thousand.
In between we have Breville’s PolyScience Control Freak: A $1,500 induction device that reaches exact temps quickly and holds them there. It’s a powerful standalone burner from Breville’s PolyScience line. This group of devices includes sous vide immersion circulators, vacuum sealers, a smoke gun and a speedy wine decanter. Gadgets and appliances for professional cooks or the pinnacle of the culinary curious at-home chefs. It’s not exactly stuff casual cooks would need, or likely even want.
However, the Control Freak’s performance is exceptional. The burner has a temperature range of 86-482 degrees Fahrenheit (30-250 Celsius). This gives you the option of everything from low-heat slow cooking to high-temp searing. You can do anything you would ordinarily stand over a stove for – and then some. The advantage of the Control Freak is that it holds an exact temperature for as long as you need it to. There’s also a 72-hour timer and Continue, Keep Warm, Repeat and Stop Cooking functionality. Plus, a probe allows you to make sure whatever you’re cooking is held at a constant temperature rather than just relying on the burner’s settings.
Beyond the usual checks for even heating and speed to boil water, I decided to put the Control Freak through its paces with one of my springtime culinary traditions: strawberry jam. The tl;dr version of the process is you bring smashed fruit to a boil (with or without lemon juice and/or added pectin to help it set). When that happens, you add an absurd amount of sugar and bring it back to a rolling boil, leaving it there for one minute.
Breville
Per Breville’s guidance, I set the temperature to 219 degrees and the heat intensity to medium, which controls how quickly the unit reaches your desired temp (low, medium and high). With all that sweetness, you don’t want to burn a batch by heating it too fast. I also plugged in the probe to monitor liquid temp directly. It probably won’t shock you to discover a large pot of smashed fruit takes significantly longer to reach a boil than water, especially when a batch is 10 half-pint jars. On my regular flat-top stove, this typically takes around 20 minutes. The Control Freak had the mixture boiling in less than half that. It was also quicker at bringing the jam back to a boil once I added all the sugar, which can take five minutes or more.
Of course, boiling isn’t the only thing the Control Freak can do. Breville offers a web-based “app” (it’s a glorified mobile website) to guide beginners through the cooking process based on your desired technique or main ingredient. You can find temperature and heat intensity information, if you should use the probe and recommended cookware. This “app” doesn’t connect to the device, so it’s a reference rather than a controller. Still, it will help you do anything from sous vide to scrambled eggs. I tested the latter and the results were perfectly moist and soft, cooked low and slow the way God intended. There’s so much to explore here, and I didn’t come close to scratching the surface, but I was still impressed.
Besides the price, the other potential downside for some people is the size. At 13.7 x 18.5 inches, the Control Freak is a beast. Most of that extra area beyond the cooking surface houses the display and controls. It also weighs almost 25 pounds. So, when you’re not using it, it will need significant storage space. Breville does include a nice case with the unit, so you won’t have to worry about tucking a pricy stainless steel appliance with a ceramic glass top in a cabinet unprotected.
In the end, I was consistently impressed by the Control Freak’s speed and efficiency, as well as its ability to hold precise temps. And while I can certainly see why someone who needs to meet exact cooking parameters would get a lot of use out of it, the price puts it out of reach for many. Unless you’ve got some serious kitchen ambitions or deep pockets to fund your cooking gadget arsenal, a much more affordable induction burner will suit most people fine. Just know that if you do splurge, the Control Freak has proven it can handle meticulous cooking and consistently deliver stellar results. There’s no doubt it’s a high-performance machine, but for most cooks, it’s like opting for a Bugatti when a Prius will get the job done.
Reddit's war over GameStop stock has claimed a major casualty. Bloomberg and The New York Times report Melvin Capital, the hedge fund considered the nemesis of the meme stock affair, is shutting down. Fund owner Gabe Plotkin told investors that the "appropriate next step" after steep losses was to liquidate assets and return cash to investors, and that it was time to "step away" from managing others' capital. At least half of the cash will transfer by May 31st, with the rest coming by June 30th.
Melvin Capital had been a successful fund, starting 2021 with over $12 billion. However, its public bet against GameStop and other struggling companies made it one of the largest victims of a GameStop-centric investing spree by people coordinating across Reddit and social networks. Plotkin's fund reported a 53 percent loss in January 2021, and it took a $2.75 billion cash infusion to soften the blow and keep losses down to 39 percent for the year.
The GameStop saga wasn't the only factor involved, however. While a recovery appeared possible, Melvin posted a 23 percent loss through April that was partly linked to poor stock positions. The fund was clearly in peril after the Reddit battle — it's just that some miscalculations finished the company once and for all.
Reddit speculators shifted their attention to BlackBerry and other companies in the aftermath of the GameStop drama, and there hasn't been fallout on par with Melvin's in the months since. Still, the shutdown illustrates the power of coordinated internet investors — they can demolish conventional stock managers in the right circumstances.
Meris has been making wild sounding hi-tech guitar pedals for sometime. But its latest entry, the LVX, is perhaps the wildest entry yet. At its core the LVX is a delay pedal, but a fantastically complicated one capable of producing a wide range of sounds from lo-fi tape warbles, to hi-fi polyphonic pitch shifting, to straightforward stereo ping pongs.
Under the hood is an "advanced ARM processor" (though Meris hasn't said what specific processor), and a 24-bit AD/DA with a 32-bit floating point DSP. In short: there is a lot of computing power here to mangle your guitar beyond recognition and deliver extremely high-quality audio while doing so.
What really makes the LVX special is its modular nature. Think of it almost like ZOIA-lite. (Though these are two very different pedals that are only comparable in that they're "modular.") Where Empress wants you to build effects from individual virtual components, Meris gives you complete building blocks that can be combined in various ways to bring out the delay sounds of your dreams.
You start by combining one of five delay structures with one of three delay styles to create a core tone. The "structure" can be just a standard delay, a multi-tap, multi-tap but with a filter, reverse or Poly, which is borrowed from Meris' Polymoon pedal. The types are clean digital, dark BBD (bucket brigade delay), or magnetic which has the lo-fi character of tape.
Then there are 25 "processing elements" spread across five categories: Dynamics, Preamp, Filter, Pitch, and Modulation. The processing elements can be inserted at various points in the signal chain as well. So if you only want them effect your echoes, or if you want them completely replacing your dry tone, you can. These effects cover everything from standard fare like compression, to bit crushing and auto-generated harmonies. Some of these are new to the LVX, but many are borrowed from other Meris pedals like the Hedra, Enzo and Ottobit Jr. Think of it's like a greatest hits compilation of the company's effects.
To push the sound design further Meris also adds modifiers for controlling the various parameters automatically. There's two LFOs, an envelope follower, a sample and hold function, plus a sixteen step sequencer. Not to mention the expression jack input and robust MIDI support.
And if that wasn't enough, Meris also put a 60-second looper and a tuner in the LVX.
Meris
That's a lot of features to navigate, so the company put a reasonably sized LCD on the pedal. It's not touch, but it allows you to navigate through all these functions in a unique "bubble" UI. Judging based just on the videos, it looks quite slick and goes way beyond what most other pedal makers offer. Of course, if the weird almost mind-map style navigation isn't to your liking, you can go with a more basic text view.
The last thing that the LVX comes with is perhaps a bit of sticker shock. At $599 this is not for the casual guitarist or someone looking to get their feet wet in the world of experimental delay. Still, that's hardly an absurd price to pay for a pedal of this scope and pedigree. Chase Bliss' Automatone line starts at $749 and the Hologram Electronics Microcosm is $449. Meris slots comfortably in the middle.
The Meris LVX is available to preorder now and will start shipping in the late summer.
All GeForce Now users can play Fortnite via NVIDIA's cloud gaming service, including those with iOS and Android devices. The company started testing the game on the platform in January. It says more than 500,000 people tried it out across "hundreds of mobile device types." The full launch of Fortnite on GeForce Now means that there's no longer a waitlist and anyone can drop into a match.
Feedback from beta testers helped NVIDIA optimize the touch controls and menu system. To thank them, it's giving everyone who signed up for the beta a three-day trial for GeForce Now's Priority plan. That offers longer game sessions than those who use the free version, along with improved visuals and access to premium servers. A three-day trial isn't exactly the most generous perk, but it's better than nothing.
For the time being, the only way to access Fortnite on iOS (at least without playing a console or PC remotely) is through cloud streaming. The game is also available for free through Xbox Cloud Gaming. You won't need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription if you go with that option.
Apple and Google pulled Fortnite from their mobile app storefronts in August 2020 amid a dispute with Epic Games. While Android users have still been able to sideload it, iOS players were effectively iced out until the cloud gaming options came into play.
Roku has joined forces with Element to create a 55-inch outdoor TV, the companies announced. The Element Roku TV looks like a version of Element's Patio Series TVs that offer anti-glare and weather protection, with Roku's smart TV operating system built in.
In fact, the Element Roku TV looks nigh-on identical to the 55-inch Patio TV, apart from the OS. It offers a good but not spectacular 700 nits of brightness, along with 4K streaming and HDR that's limited to HDR 10. More importantly, though, it has tempered anti-glare glass to combat reflections and IP55 weather protection that withstands water, dust and humidity. You also get "powerful built-in speakers, designed to cut through outdoor noise," Element said.
It's powered by Roku OS, one of the more powerful Smart TV platforms out there. You get all the streaming platforms you'd expect like Netflix, Apple TV+ and yes, YouTube TV. It also offers a customizable home screen, mobile remote, search capabilities via voice or keyboard and the ability to save shows for later. It's all conceived to let you watch sports, movies and more during barbecues, hot-tubbing, outdoor movie nights and other activities. It'll be "available starting shortly" for $1,300 at Walmart.com.
Netflix will expand its accessibility features in 10 additional languages, part of an effort to accommodate users who are hearing and vision-impaired. Starting this month and through early 2023, Netflix will roll out Audio Descriptions (AD), Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH) and dubbing for its entire library of original content, in languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian. Eventually, the streamer plans to add even more languages from the Asia-Pacific region and local European languages. The expansion will be available to all Netflix users globally and only apply to Netflix Originals.
The streamer said its aim was to allow even more viewers to watch content that is not in their native language. “For decades, the entertainment you had access to was determined by where you lived and what language you spoke, meaning people who needed AD or SDH could not enjoy stories made outside of where they were from,” wrote Netflix’s director of accessibility Heather Dowdy in a blog post.
For those who are deaf or vision-impaired, watching a new show or film on a streaming platform means turning on assistive technologies like subtitles or audio descriptions. But such accessibility features aren’t widely available across all platforms. Advocacy groups for the deaf and blind such as the National Federation of the Blind and the National Association for the Deaf have pushed streaming services to include more accessibility features over the years. Thanks to a 2012 settlement with the NAD, Netflix makes closed captioning available for all of its content. Netflix began rolling out audio descriptions for the blind and visually impaired in 2015, with the release of the show Daredevil. But the entertainment industry has been slow to embrace the newer technology, at the expense of its vision-impaired audience.
Currently, there are over 11,000 hours of audio description available globally on Netflix, and the streaming service plans to keep adding more. Netflix is also adding new badges for subtitles and audio descriptions on iOS and the web version.
“Our ambition is to entertain the world, and by increasing our SDH and AD language availability to now cover over 40 languages we hope to give all of our members the ability to see their lives reflected on screen,” wrote Dowdy.
Like many people, my food insecurity got pretty serious in April 2020. Cities and businesses all across America were shutting down, while grocery stores and delivery services started to run out of food. Everywhere I looked — whether it was Amazon, Instacart, Uber Eats or FreshDirect — it seemed impossible to find a reliable source of fruits and vegetables. I looked at my dwindling supply of canned soups and packets of ramen and almost wept.
Now, I know I’m immensely fortunate compared to a lot of people to be able to even consider my access to fresh food during the height of the pandemic. I know that there are people for whom a supply of canned food would have been a godsend, not to mention fruits and vegetables. That said, I think a lot of people can also identify, and felt the need to stock up.
Even as scarcity eased, I wanted to have a reliable source of fresh meals just in case we had to lock down again. I looked at delivery services like Blue Apron, Sunbasket and Purple Carrot. As a single person living on her own, I didn’t want to get too much food that would just spoil in my fridge. I also preferred meals that were ready made, rather than deal with raw meats.
My preference for convenient preparation limited the selections, and I narrowed down my options to Daily Harvest, Revive Superfoods and CookUnity. These companies all offered significant discounts on my first deliveries, and I rotated through them each week.
All three provided delicious, fresh food that was easy to prepare, and I appreciate that they all made an effort to use sustainable packaging. Daily Harvest’s packaging was almost 100 percent paper, with CookUnity a close second. The latter used plastic wrap on top of paper boxes for meals, with plastic containers for sauces, and meals were delivered in insulated bags that you could return with your next delivery. Daily Harvest, meanwhile, mostly used bowls made from molded pulp, as well as recyclable paper cups or pods where possible. Revive Superfoods also does a respectable job, with recyclable paper cups and plastic lids.
As my dietary needs shifted to focus on more protein instead of prioritizing fresh vegetables and fruit, it was critical that I could look up each meal’s nutritional info before my weekly orders. Again, all three websites offered at least basic data on macros and ingredients. The last time I ordered, only CookUnity allowed me to filter my searches by calorie count, which was one of my concerns at the time.
CookUnity also had an advantage in that it offered the greatest variety of meals, while Revive was the most limited in its options. I also loved that CookUnity’s food was chef-prepared and usually had more balanced macros. But they needed to be consumed within two to three days, while Daily Harvest’s and Revive’s could be stored in the freezer.
Ultimately, I quit Revive and CookUnity for the same reason. Both companies started to restrict how long you could skip upcoming deliveries, and trying to stay on top of my schedule got trickier and trickier. The tighter windows meant I had to check in to each service every two weeks to make sure I skipped an order, as opposed to a couple of months.
Daily Harvest
Daily Harvest, on the other hand, lets you skip up to nine weeks of upcoming deliveries, the company also sends you a reminder before it bills your account. It gives you ample time to consider if you need the food that week and cancel if you feel like it. Daily Harvest also provides helpful information about how its vegan meals taste, giving you a comparison to something more familiar.
That’s an important feature, by the way, since Daily Harvest’s meals are often vegetarian versions of other dishes. My favorites are the “Kimchi fried rice” made with riced cauliflower, the lentil-and-tomato bolognese and the spinach and shitake grits with nutritional yeast. Each of these consists of a handful of simple, mostly organic ingredients, and basically everything I’ve tried tastes fantastic. I loved the Broccoli and Cheeze bowl, the vegetable-crust flatbreads, the assortment of dessert bites, the vegan ice creams (especially the salted black sesame swirl) and the lattes, too. The only thing I didn’t really like was the chocolate and hazelnut smoothie, but only in comparison to something similar from Revive Superfoods.
I also generally picked bowls because they’re the easiest to prepare — just add a little water (you can skip this step) and throw it in the microwave. Many of the other options require either a blender or using your oven.
You can tell from everything I’ve mentioned, though, that Daily Harvest has a wide variety of food to offer. I haven’t even mentioned the breakfast-friendly forager bowls, the soups and the newly launched “Crumbles,” which are meant to provide a protein punch. Just looking at the menu again has me itching to send in an order for things I haven’t tried yet, like the Matcha and Murasaki bites.
In the end, though lots of meal delivery services can send you great-tasting food, few actually do so with the thoughtful approach of Daily Harvest. I don’t love that the prices of some of its dishes and lattes have increased in the last year, but at least it’s been very up front about these changes. I’ve received email notifications delineating exactly what was getting more expensive and when, as well as an explanation for the change.
I’ve since canceled my Revive and CookUnity accounts, not without hassle, by the way. After a few rounds of back-and-forth emails with customer service, Revive finally agreed to deactivate my account, rather than delete it and remove my payment and delivery details from their servers like I asked. CookUnity, meanwhile, simply had the typical process of offering you a discount and asking you to answer some questions after you manage to find the Cancel Subscription link. But at least I was able to actually cancel my subscription without having to talk to customer service.
Revive still emails me daily asking me to “Come back for more at 50% off” or “Reactivate with a 50% off offer” even after repeated emails in September and October saying “LAST CHANCE! Come back and save 40% x 2!” Typical marketing bluster, I know, but still annoying given I had asked in writing for them to lose my info. CookUnity’s last email to me was in January 19th, 2022, and when I signed back into my account, it showed me "Your subscription was canceled =("
I haven’t gotten a box from Daily Harvest in months, because these days I’ve been trying out a few more new services like Better Bagel, Farmer’s Fridge and Huel. So far I’ve loved the quality of food for the first two, and Huel is a little less appetizing. Regardless of the new options I add to my roster, I’m more than happy to keep ordering from Daily Harvest. Delicious, fresh food, a well-designed website and thoughtful customer service? Take my money.
Framework’s modular, do-it-yourself laptop has won the hearts and minds of plenty of laptop fans and right-to-repair-types alike. A year after launch, the company is back to offer the biggest test of its long term viability as a computer company: Chip upgrades. Today, the company is announcing new machines packing 12th generation Intel Core chips, as well as replacement mainboards with the new silicon for existing models.
While the company grows, users will need to lay down a refundable pre-order deposit of $100, with mainboard pricing running from $449 through to $1,049. If you’re looking to snag a Core i5-1240P, you’ll pay $449, while $699 bags you a Core i7-1260P, with high rollers looking for the i7-1280P laying down the full $1,049. Framework is using a batch system to fulfill orders, and so is advising would-be buyers to get their orders in early.
At the same time, the company is releasing a new Top Cover which is designed to add some extra rigidity to the system’s body. Whereas the original lid was aluminum-formed, the new units are CNC-milled from a solid block of aluminum. This, too, is available both in the new sold version of the laptop, and as an upgrade for the existing units already out in the wild, priced at $89.
As part of this annual upgrade, we’re also seeing the first new expansion card from the company in the form of a 2.5Gbit Ethernet adapter. Framework says that the new card uses a Realtek RTL8156 controller and will also support 10/100/1000Mbit Ethernet, and it will begin retailing later in the year. Rounding out the list of news is updated Linux support for both Fedora 36 and Ubuntu 22.04, as well as better power management while the machine is in standby mode.
While you may not have gotten around to spring cleaning, HP certainly has. Today the company is essentially refreshing its entire premium laptop portfolio with a bunch of new Envy and Spectre notebooks – both clamshells and 2-in-1s.
The two stars of the updated Envy line are the Envy x360 13.3-inch and the Envy 16-inch. Both systems can be configured with either an OLED display or a more traditional LCD panel. All of the new Envy laptops are also getting upgraded 5-MP webcams with head tracking and beamforming mics to help you look and sound your best during video calls. You even get native handwriting recognition and a hidden magnetic stylus mount on the side of the system. And, unlike a lot of other PC makers, HP’s pen actually comes in the box.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Starting at a reasonable $900, the Envy x360 13 looks like a great option for people on the move, thanks to its flexible 2-in-1 design and a battery that HP claims lasts up to 20.5 hours on a charge. You also get support for fast charging over USB-C, with HP promising you can refill half the battery in just 45 minutes. And for people who want to be a bit more discrete while working away from home, HP also introduced a quiet performance mode designed to keep fan noise to a minimum.
However, for people who want beefier specs, HP claims the Envy 16 is the most powerful Envy yet. Starting at $1,400, not only does it support refresh rates up to 120Hz, it also has a slightly taller 16:10 display for enhanced productivity. It can also be equipped with up to 32GB of RAM and either an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU or one of Intel’s new Arc A370M cards.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
So while it might not be quite as powerful as a souped-up gaming laptop, its performance is still pretty impressive. HP says the Envy 16 was designed to support video output for up to three external 4K monitors on top of its default display. When I got a chance to test that setup in person, everything felt snappy and responsive. I was able to flick Photoshop from one monitor to another without a hitch, even while having video editing apps and a bunch of other files open in the background.
HP also upgraded the Envy 16’s sound system with a rather powerful quad-speaker setup. Meanwhile, other handy upgrades include an IR sensor for speedy face unlock and even a sensor that can detect when the laptop is stashed in a bag, to help prevent unnecessary battery drain.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
That said, if the Envy x360 13 and Envy 16 don’t quite fit your needs, there’s also a refreshed Envy x360 15.6-inch 2-in-1 with support for both 12th-gen Intel CPUs or 5000 series Ryzen chips from AMD. And if you need a notebook with an even bigger screen, there’s the Envy x360 17.3-inch, which can be equipped with up to a 4K display. But notably, its GPU tops out at an NVIDIA RTX 2050, so it’s not nearly as powerful as the Envy 16. That said, starting at $1,100 it is a bit cheaper.
Finally, rounding out HP’s deluge of updates are the revamped Spectre x360 13.5 and the Spectre x360 16, which feature slightly curvier, rounded edges in addition to refreshed components. Now that might not sound like a big deal, but previous Spectres often felt too sharp and edgy for their own good. That’s because while those sleek lines looked great in photos, they had a tendency to dig into your palm or wrist while typing, which got uncomfortable real fast.
Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Both models are part of Intel’s Evo platform, so you can expect bright screens, near instant wake times and support for dual Thunderbolt 4 jacks, along with some luxury features like Gorilla Glass screens which aren’t available on all of the new Envy machines. And for people who really care about productivity, both new Spectres also get 3:2 aspect ratio displays with either LCD or OLED panels, to help make multitasking even easier.
And of course, the latest Spectres feature updated internals including 12th-gen Intel CPUs and support for an ARC A370M GPU on the 16-inch model. However, with starting prices of $1,250 and $1,650, HP’s most premium laptops do cost a bit more than comparable Envy notebooks.
All of HP’s new Envy and Spectre laptops are on sale today, direct from HP or from select third-party retailers such as Best Buy and Amazon.
