ArduinoMania

A UK-based software company called Threads Software Limited is threatening legal action against Meta over its use of the name Threads. The company, which says it’s owned the “Threads” trademark since 2012, makes an “intelligent message hub” that uses AI to help businesses keep track of phone calls, emails and other messages.

Threads Software Limited claims that Meta lawyers made four separate attempts, beginning in April 2023, to buy the software company’s threads.app domain, and eventually shut down its Facebook account. “Every offer was declined,” the company said in a statement. “It was made clear to Meta’s Instagram that the domain was not for sale. In July 2023, Meta’s Instagram announced its ‘threads’ social media platform and removed Threads Software Limited from its Facebook platform.”

The software company said that it’s giving Meta 30 days to “stop using the Threads name” and that it will “seek an injunction from the UK courts” if the social media company declines to do so. In a statement, Threads Software’s CEO John Yardley said it was “not an easy decision” to take on Meta, but that the “business now faces a serious threat from one of the largest technology companies in the world.”

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s not clear how much money Meta may have offered for threads.app, but Yardley’s statements offer a rare look at the kind of backroom negotiations that can happen in order to secure a sought-after domain or username.

It’s also worth noting that the software maker wasn’t the only company using the Threads name at the time Meta launched its Twitter competitor. Fashion retailer American Threads controlled the @Threads handle on Instagram at the time of the service’s launch. The company jokingly responded to commenters at the time, and posted on the new Threads service about people mixing up the clothing brand with the Meta-owned service. Meta used @threadsapp on Instagram and threadsapp.net on Threads, at the time of the service’s launch.

Screenshot by Karissa Bell via Instagram

A month later, the retailer’s Instagram account changed handles to @americanthreads (and americanthreads.net on Threads) without explanation, while Meta took control of the @Threads handle. Representatives for the clothing brand didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but the circumstances are strikingly similar to how Meta quietly gained control of the @Meta handle on Instagram more than a year ago. That username was also controlled by a separate entity — an independent motorcycle publication called META — but the account was later subsumed by the social network without explanation.

Representatives of Meta, the magazine, never commented directly on how their account changed hands, but wrote about their dismay in learning of Facebook's name change. “With the flip of a switch our identity was suddenly watered down, and we watched our name circle the drain and wash away with something we had no control over,” the magazine’s cofounder wrote in a blog post that’s since been deleted. The magazine now uses the name Vahna.

For now, it appears Threads Software Limited is hoping for a different outcome. “Over the last 10 years, we have made a large investment in the Threads name and we did not want to potentially have to write-off this investment simply because Meta happened to like the name we had already coined for a messaging service,” it wrote in a blog post. “For us to change the service name simply to avoid confusion with Meta’s product could well set back the service enough for us to lose that technological lead.”

If you have been offered money in exchange for your domain name or handle from Meta or another social media company, reach out to me at karissa.bell [at] engadget.com or on Signal at +1.628.231.0063.

NYU is launching a project to spur the development of immersive 3D video for dance education — and perhaps other areas. Boosted by a $1.2 million four-year grant from the National Science Foundation, the undertaking will try to make Point-Cloud Video (PCV) tech viable for streaming.

A point cloud is a set of data points in a 3D space representing the surface of a subject or environment. NYU says Point-Cloud Video, which strings together point-cloud frames into a moving scene, has been under development for the last decade. However, it’s typically too data-intensive for practical purposes, requiring bandwidth far beyond the capabilities of today’s connected devices.

The researchers plan to address those obstacles by “reducing bandwidth consumption and delivery latency, and increasing power consumption efficiency so that PCVs can be streamed far more easily,” according to an NYU Engineering blog post published Monday. Project leader Yong Liu, an NYU electrical and computer engineering professor, believes modern breakthroughs make that possible. “With recent advances in the key enabling technologies, we are now at the verge of completing the puzzle of teleporting holograms of real-world humans, creatures and objects through the global Internet,” Liu wrote on Monday. 

ChatGPT maker OpenAI launched a model last year that can create 3D point clouds from text prompts. Engadget reached out to the project leader to clarify whether it or other generative AI tools are part of the process, and we’ll update this article if we hear back.

The team will test the technology with the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Mark Morris Dance Group’s Dance Center. Dancers from both organizations will perform on a volumetric capture stage. The team will stream their movements live and on-demand, offering educational content for aspiring dancers looking to study from high-level performers — and allowing engineers to test and tweak their PCV technology.

The researchers envision the work opening doors to more advanced VR and mixed reality streaming content. “The success of the proposed research will contribute towards wide deployment of high quality and robust PCV streaming systems that facilitate immersive augmented, virtual and mixed reality experience and create new opportunities in many domains, including education, business, healthcare and entertainment,” Liu said.

“Point-Cloud Video holds tremendous potential to transform a range of industries, and I’m excited that the research team at NYU Tandon prioritized dance education to reap those benefits early,” said Jelena Kovačević, NYU Tandon Dean.

Bungie has reportedly laid off an unknown number of staffers and delayed two highly anticipated games. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that the studio’s CEO, Pete Parsons, warned staffers they would hear “some news today” while announcing a team meeting later on Monday to “discuss today’s events.”

Meanwhile, the studio has reportedly delayed the Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, and the studio’s next game, Marathon. Sony completed its deal last year to buy Bungie for $3.6 billion.

According to Bloomberg, Bungie delayed Destiny 2: The Final Shape to June from its original target of February 27, 2024. While not necessarily the end of Destiny 2, the expansion will serve as a resolution, wrapping up its main story’s loose ends. In addition, the studio has pushed back the release date for extraction shooter Marathon to 2025. That title, rebooting an IP from a 1990s Mac cult classic, is Bungie’s attempt to re-establish itself as a force in the modern gaming industry beyond Destiny.

Sony has joined much of the gaming industry (and the tech world at large) in laying off staff this year. Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and PlayStation’s Visual Arts support team have all faced cuts recently. In addition, Epic Games cut around 900 staff members in September, and CD Projekt Red announced in July it would lay off about 100 people. Niantic, Telltale, EA and Unity have also let go of workers in 2023.

Engadget has reached out to Bungie to try to confirm the layoffs and delays. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

I am fully encased in a bundle of spider’s silk, only my eyeballs still visible as I wait for my turn to be devoured. I’ve failed to save the city from the insatiable arachnidian Old God, and now myself and all the inhabitants of Shiokawa, Japan are caught in its web. I’d come so far this time, solved all of the mysteries tacked to my bulletin board, but in the end, I couldn’t escape the doom that had been closing in on me.

If World of Horror could be reduced to a single word, it’d be “dread.” It's a point-and-click cosmic horror game created by Polish developer and dentist, Pawel Kozminski (also known as Panstasz). And after spending years in early access, Ysbryd Games finally released it to the public this month on Steam, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch. It was well worth the wait.

World of Horror is heavily text-based, and plays like a choose your own adventure story — one in which most of your options are bad ones that will inevitably lead you to a gruesome death or irrevocable insanity. Players must solve five mysteries that are tormenting the townspeople, gathering information and fighting off the monstrous entities that attempt to get in your way. A slippery, boil-covered former teacher here, a woman with shards of broken ribs jammed into her gaping hole of a face, there.

All the while, you’ll be working to stave off whichever Old God has set its sights on Shiokawa for that run, and must keep an eye on the ever-ticking Doom meter to know how close you are to being overcome. Only after you’ve obtained five keys by solving each of the five mysteries can you unlock the town’s lighthouse, where you can banish the Old God. That is, if you’re able to make it through the trials on the way to the top. It’s a roguelite, too, so prepare to start from the beginning every time you make a fatal misstep.

The horror-manga-style RPG doesn't hide its Junji Ito and HP Lovecraft influences. It's so disquieting that you’ll find yourself jumpy and on edge even when nothing’s happening, which in some investigations is most of the time. The evil may not be coming for you right that moment, but there’s the sense that it could at any turn.

Ysbryd Games

When those little jump scares do come — a particularly revolting attacker or a booming sound that cuts through the chiptune score — they’re made all the more jarring by the high-contrast 1- or 2-bit visuals (you can choose at the beginning) that were created, incredibly, in MS Paint. It nails the often hard to stomach Ito-esque gore, and there are a few scenes I had to force myself not to turn away from (a certain DIY eyeball operation comes to mind).

You’re given a few options for approaching the game, in terms of difficulty and complexity. Its short tutorial, “Spine-Chilling Story of School Scissors,” is a straightforward introduction. And in the beginner-level main story mode, “Extracurricular Activities,” you'll start with one mystery already solved.

Players also have the choice of a “Quick Play” mode, in which elements like your character, Old God and backstory are randomly selected, or a fully customized playthrough where you choose your own character and story elements. That last one is the most challenging route. You can also choose from a slew of color palettes at the start of each game, if you want to mix it up.

Ysbryd Games

While the turn-based combat is nothing revolutionary, I found it to be engaging enough. There’s no guarantee all of your hits will land, and relying on spiritual attacks when going up against a ghost-type foe is a stressful game of “guess the right combo.” It keeps things interesting, albeit a bit frustrating. Since the runs are relatively short — about an hour, give or take 30 minutes — it doesn’t feel soul crushing every time you die and have to start fresh. If anything, it becomes an addicting cycle.

Where World of Horror truly excels is in its attention to horrifying detail. A TV playing in your home runs grisly newscasts nonstop, including one about a dentist who replaced his human patients’ teeth with dogs’ teeth. (Remember, the developer is also a dentist). Look through the peephole of your apartment door and you might see a shadow man down the hall, or the quickly retreating face of someone lurking around the corner, or just an empty corridor. Twisted ghouls wait behind dead-end classroom doors.

Things are rarely the same when you come back to them. Each mystery has multiple endings and multiple ways to get you there, so you can’t quite predict what’s going to happen next even if you just played 10 runs in a row. Some stories are more involved than others, better thought through. But each has at least one ghastly element that justifies its place among the rest. If World of Horror is anything, it’s effective, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Meta’s Oversight Board announced today it has upheld the company’s decision to leave up two posts detailing a Thai woman’s fruit juice-only diet. However, the board recommended the company restrict the monetization of similar “extreme and harmful diet-related content” on Facebook as researchers continue to wrestle with the concerning relationship between social media and eating disorders.

The Oversight Board’s decision describes the videos, posted in late 2022 and 2023 by the same account — and flagged by users as harmful. The clips detailed “content on life, culture and food in Thailand.” In both problematic videos, a man interviews a woman in Italian about her experience with “a diet consisting only of fruit juice.”

The decision illustrates the videos’ concerning influence. “In the first video, the woman says she has experienced increased mental focus, improved skin and bowel movement, happiness and a ‘feeling of lightness’ since starting the diet, while she also shares that she previously suffered from skin problems and swollen legs,” the board’s summary reads. “She brings up the issue of anorexia but states her weight has normalized, after she initially lost more than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) due to her dietary changes.”

The second video, posted around five months later, follows up on the woman’s story, asking how she feels nearly a year into her dangerous diet. “She responds by saying she looks young for her age, that she has not lost any more weight except for ‘four kilos of impurities,’ and she encourages him to try the diet.” Making matters worse, she told the interviewer she planned to become a “fruitarian” after wrapping up the fast, adding that she may start a “pranic journey,” which she describes as “living ‘on energy’ in place of eating or drinking regularly.”

Meta

The videos have been viewed over two million times and have over 15,000 comments. The posts also shared details about the woman’s Facebook page, which received a significant uptick in engagement after the second post. “Based on research commissioned by the Board, the woman’s Facebook page has 17,000 followers and features content about the lifestyle of the woman, including her diet,” the board wrote. Both the content creator and the woman’s Facebook page were part of Meta’s Partner Monetization Program, allowing them to profit from the potentially harmful advice. 

After users reported the videos, Meta’s human reviewers determined the posts didn’t violate Facebook’s Suicide and Self-Injury Community Standard. They remained visible on Facebook. Separate users for each video then appealed the decision to Meta’s Oversight Board.

The board’s decision not to remove the videos was more about the lack of specific violations of the Suicide and Self-Injury Community Standard than a belief that the content was harmless. Specifically, the videos don’t provide “instructions for drastic and unhealthy weight loss when shared together with terms associated with eating disorders,” nor do they “promote, encourage, coordinate, or provide instructions for eating disorders.” Even the woman’s mention of an energy-only “pranic journey” was determined to be “descriptive in nature” without mention of weight loss.

The board recommended Meta adjust its monetization policies to “better meet its human rights responsibilities” related to “harmful diet-related content.” Most of the board considers the current authorization of this content “a conspicuous and concerning one.”  

“With health and communications experts noting the ability of influencers to use first-hand narration styles to secure high engagement with their content — coupled with the ubiquity of wellness influencers — it is important that Meta should not provide financial benefits to create this type of content,” the board wrote.

Some board members believed demonetization of this type of content was a bridge too far. “For a minority of the Board, since demonetization may negatively impact expression on these issues, Meta should explore whether demonetization is the least intrusive means of respecting the rights of vulnerable users,” the board wrote. Meanwhile, another minority believed demonetization doesn’t go far enough. “For a separate minority of Board Members, demonetization is necessary but not sufficient; they find that Meta should additionally restrict extreme and harmful diet-related content to adults over the age of 18, and explore other measures such as putting a label on the content, to include reliable information on the health risks of eating disorders.”

Meta says that because the board upheld Meta’s decision to leave up both posts, it “will take no further action related to this bundle or the content.” The company adds that it will review the demonetization recommendation. A Meta spokesperson told Engadget it will respond to “their full recommendations in our Transparency Center” within 60 days.

X will no longer pay creators for tweets promoting misinformation. Elon Musk said the company is making a “slight change” to its monetization program and that tweets that are fact-checked via community notes will no longer be eligible for payouts as part of X’s revenue-sharing program.

The update appears to be an attempt to remove incentives for high-profile accounts to spread viral misinformation. “The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism,” Musk said. X also recently started to require community notes contributors to cite their sources in fact checks.

The latest change comes as researchers, fact checkers and journalists have raised the alarm about the amount of viral misinformation spreading on X amid the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza. European Union officials have opened an investigation into the company’s handling of misinformation related to the war.

Following Musk’s takeover of Twitter a year ago, the company laid off teams responsible for curating and promoting reputable tweets about breaking news events and removed tools for reporting misinformation in the app. Instead, the company has relied on its crowd-sourced fact checking tool, community notes.

But critics have said that community notes are subject to manipulation and that the user-contributed fact checks are often unable to keep up with the sheer amount of viral falsehoods, particularly those promoted by verified accounts. A recent analysis from NewsGuard, a nonprofit that tracks the spread of misinformation, found that 74 percent of “the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War are being pushed by ‘verified’ X accounts.”

As BBC researcher Shayan Sardarizadeh pointed out, the change to make tweets with community notes ineligible for payments has already been criticized by a number of high-profile accounts whose tweets are often “community noted.” Musk added that “any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious,” but didn’t say how the company would deal with attempts at manipulation. X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

I've always dreamed of revisiting classic RPGs with my kids — I wanted them to jump across time with me in Chrono Trigger, or pretend to be sky pirates in Skies of Arcadia. It's not that tough to transform a well-told RPG into an interactive storybook for children (though I may have to shield their eyes from the more gruesome bits of Final Fantasy VII). I've been planning my "intro to RPGs" playlist for years, waiting for the moment my daughter Sophia began to look beyond the storytelling stylings of Peppa Pig.

But one night she saw me playing Sea of Stars, the recent Chrono-inspired retro RPG from Sabotage Studio, and she was hooked. I didn't need to entice her like I originally thought. The game's gorgeous 2D pixel art, catchy music (including some tunes from Chrono Trigger composer Yasunori Mitsuda) and epic story were more than enough to captivate her. While I held the Switch, she kept an eye out for enemies and treasure chests, and she stayed engaged with the story as I broke it down for her. She also clapped whenever I hit the action button at just the right time to deliver an extra hit, or to block an enemy's blow (a nifty feature taken from Super Mario RPG).

Sabotage Studio

Sophia loved the two leads — Valere and Zale, who she calls Moon Girl and Sun Boy — and their colorful companions. She teared up when a major character sacrificed themself to defeat the Big Bad (that was a long conversation). And she held tight as we took on the final boss, setting the two leads up for a larger adventure once we defeated them. Now, we're mopping up additional side quests and working towards the "true" ending. Sophia doesn't want to stop until we've seen everything the game has to offer, a sign that she's going to be quite the completionist when she's ready to play on her own.

Don't judge me, but games have become an integral part of my daughter's wind-down time at night. They help her to calm down and relax before bathtime, a sort of pre-storytime before we read some actual books before bed. We're not playing anything fast-paced or loud, and the games offer plenty of teachable moments when it comes to spelling words, counting and complex moral choices. From what I can gather, watching a screen at night (which I keep distant from her and a bit dim) hasn't affected her ability to fall asleep on schedule either. (Yes, I know it's not recommended. I also waited until Sophia was over four years old before we started nightly gaming — I'm sure it would have been more troublesome if I started earlier.)

Before Sea of Stars, we also played around 20 hours of Dave the Diver, another recent release with a glorious pixel art aesthetic. Recently, we've also spent some time with the delightful Super Mario Bros. Wonder. But after playing a few levels of that, Sophia almost always wants to play Sea of Stars instead. Now she can tell the difference between a platformer like Mario, a game with a variety of experiences like Dave the Diver and an RPG (she calls them "adventure games," officially settling that debate). I'm sure she'll appreciate the mechanics of other genres more once she learns how to both run and jump at the same time in Mario. For now, she leans towards story.

Sabotage Studio

Once it was clear that Sophia was truly into RPGs as a concept, I introduced her to Chrono Trigger. For whatever reason, Square Enix hasn't re-released it yet on the Switch, and I wanted to play it on a more portable system than the Steam Deck. That left me with the iPhone port of the game, which looks pretty great on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. While there's no option to use the game's original graphics — a perk of the Steam release — the iOS version of Chrono Trigger still has all of the charm and whimsy that made me fall in love with the SNES version. (And as a nice bonus, there's an auto button to speed through minor fights!)

Sophia immediately noticed the many (many!) similarities between Sea of Stars and Chrono Trigger. The overworld map is framed similarly, they both feature some of the best pixel art of their time and they both ultimately weave an epic story. Playing both games back-to-back reveals some of Sea of Star's weaker elements — it takes a while to truly get going and the writing is a bit more simplistic. But it also makes me really want to play a proper Chrono sequel with Sea of Stars' battle system.

Within 15 minutes of starting Chrono Trigger, Sophia and I were thrown back 400 years into the past. We were looking for Marle, the princess-in-hiding, who vanished soon after we found her. Then I had to explain the potential consequences of timeline interference to a 5 year old. And Sophia immediately understood what was happening: We had to save Marle's ancestor before Marle ceased to exist! Just try competing with that, Peppa!

Sabotage Studio

To be clear, this isn't really Sophia's first rodeo with complex storytelling. She's devoured almost all of Miyazaki's films (we're holding off on Princess Mononoke because it may be too scary, and she's probably not ready for the mature exploration of death and art in The Wind Rises), and I've guided her through Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. So I shouldn't be surprised that she's fully embracing the power of RPGs. After envisioning this moment for years, I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

It won’t be too long before she’ll be regaling me with stories of her own RPG adventures. And when she’s ready, I’m going to blow her mind with a one-two punch of Xenogears and Neon Genesis Evangelion. She’ll thank me later.

Sony has revealed when you'll be able to snap up the only two wireless audio devices that will work with its PlayStation Portal handheld any time soon. The $200 Pulse Explore earbuds will hit markets including the US, UK, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand on December 6. The $150 Pulse Elite headset will arrive in most markets starting on February 21, Sony says.

Pre-orders for both products, as well as extra PlayStation Link USB adapters, will open on November 9. You can lock in an order for the earbuds, headset or adapter on PlayStation Direct or at other select retailers.

PlayStation Link, you may recall, is Sony's own wireless audio tech. The company claims it will deliver low latency, lossless audio. Sony says it'll be easy to switch between PlayStation Link devices, such as the PlayStation Portal and your PS5 (which can only connect to the Pulse Explore or Pulse Elite with the help of a USB adapter).

Sony Interactive Entertainment

The earbuds and headset both include Bluetooth. Multipoint support means you can connect them to your PS5 or Portal and your phone at the same time, so you can answer a call while playing the likes of Marvel's Spider-Man 2. However, there's no Bluetooth option on the PlayStation Portal, Sony's PS5 remote play handheld that's arriving on November 15. As such, you'll need to either use the device's speakers, plug a wired headset into the 3.5mm jack or connect a Pulse Explore or Pulse Elite.

For the time being, those are the only two devices that will support PlayStation Link. According to IGN, Sony eventually plans to allow third-party makers of audio devices to use the standard in their products. 

Low-latency, lossless wireless audio is certainly nothing to sniff at. However, Sony's decision to refrain from offering Bluetooth support in the Portal and instead nudge consumers toward an expensive headset and earbuds that use its proprietary tech is disappointing, if not surprising.

Amazon’s flagship Fire Max 11 tablet just dropped to a record-low price of $150, representing a savings of $80 from the MSRP of $230. That’s 35 percent off, for you math-heads out there. This deal is for the standard tablet and doesn’t include a stylus, keyboard or any other accessories. Being as this is an Amazon tablet, you also get those ads on the lockscreen, but they are fairly unobtrusive.

This is the most powerful Fire tablet out there, with an 11-inch LCD screen, a slim aluminum frame and Alexa-powered smart home controls. You get a fingerprint sensor in the power button, WiFi 6 support and split-screen/picture-in-picture features. We were impressed by the inherent value of the tablet at its full price, so we are 35 percent more impressed now.

The Fire Max 11 is also light, weighing around a pound, and is designed around multi-tasking, with an octa-core MediaTek processor that is nearly twice as fast as any other Amazon-branded tablet. In other words, this is a far cry from the kinds of affordable, kid-friendly tablets the company typically releases.

There’s a keyboard and stylus available for this device, but you’ll pay extra for the added functionality. There are bundles that include these accessories that are also on sale, ranging from $185 to $275.

Speaking of sales, this is part of a larger early Black Friday event that includes many other Amazon tablets. You can snag the Fire HD 10 for $75, which is half off, or the Fire 7 Kids edition for just $55. The Fire 10 Plus and the Fire 10 Kids Pro tablets are also both on sale for a limited time.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Google's Pixel Tablet is one of the more compelling options for those in the market for an Android tablet, as it's designed to double as a smart display when you aren't holding it. If you've been thinking of picking one up, now looks like a good time to do so: The 11-inch slate is on sale for $399 at multiple retailers, including Amazon, Target, Best Buy and Google's own online store. While there's always a chance we see a better offer on Black Friday, this $100 discount marks a new all-time low. It's also $10 less than the previous low we saw during Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sale earlier this month. This price applies to the base models with 128GB of storage; if you need more space, the 256GB versions are also $100 off at $499. Google says the offer will run through November 5.

We gave the Pixel Tablet a score of 85 in our review this past June, and we highlight it in our guide to the best tablets. While we don't think it's better purely as a tablet than our top Android pick, the vibrant Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, it's a good ways cheaper, and it's still more than competent for streaming video, playing games and doing most of the other casual things people do with a tablet. Its 2,560 x 1,600 LCD is crisp and punchy, its Tensor G2 chip is fast enough, its 5,000mAh battery should last a full day and the hardware doesn't feel cheap. This is still an Android tablet, so some apps aren't as optimized for this large display as they are on an iPad, but Google at least promises to supply the device with OS and security updates through June 2026 and June 2028, respectively.

That smart display functionality is the Pixel Tablet's big selling point, though. Included with the device is a dock that both charges the device and provides a dedicated speaker — plop the Pixel Tablet on, and the slate becomes something like a detachable Nest Hub Max. You can use it to control and monitor smart home devices, access the Google Assistant, cast video from your phone, display photos, stream music and so on. 

There are still issues: There's no headphone jack, the display is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and we had a few software quirks with the tablet's "Hub Mode" during the review process. Generally speaking, though, the Pixel Tablet is a clever melding of two useful devices. A few other Google devices are also on sale this week, including the unlocked Pixel 7a for $374, the Pixel Buds Pro for $119 and the indoor Nest Cam for $70, among others.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.