Keychon has been an ascending name in the mechanical keyboard world for a while now. The company strikes a good balance between features and price and it’s also not shy about releasing new models meaning whatever you’re after it likely has a solution. Unless you wanted a premium aluminum deck with a wireless option that is. Finally, that gap has been filled by the Q1 Pro - a flagship, fully customizable 75% keyboard complete with Bluetooth connectivity.
Surprising as it may seem, higher end, customizable keyboards often don’t offer wireless thanks to their tendency for metal housings. Keychron’s Q1 Pro, then, will be of great interest to those who want to fully configure their own keyboard but also want the convenience of Bluetooth.
As the name suggests, the Q1 Pro is heavily based on the original Q1 model which Keychron launched in late 2021. Like its predecessor, the Pro model features a gasket design (a double gasket in fact), hot-swappable switches and QMK/VIA compatibility (open source software for easy remapping of any key). There’s also the option of an aluminum rotary knob for things like volume control (or zoom, or brightness or whatever else you might want it for) and the obligatory RGB. As with all Keychron models, it’s also compatible with Mac, Windows and Android - or all three at the same time thanks to the option to connect to multiple Bluetooth devices.
We were big fans of the original Q1 which offered a relatively affordable entry point into the fully customizable keyboard world. And it’s a bit of a weird world at that, with configurations, price and availability varying wildly. Perhaps two of the higher profile competitors for the Q1 are the GMMK Pro (starting at $170 barebones, or $350 pre-built) and the recently released Sense75 from Drop (starting at $249 barebones, or $350 pre-built).
James Trew / Engadget
In a slight break from tradition, the Q1 Pro is being launched via Kickstarter. The benefit here being the chance to grab one at an early bird price. The barebones model is available for $174 if you already have your own switches and keycaps. Or, for $194 you can get the pre-assembled kit. Given that a set of keycaps or switches often cost more than $20 on their own, the complete kit does represent a pretty decent value.
Once you have everything setup, or out of the box if you go fully-assembled, Bluetooth pairing is merely a key-combo away. As noted earlier, you can connect the Q1 Pro to up to three devices of any type thanks to the switch around the back for Windows/Android and MacOS. There are even spare key caps in the box for the differing keys on Microsoft vs Apple layouts. Of course, if you want to connect over USB-C instead, that’s still an option.
Battery life will largely depend on how ham you go with the RGB. With no backlighting at all, Keychron claims you can expect about 300 hours of use on a full charge. If you’re demure with it, that number drops to 90. Keychron doesn’t give an estimate for hardcore full-power RGB but expect it to be less.
With the model Keychron sent for testing, the gasket design appears to have a bit more flex in it than the original Q1, but that doesn’t translate to a softer typing experience thankfully. The supplied red switches are comparable to Cherry reds in resistance, but of course you can choose whatever you want, in fact it’s encouraged. It’s hard to make a like-for-like comparison without having a rival product with the same switches and keycaps, but, overall, the Drop Sense75 and GMMK Pro feel a little stiffer on the gasket side of things resulting in a snappier type. As always, your mileage and preferences will vary.
Regardless, if you wanted a premium aluminum, customizable keyboard with Bluetooth connectivity, the Keychron Q1 Pro is likely your best (if not only) choice right now.
I’ve worked from home for twelve-plus years now, and between that, kids and COVID lockdowns I hadn’t realized just how much my world had shrunk. We have one car that my wife uses to go to work, so I spent my days getting around on foot, or using the local bike share scheme. But it was only when I started listing where I go, that I realized how small my world has become. These days, I’m limited to my office, the backyard, my kids’ school and the nearest, admittedly lackluster strip mall. I think I blinded myself to how small my horizons had become until I was given an excuse to probe beyond.
This, I should explain, came in the context of my 38th birthday, after deciding that I would try a ground-up rebuild of my bike. A 2005 Falcon Nomad, which had been sitting in a succession of sheds for the last 15-or-so years. I figured I’d ask for the tools, and a book explaining what to do, and then teach myself to strip and reassemble a bicycle as I went. This, friends, did not go very well, since the bike’s advanced age and poor state meant every repair I attempted, from paint job to brake replacement, went horribly wrong. (Maybe I should just concede that I'm not, and never will be, "good with my hands," and that when the apocalypse comes, my role will be to be hunted and eaten.)
Daniel Cooper
It also seemed the ideal moment to try Swytch, a product I’d been interested in for several years at this point. The company produces a retrofit e-bike kit that can be easily bolted onto existing bicycles, giving them a new lease of electric life. All you need to do is swap out the front wheel for a new one with a built-in 250W electric motor, which comes with a battery, pedal sensor and controller. Now, depending on your patience and budget, you can snag a Swytch kit for around £450 ($550 before tax), although it’s commonly more expensive. That said, a Swytch kit and an analog bicycle is often far cheaper than all but the most basic (and ugly) of new e-bikes.
(There’s also the longstanding point that millions of people have bikes in similar states of disrepair in their own sheds or garages. But a lack of confidence, or fitness, means that they won’t get them out and reacquaint themselves with cycling. If you could easily and cheaply add an electric motor to one, however, then most of those objections fade away pretty quickly.)
Buying a Swytch kit is more complex than just heading down to a store and snatching one up – you’ll need to let Swytch know the size of your existing bike and wheels. You’ll need to send them detailed measurements of your front forks, and the size of the gap into which a wheel can be inserted. Then, after some delay, it’ll send you a custom-sized wheel built to fit into the space, with all of the necessaries to get you up and running.
Daniel Cooper
The ads say that if you’re capable of changing a tyre, then you’re capable of installing Swytch, which is accurate. Even I, who couldn’t get my rear brakes to sit properly, was able to screw in the wheel and wire up the cable. Once you’ve done, it’s mostly self-explanatory, although I would have liked some more guidance as to best placement for the pedal sensor. You basically just use a hex key to bolt on the little OLED display, battery controller / mount and wire up the (color-coded) cables, using the cable ties supplied to keep everything tidy.
One tip – when you’re attaching the wheel of magnets to the crank arm and the Hall Effect sensor, leave your cable ties loose until everything’s lined up. That way, you can make finer adjustments, useful since every Swytch customer is entitled to a quick video call with a tech support person. They’ll survey your setup, and make sure that your installation has been successful, and offer any hints to improve your performance. (To be honest, I still don't think I've necessarily got mine in the best place, but imagine that my ability is very much the deepest floor and that most people will do much better.)
Previous Swytch models required battery packs that were closer to purse sizes than anything more elegant. The new innovation with this generation of kit is the greatly reduced size, with the Air battery pack now small enough to fit into your pocket. Swytch Air’s 36V battery pack will run you around 10 miles of assist on Level 2 power, and is a little bigger than a beefy mobile power brick. The company has made a deal about the fact that Air is more or less “pocketable,” although you wouldn’t want to keep it in your back pocket for any serious period of time.
Daniel Cooper
More crucially, at 700 grams, or around 1.5 pounds, it’s light enough to toss into your bag when you’re parked up. Oh, for completeness’ sake, there is a larger version of the Swytch battery, Max, which has a quoted range of around just under 20 miles and is a little under twice the size and weight. Although both of these are on the conservative side, mostly because the kit won’t kick in if you’re cycling in flat, easy conditions. So you can actually expect that distance to run for quite a bit longer, good for days where you’ll be covering plenty of ground.
I had a fairly busy day last week, with a trip to two different medical centers on opposite ends of the city and the bank in between. The whole journey would have taken me about 20 minutes for each leg of the trip by car, or several hours if I’d taken the bus. But while I’ve not cycled 10 miles in a single go, on mostly major roads, for… decades at this point, I felt that the Swytch could help. After all, if the terrain was rough, I could kick in the assistance to help me, and I wasn’t worried about running out of energy for the same reason.
Daniel Cooper
The other thing a Swytch kit does is offer you the power that gives you the confidence to do the hard stuff. Like powering up a hill, or sitting between cars at the lights, knowing that you’ve got the electric power to not get chewed up when we have to start. Knowing that I can pretty easily kick up the assistance level and get my speed up to 12-or-so miles an hour before the driver beside me can put their foot down makes for a sturdier ride.
Now, there’s nothing that Swytch is doing that more technical-minded riders couldn’t do on their own. I’ve seen forum talk about saving money by opting for a third-party wheel kit and some hefty DIY, but I don’t think this applies here. Swytch isn’t charging mad money for the setup, and offers a cohesive, sealed package that offers you peace of mind and proper technical support.
There are downsides… obviously there are downsides. Bolting on the machinery for an e-bike onto one that wasn’t built for it is a little inelegant. It required a lot of fiddling, and I’m still not sure that I’ve got it set up as perfectly as I could do, but it’s certainly achievable. Taking up so much space on your front handlebars, too, means that you’re losing a lot of real estate to the battery mount and controller. If you’ve got bike lights that sit close to the bar, you might need to relocate them to the head tube, and then find it’s not as useful a place to stick them.
Daniel Cooper
As for pricing and availability, that’s a little complex: Swytch will charge you up to £999 (around $1,010 excluding the UK’s sales tax) for a kit if you want one as quickly as it can ship one to you. But it’ll also offer – at the very minimum – a 50 percent discount if you choose to wait for a later shipment from the factory, with that figure rising up to 60 percent depending on your patience. If you’re prepared to delay your gratification for long enough, you could snag one of these things for £450 (around $550 before tax), which as far as I’m concerned, is the price this thing becomes a no-brainer.
I’m sufficiently impressed by the Swytch kit to want to buy the unit currently bolted to my bike. The ability to quickly and easily add so much power, with all of the privileges that conveys, is pretty darn special. I can heartily recommend it to people with bikes rusting in their sheds, who want to get back on the road but are worried their fitness level won’t permit them to travel very far. Take it from me – it’s worth it.
Apple’s first major announcements of 2023 are here! This week, Devindra and Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham chat about Apple’s new M2 Pro/Max MacBook Pros and Mac Mini. Sure, they seem like solid upgrades, but did they come too late? Also, we dive into the latest rumors around Apple’s AR and MR headsets, as well as news about cheaper AirPods and new AirPods Max. And in other news, we explore the downside of AI in journalism, as well as another round of layoffs in tech.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Apple announces M2 Pro and Max chips for MacBook Pro and Mac Mini – 1:23
The big HomePod is back from the dead! – 15:34
Apple’s AR headset may be delayed, a cheaper mixed reality headset may be in development – 25:41
Other News: CNET’s AI article problem, Twitter breaks third party apps, and layoffs at Microsoft – 32:11
Working on – 44:44
Pop culture picks – 46:08
Livestream
Credits Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Nathan Ingraham Producer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos Graphic artists: Luke Brooks
Amazon is selling the 2022 Kindle Kids at a discount for the first time since it was released in September last year. The e-reader is currently on sale for $85 or $35 less than its retail price of $120. If your child wants a device with a bigger screen, though, the Kindle Paperwhite for Kids is also on sale for $110, which isn't quite an all-time low for it but is still $50 less than its usual price. Like Amazon's other kid-focused e-readers and tablets, these Kindles come with a Parent Dashboard you can use to set age filters and device bedtime. They also ship with a year-long subscription to Amazon Kids+ that will give your children access to a library of age-appropriate books and audiobooks.
The e-commerce giant introduced its first ever Kindle Kids Edition back in 2019. This newer version comes with the specs the refreshed regular e-reader has, so it's pretty much the same device without the kid-focused features. It has a 300 ppi display, unlike its predecessors that had 167 ppi screens, which is the same resolution as the Paperwhite's. That enables text and graphics to appear crisper and more defined. It can last up to six weeks on a single charge, and its onboard has been doubled to 16GB from 8GB, allowing your child to store more books.
In addition, the all new Kindle Kids has adjustable front lights and a dark mode for night reading, as well as a USB-C port, so you can finally put that old microUSB charger to rest. With its 6-inch display, though, it is smaller than the Kindle Paperwhite Kids that comes with a a 6.8-inch screen. Both devices ship with covers and a two-year worry-free guarantee that gives you a way to easily get a replacement if it breaks within that period.
While Google shuttered Stadia for good this week, other cloud gaming services are expanding their offerings. NVIDIA is upgrading its GeForce Now service with a bunch of features, thanks to the addition of new SuperPODs equipped with RTX 4080 GPUs. This seems to be the first truly high-end cloud gaming experience. The renamed Ultimate plan now includes support for refresh rates of up to 240Hz at full HD or 4K at 120 fps and an expanded set of usable widescreen resolutions (3,840x1,600, 3,440x1,440 and 2,560x1,080).
NVIDIA is also adding better support for HDR on both Macs and PCs, along with the ability to use full ray tracing with DLSS3 in supported games. This elevates GeForce Now above rivals like Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is capped at 1080p/60 fps. There are the usual cloud gaming caveats: NVIDIA’s recommended minimum bandwidth for gaming at 1080p at 240 fps is 35 Mbps.
If you want to max out at 4K/120 fps, Engadget’s Sam Rutherford notes you’ll need at least a 45 Mbps connection. These new SuperPODs have limited availability, too. At launch, new servers with 4080 GPUs will be in four places: San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas and Frankfurt, Germany. That means only people in the US and Central Europe will experience NVIDIA’s best cloud gaming experience, for now.
– Mat Smith
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It requested an investigation into third-party OLED display imports.
Samsung may have a way to strike a hefty blow to the United States’ burgeoning right-to-repair movement. If the ITC (International Trade Commission) finds in the company’s favor, it would, in the words of Louis Rossmann (who published the text of the complaint), “fire a kill shot on the entire repair industry.” Samsung says several patents cover its AMOLED displays. But factories in China (and elsewhere) are, according to the company, churning out similar screens that infringe on those patents. Several businesses named in Samsung’s complaint include MobileSentrix, Injured Gadgets and DFW Cellphone & Parts. Many offer wholesale parts and equipment to other repair companies, as well as their own repair services. If Samsung’s request is successful, it could prevent large volumes of third-party OLED displays from being imported to the US, curtailing the repair ecosystem for one of the most crucial to your smartphone: the screen.
The company quietly updated its terms a week after cutting off prominent app makers.
In case there was any doubt about Twitter’s intentions in cutting off the developers of third-party apps, the company has quietly updated its developer agreement to make clear that app makers may not create their own clients. The “restrictions” section of Twitter’s developer agreement was updated Thursday with a clause banning “use or access to the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” The company's suggestion that the rule was "longstanding" doesn't line up with its history. Twitter clients have long been a part of Twitter. Twitterrific, one of the most prominent apps affected by the API shut-off last week, was created before Twitter had its own native iOS app. Twitterific is even credited with coining the word “tweet.”
It's been over 12 years since Tron: Legacy debuted, and those who've been longing for a third entry in the classic sci-fi series may get what they asked for. Tron: Ares, as the film may be called,could start filming this August with Jared Leto, ol' Morbius himself, reportedly set to star, with Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) is in talks to direct, according to Deadline. Leto first signed on back in 2017, but Disney had a third movie on the backburner long before then. Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski said in 2015 that he wrote and storyboarded a sequel "that takes place on the internet with Yahoo and Google and all those sites."
Reed Hastings will still serve as executive chair.
Netflix co-creator Reed Hastings is stepping down as the company's co-CEO. Ted Sarandos, who has been co-CEO since July 2020, will share the reins with newly promoted operations chief Greg Peters. Hastings' departure comes as Netflix slowly recovers from a grim 2022. It lost subscribers for the first time in over a decade and blamed a combination of fiercer competition and widespread account sharing. In its recent earnings report, it announced adding 7.66 million new customers, reaching 230.75 million subscribers.
Amazon Music Unlimited prices are going up in the US and UK, rising a dollar from $10 to $11 stateside and £10 to £11 across the pond starting on February 21, 2023. Student plans are also going up by a dollar in both regions from $5/£5 to $6/£6. That follows a move last year by Amazon to raise the prime of Music Unlimited for Prime subscribers from $8 to $9 per month or $79 to $89 annually.
Amazon said the price increase were made "to help us bring you even more content and features." Last year, both Apple Music and Deezer made identical price increases, and in October 2022, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said a US price increase was possibly in the cards for that streaming service as well.
Amazon's music streaming plans can be a bit confusing. Amazon Music Prime is free with a Prime membership, while Music Unlimited is offered either separately or at a discount rate with Prime. Both offer the same selection of 100 million songs, but Amazon Unlimited offers higher quality (lossless and spatial audio), along with the ability to listen offline, play on multiple devices, access personalized stations and more.
Google parent Alphabet is cutting around 12,000 jobs, or around 6 percent of its global workforce, the company announced in a blog post directed at employees. CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that he was "deeply sorry" to employees that will be let go and that it was a "difficult decision to set us up for the future." The layoffs will be felt globally and across the entire company, and Pichai said he takes "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here."
Alphabet went on a hiring spree over the last few years during a period of "dramatic growth," but Pichai said that "we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." Over the past few weeks Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others instituted equally painful and dramatic job cuts due to economic conditions.
The contractors working on the Federal Aviation Administration's NOTAM system apparently deleted files by accident, leading to the delays and cancellations of thousands of US flights. If you'll recall, the FAA paused all domestic departures in the US on the morning of January 11th, because its NOTAM or Notice to Air Missions system had failed. NOTAMs typically contain important information for pilots, including warnings for potential hazards along a flight's route, flight restrictions and runway closures.
While the FAA only paused departures on the 11th, US flights were already being pushed back the day before after the outage occurred at around 3:28PM ET. The issue even had an impact on military flights that partly relied on FAA NOTAMs: Pilots reportedly had to call around to ask for potential flight hazards themselves.
The agency later reported that the system failed after "personnel who failed to follow procedures" damaged certain files. Now, it has shared more details as part of the preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation. Apparently, its contractors were synchronizing a main and a back-up database when they "unintentionally deleted files" that turned out to be necessary to keep the alert system running. It also reiterated what it said in the past that it has "so far found no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious intent."
As The Washington Post notes, it's unclear at this point how deleting some files would cause the whole system to go down. The FAA had already fixed the problem and had taken steps to make the system more resilient, but the incident certainly puts the reliability of FAA's outdated technologies into question. The Transportation Department itself previously described the NOTAM system as "failing vintage hardware" in a budget document requesting $30 million to fund its upgrades.
Now that Stadia is gone, Bungie is steering players toward NVIDIA's GeForce Now. The developer has offered Destiny 2 users a free month on the game streaming service, sending unique codes to each user, according to an email seen by 9to5Google. "We managed to snag some free codes for NVIDIA's high-performance cloud gaming platform," Bungie wrote. "Redeem your one-month code of a GeForce Now priority membership, for free."
Destiny 2 featured prominently in Stadia's marketing up until the end, but also figured in GeForce Now promotion for various devices, as shown in the image above. Of the remaining cloud services, Destiny 2 is available on GeForce Now but not Xbox Cloud, Amazon's Luna or PlayStation Now.
Google announced in September that it would shut down Stadia for good as the service failed to gain traction with users. It refunded all game and hardware sales, and some game studios stepped in to help port games over to other services. If you have a Stadia controller, you can enable Bluetooth support via an online tool so it can be used with PC, iOS or Android devices.
Bungie's offer was sent to each Destiny 2 user, so check your inbox for the invitation and unique code, then be sure to redeem it before February 19th. That will give you a free month of GeForce Now Priority, which offers 1080p gaming, 6-hour session lengths and up to 60fps refresh rates (it'll cost $10 per month or $50 for six months after that). The service just introduced a new Ultimate membership tier with a new RTX 4080 boost that offers 4K resolutions, 8-hour sessions and up to 120 fps for $20 per month, or $100 for six months.
How Geopolitical Tensions Likely to Create Geographical Diversification of Semiconductor Manufacturing
The US government’s one year exemption TSMC, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, and SK Hynix Inc will help them to increase their production capacity in China in the coming one year
