As someone who regularly attends conventions like PAX, I know the importance of a good bag for your gaming gear. You need something that can snugly hold your Nintendo Switch, controllers and headsets while also making room for all their cables and plugs. I’ve tried various solutions over the years but nothing’s ever really hit that sweet spot. However, today Astro is taking another swing at the problem with the help of storied bag brand Timbuk2.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Timbuk2 is best known for its striped messenger bag, but the brand’s new collaboration with Astro skips that style in favor of two different pieces, a backpack and a sling bag. Astro already offers the $100 Scout Backpack with plenty of pockets to store your gear, but the $200 BP35 is bigger: 35 liters of space compared to the previous model’s 32. It also has two laptop pockets, and a full clamshell opening to make it easier to remove your stuff — which certainly should make your life easier at airport security. One internal pocket is designed specifically to carry Astro gaming gear, with a loop for holding your headset, a padded sleeve for a MixAmp Pro and additional pockets for cords and controllers.

There are also plenty of small, thoughtful touches throughout, including mesh shoulder straps to keep you cool, velcro to showcase your pins and patches and a d-ring to hold your keys. And if you’re of the environmentally-conscious sort, all Timbuk2 products are made of recycled materials, and the company has an exchange program for your old bag so you can dispose of it in an eco-friendly way.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

But what if you don’t need a bag that big? 35 liters is a lot of space, after all, and all you have is your Switch Lite and a set of earbuds. This collaboration has you covered on that account with its $80 CS03 crossbody sling pack. You can wear it on your back, front or around your hips because fanny packs are back. But this is one made for your Nintendo Switch, with 14 slots for game cards and a tricot liner to protect your screen. There’s also a pocket for your smartphone and a key keeper so it’ll make a handy replacement for your purse or small shoulder bag. And I mean small, as the CS03 holds a scant three liters. It’s more of a daytripper than a convention pack.

I didn't get much time with the bags, but keep an eye out here for a hands-on after I test them on the mean streets of New York and Chicago. If you want to give them a whirl yourself, both bags go on sale later this month, and can be picked up on Astro or Tumbuk2’s sites as well as any of the six Timbuk2 flagship stores.

The following contains some spoilers for the second season premiere of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

The first season of Lower Decks was a pleasant surprise to many in the Star Trek fandom. What a lot of people had written off as Family Guy- or Rick and Morty-Trek ended up being a wholesome love letter to the history of the franchise. It was filled with plenty of low-brow humor, sure, but it also showcased characters who genuinely cared about each other and what they do. Thankfully, season two is more of the same.

Lower Decks takes its name from a season-seven The Next Generation episode that revolved around the lives of four ensigns, and the parts they played in a mission that only the bridge crew really understood the full scope of. It’s generally considered one of the best episodes of the franchise, which meant that anything that even vaguely referenced it had a lot to live up to. Luckily, Lower Decks creator and executive producer Mike McMahan was a big fan with deep knowledge of Trek. He is also the creator of the @TNG_S8 parody Twitter account, as well as a veteran of animated shows like South Park, Axe Cop and, yes, Rick and Morty.

CBS

The conceit of a Lower Decks series was that the stories would focus on a core group of four ensigns on the USS Cerritos: Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, D’Vana Tendi and Sam Rutherford, also known as “beta shift.” There was a bridge crew, voiced by stars such as Jerry O’Connell and Dawnn Lewis, but their storylines would always be what’s going on in the background, and the ensigns wouldn’t always be privy to what’s happening with the ship.

Unlike the TNG episode, however, even the audience has been kept out of the loop on many occasions, with the ensigns even being forced to testify on their commanders’ behalf in an unexplained trial. (It turned out to be a party in honor of the senior officers, which confused our protagonists even more.)

CBS

It’s a pretty great idea for a show, one that’s yielded hilarious results. But Star Trek doesn’t have a good track record of sticking to a concept. The majority of shows since TNG have started out as one thing and become something else over the course of their runs. All shows evolve, but the changes in Trek have been obvious and purposeful. Deep Space Nine was intended to be a “frontier outpost” type of show, showing the long-term relationship between the Starfleet and one of the planets it encountered, Bajor. By season three they were given a warship, and season four brought in TNG-veteran Worf and a war with the Klingon Empire.

Star Trek: Voyager operated on the premise of “what if a Starfleet ship was lost far from home?” And it stuck with that, sure, but it also continued to operate like any other Starfleet vessel over seven seasons, and the ship remained in surprisingly good condition despite the lack of spacedocks for repair — something that frustrated writer Ronald D. Moore and later spurred him to create the Battlestar Galactica reboot (the title ship was a wreck by the finale). They also ended up re-establishing contact with the Federation in later seasons, which dampened the whole “alone in a strange quadrant” theme.

Enterprise wasn’t even called Star Trek until its third season. But still, though it was a show that promised to show us the early origins of Starfleet and the Federation, the first two seasons got bogged down in a “Temporal Cold War” and later episodes brought in 24th-century-era baddies like the Borg and Ferengi.

The latest concept switcheroo was the premiere Paramount+ Trek show, Discovery. The producers touted it as the first series where the captain was not the main character, with the program focusing on Commander Michael Burnham instead. This sounded great in theory, as it could show us a different side of Starfleet. In practice, however, even if Burnham wasn’t the captain the entire universe seemed to revolve around her anyway: the mysterious “Red Angel〞of season two turned out to be her mother (and her). The show ended up jettisoning its 23rd century setting after that, traveling to the 32nd century to a galaxy with a Federation in tatters. As of the end of season three Burnham became the captain anyway. So much for any Lower Decks-esque perspective on that show.

CBS

Season two of Lower Decks starts off a bit shaky in that regard — after the events of the last few episodes, Mariner is now BFF with the captain (who is also her mother) and Boimler is a bridge officer on the USS Titan. Neither of them feel like the scrappy underdog anymore. At least Tendi and Rutherford are still pretty minor players, though Tendi is alarmed at sudden changes in Rutherford’s personality and worries she may be losing his friendship.

The premiere finds Mariner having the carte blanche to go on any side missions she wants, and in one of these authorized-unauthorized missions she accidentally turns first officer Jack Ransom into a god-like being set on taking over a planet. The latter event is, at least, a pretty standard plot contrivance for Star Trek. Where Lower Decks stands apart is that as Ransom is threatening the Cerritos and banging away at its shields, the camera cuts to Tendi attacking Rutherford in a corridor, afraid that his new personality traits mean he’s suffering a serious disease, or that he just doesn’t like her anymore. The larger existential threat is background color in this scene (literally, as you can see rainbow beams blasting outside the window) while the show chooses to focus on the individual struggles of these two characters.

CBS

By the end of the episode Rutherford and Tendi sort things out, and even Mariner gets put back in her place, with the partnership between her and her mother dissolved and Beckett back in the brig. The only missing piece of the fabulous four is Boimler and well, he’s not having a great time on the Titan, because maybe things are a bit too exciting up on the bridge. The lower decks of the USS Cerritos are the still place to be, with season two off to a solid start.

Marvel has often been taken to task for poor pacing on its shows. The Netflix programs were always said to be padded out, with more installments than they really needed per season. The Disney+ era has given us shows with fewerepisodes, but that hasn’t deterred complaints about slow pacing. What If…?, premiering this week on the service, has a different problem: It’s frantic and rushed, like a podcast episode played at 1.5x speed.

The concept behind What If…? is simple. Take a pivotal moment from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, change one thing, see what happens. In the premiere episode, set during the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy Carter chooses to stay in the room where Steve is receiving the super soldier serum. Steve gets shot, forcing Peggy to jump into the machine and get bulked up in his place.

You’d need to be intimately familiar with the original movie to spot the difference, which is why the omniscient narrator is there to point it out. It’s probably the only time the episode stops to catch its breath.

The problem is that this is a half-hour show attempting to present an alternate version of a two-hour movie. It isn’t even enough to just say that Captain Carter has super powers; they feel the need to show how the events of the entire movie play out, down to the final battle with the Red Skull. There isn’t a lot of time for character development, because they assume you already know the characters well from seeing them on the silver screen. (Also, why is she Captain Carter and not Captain Britain?)

Marvel Studios

It runs from plot point to plot point, a highlight reel of the film with some small and a lot of big changes. You’ll probably want to rewatch the original movie either before or after, just because there are so many winks and nudges to it that the episode simply cannot stand alone. It’s like a DVD extra and fan fiction had a baby — which, to be fair, is what the original comic felt like.

The difference here is that this is a version of What If...? that gets to play in the MCU sandbox, with the voices and likenesses to boot (except for Hugo Weaving, who is once again replaced by Ross Marquand as the Red Skull). Animation is the only way to pull it off, given that the cast and setting changes with every episode so a live action production would be prohibitively expensive.

Marvel Studios

But, despite being owned by one of the most famous animation studios in the world, Marvel Studios went with third-party animators. It’s a cel shaded style, which is more often used in video games and here looks a lot like rotoscoping. It’s sort of stiff and awkward, with more attention paid to making characters look like their actors instead of being more fluid or expressive. It’s a shame, given that Disney’s 2012 short film Paperman utilized a hybrid 2D/3D style which looks similar to this, but with a lot more personality.

Future episodes will explore other divergences from the MCU, like T’Challa becoming Star Lord or Tony Stark getting saved by Killmonger. So it’s likely some episodes will be far more enjoyable than others based on their conceit alone, though Captain Carter is still a solid start. But a good concept can’t completely overcome animation and pacing issues.

As an ‘80s and ‘90s kid, I have a special affinity for Disney Television’s animation lineup of the time, packaged as the “Disney Afternoon” on my local station (WPIX, aka PIX 11). My favorite was Gargoyles. I have a special place in my heart for TaleSpin, but DuckTales was the undisputed king of the lineup. One hundred episodes and a movie with plenty of race cars, lasers, airplanes, robots, super suits, caveducks and, of course, Scrooge’s Lucky Number One Dime.

Plenty of cartoons from the ‘80s have seen reboots in the past decade, but few have failed to outshine the original or gain a real fandom. So when a DuckTales reboot was announced, I was admittedly a bit wary, though the cast announcement certainly was enough to get my jaded self at least a little excited, with David Tennant as Scrooge McDuck and Beck Bennett as Launchpad McQuack.

The show debuted in July 2017 and I have to say they nailed it. It straddled the line between giving fans all the little in-jokes and callbacks to the original show they loved, but also introducing new characters (like tech mogul Mark Beaks) and plotlines to make the show feel fresh and modern. Huey, Dewey and Louie were given different color-coded outfit designs, distinct personalities and separate character arcs. Mrs. Beakley was upgraded from Scrooge’s housekeeper to also being a former secret agent he used to work with. And Webby was aged up and made more adventurous, so she could hold her own on any journey and even make a few friends along the way.

The show’s biggest strength was how heavily it drew from its source material, not just the original series but the original Carl Barks comics that inspired it in the first place. DuckTales (2017) marks the first animated appearance of Huey, Dewey and Louie’s mother (and Donald’s sister) Della. She was also modernized, made into an adventuring pilot with a short temper, not unlike her brother’s. The show also referenced other Disney Afternoon shows like TaleSpin, Chip ’N’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers and Goof Troop. It was truly a love letter to fans, but one with a solid plot and some wicked humor that today’s kids could still enjoy.

The show came to an end earlier this year, with the third season hitting Disney+ back in March. While the first season dealt with Magica DeSpell and season two was all about the Moon, season three pit Clan McDuck against the evil agency F.O.W.L. The creators knew this would be the last season, so it also pulls double duty on tying up stray plotlines and checking off their bucket list. That included bringing back Darkwing Duck and setting up a possible spinoff show, telling us the story of how Scrooge met Donald and Della, and even giving us a pseudo-sequel to TaleSpin.

Family was also a constant theme in the last season, with the show delving into Della’s newfound parenthood as well as where Webby ultimately sits within the family. I didn’t quite cry during the finale, but I came close. One thing that kept me going in the end was the knowledge that the story would continue in some form, not just in comics but in a weekly podcast featuring all the original voice actors. Seven episodes of This Duckburg Life are available (yes, it is a parody of Ira Glass), and a nice thing about the program is that it contains no spoilers for the cartoon so you can check it out even before you binge the show on Disney+. The episodes are fairly short, less than 15 minutes, which is fine because DuckTales has always been good at packing a lot of adventure into its 22-minute runtime.

With tech pretty much everywhere in our lives these days, some people would prefer it matched their personal style and decor. But sometimes practicality gets left behind, resulting in products that look good but don’t work so well. Here at Engadget, for example, we’ve tested a few fancy keyboards that didn’t offer the best typing experience. But despite our misgivings, these “fashion” keyboards continue to be popular with social media influencers. AZIO’s new IZO collection, out this summer, tries to be both fashion forward and functional, and it succeeds — to a point.

The collection has three main components, all of them wireless: a $140 mechanical keyboard; a $70 number pad that also functions as a standalone calculator; and a $50 mouse. There’s also a matching wrist rest and desk pad. The items are sold separately, and you can snag them in either white, blue or pink. I opted to receive my review units in “baroque rose” because it really is a nice shade of pink, in contrast to the bubble gum shades favored by companies like Razer.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Regardless of which color you choose, each accessory is embellished with gold accents The keyboard, media dial, escape key and spacebar are all gilded and glossy. They stand out against the matte plastic used on the rest of the deck, and not in a good way. I also suspect that after several months of use, the coating is going to wear away and it’s not going to be pretty.

The keys are squircle shaped and lightly textured, so they at least feel nice to the touch. The typing… isn’t horrible. It’s actually perfectly fine, with good tactile bounce and a soft click with every press. But despite the blue mechanical switches it still feels a bit spongy compared to the other decks I have here in my office. I’m typing this hands-on with the IZO and it’s fine, but given a choice I’d switch back to my standards in a heartbeat. The IZO feels like a toy, which is disconcerting when I’m here to work. It’s a tenkeyless deck, which makes it great for tight spaces and taking on the go, though I wouldn’t slip it in my bag for fear of scratching it up.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

If you need a number pad, that’ll cost extra. Seventy dollars is kind of steep for those 18 extra keys, and the fact that it can also be used as a calculator doesn’t make the cost sting any less.I will say this for it, though: I love this thing. Not because I use the number pad to do calculations (though I do), but because it’s just so fun to play with. I don’t have it connected or even turned on right now, I just like to randomly pick it up in both hands and play with the buttons. I may find the typing experience a little subpar, but as a fidget toy the numpad is great because it’s just so chunky and clicky, perfect for keeping my hands busy during boring Zoom calls.

The final piece of the set is the wireless mouse, the most beautiful of the three desk accessories. It’s a rounded rectangular shape, with a gold scroll wheel and stripe across the middle of the mouse, below which is a frosted white plastic bearing the AZIO logo. This is the kind of mouse that could strut around Milan Fashion Week or the beach at Ibiza. Unfortunately, it’s pretty bad as a computing accessory.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

It’s the hand feel that’s an immediate turnoff. Where most mice curve inward and down on the end facing the user, the better to fit in your palm, the AZIO mouse is straight all the way down, with the rear of the mouse at the same height as the middle. It’s actually one of the smallest mice I’ve tested, but it feels huge in my hand. That’s a big no-no considering it’s a fashion peripheral, presumably meant to appeal to women, who usually have smaller mitts than men.

The design faux pas don’t end there, either. The DPI button is placed on the bottom of the mouse and it’s a tiny little nub that’s hard to hit, so once you’ve picked a setting you’ll probably want to stick with it. And the pads on bottom have a little too much friction on them to slide across my desk easily. I probably should use a mouse pad with this thing but I haven’t needed one in almost a decade and I don’t see why I should go back now.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

I wouldn’t recommend the mouse and the cost of the number pad is a bit too steep for me to tell you to buy it — even at the currently discounted price of $40. The keyboard is also on sale for $80, which is a little more tempting. But if the color was your main reason for buying it, note that Logitech’s K380 comes in a fetching pale pink, can connect to up to three devices wirelessly and is only $40. You also have your choice of mice to match, including the stellar MX Anywhere 3. The IZO collection is for people who absolutely need to have a stylish mechanical keyboard — and even then, you might be better off just buying a white deck from a company like Corsair and customizing the LEDs to your favorite shade.

Each gaming accessory company has one thing they do well, like Corsair and its keyboards or Razer’s line of mice. Turtle Beach is known as a premium headset manufacturer, but that hasn’t stopped it from expanding its offerings, starting with its very first gamepad, the Recon Controller. And it happily still incorporates the company’s audio expertise.

It’s a wired controller compatible with XboxSeries X|S and One as well as Windows 10. As a couch gamer I’m never really thrilled by the need to be tethered, but it makes up for it with a great hand feel. The grips are covered in a tactile gray material, with a grid of triangles that help channel heat and sweat away from your palms. But what I really like are the textured buttons — the shoulder, trigger and back buttons are studded with bumps that do a good job of keeping your fingers from slipping. They also feel great, so much so that I often find myself playing with the Recon Controller even when I’m not gaming.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

The marquee features of the Recon Controller are its audio controls, located in a small panel at the top of the gamepad. One of my editors said it looks like a modern interpretation of a Mad Catz unit and, well, he isn’t wrong. It’s not exactly attractive, with so many buttons it looks over-engineered.

What all those fiddly buttons offer is an array of options for the sound coming from the headset you’ve plugged into the controller. The bottom has the usual 3.5mm port, so it’ll work with pretty much any headset, provided you have the right cable for it. I tried it with the Recon Spark, a solid and inexpensive set of cans that’s served as my daily driver at the office for a few years now.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

At each end of the trapezoidal control panel are two toggles, the one on the left adjusts the volume and the right one handles the balance between game audio and chat. They’re far up enough on the controller such that you don’t accidentally hit the X and Y buttons. However, the buttons on the panel itself are packed in so tightly that if you overshoot you’re likely to hit one of the controls in the middle instead.

Which is less than ideal, given that the two big buttons are the mute function (not something you want to accidentally hit while communicating with your teammates) and the “superhuman hearing” button. The latter is a new feature, boosting smaller sounds like footsteps so you won’t miss a thing. The effect wasn’t as pronounced as it promises, as I didn’t notice huge changes while I played a few rounds of Among Us. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to have it, and the effect may vary depending on the game you’re playing and the headset you have connected.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Between those two buttons is another toggle, one that serves a variety of functions. You can adjust your EQ presets between the default, bass, bass/treble and vocal settings. You can also adjust the power of the gamepad’s vibrations, as well as the sensitivity of the thumb sticks. It’s nice to be able to adjust these things on the fly, rather than having to fiddle around in a settings program. The big drawback is that it’s not immediately clear what the icons represent, and I had to consult the instructions and experiment with them before I really understood.

Overall I was happy with the controller’s performance, and I’m enamored of the ergonomics of it more than anything. I’m just not entirely sure they’re worth dealing with a wired controller and headset when you’re used to going wireless.

There are, for the most part, two types of Disney Parks fans. There are those who see it as a nice thing to do with your family once in a while, and there are those who take it… a little more seriously. The upcoming Behind the Attraction, hitting Disney+ on July 21st, is a show that’s aimed at turning more of those casual tourists into dedicated fans, by explaining the backstory behind famous attractions like Star Tours, the Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain.

Each episode features lots of old footage, talking heads, conceptual art and snark. If you’re thinking that sounds like The Toys That Made Us, but for Disney Parks, you’d be absolutely correct. Behind the Attraction is produced and directed by Brian Volk-Weiss, the creative mind behind Netflix docuseries like TTTMU and The Movies That Made Us. He was specifically sought out by Disney+ for his style which, by his own description, is “focused more on fun” and doesn’t treat its subject like “the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.” He loves documentaries, but hates when they take silly topics too seriously.

Disney Parks

To wit, the series is narrated by comedy veteran Paget Brewster, an actress who has been in The Venture Bros., Community and Another Period. Disney fans will probably recognize her best as the voice of Della Duck on the 2017 DuckTales reboot. She adopts a light playful tone, as far from Morgan Freeman you can get. Also on board is executive producer Dwayne Johnson, who stars in Disney’s upcoming live action Jungle Cruise film. Is there an episode about the Jungle Cruise attraction? Of course there is.

Besides that, the other four episodes available this week focus on the Haunted Mansion, Star Tours, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Space Mountain. (Episodes about things like the castles and transportation systems, as well as famous rides like “It’s a Small World” and Pirates of the Caribbean are being held for later in the year.) They trace the history and development of each individual attraction with clips from shows like 1955’s Disneyland and The Wonderful World of Disney, news segments, and a mix of new and old interviews. Anyone who watched the docuseries The Imagineering Story (also on Disney+) will recognize a lot of reused footage from there. Which of course begs the question, why did we need another behind-the-scenes show?

Disney Parks

The biggest difference between the two is that The Imagineering Story takes a strict chronological approach, starting with the origin story behind Walt Disney’s desire to build a theme park, progressing through the opening of Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Epcot and so on. The later episodes focus less on a historical outlook and more on “look at what cool technology we built for this new thing.” Which leads to a sort of unbalanced feel to the program, as well as a greater sense that it’s one big travel brochure for the Disney Parks.

Which isn’t to say that Behind the Attraction isn’t one big advertisement. I certainly want to visit Disney Shanghai after getting a look at the development of its Storybook Castle and TRON Lightcycle Power Run. But because the new show takes a more topical approach, it’s a lot more “snackable,” with episodes that can be watched in any order according to what interests you the most. 

Each episode still follows its individual subject chronologically, like how the Hall of Presidents episode goes into the development of the original “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” show at the 1964 World’s Fair to the installation of the attraction at Disneyland, the creation of the full Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World to today’s animatronics like the ones used on Avengers Campus at California Adventure. The Imagineering Story talks about the development of the “Stuntronics” as well, but it’s Behind the Attraction that draws a straight line for the viewer from Abraham Lincoln giving a speech to Spider-Man doing somersaults in the air. You actually understand how tech created in 1964 can still shape something built in 2020.

Disney Parks

While it's unlikely that Behind the Attraction will ever delve into the various faceplants the company has taken over the years the way YouTube shows like Yesterworld and Defunctland do, the new show is at least capable of admitting when certain things didn’t work. The Haunted Mansion had to be completely rethought for Shanghai, while Japan got a different backstory for its Tower of Terror. And the original Jungle Cruise had no dad jokes!

Of course, there are no Splash Mountain or Captain EO episodes, so we don’t know yet how the show will deal with some of the more unsavory or embarrassing bits of Disney Park history. Which is fine, since Behind the Attraction isn’t intended to be a complete history of Disney, just a quick half-hour show that will have you going “did you know?” to all your friends and family the next time you visit the Magic Kingdom.

Though it’s still best known for its capture cards, Elgato is working toward taking over your entire streaming setup. The past half decade has seen the introduction of the Stream Deckline for easily initiating macros during a broadcast; different kinds of lighting; and, last year, the company’s first gaming microphones. The one thing missing in this list was a webcam — until today’s introduction of the Elgato FaceCam.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

On its surface, the $200 camera is not that unique. It’s a chunky rectangular box that can be easily clipped on top of a monitor, or connected to Elgato’s multi mount system. It shoots 1080p at 60fps, with a Sony-made STARVIS CMOS sensor. It may not be 4K, but most streamers don’t need that kind of resolution right now. The FaceCam makes up for it with a robust suite of settings in its dedicated Camera Hub program. Yes, you’ll have to download another piece of software for this camera to run alongside Game Capture, Stream Deck, Wave Link (for the mics) and Control Center (for the lighting), which is a little annoying. Other companies bundle all their different drivers and settings into one tool, but I suppose keeping them separate probably makes sending out updates easier.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

In the Camera Hub you’ll have easy access to things like contrast, exposure and white balance. (The latter two can be set to automatic so you have one less thing to fuss over.) The automatic white balance was a little warm for my taste, but it was easy enough to turn it off and knock the number down to a cooler 4000K. The software also comes with zoom options, but it’s nothing to write home about, as the camera is fixed focus. You’ll always be sharp as long as you always remain between 12 inches (30 cm) and 47 inches (120 cm) from the camera. That should take care of anyone working at a desk; anyone who moves further back would be better served with something a little more portable with advanced settings.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

The biggest draw of the Camera Hub is the real-time ISO reading, which makes it a lot easier to detect and react to changes in your lighting. Maybe your lights are too bright, or maybe the natural light from outside vanished with an oncoming thunderstorm (which is exactly what’s happening as I type this). The exposure and white balance can adjust automatically, or you can tweak the settings yourself on the fly. There’s a Stream Deck plugin available, which should make it possible to adjust the settings with the touch of a button. Of course, that’s dependent on you having smart lighting in the first place, like Elgato’s Key Light or Ring Light.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

There’s a definite sense that you’re meant to go all-in on Elgato’s streaming lineup, probably best evidenced by the lack of a microphone in the FaceCam. The company says it didn’t bother since most gamers tend to use headsets anyway, but let’s face it: Elgato would rather you pick up one of its Wave:1 or Wave:3 mics. They do indeed sound great, but they’re not my preferred microphones thanks to some issues I had with getting the Wave:3 to work while I was wearing a headset — yes, even one made by Elgato’s parent company Corsair.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

For the most part, the FaceCam has a lot fewer kinks. My biggest problem was plugging it in, as it must be plugged into your system directly and not via a hub. And that’s tough with many modern laptops, which may only have two USB-C ports. The FaceCam comes with a USB-C to USB-A cord, and the company recommends you use the included wire instead of providing your own. I was forced to search around for a converter dongle. While I commend companies for finally embracing USB-C in their gaming accessories, we need some solutions on the software side to ensure that they can actually be used with hubs. My Logitech C920 works with a hub and it comes with a built-in mic, so it’s likely to remain my default webcam for most purposes.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Still, the FaceCam is off to a promising start. The video quality is crisp and free of noise, and when it’s not there’s a built-in filter you can enable. I haven’t needed it to, though, as the camera has handled my Google Hangouts and Zoom calls with ease. The price is a bit steep, but still on par with Logitech’s Brio 4K and Razer’s Kiyo Pro, both of which cost $200. What your money gets you here is the assurance that it will work seamlessly with your Elgato Stream Deck — a piece of equipment that, right now at least, has no real competition.

In case you didn’t hear earlier, Lokiwill return for season two, and thank goodness: the finale didn’t resolve a whole lot, if it resolved anything. Well, we did find out who was pulling the strings behind the Time Variance Authority and why, but it really served as an introduction to a villain who’s scheduled to make his next appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

However, Loki never felt like an extended prequel to well… anything. It’s been a show that’s stood largely on its own, one which forged a unique identity apart from everything else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the Thor movies. After all, this isn’t the Loki we spent eight years watching on screen. This one was created in 2019 in the middle of Avengers: Endgame, a variant that so far is walking a path free of Asgard and all that pesky Avengers business.

Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios

And so Loki the show paved its own road as well, not really relying too much on knowledge of the films past the first and last Avengers movies. You could walk into the series knowing as much about Loki’s fate as the variant Loki and walk away after the first season knowing just as little. The finale was interesting because for the first time, I have no idea how a Marvel show fits into the greater scheme of things. And like He Who Remains, I find that a bit exciting.

One thing that has been true of all the Marvel shows has that we’ve always generally known where they’re supposed to slot into the bigger universe. Agents of SHIELD was originally intended to be a way for the side stories of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to thrive but for a while it was treated as a place to dump movie leftovers. Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist were originally aimed toward setting up The Defenders limited series. WandaVision was a prequel for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, while The Falcon and the Winter Soldier did character work for the next Captain America film.

Marvel Studios

But Loki, aside from wrapping up a loose thread from Endgame, doesn’t actually tie into anything, especially any upcoming projects. They don’t even name the man behind the curtain, he’s just “He Who Remains.” And he’s killed by the end of the episode, which means any time we see him from this point forward, it’s technically a different person; another cosmic iteration of the same jerk. Fans of the comics know that he’s meant to be Kang the Conqueror, but that big reveal is yet to come — because the man we met is not a conqueror. He was a cosmic bureaucrat.

The conqueror, though hinted at in the Loki finale, will make his first full appearance in early 2023. He won’t remember the events shown in the Disney+ show since he wasn’t actually there, which means either the film will completely ignore all we learned here, or explain it to the audience anew. Prior knowledge of Loki shouldn’t and most likely won’t be necessary.

Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios

Which leaves season two of Loki free to do well, almost anything it wants. The man who seems to now be in charge of the TVA is unlikely to be even close to the same man that Scott Lang and Hope Pym will have to tangle with, since we are dealing with a multiverse of possibilities. It does throw the next Doctor Strange movie into a bit of uncertainty, since in our original non-COVID timeline that was supposed to have premiered back in May. Were we supposed to see the debut of the multiverse before we saw its origin? Or will there be some other cosmic wrench to mess things up further for the MCU? A lot of things that seemed inevitable when all these projects were originally announced have now been thrown into uncertainty.

But for now, the key takeaway from the Loki finale is that the series is not beholden to anything else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It didn’t have to load up a ton of character development or make sure everything is back in place plot wise before the next film. It’s free to take its small cast of characters and fully explore their possibilities, with no worries about how it will affect the other Marvel properties. What will happen to Loki, Sylvie, Mobius, Ravonna and the rest? We can focus on their individual stories instead of fussing over what can and can’t happen.

We can no longer make predictions based on future projects in the pipeline, or contractual obligations of actors. Theories can proliferate and almost nothing is off-limits. Every step Loki and the rest take just means another multiverse to explore in shows like What If?. The Sacred Timeline is dead, and so are the shackles of movie continuity.

Between the enduring popularity of the Nintendo Switch, the increasing power of flagship phones and new services like Apple Arcade, portable gaming has finally moved to the forefront. However, the disappearance of 3.5mm ports on mobile devices has left many players bereft of premium audio — Bluetooth earbuds don’t quite cut it when you need your audio synced perfectly. If you want a rock-solid connection your best bet is an RF dongle, which usually uses USB-A in a world steadily being overtaken by USB-C ports. Razer has finally stepped up with a mobile-first headset that can connect to your Switch, Android phone or thin-and-light laptop, the $100 Barracuda X.

The Barracuda X is far from the first headset geared toward Nintendo Switch players; we’re big fans of SteelSeries’ Arctis 1 Wireless thanks to its comfort and superb audio quality, and have even included it in a few of our gift guides. It’s fair to say that this headset is the Barracuda’s primary competitor. Even the RF adapters look the same.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

However, while the Arctis 1 Wireless maintains the standard look of the line (as it should — it’s a great design), the Barracuda is a change of pace for Razer. Instead of the Kraken brand’s circular, grated look, the new headset resembles last year’s Opus headphones, which got a refresh last month. It’s not totally identical, with different joints on the cups, and cloth ear padding instead of fake leather. Here in New York, it’s 90 degrees as of this writing, and I can report that I haven’t felt the need to take off the Barracuda even after wearing it for a few hours. It’s still a bit warm, and I definitely feel cooler when I take the headset off, but it’s bearable.

The Barracuda X also weighs a very scant 250 grams, one of the lightest headsets I’ve tested. (I think it might be lighter than its own packaging.) In direct comparison it feels about the same in hand as similar models from Turtle Beach and Logitech, but there’s a balance in the Barracuda’s plastic build that makes it feel more ethereal. It’s not something I would mind keeping on my head for several hours or throwing it in my backpack so I can game on the train. Which is precisely the point: You shouldn’t feel that carrying this thing around is a burden.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

While I wouldn’t go tossing this thing around casually in a rage, it does feel solidly built, capable of taking a few dings in your bag. I have mixed feelings about the detachable mic; being able to take it off means a more compact headset design, but it’s also another fiddly bit that I might lose. Then again, it’s unlikely you need voice functions while out and about. (Heck, the Switch console doesn’t even have real voice chat; it asks you to connect via the app on your phone.)

The Barracuda X excites me, mostly because of its USB-C compatibility. But that’s also where it falls short for me. The adapter is small, for sure, but it’s very wide. That means that if you happen to have a laptop with two USB-C ports next to each other like my 2017 MacBook, the Barracuda dongle will block the other completely. This is a hassle in my office setup, where I have an external monitor and USB hub connected on the other side. So while working I get to choose between the power cord and the headset. I’ve opted out of using the Barracuda with my laptop at all, preferring instead to listen to podcasts on my phone. However, that’s my unique situation, and on the go you might only need two ports: one for the headset and the other for power.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

It’s exciting to see companies finally start to take mobile gaming seriously, and address the specific needs those gamers have. Mobile-friendly controllers are great, but many popular mobile games don’t really need them. Better audio, though? Almost everyone can appreciate that. The $100 price tag might seem a bit steep for some, but the Barracuda X seems versatile enough that you’ll more than get your money’s worth.