Games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild don’t come along often. The 2017 title came 31 years into the franchise’s history and somehow felt familiar while simultaneously remixing or entirely removing core tenets of the series. To put it mildly, the changes worked. Breath of the Wild is the biggest-selling Zelda game of all time and was an unqualified success with critics and players alike.

What in the world do you do for an encore?

Internally, Nintendo decided to get right on that, announcing a direct sequel was in development only two years after Breath of the Wild arrived. The result is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a game that is not a complete reinvention. Instead, after successfully blowing up the Zelda format, Nintendo is giving players even more – more of Hyrule to explore, and more freedom to dream up how to tackle the many, many challenges the game throws at them.

Perhaps even more than its predecessor, though, Tears of the Kingdom demands patience. There’s an overwhelming amount of things to do, locations to see, puzzles to solve and enemies to defeat here. And as I tried to play through it as quickly as possible, to see as much of the world as I could for this review, I ended up more frustrated than satisfied. Fortunately, I then decided to slow down and indulge my curiosity, a decision that made the game far more rewarding and made me eager to explore at my own pace, without worrying about getting to the end.

Nintendo

Tears of the Kingdom kicks things off in a fashion that’ll be familiar to anyone who played Breath of the Wild. A quick prologue reveals the dark wizard Ganondorf and a calamity known as the Upheaval – events that leave Link grievously injured and Zelda missing (stop me if you’ve heard this one). The twist comes when Link awakes in a sky kingdom populated by ancient and powerful technology, courtesy of the Zonai clan. Lest you think, like me, that Nintendo just invented a new mysterious culture with a new set of powers to replace the Guardians from Breath of the Wild, the Zonai were actually briefly mentioned in the previous game.

The first few hours of the game take place entirely in the sky, a fascinating setting with a host of new challenges and enemies. But here the game retreads the prior entry here as you need to journey to a handful of shrines to get a new set of abilities, just like you did on the Hyrule plateau in Breath of the Wild. Once that’s done, you’re able to descend to Hyrule proper and get exploring.

Nintendo

Tears of the Kingdom gently guides you towards a few locations to get you started – but you can go anywhere you want, if you’re intrepid enough to try. The game definitely doesn’t hold your hand, and it took me a surprisingly long time to get my bearings and feel confident against the many monsters you’ll come across. At the start, Link is woefully underpowered, which makes finding the dozens of shrines dotting Hyrule crucial, as this is the quickest way to get more hearts, stamina and learn new fighting techniques.

I was also eager to find the numerous towers that dot the land, as those are how you reveal more of the Hyrule map. Six years later, Hyrule still feels positively massive, and navigating it without filling in the map is an exercise in frustration. In retrospect, though, I probably was too aggressive about journeying beyond the first few areas the game reveals to you, as I ran into numerous enemies I was simply not powerful enough to take on. My advice: stick to the game’s script and focus on the first few quests it gives you before going into full explorer mode.

In addition to the many shrines, the game will quickly implore you to search out four regions of Hyrule to investigate disturbances affecting the areas. (If you played Breath of the Wild, you can surely guess where those areas are.) This is where you’ll find the game’s four areas that harken back to the dungeons in Zelda games of yore. Just like before, you’ll need to help the citizens of each region before you can advance – but to keep things fresh, all the big dungeons are in the sky.

As much as I enjoyed revisiting the vast Hyrule overworld, the different gameplay elements and scenery of the sky areas made this feel novel. These main dungeons feel more similar to the Divine Beasts from Breath of the Wild than the levels found in Zelda games of old, but this time out they’re more visually distinct and connected to the region of Hyrule you’re visiting. The bosses of each are also a lot more creative and interesting than the variations of Calamity Ganon from last time out, too.

Nintendo

Another thing that will be familiar to Breath of the Wild players is the game’s presentation. As a direct sequel, there’s no noticeable change to how Hyrule and its inhabitants are rendered this time. Obviously, the sky islands and underground caverns were not present in BotW, so those areas gave the designers a chance to come up with impressive new visuals. The sky areas were particularly striking to me, though the underworld has a creepy, alien atmosphere that adds a whole new vibe to the game.

Nintendo’s art direction is impeccable, as usual, but six years on from Breath of the Wild it’s fair to say I sometimes wanted a bit more. I’ve been playing the Horizon Forbidden West expansion Burning Shores – that series has a similarly vast open world to these recent Zelda games, and having that in the back of my mind made me imagine what Hyrule could look like on more powerful hardware. I’m not saying I want a fully photorealistic Zelda game; the semi-cartoonish style has always been part of the charm. But it’s hard not to imagine just how spectacular this game could look on more powerful hardware. Of course, that’s not Nintendo’s strategy and it hasn’t been for years – but one can dream.

That said, the Switch hardware does show its age in one significant area. Frame rate drops are a bit more common in Tears of the Kingdom than I’d like. To be clear, this isn’t a major issue that renders the game unplayable by any stretch of the imagination. Generally, things run solidly at 30 fps, but the more advanced physics at play here occasionally causes some stutters. You’ll also get some dropped frames if too much is happening on screen, like big battles with multiple enemies in the rain. I never felt like these problems were enough to keep me from playing, but they are noticeable and show that Nintendo is pushing the Switch as hard as it can here.

Nintendo

You may be wondering what makes Tears of the Kingdom more than just a Breath of the Wild remix. There are two major components that make it stand out. First are the two new areas above and below Hyrule proper. Both the sky islands and underworld add completely new challenges and gameplay elements. For example, one set of sky islands has less gravity than everywhere else in the game, so jumps carry you further. It may sound like a little thing, but it actually changes the way you go about fighting enemies – for example, a jumping slash attack can deliver multiple blows as you slowly float back to the ground. But it also leaves you more vulnerable, since you can’t pull out your shield in the middle of this move. If you time it wrong, you can take serious damage in a counter-attack.

The underworld areas are perhaps the most treacherous you can visit in Hyrule. That’s thanks to the persistent gloom enveloping those regions, something that makes the monsters below even more powerful. If you get hit, not only do you lose hearts from your health bar, but those hearts actually “break” – they can’t be refilled unless you use a special elixir or visit particular waypoints scattered throughout the map. Naturally, since it’s pitch-black underground, navigating is a challenge as well. You’ll want to come well-stocked with brightbloom seeds, which can be found in caves throughout Hyrule. Dropping those illuminates the area, and you can also take special potions that make you glow on your own.

The underworld quest line provides a second set of tasks beyond the ones found in the Hyrule overworld. There aren’t any dungeons underground as there are up in the sky, but there are still significant quests and enemies to find below the surface. And from what I’ve played so far, these aren’t just side quests – they intersect with the main goal of finding Zelda. It’s easy to forget about the underworld while journeying through Hyrule proper, looking for shrines and helping residents in all corners of the map, but you’ll gain valuable skills and progress the story in major ways by diving underground as well. If you’re getting stuck or running out of steam, delving into the deeps is a good way to change things up.

Nintendo

But easily the most significant change is in the abilities Link has, thanks to his “Purah Pad” (a new name for the Sheikah Slate from BofW). Two of the abilities, Ascend and Recall, are useful but don’t fundamentally change the way the game is played. Ascend lets you dive straight upwards through roofs or rocks to reach new areas quickly, while Recall rewinds time on specific objects to move them backwards. They can be handy for sure, but you’ll need to master the other two powers to get anywhere in Tears of the Kingdom. One is called “Fuse,” which lets you stick objects you find around the world onto your weapons or arrows to enhance them. This is a requirement, because most of the weapons you find in the world have been decayed by Ganondorf’s emergence.

The good news is that you can stick all the monster parts you find around the world onto these weapons to greatly increase their power. For example, you can stick bokoblin horns on to your swords to make them stronger, but you can also fuse the tail of an ice lizard to a weapon and get its freezing power. However, these weapons still break far too often, so you’ll constantly want to be stocking up your inventory and investigating what combos of weapons and additional items work best. This goes for arrows, too: instead of being able to find or buy fire arrows, for example, you’ll need to attach a fire fruit to your arrow to set things aflame.

And then there’s Ultrahand. This takes the Magensis power from BotW, which let you move metallic objects around, and supercharges it. Now, you can pick up almost anything you see – and you can stick objects together to build basically anything you want. What really makes your creations useful are the Zonai tools you’ll find around the world, things like fans, wheels, flame-emitting objects and much more. If you have a board and a fan, you can fashion a makeshift hovercraft, for example. Or if you need to reach a far-off location, try building a bridge.

As the game goes on, it does a great job of nudging you towards building more complex and useful tools. The possibilities are near-limitless, and I’m really looking forward to seeing videos of all the ridiculous things that people try to build. (For example, the hilariously flammable war cart that my colleague Sam Rutherford built.) I was initially worried that I wouldn’t be quite creative enough to fully take advantage of the potential that Ultrahand provides, but totally wild creations are rarely required. Usually, it’s a matter of sticking two or three things together to achieve a goal, and the game makes it pretty clear what you need to do. The quick shrines, most of which you can get through in five or 10 minutes, also are good at showing you what kinds of things are useful to combine.

You can also use Fuse to combine Zonai objects together with your weapons and shields. One of my favorite combos is sticking a springboard to a shield – so when enemies hit it, they go flying, giving you a chance to counter-attack or run away. Attaching a fire device to your weapon, meanwhile, lets it spew flames as you swing it. Again, the possibilities are vast, and it’s going to be a lot of fun seeing what kinds of weapons and other contraptions people come up with to suit their own play styles.

Nintendo

This all adds up to a game that, despite significant shared DNA with Breath of the Wild, feels new and vital. I have fond memories of my time traversing Hyrule in BotW, and I was eager to jump back into the world again. The overworld map may be the same, but plenty of the locations have changed significantly, which provided a distinct feeling of time passing between the games as well as offering new puzzles and challenges. The frequent dips into the sky or underworld, meanwhile, provide plenty of fresh, all-new areas to explore and challenges to overcome.

All this said, I also would be remiss if I didn’t mention the difficult, sometimes unforgiving challenge this game can occasionally present. Since there’s minimal guidance as to where you can and should go, it’s easy to find yourself in enemy encounters where you’re totally overmatched. And while most of the shrines are well done, there are some that are absurdly difficult for no apparent reason.

My “favorite" so far is one where you lose all your items and armor and have to figure out how to defeat enemies with just the tools provided to you. In this case, there were about eight high-powered machines, and while there were some little war machines to create, there’s also no shield in the shrine. Even with 10 hearts, making two mistakes was enough that I would die and lose my progress. It was incredibly frustrating, and there was no reason for it to be so hard.

And the impact of Fuse and Ultrahand cannot be overstated. These new tools make experimentation a hallmark of Tears of the Kingdom in a way it hasn’t been before. Now, in addition to exploring every corner of Hyrule, you’ll also need to try lots of different combinations of tools, weapons, found objects and Zonai devices to find the solution a puzzle demands. Or you can fritter away hours making contraptions from whatever you find laying around. In a lot of ways, Breath of the Wild was already a creative sandbox that let gamers tackle the various adventures it offered in any order and any fashion they chose. In Tears of the Kingdom, that’s even more true.

If you want to spend all your time spelunking in the underworld, feel free. If you’d rather hunt down shrines at the expense of all else to maximize your stamina and hearts, that works too. If you only want to engage in building objects with Ultrahand when the game requires it, that’s fine – it makes it clear when you need to build various contraptions to advance. There’s enough guidance to set you on your path when you get started, but you can also ignore that and just roam the wilds. Do so at your own risk, though – it’s rough out there.

Tears of the Kingdom isn’t the series reinvention that we got in 2017, but that’s OK. There’s more than enough here to justify revisiting the Hyrule that we first saw with Breath of the Wild — I've "only" put in about 35 hours at this point, and there's no end in sight to my journey. If you’re one of the millions who delighted in that game’s freedom, chances are you’ll love Tears of the Kingdom too.

Given how important smart home devices have become, it’s not a surprise that Google has a lot of updates to its Home app and how Android users can interact with those devices. The most significant update is to the aforementioned Google Home app for both Android and iOS — it has been completely redesigned and will be available tomorrow.

The app has been in preview since last fall, and Google says they’ve been iterating on it significantly based on user feedback. The new design incorporates a familiar five-tab view along the bottom of the screen: favorites, devices, activity, automation and settings. The favorites tab is the default view and lets you pin interactive tiles to the view for devices, actions and automations you use the most.

For example, it can automatically show you a view from a Nest camera, let you adjust specific lights or change the temperature in a specific room. It’ll also pop up media controls when you have an active video or audio stream playing on one of your devices. A bar at the top of the screen also shows “spaces” that are commonly used, like climate, WiFi control, cameras and lights. This makes it quick to jump right into adjusting those settings across your home.

Devices, as you might expect, shows everything you have connected, organized by room. The activity tab lets you see how things have changed with your devices, like your thermostat’s activity over time or camera events. It also contains an inbox that pulls together notifications in one place. Cameras specifically are getting a big improvement here, specifically in terms of performance. Google says cameras are 38 percent faster to show you a live feed in the new app, and accessing clips is 29 percent faster.

The automation tab is the default spot for for building routines that work across multiple devices, and you can schedule them there or active them on the fly. Finally, the settings tab was rebuilt to simplify and bring all controls you need into one place. Google called the old experience fragmented and said that centralizing these tools was a key part of the update.

Google also has some big news around support for the Matter smart home standard. Most significantly, the Google Home app for iOS now has Matter support, which means you can set up and manage Matter-compatible devices in app on your iPhone. Google says this will go live in the “coming weeks” and will require iOS 16.5. There are also new controllers in the Home app for more than 60 apps, which should make it easier to control more devices in the Home app itself.

Along with these app updates, the Google Home app is finally coming to Wear OS — you’ll be able to see your favorites on your wrist and scroll through your rooms to make adjustments as needed. You’ll also get camera notifications on your Wear OS watch with an animated preview of what just happened, so you can see that someone just delivered a package, for example. The Wear OS app will be available on May 15th.

The Home app is also getting updated to work better with tablets. It’s a smart time to do that, given the Pixel Tablet is arriving very soon. Naturally, it’ll take better advantage of a large screen and work in both landscape and portrait orientation. There’s also a new “home panel” that’ll come to both the Pixel Tablet and Pixel smartphones — this will let you do common actions like view a camera, adjust a thermostat or turn on your lights without even going into the Home app. And when the Pixel Tablet is docked, that Home panel will be accessible by anyone so they can adjust things in the house as needed.

Google also has some good news for people who own older Nest Cam devices. The first generation Nest Cam Indoor and the Nest Cam Outdoor will finally be able to be transitioned from the old Nest app to the new Home app. That’ll happen in July, and you’ll need to be using the public preview of the Home app. Google says the transfer takes about 10 minutes, and then all the data and feeds from those cameras will be available in the same app as the rest of your smart home devices.

As is often the case with Google, the timeline for all these updates varies — but the biggest change is easily coming to the Home app itself, and that’ll be available tomorrow. Get ready to mash that “update my apps” button.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2023 right here.

Google wasn’t kidding when it said last year that the Pixel Tablet was “months away.” In fact, it was a whole year away, but we’re finally getting full details today. The $499 tablet is built around an 11-inch screen, with Google’s Tensor G2 chip inside. The chip and screen aren’t exactly a big surprise, but Google is doing something a little unusual with the Pixel Tablet: it comes with a speaker dock that turns it into a Nest Hub Max with a better screen.

Rather than outfit the Pixel Tablet with accessories like a stylus and keyboard, as others like Samsung, OnePlus and of course Apple have done with their tablets, Google is pitching the Pixel Tablet as a device for entertainment and to control your home.

When the Pixel Tablet is attached to the speaker dock, the software runs in a Hub Mode to make it easy to access controls for all your smart home devices. Naturally, it also serves as a digital photo frame and can play back tunes and videos with audio through the built-in speaker. I haven’t heard that speaker yet, but Google says it’ll deliver “room-filling music.” Given that Google is including it at no extra charge, it doesn’t have to deliver too much to be worth it. The tablet itself also has four built-in speakers.

From a specs perspective, the Pixel Tablet features an 11-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio and a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. There’s no word on the refresh rate, but that’s a nice size and resolution for a tablet in this price range. In addition to the Tensor G2 chip, the Pixel Tablet also has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (you can bump that up to 256GB if you’re so inclined). Credit here to Google for starting things off with 128GB of storage, rather than the stingy 64GB Apple includes on most of its base iPads.

Google

Given that Google is positioning the Pixel Tablet as a hub of sorts, it naturally has a front-facing camera for video calls. Unsurprisingly, it’s nothing too special, an 8-megapixel shooter with an f/2.0 aperture and fixed focus. But it can shoot and transmit video at 1080p at 30 fps, so it should be decent enough for video cals. The back camera has identical specs. As for the battery, Google says it will last for 12 hours of video streaming, but that’s another thing we’ll need to test in person to verify.

In addition to the speaker dock (which Google is selling separately, as well, for people who want to place them around the home), Google is also selling a basic case that comes with a built-in metal ring stand that lets you place the tablet at a variety of angles. You can also dock the tablet without removing the case. And partner Speck is making a handful of other cases as well.

Google

Of course, the real key to making Android work on a tablet is having good apps, and that’s long been a struggle that continues to this day. Google says that there are “more than 50 Google apps” optimized for the Pixel Tablet and that it can run them in split-screen for multitasking.

I just reviewed the OnePlus Pad and can confirm that Google’s own apps work well on tablets at this point, but the problem really is in the third-party ecosystem. Google points out that it is working with developer partners to optimize their apps and cites Spotify, Minecraft and Disney+ as a few cases that take advantage of the large screen.

The Pixel Tablet goes up for pre-order today and starts at $499. It’s available in three colors: A gray-ish “Hazel” with a black screen bezel, a white-ish “Porcelain” with a white bezel and a pink-ish “Rose” with a white bezel. For more on the device, check out our hands-on with Google’s first tablet in years.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2023 right here.

Apple had its second "bad" quarter in a row. Bad, of course, is a relative term — the company's revenues declined again, but Apple is still making a positively massive amount of money. Specifically, the iPhone and Services categories, both of which have been Apple's biggest money-makers for years now, saw revenue gains year-over-year. But this wasn't enough to offset declines everywhere else: the Mac, iPad, and Wearables / Home / Accessories divisions all shrank compared to this time a year ago. As such, Apple's overall revenue dropped a modest three percent year-over-year to $94.8 billion, while net income of $24.2 billion was down less than one percentage point. Like I said, not exactly a bad quarter, but given that the company's sales and profits almost always are up, it's worth noting when they aren't.

The strong iPhone sales (up two percent to $51.3 billion) marked a record the March-ending quarter, despite the fact that the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro arrived last September. And Apple's services business, which has been growing steadily over the past five years to surpass all other products the company offers (besides the iPhone, of course) hit another record with $20.9 billion in revenue (up five percent year-over-year). 

Mac sales plummeted from $10.4 billion a year ago to only $7.2 billion this quarter past, down 31 percent overall. That's less than IDC predicted a month ago when it said Mac sales dropped by 40 percent, but the general forecast of hugely diminished interest still rings true. iPad sales weren't hit as hard but still dropped 13 percent to $6.7 billion for the quarter despite major updates to the product lineup last fall. Finally, the wearables / home category, which encompasses products like AirPods, the Apple Watch and the HomePod lineup, dipped less than one percent, so there aren't any significant red flags around that. 

Apple CEO Tim Cook is kicking off the usual call with investors at 5PM ET, and we'll update this story with anything we learn. 

I really thought we were done with Android tablets. Google itself hasn’t released one in years, though that’ll change soon with the forthcoming Pixel Tablet. Samsung has hit on a high-end formula that works pretty well, Amazon’s cheap Fire tablets technically run Android… and that’s basically it. Plenty of manufacturers have tried, but for various reasons Android tablets have never caught on.

Despite that market reality, OnePlus is taking its first shot at this market with the $479 OnePlus Pad. As the price hints, OnePlus isn’t going right after high-end tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy S8 lineup or Apple’s iPad Air or Pro. Instead, this tablet reminds me more of Apple’s 10th-generation iPad, in style, substance and price. And the fact that OnePlus is also making a keyboard folio and a stylus shows they’re serious about making a tablet built for more than just watching movies or browsing the web. But while OnePlus made a lovely piece of hardware, Android’s large-screen limitations continue to hamper the overall experience.

Hardware

The OnePlus Tab makes a great first impression. That starts with its striking metallic green color and subtle rounded brushing of the metal that surrounds the centered camera bump on the tablet’s back. I’m a little surprised that OnePlus isn’t offering the Tab in a more generic color like black or silver, but the green makes it stand out a bit without being something most people will object to.

Despite having a relatively large, 11.6-inch display, it’s light and easy to hold with one hand. That’s due in part to the tiny 6.7mm bezel surrounding the display. That’s slightly thinner than the one on my 11-inch iPad Pro and noticeably thinner than the one on the current Air or 10th-generation iPad. OnePlus used a rather unusual screen ratio here, 7:5, but I definitely prefer that over the 16:9 ratio so common on other devices. Movies and shows will have more noticeable black bars, but everything else benefits from more vertical screen real estate.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Besides the screen, there’s nothing else of note on the front of the Pad aside from the landscape-oriented 8-megapixel camera for video chat. On the sides, you’ll notice the power button and two volume buttons, a USB-C port and four speakers. As with most successful tablet designs, it’s a screen-first device that is light and easy to hold, which is probably the most important thing.

There’s a lot to like about the OnePlus Tab’s screen besides just the size. OnePlus says it’s a Dolby Vision panel with HDR, and its 2,800 x 2,000 resolution works out to 296 pixels per inch. Even though it’s an LCD, lacking the extreme contrast ratios you’ll find on OLED or mini-LED panels, it’s still an extremely bright and vibrant display, whether you’re looking through photos, watching a movie or playing games. It also has a 144Hz refresh rate, though most apps max out at 120Hz. Still, that’s better than any iPad in this price range.

The four-speaker system is also much better than I expected, given the Tab’s svelte profile. It can get surprisingly loud, pumping out enough volume for watching movies on your own or with a friend. But more importantly than just the level, the sound is clear and balanced. You’ll still likely want to opt for headphones during any more serious listening session, but these speakers definitely do the job in a pinch.

On the inside is MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000, a Cortex-X2 processor which runs at 3.05 GHz; that’s paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Accessories

Unsurprisingly, OnePlus made a keyboard folio and stylus to go along with the Tab.Also unsurprisingly, the tablet isn’t bundled with either, so you’ll need to shell out extra cash to complete your rig. The $149 keyboard includes a trackpad and connects directly to the Tab via pogo pins, so it doesn’t need its own power or a Bluetooth connection. It’s thin and attaches easily to the Tab without adding any significant weight or bulk, which is a nice change of pace from the comfortable but heavy Magic Keyboard that goes along with my iPad Pro.

The keyboard is a bit of a mixed bag, though. On the plus side, it’s just big enough to be comfortable to type on for extended periods of time. Like the keyboard on the similarly-sized iPad Air or Pro, there’s a little learning curve, but the keys are a good size and have decent travel. The space key was a lot less reliable than I hoped, though (apologies to my editor who had to fix the numerous missing spaces in this draft). The trackpad, on the other hand, was a bit more problematic. It wasn’t great at rejecting input from the edge of my hands, so it often moved the cursor randomly around as I was typing this review. It was incredibly frustrating and almost made me give up on it entirely. I eventually managed to hold my hands to minimize the mistaken input, but it still happened often enough to be maddening.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

The trackpad itself was generally fine for moving through the OnePlus Pad’s interface, but it felt just a little slow to respond to everything I was doing, whether scrolling, swiping or clicking on things. This is a recurring theme with the whole OnePlus Pad experience, unfortunately. The trackpad itself is small, but I’m plenty comfortable with a similar-sized one on my iPad.

The last nit I’ll pick about the keyboard folio is that you can’t adjust the angle of the screen at all. The folio holds it in a fixed position, so hopefully that works for you. This isn’t dissimilar to some other keyboard folios for other tablets in this price range, so I will only complain so much, but it would still be nice if it was adjustable.

There’s also a stylus available for the Pad, the $99 OnePlus Stylo. Like the second-generation Apple Pencil, the Stylo magnetically attaches to the top of the Pad for power and convenient storage. I love this trick on the iPad, and I love it here as well. The Stylo itself is a round (aside from the flat charging edge), fairly nondescript piece of hardware that serves its purpose well.

I have zero visual arts skills, so I can’t say exactly how it compares to using an iPad and Apple Pencil for serious creative work. But, OnePlus says it has 4,096 levels of pressure and 60 degrees of tilt, which should make it a versatile instrument. And in a little testing taking notes and scribbling around in the OnePlus Notes app, I was immediately impressed at the total lack of lag. If you can find the right drawing software, the OnePlus Pad and the Stylo could make a reasonably affordable and powerful drawing kit.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Software experience

As with basically every Android tablet I’ve ever used, the thing that is holding the OnePlus Pad back isn’t its hardware, but the software. The Pad runs Android 13.1 with OnePlus’ Oxygen OS on top of it. For the most part, Oxygen OS represents a minor re-skinning of the Android UI, along with a couple custom OnePlus apps as well as some handy tricks if you also use a OnePlus phone. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to a OnePlus phone for this review, but these features are worth noting.

For starters, OnePlus has a cellular data sharing feature that lets the Pad jump onto the 5G signal from a OnePlus smartphone. It’s automatically enabled when the phone is near the Pad. Obviously, tethering another device to a smartphone signal isn’t new technology, but OnePlus is definitely trying to make it more seamless. Furthermore, OnePlus built in an “Auto Connect” feature between the Pad and a compatible phone, which means you can receive notifications, share clipboard data for instant copy and pasting, and see text messages and phone calls on the Pad. If you’re in the OnePlus ecosystem already, this is a solid reason to consider the Pad over another competing tablet.

OnePlus also did a decent job of including some apps that take advantage of the Pad’s screen – the Notes app uses multiple panes to show your list of notes as well as whatever you’re working on, or you can go into a full-screen focus mode. It also has a to-do app built in and works well with the Stylo if you want to draw or take handwritten notes. The Weather app, meanwhile, feels like a clone of what you might find on the iPad, but it’s still useful and takes advantage of a bigger screen, rather than feeling like a blown-up phone app.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Naturally, Google has done a great job of making its apps work on a larger screen, as well. Chrome, Gmail, Photos, Drive, Docs, Meet and basically anything else I tried from Google felt native, which goes a long way towards making the OnePlus Pad feel useful.

The experience isn’t so great once you start using third-party apps, though. If you’ve ever read a review of an Android tablet, you’ve heard this complaint before. There just aren’t enough Android apps designed to take advantage of a bigger screen. Comparing things like Slack and Twitter to their iPad counterparts shows that the developers haven’t taken larger-screen Android devices into account. On the iPad, both apps have multiple panes which makes it much easier to get things done. On the Pad, Slack just shows any conversation you’re in at full width. Similarly, tweets stretch across the entire screen and images or video aren’t scaled down at all. Todoist, another app I use constantly, has a sidebar, but it automatically hides whenever I tap on an item, so I have to keep resummoning it.

There are also numerous apps, like Reddit and Instagram, that simply don’t run in landscape orientation at all. Even worse, some apps throw you from landscape into portrait mode. For example, HBO Max seems to work fine in landscape mode, but when I exit a movie, the screen jumps to portrait mode. There are also plenty of strange bugs throughout the system. More than once, I tried playing a video in HBO Max or the Google TV app only to have it refuse to load. This happened in both apps back-to-back and was only cleared up after rebooting the tablet. Another fun one is the notification I get every single time I open up the keyboard folio that tells me to “configure physical keyboard,” which brings up a menu with basically nothing you can actually configure.

Probably the most frustrating thing for me was simply trying to work across multiple apps. Pressing alt-tab brings up a view of recently-used apps, but the implementation is poor. If you tap alt-tab once and don’t hold anything, all it does is zoom out of the app you’re in and then drop you back. On basically every other computer I can think of, this key command brings you straight to the last app you were using. If you keep holding alt and press tab again, you’ll start cycling through your recent apps – but there’s absolutely no visual indicator to show which you have selected, so it’s useless. Swiping up on the trackpad with three fingers and holding for a second also drops you into this view, and you can then swipe around with the trackpad and click on the app you want. That’s marginally better, but not having a reliable keyboard shortcut for moving between apps is infuriating.

Just as you can on an iPad, you can split an app view and run two apps side-by-side. This generally works fine – but if you exit out to the home screen, the only way to get that dual view back is by going into the aforementioned app switching view. Tapping the app’s icon on the home screen will bring that app back up in full screen, forgetting the configuration you had before

Despite all this, the OnePlus Pad is fairly responsive, at least. Websites and apps loaded quickly, but scrolling through sites or my long list of emails felt a little bit choppy. That’s despite the screen’s high refresh rate. Similarly, games I tried (including Genshin Impact, Asphalt 9 and my go-to Alto’s Odyssey) mostly worked fine, but had occasional moments where it felt the hardware was struggling slightly. For a tablet priced under $500, the OnePlus Pad more or less met my expectations – but it’s not as smooth as even the most basic iPad.

One area where the OnePlus Pad is definitively great is on battery life. I can get about 10 hours doing my normal work routine on the device, jumping between multiple apps, playing occasional games, watching some videos and streaming music. More extensive gaming sessions will always run the battery down quicker, as will jacking up the screen brightness, but I don’t think anyone who tries this tablet will need to worry about reaching for the charger too often.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Wrap-up

After using the OnePlus Pad for a few weeks, I’m left struggling with who this device is for. Die-hard Android fans are probably better served by a Samsung tablet, though people who use a OnePlus phone will appreciate the way the two devices work together. For the price, the OnePlus Pad does a fair few things well, at least. The battery is very good, the Stylo is a solid drawing tool and the screen is better than one you’ll find on a similarly-priced iPad.

But the app ecosystem for large-screen Android devices remains dire, and the experience of using Android on a tablet still does not feel fully baked. Most Android users who have a passing interest in using a tablet will likely still be better off with an iPad. They’re faster, less buggy and have a wildly better app ecosystem. And the price comparison doesn’t exactly work out well in the OnePlus Pad’s favor, either. The kit I tested cost $730, while you can get a 10th-generation iPad with its keyboard folio and pencil for $800.

If you’re absolutely not willing to consider Apple hardware, we’re just a few weeks away from Google taking the wraps off the Pixel Tablet. While that won’t solve the third-party app issue (after more than a decade, I don’t know what will), I do think it’s worth waiting to see what Google has in store before committing to new hardware. Unless, of course, you’re a die-hard OnePlus fan – but even those folks should think long and hard before pulling the trigger here.

I really thought we were done with Android tablets. Google itself hasn’t released one in years, though that’ll change soon with the forthcoming Pixel Tablet. Samsung has hit on a high-end formula that works pretty well, Amazon’s cheap Fire tablets technically run Android… and that’s basically it. Plenty of manufacturers have tried, but for various reasons Android tablets have never caught on.

Despite that market reality, OnePlus is taking its first shot at this market with the $479 OnePlus Pad. As the price hints, OnePlus isn’t going right after high-end tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy S8 lineup or Apple’s iPad Air or Pro. Instead, this tablet reminds me more of Apple’s 10th-generation iPad, in style, substance and price. And the fact that OnePlus is also making a keyboard folio and a stylus shows they’re serious about making a tablet built for more than just watching movies or browsing the web. But while OnePlus made a lovely piece of hardware, Android’s large-screen limitations continue to hamper the overall experience.

Hardware

The OnePlus Pad makes a great first impression. That starts with its striking metallic green color and subtle rounded brushing of the metal that surrounds the centered camera bump on the tablet’s back. I’m a little surprised that OnePlus isn’t offering the Pad in a more generic color like black or silver, but the green makes it stand out a bit without being something most people will object to.

Despite having a relatively large, 11.6-inch display, it’s light and easy to hold with one hand. That’s due in part to the tiny 6.7mm bezel surrounding the display. That’s slightly thinner than the one on my 11-inch iPad Pro and noticeably thinner than the one on the current Air or 10th-generation iPad. OnePlus used a rather unusual screen ratio here, 7:5, but I definitely prefer that over the 16:9 ratio so common on other devices. Movies and shows will have more noticeable black bars, but everything else benefits from more vertical screen real estate.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Besides the screen, there’s nothing else of note on the front of the Pad aside from the landscape-oriented 8-megapixel camera for video chat. On the sides, you’ll notice the power button and two volume buttons, a USB-C port and four speakers. As with most successful tablet designs, it’s a screen-first device that is light and easy to hold, which is probably the most important thing.

There’s a lot to like about the OnePlus Tab’s screen besides just the size. OnePlus says it’s a Dolby Vision panel with HDR, and its 2,800 x 2,000 resolution works out to 296 pixels per inch. Even though it’s an LCD, lacking the extreme contrast ratios you’ll find on OLED or mini-LED panels, it’s still an extremely bright and vibrant display, whether you’re looking through photos, watching a movie or playing games. It also has a 144Hz refresh rate, though most apps max out at 120Hz. Still, that’s better than any iPad in this price range.

The four-speaker system is also much better than I expected, given the Tab’s svelte profile. It can get surprisingly loud, pumping out enough volume for watching movies on your own or with a friend. But more importantly than just the level, the sound is clear and balanced. You’ll still likely want to opt for headphones during any more serious listening session, but these speakers definitely do the job in a pinch.

On the inside is MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000, a Cortex-X2 processor which runs at 3.05 GHz; that’s paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Accessories

Unsurprisingly, OnePlus made a keyboard folio and stylus to go along with the Tab.Also unsurprisingly, the tablet isn’t bundled with either, so you’ll need to shell out extra cash to complete your rig. The $149 keyboard includes a trackpad and connects directly to the Pad via pogo pins, so it doesn’t need its own power or a Bluetooth connection. It’s thin and attaches easily to the Pad without adding any significant weight or bulk, which is a nice change of pace from the comfortable but heavy Magic Keyboard that goes along with my iPad Pro.

The keyboard is a bit of a mixed bag, though. On the plus side, it’s just big enough to be comfortable to type on for extended periods of time. Like the keyboard on the similarly-sized iPad Air or Pro, there’s a little learning curve, but the keys are a good size and have decent travel. The space key was a lot less reliable than I hoped, though (apologies to my editor who had to fix the numerous missing spaces in this draft). The trackpad, on the other hand, was a bit more problematic. It wasn’t great at rejecting input from the edge of my hands, so it often moved the cursor randomly around as I was typing this review. It was incredibly frustrating and almost made me give up on it entirely. I eventually managed to hold my hands to minimize the mistaken input, but it still happened often enough to be maddening.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

The trackpad itself was generally fine for moving through the OnePlus Pad’s interface, but it felt just a little slow to respond to everything I was doing, whether scrolling, swiping or clicking on things. This is a recurring theme with the whole OnePlus Pad experience, unfortunately. The trackpad itself is small, but I’m plenty comfortable with a similar-sized one on my iPad.

The last nit I’ll pick about the keyboard folio is that you can’t adjust the angle of the screen at all. The folio holds it in a fixed position, so hopefully that works for you. This isn’t dissimilar to some other keyboard folios for other tablets in this price range, so I will only complain so much, but it would still be nice if it was adjustable.

There’s also a stylus available for the Pad, the $99 OnePlus Stylo. Like the second-generation Apple Pencil, the Stylo magnetically attaches to the top of the Pad for power and convenient storage. I love this trick on the iPad, and I love it here as well. The Stylo itself is a round (aside from the flat charging edge), fairly nondescript piece of hardware that serves its purpose well.

I have zero visual arts skills, so I can’t say exactly how it compares to using an iPad and Apple Pencil for serious creative work. But, OnePlus says it has 4,096 levels of pressure and 60 degrees of tilt, which should make it a versatile instrument. And in a little testing taking notes and scribbling around in the OnePlus Notes app, I was immediately impressed at the total lack of lag. If you can find the right drawing software, the OnePlus Pad and the Stylo could make a reasonably affordable and powerful drawing kit.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Software experience

As with basically every Android tablet I’ve ever used, the thing that is holding the OnePlus Pad back isn’t its hardware, but the software. The Pad runs Android 13.1 with OnePlus’ Oxygen OS on top of it. For the most part, Oxygen OS represents a minor re-skinning of the Android UI, along with a couple custom OnePlus apps as well as some handy tricks if you also use a OnePlus phone. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to a OnePlus phone for this review, but these features are worth noting.

For starters, OnePlus has a cellular data sharing feature that lets the Pad jump onto the 5G signal from a OnePlus smartphone. It’s automatically enabled when the phone is near the Pad. Obviously, tethering another device to a smartphone signal isn’t new technology, but OnePlus is definitely trying to make it more seamless. Furthermore, OnePlus built in an “Auto Connect” feature between the Pad and a compatible phone, which means you can receive notifications, share clipboard data for instant copy and pasting, and see text messages and phone calls on the Pad. If you’re in the OnePlus ecosystem already, this is a solid reason to consider the Pad over another competing tablet.

OnePlus also did a decent job of including some apps that take advantage of the Pad’s screen – the Notes app uses multiple panes to show your list of notes as well as whatever you’re working on, or you can go into a full-screen focus mode. It also has a to-do app built in and works well with the Stylo if you want to draw or take handwritten notes. The Weather app, meanwhile, feels like a clone of what you might find on the iPad, but it’s still useful and takes advantage of a bigger screen, rather than feeling like a blown-up phone app.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Naturally, Google has done a great job of making its apps work on a larger screen, as well. Chrome, Gmail, Photos, Drive, Docs, Meet and basically anything else I tried from Google felt native, which goes a long way towards making the OnePlus Pad feel useful.

The experience isn’t so great once you start using third-party apps, though. If you’ve ever read a review of an Android tablet, you’ve heard this complaint before. There just aren’t enough Android apps designed to take advantage of a bigger screen. Comparing things like Slack and Twitter to their iPad counterparts shows that the developers haven’t taken larger-screen Android devices into account. On the iPad, both apps have multiple panes which makes it much easier to get things done. On the Pad, Slack just shows any conversation you’re in at full width. Similarly, tweets stretch across the entire screen and images or video aren’t scaled down at all. Todoist, another app I use constantly, has a sidebar, but it automatically hides whenever I tap on an item, so I have to keep resummoning it.

There are also numerous apps, like Reddit and Instagram, that simply don’t run in landscape orientation at all. Even worse, some apps throw you from landscape into portrait mode. For example, HBO Max seems to work fine in landscape mode, but when I exit a movie, the screen jumps to portrait mode. There are also plenty of strange bugs throughout the system. More than once, I tried playing a video in HBO Max or the Google TV app only to have it refuse to load. This happened in both apps back-to-back and was only cleared up after rebooting the tablet. Another fun one is the notification I get every single time I open up the keyboard folio that tells me to “configure physical keyboard,” which brings up a menu with basically nothing you can actually configure.

Probably the most frustrating thing for me was simply trying to work across multiple apps. Pressing alt-tab brings up a view of recently-used apps, but the implementation is poor. If you tap alt-tab once and don’t hold anything, all it does is zoom out of the app you’re in and then drop you back. On basically every other computer I can think of, this key command brings you straight to the last app you were using. If you keep holding alt and press tab again, you’ll start cycling through your recent apps – but there’s absolutely no visual indicator to show which you have selected, so it’s useless. Swiping up on the trackpad with three fingers and holding for a second also drops you into this view, and you can then swipe around with the trackpad and click on the app you want. That’s marginally better, but not having a reliable keyboard shortcut for moving between apps is infuriating.

Just as you can on an iPad, you can split an app view and run two apps side-by-side. This generally works fine – but if you exit out to the home screen, the only way to get that dual view back is by going into the aforementioned app switching view. Tapping the app’s icon on the home screen will bring that app back up in full screen, forgetting the configuration you had before

Despite all this, the OnePlus Pad is fairly responsive, at least. Websites and apps loaded quickly, but scrolling through sites or my long list of emails felt a little bit choppy. That’s despite the screen’s high refresh rate. Similarly, games I tried (including Genshin Impact, Asphalt 9 and my go-to Alto’s Odyssey) mostly worked fine, but had occasional moments where it felt the hardware was struggling slightly. For a tablet priced under $500, the OnePlus Pad more or less met my expectations – but it’s not as smooth as even the most basic iPad.

One area where the OnePlus Pad is definitively great is on battery life. I can get about 10 hours doing my normal work routine on the device, jumping between multiple apps, playing occasional games, watching some videos and streaming music. More extensive gaming sessions will always run the battery down quicker, as will jacking up the screen brightness, but I don’t think anyone who tries this tablet will need to worry about reaching for the charger too often.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Wrap-up

After using the OnePlus Pad for a few weeks, I’m left struggling with who this device is for. Die-hard Android fans are probably better served by a Samsung tablet, though people who use a OnePlus phone will appreciate the way the two devices work together. For the price, the OnePlus Pad does a fair few things well, at least. The battery is very good, the Stylo is a solid drawing tool and the screen is better than one you’ll find on a similarly-priced iPad.

But the app ecosystem for large-screen Android devices remains dire, and the experience of using Android on a tablet still does not feel fully baked. Most Android users who have a passing interest in using a tablet will likely still be better off with an iPad. They’re faster, less buggy and have a wildly better app ecosystem. And the price comparison doesn’t exactly work out well in the OnePlus Pad’s favor, either. The kit I tested cost $730, while you can get a 10th-generation iPad with its keyboard folio and pencil for $800.

If you’re absolutely not willing to consider Apple hardware, we’re just a few weeks away from Google taking the wraps off the Pixel Tablet. While that won’t solve the third-party app issue (after more than a decade, I don’t know what will), I do think it’s worth waiting to see what Google has in store before committing to new hardware. Unless, of course, you’re a die-hard OnePlus fan – but even those folks should think long and hard before pulling the trigger here.

Voice assistants are everywhere now – on your phone, in your TV, possibly even in your kitchen appliances. But one of the most common ways that people interact with Siri, Alexa and the Google Assistant is through a smart speaker, and there are now a wide variety of such devices available at a wide variety of price points. There are downsides to having a smart home device that’s always listening for a wake word, as giving more personal information to Amazon, Apple and Google can be a questionable decision. That said, all these companies have made it easier to manage how your data is used — you can opt out of humans reviewing some of your voice queries, and it's also less complicated to manage and erase your history with various digital assistants, too.

The good news is that there's never been a better time to get a smart speaker, particularly if you're a music fan. For all their benefits, the original Amazon Echo and Google Home devices did not sound good. Sonos, on the other hand, made great sounding WiFi-connected speakers, but they lacked any voice-controlled smarts.

That's all changed now. Sonos released its own voice assistant in 2022 and also supports Alexa on its latest speakers. Google and Amazon, meanwhile, made massive improvements in sound quality with recent speakers. Even lower-end models like the Echo Dot and Nest Mini sound much better than earlier iterations. With the growing popularity of these speakers, there are now more options than ever. Let’s walk through our choices for the best smart speakers at different price points and for different uses.

Picking an assistant

The first thing most people should do is decide what voice assistant they want to use. Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa are both well-supported options that are continually evolving, with new features added at a steady clip. A few years ago, Alexa worked with more smart home devices, but at this point, basically any smart device worth buying works with both.

It's mostly a matter of personal preference. If you already use Google Assistant on your Android phone, it makes sense to stick with that. But while Alexa isn’t quite as good at answering general knowledge questions, it syncs just fine with things like calendars from your Google account. And it works with perhaps the widest variety of smart home devices, as well. If you’ve never used Alexa or Google Assistant, you can download their apps to your smart phone and spend some time testing them out before buying a speaker.

If you buy a Sonos device with a microphone, you can also use the company's own voice assistant, voiced by Giancarlo Esposito. It's focused purely on music control, so you won't use it to do things like send messages or ask the weather forecast. But as a music assistant, Sonos Voice Control is generally quite fast and reliable.

As for Apple, you won’t be surprised to learn the HomePod and HomePod mini are the only Siri-compatible speakers on the market. Siri has a reputation for not being as smart as Alexa or Google Assistant, but it’s totally capable of handling common voice queries like answering questions, controlling smart home devices, sending messages, making calls and playing music. Technically, Siri and Apple’s HomeKit technology doesn’t work with as many smart home devices as the competition, but it’s not hard to find compatible gear. And Apple has most definitely improved Siri’s capabilities over the last couple years, with handy features like and Intercom tool and routines that take advantage of the built-in temperature sensor in the HomePod and HomePod Mini.

Best smart speaker under $50: Amazon Echo Dot

Most people's entry point into the smart speaker world will not be an expensive device. Amazon's fourth-generation Echo Dot and Google's Nest Mini are the most obvious places to start for two important reasons. One, they're cheap: Both the Nest Mini and Echo Dost cost $50. Two, they're capable. Despite the low price, these speakers can do virtually the same things as larger and more expensive devices.

The Google Nest Mini was released in late 2019, but Amazon just refreshed the Echo Dot last year. The Echo Dot is the best small smart speaker for most people. Amazon keeps improving the audio quality across its Echo device line, and the Echo Dot is no exception. It produces much louder and clearer audio than I’d expect from a $50 speaker. The Nest Mini doesn’t sound bad, and it’s perfectly fine for listening in the bedroom while getting ready for the day, but the Echo Dot is a better all-purpose music listening device.

From a design perspective, Amazon broke the mold with the latest Echo Dot. Instead of a small puck like the Nest Mini, the new Dot is shaped like a little globe. It’s much bigger than the Nest Mini, but that size gives it room for higher-end audio components. The Dot keeps the handy physical volume buttons and mute switch on top, along with a button to activate Alexa's voice control. While the Dot doesn’t look as sleek as the Nest Mini, having physical buttons makes it easier to adjust volume and mute the mic. I do wish the Dot had a way to physically pause music; on the Nest Mini, if you tap the middle of the device, the music stops.

Another benefit the Amazon Echo Dot has over the Google Nest Mini is its 3.5mm audio out jack, which means you can plug it into other speakers and instantly upgrade the audio quality. When you do that, you can ask Alexa to stream music, and it'll output to whatever speaker you have connected. That'll help you get more mileage out of the Dot in the long run. The Nest Mini answers with a handy wall mount, for people who want to keep their counter or shelf clear. The Echo Dot’s new bulbous form is definitely not suited to this, so if you want a speaker you can really hide, the Nest Mini is probably the better choice.

Overall, the Dot is the best choice for most people, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Nest Mini, either. I generally prefer using Google Assistant over Alexa, and anyone who feels the same should go ahead and get the Nest Mini. The Dot does sound notably better, so if you plan to listen to audio on a regular basis, that’s probably the way to go. But if you only plan to use it for a quick song or podcast when you’re getting ready in the morning, just pick your favorite assistant and go from there.

Best smart speaker under $100: Amazon Echo

Amazon, Apple and Google all have $100 smart speakers: the fourth-generation Echo, the HomePod mini and the Nest Audio, respectively. All three companies claim superior audio quality, so for lots of people these speakers will be the sweet spot between small speakers like the Echo Dot and Nest Mini and bigger, more expensive models like the Sonos Era 100.

Once again, Amazon punches above its weight. Like the Dot, the latest Echo is totally redesigned and the new internals were made with music in mind. It combines a three-inch woofer with two 0.8-inch tweeters — a more advanced setup than either the Nest Audio or HomePod mini. (The Google Nest Audio uses a three-inch woofer but only a single 0.75-inch tweeter, while the Apple HomePod mini makes do with a single “full range” driver and two passive radiators.)

In practice, this means the Echo is noticeably louder than either the Nest Audio or HomePod mini and much better suited to filling a large room than the competition. It also delivers an impressive bass thump and powerful mid-range frequencies. In fact, my main complaint with the speaker is that highs aren’t quite crisp enough. Compare the Echo to a Era 100 and the 100 sounds much more lively, while the Echo comes off a bit muddy. Then again, the 100 costs more than twice as much as the Echo.

While the Echo may beat the Nest Audio and HomePod mini on volume and bass, Google and Apple’s speakers are not bad options. The HomePod mini is the quietest of the three speakers, but it still sounds balanced across the entire audio spectrum. The bass isn’t too assertive, but there’s more presence than I would have expected given its tiny size (it’s by far the smallest of these three speakers).

And it has a few nice perks if you’re using an iPhone 11 or newer. Thanks to the U1 “ultra-wideband” chip in recent iPhones, the HomePod mini can tell when there’s a phone near it, which makes handing off music from your phone to the speaker (or vice versa) quite simple. Playback controls for the HomePod mini will automatically pop up as well, and your phone’s lock screen will display music suggestions if the speaker isn’t currently playing. Setup is also dead-simple — just bring an iPhone or iPad near the speaker and it’ll automatically start the process.

Google’s Nest Audio is also quite pleasant to listen to. It’s a little louder than the HomePod mini, and has stronger bass, to boot. It doesn’t have the same overall power and presence that the Echo does, but for $100 it’s a well-balanced speaker that should serve most people’s needs.

All three of these speakers support stereo pairing as well, if you want more volume or crave a more immersive experience. For $200, two Echoes will fill a large room with high-quality sound and enough bass to power a party. A pair of HomePod mini or Nest Audio speakers aren’t quite as powerful, but it makes for a great upgrade if you’re a more avid listener. A pair of Nest Audio or HomePod mini speakers sounded great on my desk during the workday. I don’t need overwhelming volume but can appreciate the stereo separation. And two of those speakers together can easily power a larger living space, although the Echo is the better choice if volume is a priority.

Here too, I think that picking the assistant that works best in your house and with your other gadgets is probably the most important factor — but given Alexa’s ubiquity and the new Echo’s superior sound quality, it’s the best smart speaker at this price point.

Best midrange smart speaker: Sonos Era 100

If you have more than a passing interest in music, the Echo Dot and Nest Mini aren't really going to cut it. Spending more money to upgrade to a speaker designed with audio quality in mind is one of the best decisions I've made. For years, I didn't have a proper home music solution, but in the end the modest investment has made my life much more pleasant.

For years, the Sonos One has been a favorite of mine, combining a reasonable price with good sound quality and a plethora of useful features like easy multi-room audio, stereo pairing and compatibility with tons of services. This year, Sonos replaced the One with the Era 100, a $250 speaker that is an improvement in almost every way you can think of. Most importantly, it uses a new speaker array that includes two tweeters instead of just one as well as a woofer that’s 25 percent bigger. The end result is that the Era 100 handily bests the One in sound quality, with impressive bass, surprisingly huge volume and increased high-end clarity thanks to the additional tweeter.

There are a lot of other improvements beyond just sound quality. The Era 100 uses its built-in microphones for much easier Trueplay tuning, which optimizes the speaker’s output based on where you place it. Previously, you had to use an iPhone and walk around the room waving the phone to optimize your Sonos speaker, but now the process is much simpler. The Era 100 also includes line-in via a USB-C port and also has Bluetooth for when you just want to quickly connect a device to the speaker. It’s a bummer that you need to buy an adapter to hook up a turntable or other audio equipment to the Era 100, but since the One didn’t support line-in at all, I’m still glad it’s an option.

There are a handful of other small but solid improvements, like redesigned controls on the top that make it easier to skip tracks and a mic mute switch that cuts the power to the mic for extra security. Like the One, you can set up Alexa or the Sonos voice assistant here, but the Era 100 doesn’t support the Google Assistant – so if you were previously using a Sonos speaker and relied on Google, you’re unfortunately out of luck here. Other than that one change, though, the Era 100 is an excellent all-around performer. It’s a great speaker on its own and is also a great starting point if you want to build a multi-room audio setup.

Amazon’s Echo Studio remains an excellent-sounding speaker as well, and at $199 it’s a good bit cheaper than the Era 100 as well. If you want to save some cash or already have a bunch of other Echo devices, it makes sense as a speaker for higher-quality music playback. But given that it’ll be four years old this fall, I think it makes sense to opt for a newer device that’ll get longer support and updates.

Best smart speaker for music lovers: Sonos Five

As nice as the Era 100 and Echo Studio are, there's only so much you can get out of them. If you crave more bass, clarity and stereo separation, the $550 Sonos Five is one of our favorite pure music speakers. It has many of the conveniences in the Era 100 and sounds significantly better than any other Sonos speaker. It also sounds much better than the Echo Studio and anything Google is currently selling.

That said, the Five stretches our definition of a smart speaker here because it doesn't have a built-in voice assistant. But it's so good at music playback that it's worth recommending you pick one up along with an Echo Dot or Nest Mini. Both of those speakers work with Sonos, so you can use voice commands to control the Five just as you would a dedicated Alexa or Google Assistant device. Sonos also refreshed the speaker two years ago with a new wireless radio as well as more memory and a faster processor. This means it should stay current and work with future Sonos software updates for years to come.

Since we're talking "best" here, I'm going to go ahead and recommend that true music junkies splash out on two Five speakers and pair them in stereo. Put simply, it's the most enjoyable experience I've had listening to music in years; I found myself picking up new details while listening to albums I've heard over and over again. It's a wonderful experience and worth saving for if you're a music lover. I didn't know what I was missing until I tried the Five.

Sonos also just released the Era 300, a $450 speaker that supports Dolby Atmos spatial audio from Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited. I’ve found that the quality of spatial audio mixes can be very hit or miss, but the good news is that the Era 300 sounds outstanding whether it’s playing back Atmos content or just standard tracks. It’s not quite as good as the Sonos Five, but it does have built-in microphones for voice assistants and easy Trueplay tuning as well as Bluetooth and the redesigned controls on the Era 100. Again, the main downside is that Google Assistant isn’t supported here.

Finally, if you’re an Apple Music user or have a lot of Apple hardware in your home, the second-generation HomePod is definitely worth considering. At $300, it’s a lot cheaper than these Sonos speakers but supports spatial audio like the Era 300. The Era 300 and Sonos Five are better speakers overall (and certainly much louder), but there's a lot to like about the HomePod’s audio quality at its price point. It’s a clear, crisp vocal-forward speaker, and its design and software processing does a great job of making music sound like it’s all around you, even if you’re not playing back Dolby Atmos tracks.

Best portable smart speaker: Sonos Roam

While many people will be happy with a few speakers strategically placed throughout their home, you might want something that works outside as well as inside. Fortunately, you can find speakers that pair voice controls and strong music playback performance with portable, weatherproof form factors. For my money, it's hard to beat the Sonos Roam for sheer versatility, not to mention audio quality.

When used inside the home, the Roam works like any other Sonos speaker. It fits in with an existing multi-room Sonos setup, or you can get a pair for stereo playback. Like most other Sonos speakers, it works with the Sonos Voice Assistant, Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, and it supports essentially every major music service available. It sounds very good given its tiny size; it’s quieter and not quite as clear as the Sonos One or the Era 100, but it still packs a surprising bass thump and distinct highs.

Since it was designed with on-the-go usage in mind, the Roam has a battery and Bluetooth so you can take it anywhere and use it far away from your WiFi network. And its diminutive size makes it easy to take it everywhere, both around the house and out and about. It’s also the first Sonos speaker that is fully waterproof, as well as dust- and drop-resistant, so you shouldn’t worry about taking it to the pool or beach.

The Roam gets about 10 hours of battery life, whether you're on WiFI or Bluetooth. There are other portable speakers that last longer, so if you’re really going to push the battery you might be better served by another option.

Sonos also has another portable option, the Move. It’s much larger and louder than the Roam and has better sound quality, which it should given that it costs $400. But, rumors indicate Sonos is getting ready to replace it this fall with a new model. With that in mind, I’d recommend most people interested in a speaker like this wait to see what Sonos has coming up – $400 is a lot of money to spend on hardware that’s about to be replaced.

A better choice than the Move, unless you already have other Sonos products, is the $399 Bose Portable Smart speaker. It supports Alexa and Google Assistant commands, and since it can connect to WiFi, you can ask your preferred assistant to play music from Spotify, Amazon Music and other services. On top of that, it produces well-rounded sound, sports an IPX4 design with a convenient carry handle and will last up to 12 hours on a single charge.

Bose also has a good alternative to the Roam. The $149 SoundLink Flex supports Siri and Google Assistant commands, plus it has an IP67 design that's roughly the size of a small clutch bag. It pumps out bright, dynamic sound and can pair with other speakers for stereo sound, too – it's excellent and slightly cheaper than the Roam.

While this guide is all about smart speakers, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention all of the solid portable speakers out there that either have limited smart features or none at all. We have an entire guide to the best portable Bluetooth speakers, so if you’re purely concerned with portability and less about having an ecosystem of connected speakers, there are lots of options worth investigating.

Acer reliably makes some of the best Chromebooks on the market, and today it's announcing an update to the Chromebook Spin 714 as part of a slew of PC news. Like last year's model, the Chromebook Spin 714 is a premium laptop that's thin (0.7 inches), light (about three pounds) and powerful. 

Unsurprisingly, the new model users Intel's 13th-generation Core processors — either the i3-1315U, i5-1335U or i7-1355U. Acer also offers a high-end model geared at enterprise use with Intel's vPro platform with an i7-1365U processor. Combine that with up to 32GB of RAM and up to a 1TB SSD and you're looking at far more power than most ChromeOS tasks need, but that's kind of the point when you're looking at a premium Chromebook.

Another notable change is the webcam — Acer put a "QHD 2K" camera in the Spin 714. It feels like companies are finally adjusting to the realities of work-from-home life and giving us webcams that offer notable improvements, so I'm glad to see that here. 

Otherwise, the Spin 714 sticks to the usual premium Chomebook script that we know from Acer, not that that's a bad thing. As usual, Acer is using a durable anodized aluminum chassis which the company says meets the US MIL-STD 810 durability spec. As the name suggests, the 14-inch 1,920 x 1,200 touchscreen has a 360-degree hinge so you can prop the laptop up in tent mode or use it as a tablet. I say this every year: this trick means nothing to me. 

Acer

But Acer and plenty of other companies are still keen on convertible laptops, so I'm sure someone out there appreciates it. The touchscreen does work well with a USI stylus, offering 4,096 levels of pressure and tilt sensitivity — so if you're interested in drawing on the relatively large canvas this screen afford you, it should work pretty well. There's nothing new about the keyboard or trackpad this year, though Acer once again thoughtfully includes an optional fingerprint sensor for security. And past keyboards and trackpads on the high-end Spin models have been very good.

Finally, Acer says the battery on this laptop will last for about 10 hours. Unfortunately, most high-end Chromebooks I've used lately seem to max out in the six-to-seven hour range. Not terrible, but not ideal for a relatively expensive device. Hopefully the new Spin 714 will get closer to matching its promised battery life than last year's model. 

The Chromebook Spin 714 starts at $699 and will be available in North America in May. It'll then come to Europe, Middle East and African markets in July. As usual, Acer says it'll offer a wide variety of configurations, with prices differing by spec and region. 

I love all things The Last of Us, so it pains me to report that the PC port of The Last of Us Part I, which launched yesterday, is a buggy mess. Thousands of reviews on Steam are categorized as "mostly negative" and are filled with mentions of frequent crashes and poor hardware utilization. Meanwhile, Steam Deck users are reporting that it takes more than an hour for the game to compile shaders on its initial launch — and even once that's done, performance is an issue.

I don't have a powerful gaming PC, but I do have a Steam Deck and can confirm these issues. Once I got the game installed and waited around 90 minutes for the shaders to compile, I started playing the standalone DLC Left Behind, and the game crashed during the opening cinematics. Once I started playing the game, I saw it was using 102 percent of the Steam Deck's VRAM. Dropping all graphics settings to low got me under 100 percent, so crashes will probably be less frequent going forward. I only played for a few minutes, so I can't say how things work once you're taking on Infected, but I won't get my hopes up. 

It's also worth nothing that Sony didn't provide reviews with a demo code for the game until launch day, something that often means the game is either being worked on right up until the last minute or the experience isn't very good (or both). This made a bit nervous about how The Last of Us Part I would run, and it seems like my fears were well-founded.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Developer Naughty Dog didn't waste any time addressing the problems, tweeting out last night that they're "actively investigating multiple issues" that players have reported. The company also has a "known issues" page running, which acknowledges the shader loading issue as well as a potential memory leak, older graphics drivers leading to instability, and the game being unable to boot despite systems that meet the minimum requirements.

A number of high-profile PlayStation games from Sony's first-party studios have been ported to PC, including 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn and 2018's God of War, as well as Naughty Dog's own Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection (which includes remastered versions Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy). Both Horizon and the Uncharted collection had pretty serious issues at launch, as well. Since then, updates have made the games work much better, but it's still a disappointing trend. 

Even after delaying the game about a month from its original March 3rd date, things were clearly not ready to go. Sony likely wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the HBO series, which wrapped its first season earlier this month, but a delayed launch is probably better than a launch that no one can play. As of now, Naughty Dog hasn't released an update for The Last of Us Part I, but we'll be keeping an eye out for any fixes. I've been dreaming of having this game on-the-go since it was announced, so my fingers are crossed Naughty Dog can make it work on the Steam Deck — not to mention for the many people who want to play it on their powerful gaming PCs.

If you pay attention to the music industry, you’ve probably heard about spatial audio. The promise is that music will envelop the user from all directions without needing a room full of speakers to achieve the effect. Apple has pushed it a lot in the last few years, in Apple Music, its line of AirPods headphones and the latest HomePod speaker. Amazon’s streaming service also offers spatial audio, and its Echo Studio speaker can play back compatible tracks.

Sonos has been paying attention, as well – its recent Arc and Beam soundbars support Dolby Atmos for movies, and now the company is releasing its first music speaker designed for spatial audio, the Era 300. This beast is large and has an unusual shape to accommodate all the drivers needed for achieving these room-filling effects. At $450, you’d expect this speaker to sound excellent, regardless of whether it’s playing back spatial audio or not, but support for this new format is what sets it apart from other speakers. As such, the big question on my mind is whether this feature is a game changer, a gimmick, or somewhere in between?

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Design

There’s nothing in the Sonos lineup to compare the Era 300 to. From a size and weight perspective, it’s a large speaker, similar to the Sonos Five, but its unusual shape immediately sets it apart. Seen from the front its oval reminds me of a race track, but any other angle reveals a distinctive footprint. If you look at it from the top, it’s thinner near the middle than it is on the ends; the best way I can describe it is a knocked-over hourglass.

This is to accommodate the complex driver array inside the Era 300. There’s one tweeter pushing out from dead center, and two more sending audio out the left and right sides. Finally, there’s a fourth tweeter inside a directional horn pointed upwards; Sonos says that it’s at a specific angle optimized for spatial audio. Two woofers, again on either side of the speaker, complete the array.

The Era 300 reminds me of most other recent Sonos products. It is well-built, exceedingly sturdy and generally feels like a product that justifies its high price tag. That said, its physical appearance is definitely more unusual than the company’s other speakers. I recognize that it’s functional, but the combo of its size and strange tapering make it stand out more than you might like.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

A lot of new features and changes in the Era 100 are also found in the Era 300. This includes a redesigned set of touch controls on the top panel, a USB-C port for line-in and ethernet (provided you shell out for the optional adapters), a Bluetooth toggle and a switch to physically disconnect the microphone on the back. For more on these features, I’ll point you to the relevant section of my Era 100 review. Most everything I said there applies. That said, for $450, it’s a little disappointing that Sonos requires an adapter for line in or Ethernet. The $550 Sonos Five has both of those built right in. I’m sure the company has the data showing that a small percentage of owners use those features, so I’m glad they haven’t been removed completely, but it would definitely be nice if they didn’t require an adapter.

Setup

Setting up the Era 300 is pretty simple, even if you don’t already have a Sonos system. You’ll need to download the Sonos app to your phone and set up an account; from there, the app will look and see if there are any speakers to add. You’ll also need to log in to your audio services of choice – if you want to try spatial audio, you’ll need either Apple Music or Amazon Music Unlimited. You can search for and play music through the Sonos app, but there are also a bunch of options if you’d rather stick with the music apps you’re used to. You can use AirPlay 2 to shoot audio from Apple Music and other services on the iPhone directly to the Era 300, or use Spotify Connect without needing to go through the Sonos app. That said, it’s worth noting that if you want to play back tracks in spatial audio, you’re required to use the Sonos app.

There are a few optional but useful things you can do while you’re setting up the Era 300. The first is Trueplay, a feature that tunes your speaker’s output based upon where it’s placed in your room. Trueplay has been around since 2015, but in the past it required you to have an iPhone. You’d have to walk around your room slowly raising and lowering the phone while the speaker played a test tone. The Era 300, though, can use its built-in microphones to listen and optimize its output – that process is much simpler and faster than the old technique, and Android users aren’t left out either.

I’ve been extremely happy with Trueplay’s results in the past, so I’d recommend that everyone try this out. That said, I did find that the old, manual tuning process yielded slightly better results. So while I appreciate the ease of use in the new Trueplay system, I’ll probably still walk around my room waving my phone – but I won’t judge you if you take the easier route.

If you like using voice controls, you can also add a voice assistant to the Era 300. Amazon’s Alexa has been supported since the One launched back in 2017, and last year Sonos added its own music-focused assistant. Setting up the Sonos assistant is a little easier than Alexa, because you don’t need to go linking your Amazon account, but both are pretty straightforward at this point. One thing to note: past Sonos speakers with microphones also worked with Google Assistant, but that’s no longer the case. The Era 100 only works with Alexa and the Sonos assistant, likely due to the ongoing patent battles between Google and Sonos. I personally prefer Google Assistant over Alexa, so this is a bit of a bummer. But I also mostly just talk to my speaker to play music, so the Sonos option works well enough.

Audio quality and the spatial experience

Putting aside the potential of spatial audio for a moment, the Era 300 sounds excellent – as it should, given its price. It doesn’t quite match the stunning detail and bass presence of the Sonos Five, which remains the most impressive audio-focused speaker Sonos sells. But for $100 less, you’re getting a premium experience that far surpasses the Era 100 and other speakers like Apple’s HomePod. I was very impressed with the Era 100, but playing the speakers back side-by-side shows just how much better the Era 300 is at making each separate component of a song shine. Bass, vocals and instrumentation are all reproduced in excellent detail that smaller speakers simply can’t match.

But the real question with the Era 300 is the value of spatial audio – does it really provide a new and worthwhile listening experience? For me, the answer is a big “sometimes.” Right now, I think that the trick of spatial audio, to a large extent, remains just that: a trick. I spent a lot of time bouncing between Atmos versions of songs on Apple Music and Amazon, comparing them to the standard versions on Spotify. I could always tell there was a difference, but I also didn’t always feel that it was an improvement. Broadly speaking, spatial audio tracks did feel less like they were coming out of a single point in space. But a lot of times, the immediacy of the song’s original mix was lost and the vocals felt drenched in reverb rather than being right up close.

In some cases, especially when I listened to older albums that were remixed for spatial audio, the results were simply worse. The excellent guitarwork and vocals on the Alice in Chains classic “Down in a Hole” from 1992’s Dirt sounded a million miles away. I had high hopes for the multi-layered doom rock of “Rain When I Die,” but again the mix felt mushy and poorly defined. Alice in Chains’ 1990 debut Facelift was also released in Atmos recently, and it sounds far better than Dirt, so it’s clear that older albums and spatial audio aren’t inherently incompatible. Pearl Jam’s 1991 debut Ten didn’t sound bad, but there was still a lack of definition to too much of the mix. By contrast, the recently-released Atmos mix of 1998’s Yield was an enjoyable listen, but I’m not convinced it’s better than the original. For the record, this isn’t a fault of the speaker, but rather a fault of these mixes – I noticed the same issues when listening through Apple’s HomePod or AirPods Max.

Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Newer songs and albums that are likely recorded, produced, and mastered with spatial audio, in mind sounded better. The acoustic guitar and hushed vocals of Billie Eiish’s “Billie Bossa Nova” felt wonderfully close, and the club beats of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia were lively and impressive. In most cases, though, the mixes that sounded best to me were only slightly different than the originals, and I still often felt like the Atmos versions put too much reverb into the mix. This was particularly true on Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest album The Loneliest Time. Instrumentation sounded lush and vibrant, but the vocals lacked impact. In a best case scenario, with a single Era 300, the difference between the best spatial audio and standard mixes is often going to be fairly subtle.

I will admit that when I simply put on a playlist of new songs (many of which were in spatial audio) and stopped thinking about it, I enjoyed myself a lot more. It helps that newly-released songs generally sound much better in Atmos than the remixes of older albums I’ve come across. When I wasn’t obsessively comparing the new mixes to old versions of songs I knew inside and out, it was easier to appreciate the Era 300 for the great-sounding speaker it is. But that’s the case whether you’re listening to an Atmos version of a song or the standard mix, so spatial audio shouldn’t be the main reason to buy the Era 300.

Like basically all Sonos speakers, you can pair two Era 300s together for stereo playback, though I’m not sure “stereo” is the right word when we’re talking about spatial audio. The fact that you can’t adjust the left / right balance between them kinda proves that point. Regardless of what you call it, two Era 300s provide an absolutely massive experience that does a better job of delivering on the promise of spatial audio. With two speakers, there’s no real sweet spot; instead, music sounds consistently excellent regardless of where you are relative to the speakers. And if you want to get really wild, you can use a pair of Era 300s as rear speakers along with a Sonos Arc or second-gen Beam soundbar to get Dolby Atmos home theater playback. I don’t have the right living room or soundbar setup to make this work, but I can say it was impressive in a demo Sonos gave the press last month. Of course, considering how much an Arc and two Era 300s costs, it had better be.

Wrap-up

The Era 300 is in a slightly strange place in the Sonos portfolio. Its higher price means it’s not going to be as broadly appealing as the $250 Era 100. It’s closer to the $550 Sonos Five, which is probably a superior speaker despite lacking spatial audio capabilities. But, for $100 less, the Era 300 still provides a premium audio experience and has a handful of improvements over the Five, including built-in microphones and automatic Trueplay tuning. For $500, you could also buy a pair of Era 100 speakers and run them in stereo – those speakers sound great, and you’ll get excellent coverage with two of them working together.

And, of course, there’s the messy potential for spatial audio. After spending a lot of time listening to the Era 300, I don’t think it’s a game-changer yet. In the best cases, it provides a different listening experience, but it’s not always better – in fact, I’ve been surprised at how often it has been worse. While lots of new music is being released in spatial audio, most older music is only available in good old stereo, so the catalog of songs available in the new format is comparatively small.

Fortunately, the Era 300 is a great speaker, whether or not it is playing songs in Dolby Atmos. It’s crisp, loud, detailed and has lively bass – and when I’ve stopped thinking about spatial audio, it has been a joy to listen to. Spatial audio is a potentially interesting feature, especially if more and more musicians and producers embrace it, but I’d recommend that you not buy the Era 300 with only that in mind. Buy it if you’re really interested in a premium speaker that does a great job filling a room with sound, whether it’s an Atmos mix or not.