“It all came about at 11:30PM on a random Wednesday.”

Penelope Bourbon CEO and founder Michael Paladini admitted that late-night calls are a regular occurrence for him. After his wife goes to bed, the kids are asleep and there are no emails hitting his inbox, he has time to get creative. One of these evening brainstorming sessions was with Robert Crandell, a regional sales manager for Tonnellerie Radoux and Pronektar. Radoux is a French cooperage that has been making barrels for decades. The company has been operating in the US since 1994, based in wine country California. What’s more, Radoux has conducted extensive research into the chemical composition and tannins of French oak.

Since 2008, Radoux has completed over 300 trials containing over 10 million analyses to observe polyphenols in the wood that can impact the appearance, taste and smell of wine. The result is a tool that can instantly measure these properties with Near Infrared Spectrometry, rather than using the time-consuming process of taking random samples from various batches of staves. The technology is called OakScan.

Tonnellerie Radoux

“French oak can be wildly inconsistent,” Crandell noted.

All of the variation in French oak can lead to unintended results without careful planning. Combine that in with the fact that the wood is more expensive than American oak and companies using it to age wines and spirits can greatly benefit from knowing how their liquid is going to react to the wood. It’s long been known that trees from different forests that are made into barrels will have different chemical compositions (the concept of terroir), and thus different levels of tannins. There can also be significant variation in trees just a few feet apart or from staves made from different parts of the same tree. What’s more, there can be distinctions in the grain width, which affects the extraction time for getting the tannins out of the wood.

“Even if you’ve gone to great lengths and you bought wood from the same forest, you still aren’t getting the same sort of precision and consistency [as with OakScan],” Crandell said. When Radoux uses OakScan to analyze staves bound for production, each piece of wood is assigned a barcode and a letter corresponding to its “tannic potential,” according to the cooperage. This not only helps with sorting, but it allows the company to build barrels with a specific polyphenolic index (PI), ensuring the wood is suitable for the style a winery or vineyard is trying to make. And since every stave is scanned, there’s uniformity of the tannin content of each barrel and all the data makes the end result repeatable.

OakScan also allows customers to select wood from different forests, but not by sourcing actual staves from those places. Instead, Radoux can build the tannin profile and replicate the terroir in a much more consistent way.

“If someone wanted a Voges-style barrel, we could work that out based on tannin level,” said Radoux national sales manager Craig Holme. “We can be more precise on what [the results are] going to be. Someone else will get a barrel that may be from two different trees [in that forest], and they might be completely different.” According to Holme, Radoux can pull 100,000% extracts from the staves that they can then put in a sample of a prospective customer’s product to show them what it’s going to do.

Originally developed exclusively for wine making, OakScan was initially used to analyze the chemical characteristics of barrel staves. Once the system was developed and fine-tuned, Radoux began using the same technology for tank staves. Thinner than a barrel stave, these pieces of wood allow for a quicker extraction process, which at the time was intended for larger volumes of wine. Where barrels are only toasted on the inside, tank staves are finished on all six surfaces and they’re designed to be completely submerged.

“Typically, the toasting process for wine is much more precise than the charring process for spirits,” Crandell explained. “So we came up with something very precise and very repeatable.” However, OakScan hadn’t really been used extensively in the spirits industry, he continued, except for a “small, experimental project” he had done a few years ago. Eventually, Crandell said he started working with Penelope and another micro-distiller to see if the detailed analysis of French oak could work for spirits.

Penelope Bourbon

Penelope isn’t your traditional bourbon maker. The company doesn’t actually distill anything. Instead, it sources aged bourbon from MGP: a producer of distilled spirits with operations in ​​Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, in addition to Mexico and Northern Ireland. MGP has its own brands of spirits (it actually announced the acquisition of Penelope earlier this week), but it also sells bourbon, rye whiskey, gin and more to other companies to package and sell on their own. Penelope buys bourbon of various ages and mashbills from MGP and blends it to their specifications. Sometimes they’ll bottle those blends as-in (Four Grain Bourbon and Barrel Strength Bourbon), while others undergo additional aging before they’re packaged.

While Radoux primarily caters to vineyards in France, Italy, Spain, the US and more, its colleagues at Speyside Cooperage (both owned by TFF Group) typically work with breweries and distilleries. Paladini and Penelope COO and founder Daniel Polise initially worked with Crandell to secure Rosé casks for secondary aging of its bourbon. They then collaborated with Speyside Cooperage to source toasted American oak barrels for a secondary finishing of its bourbon. For that treatment, Penelope would create a blend of aged bourbon and put it in barrels with varying char and toast levels for a period of time. In the end, Paladini and Polise discovered that even with the same bourbon in the same barrels, samples from each would be very different.

“It would go in completely different, wild directions,” Paladini observed. “We found that to be great, and that’s why that product was incredible.” Indeed, Penelope Toasted Series Bourbon won gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2022. The company leaned into the variation in the aging results, indicating the char and toast levels on the bottles of each batch. Of course, that means each batch is quite different.

Following the challenges of the Toasted Series, Polise tried using some of the OakScan staves in some samples. “We have so many different products that show up and people want us to try and use them,” he admitted. “I finally tried it and I was just shocked.” Polise explained that the OakScan French oak “stood out from the others greatly.”

Thus the idea for Penelope’s Architect Bourbon was hatched. The company was hoping to tap into the success of Toasted Series by once again being transparent about the types of wood they were using for secondary aging. But while OakScan can create the ultimate consistency batch to batch, Paladini says he and Polise weren’t sure they really wanted that.

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

“Our first thought was to take an exploratory approach and highlight the actual flavor profile on the back of the label. That profile is coming directly from the oak engineer in France when they run the OakScan process,” said Paladini. On each bottle of Architect, there’s a spider graph that illustrates the characteristics of that particular “build.” The company is playing up the idea of constructing a flavor profile, so it calls each batch a “build” instead. Hence the name Architect.

With Architect, Penelope has created six different “builds” or stave selections and they’re all different. However, they’re still consistent, as Crandell explained. “We can make a build again, it’s repeatable,” he noted. And that’s because OakScan allows for that consistency rather than the company hoping they can recreate a hit. They will, of course, need to replicate the blended bourbon from MGP that undergoes the secondary aging in order to do so. Even if they can’t, the company can still give a new blend the same “build” as a previous version of Architect. Since the wood analysis gives them so much control over the end result, the combinations – and the creative potential – are seemingly endless.

“[OakScan] not only gives you the ability to be precise, but it also gives you the ability to be creative,” Crandell said. “If you know what the end result is going to be, you can change the end result – you can control the end result.”

For Penelope, French oak that’s been analyzed with OakScan is only being used in Architect right now. But, Paladini and Polise aren’t ruling out using the staves for another product in the future.

“We’re constantly playing with different woods and finishes,” Polise noted. “So whatever matches next, we may release. It just works like that.”

How do you follow up one of the most well-regarded and critically acclaimed games of the last decade? Well, you keep a lot of things the same, but shake it up. The first few hours of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom take place entirely in the sky, but the game leads you through a handful of shrines to get a new set of abilities, just like you did on the Hyrule plateau in Breath of the Wild.

Now, there are islands in the sky and underground grottos to explore, assisted by some powerful new skills, including Fuse, which lets you stick objects to weapons and arrows to enhance them, and Ultrahand, where you can stick objects together to build basically anything you want, including vehicles. Read on for how this translates to the world of Zelda and Link – which is what I’m doing while I wait for my copy to land before the weekend.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Elon Musk says a new Twitter CEO is starting in six weeks

He will be CTO and executive chair.

Musk has announced a replacement chief executive will start at Twitter in roughly six weeks. While he hasn't identified the new leader by name, he indicated he’d hired a woman for the role. Musk will stay on as executive chair and chief technical officer covering "product, software and sysops." Hours after Musk's announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported that NBCUniversal advertising exec Linda Yaccarino "is in talks" to take over the CEO role at Twitter. Yaccarino is known for being an "industry advocate for finding better ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising," according to The Journal. Sounds fun. Musk said in December he would honor the results of a poll he made, asking whether or not he should bow out. He said he would leave as soon as he found someone "foolish enough to take the job."

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Sony's Xperia I V phone is a photo and video powerhouse

It borrows camera features like Product Showcase from its Alpha series.

Sony

Sony is still making smartphones, and its latest is the flagship Xperia 1 V, for both photographers and vloggers. The Xperia 1 V has a new image sensor called Exmor T for Mobile, designed to be faster and work better with computational (AI) photography while offering "approximately double" the low-light performance of the Xperia 1 IV. For vloggers and content creators, it now features the same Product Showcase setting found on Sony's vlogging cameras, like the ZV-E1, which will keep items locked in focus while blurring out the background. The new sensor also promises improved skin tones, thanks to extra saturation available on the sensor. It also has a new voice priority mic near the rear camera. As with past Xperia models, the catch here is the price: The Xperia 1 V starts at $1,400.

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Disney+ and Hulu will merge into a single app later this year

But they’ll still be available as 'standalone options.'

A "one-app experience" that combines Disney+ and Hulu content will launch in late 2023, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced during the company's latest earnings call. He said the company will continue offering Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ as standalone options, but combining services "is a logical progression." In addition to announcing the combined streaming app, Iger has also revealed Disney+ is getting another price increase after adding $3 on top of its ad-free streaming tier's monthly fee in December. He didn't say when the company is raising the service's prices, but when it does, the ad-free and ad-supported tiers will cost more than $11 and $8, respectively.

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Fairphone launches a fully repairable set of over-ear headphones

The Fairbuds XL are not buds, though.

Ten years since Fairphone launched its first repairable smartphone, now it's bringing its processes to wireless over-ear headphones. They’ll include active noise cancellation (ANC), multiple audio modes, two-point Bluetooth connection and a two-year warranty. The company says Fairbuds XL (these are not buds) use 100 percent recycled aluminum, 100 percent recycled tin in its solder paste and 80 percent recycled plastic. It added it has integrated Fairtrade Gold into its supply chain, and uses 100 percent vegan leather for both the ear cushions and headband.

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'Mouse' is a first-person shooter inspired by vintage Disney

Think 'Cuphead' with Tommy guns.

Mouse

Mouse is a shooter inspired by the style of 1930's cartoons from Disney and other studios. The (very) early footage shows barebones maps and gameplay mechanics, but if it gets close to the magic of Cuphead, it could be a lot of fun.

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/.Smart displays have evolved quite a bit since the initial debut of Amazon’s first Echo Show back in 2017. In fact, the category didn’t really come into its own until Google joined the fray with its own line of hardware about a year later. Now, both of these companies are essentially dominating the smart display landscape, with each offering their own take on a smart assistant with a screen.

It’s that screen that makes smart displays so much more useful than smart speakers. Rather than just having a voice recite the current weather report, for example, you can see a five-day forecast as well. The same goes for when you ask about your shopping list or calendar; it's simply easier to see the whole list or your day's appointments at a glance.

Plus, displays offer other benefits that speakers can't, like watching videos or checking your webcam to see who's at your front door. They're especially handy in the kitchen, where you can use them for step-by-step cooking instructions. And, thanks to touchscreens, you can often navigate through functions and settings a lot faster than using your voice.

Amazon vs. Google

The first question you should ask is when looking for the best smart display for you is whether you prefer Amazon’s or Google’s ecosystem. If you have a lot of Google products in your home, like Nest thermostats or Nest cams, then a Google-powered model makes more sense. If you have Amazon products, like a Fire TV Stick or a Ring cam, Amazon would obviously be a better choice. Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to have products from competing companies in the same home, but just realize they might not work seamlessly with each other.

Aside from that, the two systems also offer some unique features. Google, for example, works best if you have an existing Google account and use services like Calendar and Photos. In fact, we especially love Google smart displays because they work well as digital photo frames. You can set it up to automatically pull in pictures of friends and family from your Google Photos library, and the algorithm is smart enough to use what it thinks are the best shots — so less chance of blurry photos or images of your eyes half-closed showing up, for example.

It might seem like a minor point, but seeing as the display is on standby 90 percent of the time, its secondary function as a digital photo frame is very welcome. All Google smart displays also support YouTube and YouTube TV, step-by-step cooking instructions and all of the usual benefits of Google Assistant, like weather reports. As with Assistant on the phone, it also has voice recognition, so only you can see your calendar appointments and not others.

Amazon's smart displays, on the other hand, are slightly different. Instead of YouTube, they offer some alternative video streaming options, including Amazon Prime, NBC and Hulu. They also come with two browsers (Silk and Firefox), which you can use to search the web or watch YouTube videos – a handy enough workaround given the lack of a dedicated app.

Amazon devices offer step-by-step cooking instructions as well, thanks to collaborations with sources like SideChef and AllRecipes. In fact, the cooking instructions sometimes include short video clips. But although you can use Amazon's displays as digital photo frames, the process is not quite as intuitive as Google’s, and Amazon doesn’t have anything comparable to Google’s photo-sorting algorithm.

The best smart displays

Smart displays come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and some are better suited to certain rooms in the home than others. So while we do have some favorite all-around picks, we've also compiled a list of the best smart displays that would suit specific use cases as well.

The best Google smart display: Google Nest Hub

We at Engadget tend to prefer Google smart displays because most people are likely already entrenched in the Google ecosystem due to the ubiquity of Google services like Gmail, Calendar and so forth. We also tend to find Google Assistant to be a little smarter than Alexa, especially when bringing up answers from the web. As mentioned earlier, we also really like the tie-in with Google Photos and the smart photo-sorting algorithm.

Our favorite smart display overall is Google's latest Nest Hub. Its 7-inch size is a better fit in more rooms, and its unobtrusive design combined with its soft fabric exterior blends nicely into your existing home decor. It does everything we think most people would want in a smart display, like YouTube videos, step-by-step cooking instructions, smart home controls and the ability to check in on your Nest cams if you have any.

In fact, the Nest Hub is especially useful if you have a Nest video doorbell, as the camera view of who’s at the front door will show up on the screen. An ambient light sensor helps to detect the light and color temperature of the environment and adjusts the screen to match. Plus, if you choose, it can help track your sleep patterns if placed next to your bed.

Another feature of the Nest Hub is actually a lack of one: It doesn't have a camera. That gives it that additional layer of privacy that many people covet, and it's also a lot more suitable for personal spaces like the bedroom. Sure, you could also cover up a camera with a shutter, but with the Nest Hub you don't have to remember to do that.

Runner up: Google Nest Hub Max

If you like Google but you miss having a camera for video calls, or you just prefer a bigger screen, consider the Google Nest Hub Max. At 10 inches instead of seven, it works a lot better for watching videos from YouTube and YouTube TV. It's especially useful in the kitchen, where it functions as a kind of portable television, and you can see more of those step-by-step cooking instructions at a glance. The bigger display also means a larger photo frame, which you may prefer.

As mentioned, the Nest Hub Max adds a camera to the mix. It doesn't have a physical shutter, which is a concern, but you can shut it off with an electronic switch. You can use the camera for video calls with Google's Duo service as well as Zoom, and it can also function as a Nest Cam to help you keep an eye on your house when you're away. Another benefit of the camera is the addition of Face Match facial recognition for authentication purposes, which we found to be a little more accurate than just using Voice Match.

Last but not least, the Nest Hub Max's camera adds a unique gestures feature that lets you play and pause media simply by holding up your hand to the screen. It's not entirely necessary, but it's potentially useful if you're in a noisy environment and just want the music to stop without having to shout over everyone. Or perhaps you have messy hands while cooking and don’t want to dirty up the display.

The best Amazon smart display: Amazon Echo Show 8

Our favorite Amazon smart display is the second-gen Echo Show 8. Its 8-inch screen is just right; it doesn’t take up as much space as the Echo Show 10, but it’s also more suitable for watching videos than the tiny Echo Show 5. Like other Amazon smart displays, it has a built-in camera, but there is a physical camera cover to help alleviate privacy concerns.

As such, the Echo Show 8 is a compelling choice if you want the option of using your smart display for video calls. Not only is the camera quality fantastic, but the Show 8 has a feature that automatically frames your face and follows your movements during video calls. It’s useful if you want to move around as you’re chatting, or if you have rambunctious children and pets running around the house and you want to involve them in the conversation. You can use the Echo Show 8 to make calls between other Echo Show displays, or through Skype or Zoom.

As with the other smart displays, the Echo Show 8 also works as a digital photo frame and can be used to keep up with the news, check the weather and control smart home devices. If you want to use your smart display to play music, we also really like the Echo Show 8’s audio quality on account of its deep bass and rich tone.

Runner up: Amazon Echo Show 5

At only 5.5 inches wide, the Echo Show 5 is one of the smallest smart displays on the market, and as a result, will work nicely on a desk or a nightstand. In fact, one of the reasons we like the Echo Show 5 so much is that it doubles as a stellar smart alarm clock. It has an ambient light sensor that adjusts the screen's brightness automatically; a tap-to-snooze function so you can whack the top of it for a few extra minutes of shut-eye; plus a sunrise alarm that slowly brightens the screen to wake you up gently.

The Echo Show 5 does have a camera, which might make you a touch queasy if you are privacy conscious – especially if this is supposed to sit by your bedside. Still, it does have a physical camera cover, which can help ease any fears.

Best smart clock: Lenovo Smart Clock 2

Perhaps a smart display doesn't appeal to you because you don't care about watching videos on it. But maybe the idea of a smarter alarm clock like the Echo Show 5 intrigues you. In that case, I’d recommend the 4-inch Lenovo Smart Clock 2, which isn't a full-fledged smart display because you can't play any videos on it, but it does use Google's smart display tech, so you can use it for controlling your smart home as well as checking out your Nest Cams.

We also like it because it lacks a camera, which makes it perfect for your nightstand. It has all of the features we want in a smart alarm clock, like an ambient light sensor, that tap-to-snooze function and a sunrise alarm. Plus, the latest version can double as a night light – you can swipe down the display to enable it – and you can get an optional wireless charging base to go with it.

If the Smart Clock 2 is too advanced for you, Lenovo does offer an even simpler version called the Smart Clock Essential. It really isn’t a smart display at all – it’s really more of a smart speaker with a clock – but it does perform many of the same functions as the Smart Clock 2.

Lenovo sells the Smart Clock Essential in two different versions: One has Google Assistant, while the other is powered by Alexa. The one with Google Assistant has a built-in night light, an extra USB port for charging devices and a mic-mute button. The one with Alexa, on the other hand, is compatible with an optional docking station that can be used with accessories such as a wireless charging pad or an ambient light dock (it comes in either a sea lion or a squid shape) that can act as a night light.

In a potentially encouraging sign for reducing environmental waste, researchers have discovered microbes from the Alps and the Arctic that can break down plastic without requiring high temperatures. Although this is only a preliminary finding, a more efficient and effective breakdown of industrial plastic waste in landfills would give scientists a new tool for trying to reduce its ecological damage.

Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute WSL published their findings this week in Frontiers in Microbiology, detailing how cold-adapted bacteria and fungus from polar regions and the Swiss Alps digested most of the plastics they tested — while only needing low to average temperatures. That last part is critical because plastic-eating microorganisms tend to need impractically high temperatures to work their magic. “Several microorganisms that can do this have already been found, but when their enzymes that make this possible are applied at an industrial scale, they typically only work at temperatures above [30 degrees Celsius / 86 degrees Fahrenheit],” the researchers explained. “The heating required means that industrial applications remain costly to date, and aren’t carbon-neutral.”

Unfortunately, none of the microorganisms tested succeeded at breaking down non-biodegradable polyethylene (PE), one of the most challenging plastics commonly found in consumer products and packaging. (They failed at degrading PE even after 126 days of incubation on the material.) But 56 percent of the strains tested decomposed biodegradable polyester-polyurethane (PUR) at 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). Others digested commercially available biodegradable mixtures of polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) and polylactic acid (PLA). The two most successful strains were fungi from the genera Neodevriesia and Lachnellula: They broke down every plastic tested other than the formidable PE.

Plastics are too recent an invention for the microorganisms to have evolved specifically to break them down. But the researchers highlight how natural selection equipping them to break down cutin, a protective layer in plants that shares much in common with plastics, played a part. “Microbes have been shown to produce a wide variety of polymer-degrading enzymes involved in the break-down of plant cell walls. In particular, plant-pathogenic fungi are often reported to biodegrade polyesters, because of their ability to produce cutinases which target plastic polymers due [to] their resemblance to the plant polymer cutin,” said co-author Dr. Beat Frey.

The researchers see promise in their findings but warn that hurdles remain. “The next big challenge will be to identify the plastic-degrading enzymes produced by the microbial strains and to optimize the process to obtain large amounts of proteins,” said Frey. “In addition, further modification of the enzymes might be needed to optimize properties such as protein stability.”

ASUS has finally priced the ROG Ally in the US, and it might be more affordable than you think — if you're willing to wait. The handheld gaming PC is now known to start at $600 for a base version with an AMD Z1 processor and 512GB of storage. At present, though, Best Buy is only taking pre-orders for a $700 version with a Z1 Extreme chip. That model should be available on June 13th.

Both configurations include a 7-inch, 120Hz 1080p touchscreen, 16GB of RAM and a microSD card slot. And if the built-in graphics aren't powerful enough, they can also connect to ASUS' external GPUs.

The ROG Ally is ASUS' response to Valve's Steam Deck, not to mention offerings from Ayaneo and GPD. It's supposed to be up to twice as powerful as the Steam Deck while delivering a higher-quality display. And since it's running Windows 11 rather than Valve's custom Linux interface, it can run games from a range of stores without a compatibility layer that might limit performance. Theoretically, you're only missing touchpads and more advanced analog sticks.

There are still unknowns, such as real-world battery life across a wide range of games. With that said, this might be the handheld to get if you're frustrated by the Steam Deck's limitations but want the support that comes from a major brand like ASUS.

The same noise-canceling ability and overall clarity that make AirPods a good match for iOS, also make the buds well-suited for video chats and casual listening while you work on your laptop. AirPods are designed to pair automatically with your iPhone, but pairing them with a MacBook usually requires a few extra steps. If you’ve already connected them to your iPhone and you’re using the same Apple ID on your MacBook, your buds may already show up in your laptop’s list of available Bluetooth devices. If so, you can skip down to “How to switch your AirPods.” If you don’t see them listed, follow these steps. 

How to connect AirPods to a MacBook

Apple renamed System Preferences to System Settings with macOS Ventura in 2022. That’s where you’ll head first to access your Bluetooth settings.

1. Click the Apple icon in the upper left corner of your Mac’s screen and select System Settings. You can also click the System Settings icon in the dock or click on the Control Center icon in the upper right corner, and click on Bluetooth then Bluetooth settings. Once in System Settings, click on Bluetooth in the left panel.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

2. With your AirPods in the case and the lid open, bring them near your Mac and press and hold the button on the back of the case until the light on the front flashes white.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

3. Your AirPods should show up under My Devices in the Bluetooth window. Click the connect button to pair them. You may be prompted to enable Siri and select your voice assistant preferences.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

4. If your AirPods don’t show up in the Bluetooth dialog box, shut the AirPods case, wait 15 seconds and then open the case and press the back button again. You may have to try the pairing process a few times before your AirPods show up on the list. If you still have trouble, make sure the AirPods are fully charged and you have the latest OS version installed on your Mac. Restarting your computer might also help.

How to switch AirPods between devices

To manually switch your AirPods from another device to your Mac, follow these steps. Just keep in mind that these instructions only apply if you’ve already connected your AirPods to your Mac. If you haven’t done that, first follow the steps above.

You can go through the Systems Settings application, but I find it’s easiest to go through the through the Control Center:

1. Click on the Control Center icon in the upper left corner of your menu bar.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

2. Click on the text that says “Bluetooth” (not the Bluetooth icon, which toggles Bluetooth on and off).

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

3. Select your AirPods from the list of available devices.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

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.

Yes, Sony is still making smartphones, and its latest is the flagship Xperia 1 V designed for both photographers and vloggers. It features a new stacked, backside-illuminated (BSI) sensor along with features aimed at content creators found in its Alpha-series cameras. 

The Xperia 1 V has a new image sensor called "Exmor T for Mobile" designed to be faster and work better with computational (AI) photography, while offering "approximately double" the low-light performance of the Xperia 1 IV, Sony said. As you'd expect in a flagship, it offers other high-end features like a Snapdragon 8 Gen2 Mobile Platform, a 6.5-inch 4K 120Hz OLED HDR display, a 5,000 mAh battery that allows for up to 20 hours of continuous 4K playback, up to 12GB of RAM and more.

With that, Sony is promising "best in class" gaming performance, thanks to a Game Enhancer function that provides visual and auditory support. It also lets players livestream their gaming directly to YouTube. 

The key feature is clearly the camera system, though. The main 24mm f/1.9 equivalent 52-megapixel camera features a Type 1/1.35-inch (about 12mm diagonally) Exmor T sensor that's 1.7 times larger than the Xperia 1 IV's sensor, Sony said. It also comes with an ultrawide 12-megapixel camera and an 85-125mm 12-megapixel optical telephoto zoom, like the one on the Xperia 1 IV. The front 12-megapixel camera has a Type 1/2.9-inch sensor. 

Purists will be able to shoot video and photos using the professional modes that allow for full manual control. Chief among those is the Photography Pro mode designed for creative control. It also allows live streaming while letting creators see viewer comments in real time.

Sony

If you set it to Basic mode, though, you'll get a good dose of computational imaging seen in other Android phones. Those include a Night mode and color settings for subjects like flowers and a blue sky. It also delivers real-time eye autofocus and tracking, along with high-speed continuous shooting of up to 30 fps with auto-exposure and AF enabled. 

For vloggers and content creators, it now features the same Product Showcase setting found on Sony's vlogging cameras like the ZV-E1. The new sensor also promises improved skin tones, thanks to extra saturation available on the sensor. It also has a new voice priority mic placed near the rear camera that can pick up voices even in busy outdoor locations. 

Sony

One cool feature that might justify the price alone for many video shooters is the ability to use the phone as a monitor for select Sony Alpha cameras. The Xperia 1 IV could do that as well, but the new model offers multiple display options with waveforms, gridlines, and zebra lines normally only found on professional field monitors. You can also control settings and record content to phones, features that weren't available before. Meanwhile, the phone's microphones can capture sound while monitoring audio via the Xperia 1 V's headphone jack.

As with past Xperia models, the catch here is the price. The Xperia 1 V starts at $1,400 (in khaki green or black) with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (upgradeable via an microSD slot). That's a lot of money for most smartphone users (even flagship buyers) but might make sense for content creators, avid photographers and others. 

Along with the Xperia 1 V, Sony also unveiled a far more mainstream smartphone, the Xperia 10 V. It's powered by a Snapdragon 695 chipset and offers a 6.1-inch 1080p OLED display that's 50 percent brighter than before, but only refreshes at 60Hz. The camera system features a main 48-megapixel Type-1/2.0-inch sensor with a wide lens, along with a 2x telephoto and an ultrawide. Other features include a 5,000 mAh battery and up to 6GB of RAM. It's priced at €449 in Europe, with sales set to start in June. US pricing/availability is not yet available.

At I/O 2023 today, Google shared a few updates for both Android Auto and Android Automotive OS. Perhaps the biggest news is that Google is working with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex to bring those virtual meeting apps to Android-equipped vehicles. If the thought of joining a video call in your car sounds like a driving hazard, don't worry: the meetings will be audio only with simplified controls on the infotainment display.

Google is also rolling out Waze in the Google Play Store for all vehicles with Google built-in. This means the popular navigation app will be available outside of just Android Auto and beyond Volvo and Polestar models. What's more, the company is allowing developers to integrate the instrument cluster with their navigation apps. As you might expect, this will put turn-by-turn directions in the driver's line of sight. Plus, developers can access vehicle data like range, fuel level and speed to give drivers even more insight on their trips. 

Google

Google has added new app categories to the Android for Cars App Library. That repository now allows developers to add IoT and weather apps for use in vehicles. For example, The Weather Channel app will be available alongside existing software like Weather and Radar later this year. The company is also making it easier for media apps (music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc.) to port their software to Android Auto and Android Automotive OS.

Additionally, the company has new categories for video and gaming apps in its library, with the goal of expanding to browsing apps soon. These are specifically designed for use when the car is parked or by passengers. YouTube is now available for all automakers to add to cars with Google built-in. Google says Polestar, Volvo and other "select partners" have committed to adding the video-streaming app via over-the-air updates. In terms of games, the initial slate includes Beach Buggy Racing 2, Solitaire FRVR, and My Talking Tom Friends. What's more, Google plans to add multi-screen support to Android Automotive OS 14, which will allow "shared entertainment experiences" between drivers and passengers. 

Google

Google says Android Auto will be available in almost 200 million cars by the end of 2023. The company also says that the number of cars with their infotainment systems powered entirely by Android Automotive OS with Google built-in should nearly double by the end of the year. That latter figure is spurred by adoption by automakers like Chevrolet, Volvo, Polestar, Honda, Renault and more. In March, GM announced it would phase out Android Auto and CarPlay in its EVs in favor of Android Automotive.

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

After confirming its existence last week, Google has formally introduced the Pixel Fold, its first stab at a foldable phone. Like past foldables, the new Pixel has a vertical hinge that lets it unfurl like a book. When it's folded, you get a more traditional form factor with a 5.8-inch display. Open it up, and you get a wider 7.6-inch screen for multitasking or watching videos. Both OLED panels have 120Hz refresh rates, and the device runs on the same Tensor G2 chip found in last year's Pixel 7 line. Google is pushing the phone's thinness (12.1mm folded, 5.8mm when not), battery ("over 24 hours") and weight (10 oz) as particular selling points. It also claims that the near-gapless hinge is built to last over time.

We'll have to review the Pixel Fold before we can speak to that. For now, though, we've laid out how the Fold compares on paper to the most prominent book-style foldable on the market today: Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 4. Yes, specs can't tell the whole story with a form factor like this, and both Samsung and OnePlus are expected to launch new foldables in the coming months. But if you want a sense of what the Pixel Fold's $1,800 starting price will get you, here's a quick rundown. The phone is available to pre-order now and will ship in June. For more impressions, check out our initial hands-on.

Google Pixel Fold vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4

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