It's not just Tesla that can offer games to play while you're waiting in your car. BMW is teaming up with AirConsole to deliver casual games in its cars starting in 2023. The technology downloads games to your infotainment system, and uses your phone as the controller. This is clearly meant to keep you distracted while you charge your EV, but the automaker sees this as helpful for any time you're waiting in the car — say, to pick someone up at the airport.
BMW didn't say which vehicles were first in line for the gaming upgrade. However, it pitched AirConsole's tech as a 'perfect' fit for the Curved Display already in use in vehicles like the iX.
This isn't quite as flexible as Tesla's approach to games, which lets you play using dedicated controllers and even the car's steering wheel. However, it could still prove valuable if you want to do more while waiting than fiddle with your phone. It's also an acknowledgment that the role of a car's infotainment is shifting in the EV era, when you can spend half an hour at a charging station. They now serve as media hubs that are just as useful when your car is idle.
If you're ready to upgrade your living room setup before the cold, winter months arrive, Amazon's Prime Early Access Sale has a bunch of deals you should consider. It's not often that most people upgrade their TVs, but this sales event has a number of good discounts on TV sets of all sizes from brands including LG, Samsung, Sony and others. For those that are already happy with their tube, Amazon has also discounted a bunch of home theater gadgets include streaming devices, soundbars and more, so you can upgrade your setup in a different way. Here are the best TV and home entertainment deals we found for this October Prime Day.
The latest Apple TV 4K has dropped to $109. While on the expensive side, it's a set-top box that Apple lovers will appreciate. We gave it a score of 90 for its speedy performance, Dolby Vision and Atmos support and much improved Siri remote.
Amazon's previous-generation Fire TV Cube is on sale for $60, or half off its regular price. It supports 4K streaming, Dolby Vision and Atmos, plus hands-free Alexa controls.
The standard Fire TV Stick is on sale for $20. It supports 1080p streaming with Dolby Atmos and it comes with an Alexa Voice Remote that has power and volume buttons on it.
The Fire TV Stick 4K is on sale for $25 for October Prime Day, which is half off its normal price. This one supports 4K streaming with Dolby Vision along with Dolby Atmos audio and Amazon's Fire TV OS.
The higher-end Fire TV Stick 4K Max has dropped to $35, which is $20 less than usual and a record low. On top of all of the features in the standard Fire TV Stick 4K, the Max version also supports WiFi 6 and live picture-in-picture viewing.
Roku's Express streaming dongle is on sale for $18, which is $12 off its usual rate. Like Amazon's own budget streaming devices, the Express doesn't have a ton of fancy features, but it does support HD content and it comes with a high-speed HDMI cable. The Express 4K+ streamer is also on sale for $25.
The latest Roku Streaming Stick 4K is on sale for $27, or $23 less than normal. It builds upon the technology in the Streaming Stick+, supporting 4K HDR10+ content, Dolby Vision, long-range WiFi, voice search and TV controls with the included remote.
A bunch of Sony OLED TVs sets have been discounted for October Prime Day, key among them being the 55-inch Sony A90J Bravia XR OLED smart TV for $1,798, which is 28 percent off and a record low. This model includes Sony's Cognitive Processor XR, Motion Clarity with a 120Hz refresh rate plus support for Google Assistant and Alexa voice commands.
A number of LG OLED TVs are on sale for Prime Day, with one of the best deals being the 48-inch A1 OLED smart TV for only $645. This is one of the company's more affordable OLED sets and it runs on LG's a7 Gen 4 AI Processor 4K and supports Dolby Vision, HDR10, Game Optimizer and voice controls with Alexa and the Google Assistant.
Plenty of Samsung TVs are on sale for Prime Day, including a 32-inch The Frame model that's coming in at less than $400. The Frame is a good series to consider if you don't want your TV to look like your typical black box when not in use since you can set it to show artwork while it's idle.
Vizio's Elevate soundbar is on sale for $700, or $400 off its normal price. It has multiple speakers inside the main portion that rotate upward whenever you're playing Dolby Atmos or DTS:X content. Plus, the whole system has 18 speakers, including a wireless subwoofer and two satellite surround speakers that you can position anywhere in the room.
Samsung's Premiere ultra-short-throw projector is a whopping $1,000 off and down to $2,498, which is close to its record-low price. This model supports 4K picture, 2,200 lumens of brightness and a built-in smart TV interface that makes it easy to access services like Prime Video and others.
If you've been eyeing those Instant Pots or Instant air fryers that everyone seems to have, they're on sale as part of Amazon's Prime Early Access Day with savings up to 50 percent. Some of the key products include the Instant Vortex 5.7-quart air fryer oven combo ($70 or 50 percent off), the Instant pot Duo Plus ($90 or 40 percent off) and the Instant Pot Crisp 11-in-1 Air Fryer ($170 or 37 percent off).
While Instant Pot Vortex is an air fryer, it also has one-touch controls for baking, roasting and reheating. It allows supports customized programs for specific types of food, so you can cook wings, potatoes or even cinnamon buns with a single touch. Grab the 5.7-quart model for just $70, or half off the regular price.
Instant Pot's 8-quart 9-in-1 Duo Plus model is also on sale, if what you need is the brand's classic pressure cooker. It has dropped to $90, or $76 off the retail retail price. The Duo Plus has nine functions in one device and could act as a rice cooker, slow cooker, yogurt maker, steamer, sauté pan, food warmer, sous vide and sterilizer, in addition to being a pressure cooker. It has 15 customizable programs to make cooking ribs, cake, soup and other types of food a lot easier as well.
Other notable items include the Instant Pot Crisp 11-in-1 Air Fryer ($170), that offers both Air Fryer and pressure cooker options. In addition, grab the Instant Vortex Pro Air Fryer that also offers rotisserie and convection oven functions for $110 (35 percent off) and the Instant Accu Slim Sous Vide that acts as a precision cooker and immersion circulator at $70 (30 percent off).
When Mark Zuckerberg announced the company he founded would change its name from Facebook to Meta, he added it would be “metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.” He’s shown off dystopian VR offices, looked at space in VR with Neil deGrasse Tyson and talked up the metaverse on Joe Rogan’s podcast. (During that appearance, Zuckerberg said he’s started MMA, doing some critical damage to the sport on the way.)
This year’s Connect kicks off at 10 AM PT today, with a keynote from Zuckerberg, and Engadget’s Karissa Bell has outlined a lot of the questions we still need answering. Will the metaverse ever look cool? How will it handle harassment and misinformation? And can Zuckerberg explain what the metaverse even is, one more time, for those of us at the back of the class?
If you still don’t own an Echo speaker or a Kindle yet…
Amazon Prime Day is, unsurprisingly, the best time to pick up a gadget made by Amazon. We saw record-low prices during July’s Prime Day and a lot of those prices have returned this fall. Discounts cover not only the usual Kindle tablets and Fire TV gadgets but also Eero routers and Blink security cameras.
Including the MagSafe accessories worth your money.
So you’ve upgraded to an iPhone 14, now what? Now you need to upgrade your phone charger from that dinky charging brick you got with your iPhone 6. Seriously, it may well change your smartphone life. We’ve got several other recommendations for charging cables, cases and more.
Gaming laptops have become some of the most intriguing PCs around. They’ve gotten thinner and lighter, naturally — but they’ve also become vastly more powerful and efficient, making them suitable for both work and play. They’ve adopted some bold innovations, like rotating hinges and near desktop-like customizability. Gaming laptops are where PC makers can get adventurous. If you’re a professional in the market for a beefy new computer, and you like to play a few rounds of Apex Legends on occasion, it may make more sense to go for a gaming notebook instead of a MacBook Pro-like workstation. We pick out the best options from the likes of ASUS ROG, Razer, Dell and more. It doesn’t have to cost several thousand dollars either. Our budget pick is $800.
A court in the Netherlands has ruled that a US company violated a Dutch worker's human rights by forcing him to keep his webcam on during work hours. Hired by a telemarketing firm Chetu, the employee was terminated for refusing to be monitored "for nine hours per day" by a program that streamed his webcam and shared his screens.
"Tracking via camera for eight hours per day is disproportionate and not permitted in the Netherlands," the court verdict states, adding it also violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court found Chetu dismissed the employee unfairly and must pay a $50,000 fine, along with the worker's back wages, court costs and unused vacation days.
Last week, LG announced it would allow third-party TV manufacturers to use its webOS platform, and now its main rival is following suit. Samsung has revealed it will license its Tizen OS TV platform for use in non-Samsung TV models for the first time, partnering with Akai, RCA and a bunch of other brands you… probably haven’t heard of. Those manufacturers will get access to features like Samsung TV Plus (a free streaming platform), personalized recommendations and even Samsung's Bixby.
Last week LG announced that it would allow third-party TV manufacturers to use its webOS platform and now its main rival is following suit. Samsung has revealed that it will license its Tizen OS TV platform for use in non-Samsung TV models for the first time, partnering with Akai, RCA and a bunch of other brands (Bauhn, Linsar, Sunny, Vispera) sold in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The partnership gives those manufacturers access to Tizen OS features like Samsung TV Plus (a free streaming TV and video platform), Universal Guide for discovery and personalized recommendations, and Samsung's Bixby and other voice assistants.
As we noted when LG first announced it would license webOS to other TV makers, these deals give buyers another option on lower-priced smart TVs that might otherwise run Android TV, Roku or Amazon's Fire TV. While you've probably never heard of many of the brands mentioned, the fact that Samsung is opening its Tizen platform means it could come to TVs sold in the US at some point.
Samsung's Smart TV and LG's webOS are good options instead of Android TV, as both offer good search and personalization capabilities, a choice of multiple voice assistants (their own plus Alexa and Google) and support for Apple Airplay (though not Chromecast). Google TV is a big update from Android TV, but the majority of TVs and streaming boxes like NVIDIA's Shield TV still use the latter — though Google's plan is to eventually have all third-party devices running Google TV.
Did you think the big tech events were over for the year? This week, it’s Microsoft’s turn, and we’re expecting lots of Surface news. That might include a long-overdue Surface Studio refresh and even a mini desktop. First up is the Surface Pro 9. It’ll reportedly use 12th-generation Core i5 and i7 U-series processors (considerably faster than the Pro 8’s 11th-gen parts). Don’t expect much to change on the outside, though. It’s likely the Surface Pro 9 will largely resemble its predecessor, with a 13-inch 120Hz display and two Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Some wild cards exist, like the previously teased Project Volterra, a compact desktop for developers building ARM-native Windows apps with AI features. It might look like a Mac mini, but it seems to be pitched at developers. We’ve outlined everything else we’re expecting to see right here. The event kicks off on Wednesday October 12th at 10 AM ET.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple should transition all of its wireless earbuds to the USB-C charging standard by 2024. The company may even refresh accessories like the Magic Mouse with USB-C as early as next year. The reported shift would put most of Apple’s products in compliance with the European Union’s upcoming USB-C mandate. The European Parliament recently voted to make the port the common charging standard across the EU. Once enacted, any new phones, tablets and headphones released in the bloc will need USB-C charging by the end of 2024. This will extend to laptops in 2026.
For the Chromecast with Google TV (HD), it's clear Google didn't try to do too much. As Engadget’s Sam Rutherford put it, that's totally OK, because the original blueprint works fine. It’s just tailored for 1080p screens this time. You get the same great UI, a nifty compact remote for all the basics and more than good enough performance — for just $30. So if you've got an aging set or secondary display that could benefit from a modern streaming TV OS, this is probably the solution.
Paramount has shared a new trailer for the final season of Star Trek: Picard at New York Comic Con. After the previous teasers mostly played up the nostalgia of the principal cast of The Next Generation returning to the franchise, the new trailer finally offers a glimpse at season three’s story. New threats, getting the old band back together and some surprise additions.
This week, we dived into everything we learned at Google’s Pixel 7 event. Sure, it’s nice to have new phones, but it’s even nicer to see Google developing a cohesive design for all of its new devices. The Pixel Watch actually looks cool! And while we were ready to knock the (way too late) Pixel Tablet, its speaker base seems genuinely useful.
They claim the company paid developers to prevent Play Store competition.
Epic Games and Match Group are attempting to expand their lawsuits against Google. In a motion filed last Friday with a federal court in the Northern District of California, the two companies accused Google of paying off developers who had the means and ability to create competing Android app stores.
That’s almost all the vehicles Rivian has ever delivered.
Rivian is recalling 13,000 EVs – almost all its delivered electric trucks and SUVs – due to an issue that could render drivers unable to steer and control their vehicles. The company issued the recall after seven reports that a fastener connecting the steering knuckle to the vehicle's upper control arm "may not have been sufficiently torqued."The automaker is hoping it can check all affected vehicles within 30 days. Rivian told customers they can bring their vehicles to service centers to have the fasteners tightened in minutes.
Rivian has notified customers that it's recalling 13,000 EVs — or almost all of the electric trucks and SUVs it has ever delivered — due to an issue that could render drivers unable to steer and control their vehicles. The company issued the recall after becoming aware of seven reports wherein a fastener connecting the steering knuckle to the vehicle's upper control arm "may not have been sufficiently torqued," according to Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal.
In the letter sent to customers, Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said the company is recalling vehicles despite the small number of reported defects "out of an abundance of caution." He said the fastener could become loose in "rare circumstances" and lead to loss of steering control, but that there had been no reported injuries related to the issue.
At the moment, Rivian has two models on offer, which are the R1T truck and the R1S SUV, but it also makes electric delivery trucks for its minority owner Amazon at its factory in Normal, Illinois. Like most players in the auto and tech industries, the global supply chain woes over the past couple of years impacted its production capability. It even tried to raise the price of its R1T pickup truck by $12,000 due to inflation and component shortages earlier this year, though it quickly reversed the decision after customer backlash.
In July 2022, the automaker reported that it had almost doubled its production output to 4,401 vehicles for the second quarter of the year compared to the first. That's a fraction of other automakers' output — rival company Tesla, for instance, manufactured 258,580 EVs within the same period — but it's a positive step towards achieving its goal of producing 25,000 vehicles in 2022.
This recall isn't expected to prevent the company from reaching that goal, and the automaker is hoping that it can check all affected vehicles within 30 days. Rivian told customers that they can bring their vehicles to service centers to have the fasteners in their vehicles tightened within minutes. The company also said that they can send mobile repair vans to customers. Those experiencing possible symptoms for the issue, such as noise and vibration, may want to look into that option.
In many ways the $2,059Pērkons seems like the drum machine sibling of Erica Synths’ SYNTRX. It’s not just that they share a chassis and knobs. But they’re both pricey, niche instruments that focus on having a unique character, rather than cramming in as many features as possible. But, while they’re both compelling yet impractical devices, that’s where the similarities end.
Talking about using Pērkons is going to get very complicated, very quickly. So let’s ease into things by talking straight specs. It’s a four-voice digital drum machine with multiple different sound engines and algorithms per track, paired with analog multimode filters and drive. There are four 16-step sequencer tracks with four different shuffle algorithms, ratchets and probability settings. In addition to a master output, headphone output and master send and return effect jacks, there are also individual outputs for each voice, along with separate sends and returns and trigger inputs for each, not to mention MIDI In and Out. Plus an analog bucket brigade delay (BBD), an optical compressor and an LFO.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
In short, there’s a lot of sound shaping power here. Sure, it doesn’t have microtiming, and you have to chain multiple patterns together if you want to have more than 16 steps, but there’s still a decent number of features to take advantage of.
The four voices don’t have prescriptive uses, but some are better for certain sounds than others. And each has a unique set of engines with multiple modes. For instance, voice one has a wavefold drum, a wavetable drum and a simple drum algorithm. The mode switch then chooses between three different transients for the fold drum, three different wavetables or three different simple waveshapes depending on the algorithm chosen. And each algorithm has different controls assigned to the parameter one and two knobs.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
This basic setup is spread across all four voices, just with different algorithm options. So while voice one and two work better for kicks and toms, voice three is your best bet for claps and snares, and voice four is ideal for high hats and cymbals.
I feel like it’s important to pause here and point out that, while I may say things like “best for snares,” these are not typical drum sounds. Don’t come to Pērkons expecting 808 kick — you’re not gonna get them. But, that’s part of its appeal. It doesn’t sound like other drum machines and it oozes character. That’s quite refreshing in an age of countless clones and rehashes that simply try to repackage beloved sounds of the past.
That character and unique timbre might put some people off, though. Even I initially was underwhelmed with what I was coaxing out of the Pērkons my first couple of days with it. But once I stopped trying to bend it to my will, and simply let it do what it was designed to, I came around pretty quickly. Those sounds are decidedly digital and err towards the aggressive end of things. Do you dig ‘90s industrial music? You’re gonna like Pērkons. Digital hardcore? Have I got the drum synth for you.
In fact, after years of mostly making more laidback and ambient styles of electronic music, I found myself dialing in harsh, blown-out guitar tones, a la Nine Inch NailsBroken to jam along with Pērkons. I was transported back to my high school days of black t-shirts and long greasy hair. And I wasn’t mad about it.
The one tip I have is, keep that drive knob pinned and be generous with the compressor. I think part of why I was a bit lukewarm on it at first was because I was trying to be subtle and judicious with dialing in those effects. Which, frankly, it was probably pretty stupid of me to expect subtlety from a drum machine named after the Baltic god of thunder.
Once you accept the sound palette at your disposal, you have to come to grips with the technical functions of Pērkons. This is where things can get a little messy. While programming in a basic 16-step drum pattern and playing it back is relatively simple, some of the more advanced functions aren’t always that intuitive. At least at first, I’d highly recommend keeping the manual handy. Even if just to reference what the parameter knobs are controlling for each voice mode.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The Pērkons is decidedly old school in its approach to interface design. There’s no screen or menus to dive through. Instead, almost all of the machine's functions from the sequencer playback mode, to the shuffle percentage to the LFO target, are controlled via the 64 step buttons or four trigger buttons. This means that basically anything beyond simply inputting individual drum hits requires pressing some combination of two or three buttons simultaneously.
For example, if you want to set the probability that a particular step will play you have to hold down the step you want to change, the probability key and one of the four trigger buttons to select a percentage (10, 25, 50 or 90 percent). The benefit is that, since you don’t have to do any menu diving, it’s simple to manipulate a pattern while it’s playing. And once you figure out the basics of how the interface works, it’s pretty easy to grasp since everything is labeled. The downside is that some things have relatively limited options, like probability. If you want to have a step to have a 33 or 75 percent chance of playing, you’re out of luck. Similarly, shuffle is in predetermined percentages, though those aren’t labeled.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
You also have to be careful to hit the buttons you want in the right order. If you press the pattern / ratchet button before you start holding down a particular step, then you’re not going to add a ratchet, you're going to change patterns. And if you haven’t saved the one you were currently working on, it will be gone for good. Pērkons can be fun, but it can also be very unforgiving.
Even though the interface is old school, Pērkons does have a number of new-school features to help keep it from being too robotic. In addition to shuffle and probability, you can change the length, add accents, multiply or divide the tempo, select one of four “grooves” and choose one of four different playback modes: forward, backward, ping-pong or random. And each of these can be done on a per-track basis. So you can make track four only 13 steps long and ping-pong from beginning to end and back at half speed, while track one plays at double speed with a 50-percent shuffle and track two has a unique groove but is only eight steps long.
All of these options are welcome, but can feel a bit unwieldy to manage at times. The lack of a robust menu system is both a gift and a curse. While it keeps everything at your fingertips, it also means you have to remember a bunch of button combinations to change or review settings.
Another thing worth discussing is that, while Pērkons is primarily a drum machine, it’s also a synthesizer. But, don’t expect to plug in a keyboard and play funky basslines. Instead, it’s best approached as a drone instrument. You can’t play the voices chromatically, at least on the current firmware. That said, if your ear is good enough, you can tune each step individually to create a bassline.
Changing the parameters for each step is simple too. You just hold the target trigger button and start turning knobs. It functions almost exactly like parameter locking on unabashedly modern instruments from the likes of Elektron. If you’d prefer to tweak things on the fly, you can just press record and start turning knobs to record automation. You can even change the algorithms and voice modes on a per-step basis, which really broadens the variety of sounds at your disposal in a given pattern.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The most important thing, though, is that Pērkons is an absolute delight to play. Frustrations with some of the interface aside, it lends itself towards live tweaking. And the hardware, just like with its distant sibling the SYNTRX, is incredible. The trigger keys on the right feel like they’re ripped straight from an IBM Model M. The individual step buttons have an insanely satisfying click. And the knobs have basically the perfect amount of resistance. All of this is in a large, metal body with wooden cheeks that feels like it was built for the express purpose of being abused.
All of that being said, I can’t simply recommend that anyone rush out and buy a Pērkons. It definitely caters to a particular audience. And its $2,059 asking price means you need to be really invested in that more aggressive aural aesthetic. While it does pack a lot of features and connectivity for the money, they're definitely targeted more at a professional audience than the casual bedroom producer. But, if you’re looking for something rugged, wholly unique and powerful enough to explode a few heads with a thunderous kick, the Pērkons might be the perfect drum machine for you.
Tesla's long-delayed semi-truck has started production, and the company will begin making deliveries as soon as December 1st, Elon Musk has announced on Twitter. When the automaker unveiled the Tesla Semi way back in 2017, it expected to start manufacturing the electric big rigs by 2019. While that obviously didn't happen, Musk told employees in an email back in early 2020 that the vehicle was already in limited production and that it was "time to go all out and bring the Tesla Semi to volume production." In April that year, however, the automaker announced in an earnings call that it's delaying deliveries yet again to 2021.
Alas, 2021 wasn't the Semi's year either. Tesla notified shareholders in another earnings call that deliveries would be delayed to 2022 due to the global supply chain shortages affecting the tech and auto industries, as well as its then-limited production capability for the vehicle's 4680 style battery cells. Musk didn't say outright that the company's component shortage issues for the semi-truck have already been addressed. But if it has started building the vehicles, and there's already an expected delivery date, Tesla must have at least enough parts to build Semis for its first customer.
The first batch of Semis will be delivered to Pepsi, which ordered 100 vehicles from the company back in December 2017. As TechCrunch notes, other big companies had also ordered trucks from the automaker, including Walmart and UPS. And in May this year, the automaker opened reservations to more customers for a deposit of $20,000. A Semi costs between $150,000 and $180,000, depending on the range, and it could go as far as 500 miles on a single charge.
At this point, we’re all pretty used to seeing Instagram copy TikTok. Now, in a new twist, TikTok is copying Instagram with a new feature called “Photo Mode.” The update allows TikTok users to share multiple still photos in a post, along with captions of up to 2,200 characters.
The new photo posts, which can also feature music, will appear in users’ For You page alongside videos. In a blog post, TikTok says it hopes Photo Mode, combined the recently-extended character count, will allow creators to “express themselves and more deeply connect with others.”
But Photo Mode is also making the For You Page more like Instagram in ways that may not be as creative. According to Mashable, the feature is already being used by creators to share recycled text memes and other content that’s often popular on... Instagram.
But TikTok now copying Instagram’s original premise is especially noteworthy given that Instagram has reportedly been struggling with engagement with its TikTok clone, Reels. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that TikTok is still vastly outpacing Instagram Reels in daily watch time.
It’s also the latest bout of every social media platform shamelessly copying each other until they all look kind of the same. In the last six weeks alone: Instagram,TikTok and Snapchat have come up with their own take on French upstart BeReal (Instagram’s hasn’t formally launched yet). Twitter introduced a TikTok-style feed for full-screen videos. While YouTube Shorts, itself a TikTok clone, added TikTok-style voice overs.
