For those who haven't jumped on the Instant Pot bandwagon yet, the holiday shopping season is a great time to buy one because you'll find most models on sale. We're a few days out from Black Friday but the six-quart Instant Pot Duo Plus is already half off, bringing it down to a record low of $59. The higher-end Instant Pot Pro Crisp, which includes an air-fryer lid, is also down to an all-time low of $170.
The Instant Pot Duo Plus is better for most people, and certainly better for Instant Pot newbies. It combines nine cooking methods in one device: pressure cooking, slow cooking, sautéing, rice cooking, yogurt making, steaming, warming, sous vide cooking and sterilizing. It also has a number of quick-cooking modes, including slow cook, soup, eggs and rice, that can be activated with just one button press. All that is to say that this one device can prepare a bunch of different foods in various ways, without much hassle on the part of the home cook. The inner pot is made of food-grade stainless steel and is dishwasher safe, too, so cleanup is a breeze as well. And with this model's six-quart capacity, you'll be able to make a full meal for a mid-sized family or a group of visiting friends easily.
Air frying is a big trend right now and thankfully you don't have to buy a dedicated air fryer to get those results. A few Instant Pot models have an air fry mode, but they require a special lid. The Instant Pot Pro Crisp is one such model that comes with the necessary lid (along with the standard multi-cooker lid) and it's $80 off right now, bringing it down to $170. This model has 11 cooking modes, the two included lids plus additional accessories like an air fryer basket and a dehydrating/broiling tray. It's also an eight-quart machine, making it even better than the discounted Duo Plus for large families and gatherings.
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Smartwear hasn’t quite had its moment. Innovators like Hexoskin and Omsignal, not to mention huge companies like Adidas and Ralph Lauren, have struggled to make an impact, demanding a lot of money for dedicated shirts and sensors, while contending with mediocre accuracy, polarizing style choices and not many compelling reasons to exist. As Adam Crofts, founder of the startup Prevayl, puts it, there have been a lot of lessons to learn from other companies’ mistakes. He’s hoping to get it right.
Prevayl, whose first products launch in the UK later this month, combines a small tracking sensor with a line of fitness “smart” shirts, from crop tops through to vests and compression shirts, in addition to a companion app (of course) and an online community. Usually, that means something approximating a forum, but according to the company’s website, it’s created “a members-only private community designed for amateur athletes and the sporting elite.”
It’s limited its first wave of users to 700 people. The audience seems to be, well, the fittest friends and acquaintances you know. The ones that know what they can benchpress, their fastest 5K time, or their VO2 Max. The latter is not a haircare product.
Prevayl’s sweet spot is this area between amateur athlete and biometric obsessive, and it’s approaching the fitness tech fight with style. It has a slick promotional video featuring pro athletes, a moody black logo and a surprisingly slick, well designed app. (Seriously, it amazes me how poor most entry-level fitness apps can still look.) And the shirt? Well, it looks good on the athletes.
At a preview event in London, the team set me up in one of their first shirts, ahead of a planned launch early next year. It feels like a premium, luxury sports tee. It’s breathable, soft to the touch and tight. An elasticated band across the chest on all of the garments houses the conductive sensors, connected with graphene-augmented knitted electrodes. The fibers connecting these sensors look like metallic shoelaces and are machine washable. The shirt can go straight into a warm laundry wash; you just need to ensure you’ve taken the sensor out from the tiny pocket on the front of the clothing.
Mat Smith/Engadget
There’s no need to fasten the sensor in place, as it comes in contact with the conductive fabric as soon as it’s in the front of the shirt. The sensor itself is an evolution from the chunky haphazard sensor unit design of smartwear’s past. The sensor has a plastic stopper that protects the USB-C charging port, while the charging cable is a small, machined aluminum clasp that magnetically folds in on itself.
The company makes everything here in-house, and Crofts believes this is why Prevayl can do things differently. “Usually, it’s been tech [companies] trying to make clothing or visa versa.” The company’s approach to the clothing itself was “style led” design. Prevayl’s head office has entire machines and technicians dedicated to knitting the clothing part of the equation.
Despite the sensor itself being so small, it’s packed with tech. There’s a “clinical-grade” ECG, that tracks your workout with four times the frequency of Polar heart rate monitors. It also monitors breathing frequency, motion and even body temperature. There’s even a bioimpedance sensor, which can be used for body composition scans, but there didn’t seem to be any feature that takes advantage of that yet. Prevayl is trying to do it all.
The company puts all this biometric data to use through many of the features and guidance you’ve seen on other fitness devices and services. Like Whoop, the system can be used to gauge whether your body has fully recovered from a workout; like MyZone’s traffic light system, it color-codes your workout effort into five categories, measuring both how hard you’re working out and when your heart rate has recovered. This is all in addition to tracking your heart-rate, caloric burn and more. Within the app, you can even see an accurate cardiogram of your heart as it beats away.
Mat Smith/Engadget
One of the bigger challenges, which many fitness trackers and wearables struggle with, is ensuring a decent level of accuracy. Crofts mentioned multiple times during our interview that the company has been obsessed with gathering data.
The company worked with the UK’s University of Salford to validate the accuracy of its ECG unit. The team also recruited professional athletes, including British Olympic and Paralympic athletes and professional sportspeople, to test its prototypes and offer up crucial data for the team to chew over. The next stage is testing with more typical gym-goers, weekend warriors and the marginal gain-chaser, kicking off this month.
Even sized at a large, my tee felt a little too snug. I know many of us aren’t fans of the compression fit, but this, a tank top and crop top are the only options for now. Fortunately, Prevayl is working on loose fit and long-sleeved options, which I’d find more appealing. More colors, beyond Personal Trainer Black (my name, not theirs), are also incoming. The issue remains, though: If you wanted to use this system frequently, you will need more than one top. Or to do a daily laundry run.
As the sensor is removable, this should strip away some (most?) of the cost of additional shirts. But Prevayl wants to invade the luxury sportswear segment and that means prices to reflect that ambition. To begin with, it will cost you at least £120, which is roughly equivalent to $160. This starter kit includes a sensor priced at £60, and a tank top. Not including the sensor, the Smart Tank will cost £60, while the Smarts Sports Bra will be £65. The Smart T-Shirt, which I tested, will cost £70. The impressive specs and tight app integration will go up against the expensive cost of entry.
Judging from my demo with Prevayl’s team (and my own early testing), the product is already looking polished. I spoke with a fitness professional at my local gym who, conveniently, had also tested out Prevayl. She noted that any new smartwear product would have to fight against incumbent chest straps and fitness trackers. Unlike a smartwatch, it’s nearly impossible to wear this top in tandem with a chest strap from another manufacturer. People are creators of habit — especially when it comes to exercise. People swear by Strada or their Apple Watch because it’s familiar and consistent. At this early stage, Prevayl’s online community isn’t yet live.
For now, the company is focusing on the UK and Ireland, but Prevayl’s spokesperson told me that the US will be a priority. I’m planning to test the smart shirt further, but I might have to invest in more items if I want to get serious about using Prevayl regularly.
Canon's EOS M200 is still one of the best budget mirrorless cameras thanks to features like the Dual Pixel autofocus system and 4K video. Now, you can pick one up with an EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 at Amazon for just $450 or $100 (18 percent) off the regular price.
The EOS M200 is a top pick as a budget camera because it's so compact and versatile. It takes great photos thanks to the 24.1-megapixel APS-C sensor, which delivers sharp images with natural colors and skin tones. It also comes with Canon's Dual Pixel eye-detect autofocus tech, so most of them will be in focus, too. And for social or tourist shooting, it comes with a pop-up flash.
At the same time, it can handle 4K video at 24 fps, albeit with a 1.6 times crop. That, along with the flip-up display, makes it very useful as a vlogging camera — and it's even good for social media because it can also shoot vertical video. The 15-45mm lens, meanwhile, offers a decent zoom range for most types of shooting.
The downsides are the lack of a viewfinder, though that helps keep the size very small. It also offers a limited lens selection and relatively slow burst shooting speeds. However, it's a real bargain at $450, which is a cheaper price than most cameras without any lens at all.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Just ahead of Black Friday, some solid gaming deals are popping up. A 12-month subscription to PlayStation Plus is currently $40 on Amazon. It typically costs $60 and it's a digital code, so you won't have to wait for delivery. If you’re already a PS Plus member, it’s still worth checking out this deal, since you can stack additional subscriptions.
You'll need a PS Plus membership to play most multiplayer games on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. There are exceptions for some free-to-play games, including Fortnite. In addition, members often get discounts on digital purchases through the PlayStation Store, as well as cloud storage and backups for game save files.
One of the major value adds of PS Plus is that players receive a mystery bag of a few games each month across PS4 and PS5. There are three extra PS VR games this month to mark the headset’s fifth anniversary. You’ll retain access to claimed PS Plus games as long as you maintain your subscription.
PS5 owners can take advantage of the PS Plus Collection too. It’s a selection of first-party and third-party PS4 games, some of which have been patched for better performance on PS5. The lineup includes God of War, Monster Hunter: World, Final Fantasy XV, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Ratchet & Clank, Days Gone, Battlefield 1, Batman: Arkham Knight, The Last Guardian, The Last of Us Remastered, Persona 5 and Resident Evil 7. The same rule applies: if your PS Plus subscription lapses, you won’t be able to play games you claimed through the collection.
Of course, given that this is the biggest shopping season of the year, there are discounts on games as well, and many of the better deals are for physical editions. You can find savings on PlayStation console exclusives like Deathloop ($30, usually $60), the director's cut of Ghost of Tsushima on PS5 (down from $70 to $40), Demon's Souls(also reduced by $30 to $40) and, in one of the bigger discounts, Returnal, which has dropped from $70 to $30.
There are good deals on multi-platform titles too, such as Eidos-Montreal's surprisingly wonderful Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which is half off at $30 on all platforms. Hitman 3 and Resident Evil: Village are both less than half price at the minute at $20. Hades, which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2020, is also $20 on all platforms.
Far Cry 6 is a third off at $40, and you can save on FIFA 22 as well. The latest edition of EA's famed soccer series is $40 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (it's a digital code for the latter consoles), and $28 on PS4 and Xbox One.
The PS5 digital edition and Xbox Series X don't have disc drives, so deals on physical games won't mean much to owners of those consoles. However, it's worth checking out the PlayStation and Xbox digital stores for Black Friday deals there too.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Samsung's latest family of foldables is its best yet, but also its most expensive. Their high price tags can make it hard to be an early adopter without emptying your bank account. But Black Friday sales have come in clutch for the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Galaxy Z Fold 3 — both are on sale for record-low prices at Amazon right now. The Z Flip 3 is $150 off and down to $850 while the Z Fold 3 is $300 off and down to $1,500. Both also come with a free pair of Galaxy Buds 2 if you apply the promotional offer on the product page before checking out. If you'd rather order directly from Samsung, you can get the same deal on the Z Fold 3 there, but the Z Flip 3 costs an extra $50.
Out of the two, the Z Flip 3 impressed us more, in part because Samsung fixed many of the problems found in its predecessor. While you'll still notice a crease in its 6.7-inch AMOLED display, it's not as noticeable as before, and the screen and the device overall seems more durable this time around. The handset doesn't scratch as easily anymore and it's IPX8 water resistant, too.
The main screen runs at 2,640 x 1,080 resolution and is lovely to use, and it supports up to 120Hz refresh rates. When folded, the 1.9-inch external screen displays short bits of information like the weather and calendar events, and it can be used to quickly access certain features like Samsung Pay. We also appreciate the new software features that Samsung built in that are foldable specific such as Flex Mode, which will show things like a a YouTube video on the top half of the display when the device is partially folded and the comments section on the bottom.
While the Z Flip 3 is both impressive and fairly practical, we found the Z Fold 3 to be remarkable but much less useful. It's larger and heavier for one, and when closed, it's narrower than most smartphones, which makes it a bit awkward. Its 7.6-inch AMOLED interior display provides an immersive experience and is more flexible than previous iterations, and we appreciate the S Pen support. But overall, it's not the best smartphone nor the best small tablet. However, that might not matter to those who are super excited about owning a foldable — and these Black Friday sales make that reality a bit more accessible.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
The cult classic '90s game Earthworm Jim is coming back to TV as a new series, according to Variety and a tweet from Interplay Entertainment. Interplay holds the rights to Earthworm Jim games and recently announced it was bringing the franchise back as an Intellivision Amico exclusive.
The project will be headed be Interplay's newly formed TV and film studio division, working with the animation studio Passion Pictures. "There’s so much potential in this story universe: a galaxy full of animals battling for power," project lead Michel K. Parandi told Variety. "Jim is an earthworm in a universe where Earth is nothing more than a myth. His struggle to find meaning is surreal and comical, but it’s also relatable."
The first Earthworm Jim game came out on Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo in 1994, with the last released in 1999. There's still no word on when the new game will arrive. There was also a Warner Bros. cartoon series based on the game that ran for two season in 1995, with the lead character played by none other than Dan Castellaneta, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson.
In a follow-up tweet, Interplay said that the original creator of the game, presumably Doug TenNapel, "is not involved at all." TenNapel was originally brought in as a creative consultant on the game, but his participation was called into question after he made a number of racist and homophobic comments on a podcast.
If you missed the chance to get the NVIDIA Shield TV for $20 off its usual price in August, here's your chance to do so before Black Friday even arrives. The $150 streaming box is now on sale for $130 at Best Buy, which is only $1 more than its all-time low price for Black Friday last year and is the best price we've seen for the device in 2021. It's a great chance to grab the streaming box if you're looking for something a bit more powerful than a Chromecast either for yourself or as a gift this holiday season.
The Shield TV is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra X1+ processor, giving it the capability to run the Android TV software smoothly and efficiently. It supports Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos surround sound, and it's capable of 4K streaming from services where it's available, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV. You can also stream straight from your phone with its built-in Chromecast 4K.
The Shield TV isn't literally a box and comes in a tubular body, which NVIDIA says can help avoid wireless interference. On it, you'll find a Gigabit Ethernet port and a microSD card slot for storage expansion. You can control the device with your voice using Google Assistant, and you can issue commands hands-free with Alexa through an Amazon Echo speaker, as well. As a plus, it has Bluetooth that you can use to transfer media and to connect accessories like wireless headsets. The NVIDIA Shield TV has been around for a couple of years at this point, but it's still a powerful addition to your entertainment center.
Meta and Microsoft aren’t the only companies with ambitions for the metaverse. On Thursday, Nike announced a partnership with Roblox to offer a free virtual playspace called Nikeland. In its current iteration, Nikeland includes minigames such as tag, dodgeball and the floor is lava that players can check out with their friends. Mobile integration allows you to use your phone to translate real-life movement into the game. In that way, you can do things like long jumps and fast sprints. Naturally, there’s also a digital showroom where players can get Nike swag for their avatar.
According to CNBC, that’s only the start of what the brand has planned for the space. In the future, it could host competitions tied to global sporting events. For instance, it could host soccer games when the 2022 World Cup kicks off in Dakar. The showroom could also one day tease future product releases and allow users to co-create items.
It’s no surprise to see Nike partner with Roblox on a metaverse play. With more than 200 million estimated monthly active users, it’s one of the most popular games among kids and teenagers. By offering a free space where those young people can interact with the brand, Nike creates an avenue for them to become its customers in the real world.
I was definitely a little out of my element when I took on this review. I’m not really an arts and crafts kind of guy. Sure, I’ll do the occasional project with my four-year-old. I also like to make things (beer, music, small electronics) and generally have a pretty strong DIY streak. But I don’t really traffic in the same mediums as the traditional Cricut crowd: cardstock, fabric, vinyl, et cetera.
This sort of stuff is more my wife’s territory. She made the decorations, bouquets and the invitations for our wedding. She crochets video-gamethemedblankets. And she made a robot costume out of cardboard and aluminum foil for our kid. So honestly, I was kind of hoping she’d come to the table with a bunch of project ideas to put the $300 Cricut Explore 3 through its paces. Suffice to say, she let me down. (I still love her, though.) So I was largely on my own as I tried to figure out what exactly an Engadget review of a Cricut machine should look like.
I guess to start, we should establish what exactly a Cricut is. It’s basically a desktop CNC machine that’s designed to cut things like fabric, paper and vinyl, as opposed to wood or metal. The whole idea is to let your average DIYer quickly and easily cut intricate shapes and patterns with extreme precision.
The first thing I did: I made a delicate vinyl decal of a mixtape to stick on my laptop. Then I made one to stick on one of my guitar pedals. And a floppy disk decal that I put on top of a canvas board I painted. You get the picture. Basically, I just cut out a bunch of decals.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The process for doing these things is almost idiot proof. The Design Space app (available for macOS, Windows, Android and iOS) where you layout your creations is incredibly simple to use and offers access to over 1,000 free images and over 250 projects, ranging from simple stickers to 3D cardboard masks. And if that isn’t enough, you can pay for a Cricut Access membership (starting at $9.99 a month) that opens up over 200,000 images and “thousands” of projects. Or you can pay individually for licensed content from the likes of Disney, Marvel, Warner Bros. and Sesame Street. Or you can upload your own images.
The latter is pretty simple so long as you stick to line drawings, but it does require occasional cleanup work. For instance, I downloaded a Superman silhouette for my son to color in (he wanted to make his own superhero stickers). But before I could cut it out using the Cricut I had to select and remove the background, otherwise it’d have just cut out a square.
The instructions in the app for predesigned projects are thorough and clear. And that’s even true for relatively complex ones that require multiple cutting tools, markers and several different materials. It walks you through each step as you load a pen to draw on white cardstock, then cut the shape out, before having you swap in a different color card stock and the scoring tool. And for really involved designs, like the 3D cardboard masks, you’ll find a PDF with assembly instructions. (Well, most of the time at least. I only discovered after I cut the pieces for the cardstock fox I tried to build that it had "tips for assembly" as opposed to detailed instructions.)
The more intense projects that call for multiple materials and multiple cuts to be assembled after the fact can feel a little daunting at first. But as long as you don’t try to rush through without reading directions it’s relatively easy to figure out.
The bigger issue is, you end up needing a lot of stuff. The Cricut Explore 3 comes with a fine point blade, other tools such as the scoring stylus and foil transfer tool are sold separately, or as part of a bundle with the Cricut starting at $350 (which, if you’re in the market for one as a newcomer I’d highly recommend). But even if you get a bundle, you’ll still probably need to snag some extra stuff if you want to venture beyond stickers, decals and iron-ons.
See, part of the pitch for the latest Cricut machines is their compatibility with “Smart Materials,” which you’re able to load without using the special mat normally required to hold things in place for cutting. This is, to be clear, a huge advantage. One, it just means there’s fewer variables and less than can go wrong. But it also allows the latest Cricut machines to cut up to 12 feet of material in a single shot, whereas previous versions topped out at 24-inches with a mat. That’s great if you want to create room-covering decals.
The one shortcoming is that all the Smart Materials are adhesive in some form. There’s paper and cardstock sticker options, permanent or temporary vinyl decals, and iron-on. If you want to cut regular cardstock, paper or fabric you’ll still need to get mats, which come in four different levels of grippiness. They’re not prohibitively expensive; most people should be able to get by with the 12x12 variety pack, which includes light, standard and strong grip mats that cost $41. But it’s something to be aware of if you want to make greeting cards, paper banners or some of these undeniably awesome 3D cardboard figures.
If you do get those mats you’ll be greatly expanding the cutting capabilities of your Cricut, too. The Explore 3 can cut over 100 different materials from felt, to foil, to leather and light chipboard. If you spring for the $400 Cricut Maker 3 instead, that number jumps to over 300 materials, including acetate, various types of wood sheets and a host of additional fabrics.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
Creating your own designs or projects from scratch is a little more complicated. It’s simple enough to slap a few shapes and some text down on the virtual canvas. But If you want to make your own 3D figures, multilayered greeting cards, or print then cut custom stickers, things get a little more difficult. Frankly, it’s something that’s beyond my skill set.
There are templates in Design Space to help get you started laying out projects. But I found them only minimally useful. They’re basically just generic sketches of objects like bowls, mugs and guitars to give you a rough idea of what your decal or whatever will look like. But they’re not customizable enough to really be relied on for building out a complex design. I used the hoodie template to create an iron-on Spiderman emblem for my son’s Halloween costume. (It was chilly and I knew he wouldn’t want to cover his Spiderman costume with a jacket.) But I was still mostly left guessing when trying to figure out what the final product would look like.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
At the end of the day, the most important thing to know about Cricut machines is that they demand patience. Patience to figure out how to use it. Patience to navigate some of the complex projects. And patience to actually put those projects together. (Let me tell you, peeling thin cardstock off one of the mats without tearing it is no easy task.) But, it also feels like magic at times. Watching it as it writes impossibly small and delicate numbers on pieces of cardboard or cuts out intricate designs in vinyl is impressive. Obviously, more complex patterns require more time to cut out, but the Explore 3 is still impressively fast.
Can I say that a Cricut is absolutely worth the investment? No. It really is going to depend on your particular crafting needs and style. I’m not going to use the Cricut every day, or even every week. But I could see once a month dusting it off to customize something for my kid or to put a personal touch on a small project I’ve been working on.
What kid hasn't wished that their toy car was a full-sized road-going vehicle? Mattel showed some serious commitment to that idea by unveiling a full-sized EV version of the Barbie Extra Car based on the Fiat 500e that looks exactly like the toy car, Roadshow has reported.
Now showing at the LA Auto Show, the Extra Car is sitting on a Fiat 500e chassis, with an all-electric powertrain offering 100 miles of range and a healthy 147 pound-feet of torque — enough to let a human-sized Barbie Extra and her pets, accessories, etc. zoom around town. At the same time, Mattel used CAD files to duplicate the body of the toy car precisely and scale it up in foam to fit on the Fiat undercarriage.
Some of those details include sparkly silver paint and wing-shaped doors. The 20- and 22-inch (front/rear) pink and rainbow-hued wheels were apparently 3D-printed and hand painted. The headlights are gold and star shaped, which, nice touch. Sure, the whole affair is designed to promote Mattel's lineup of Barbie Extra dolls and accessories, but it should make the auto show a bit more accessible for kids.
