NAMM 2024 is right around the corner, but Korg isn't waiting for the festivities to officially begin. It's announced about a dozen new products over the last few days. Among them are updates to two of the company's virtual analog synths, the roughly 10-year-old KingKorg and the 22-year-old MicroKorg.

The KingKorg Neo is built on the same 37-key form factor as the rest of Korg's recent digital synths, like the Opsix, Modwave and Wavestate. But the core here is the company's XMT (eXpanded Modelling Technology) virtual analog sound engine. It's not the most convincing analog emulation in the world, but it does have some character. 

It's a multi-timbral synth, with each patch having the ability to layer or split to different sounds, with three oscillators at its disposal. There are 138 different options to choose from on the oscillator front, ranging from basic wave shapes, to PCM samples. And there are 18 different filter emulations to choose from as well, including the classic MS-20. There's also two LFOs, two envelopes, and a whole host of effects from your typical delays and reverbs, to amp simulators and sound mangling decimator. 

Perhaps most exciting though, is the 16-band vocoder and included gooseneck mic. But, the KingKorg Neo isn't the only new synth from the storied manufacturer with a vocoder. It's also updating its iconic MicroKorg with the MicroKorg 2. 

The original MicroKorg was launched in 2002 and went on to become one of the best selling synths of all time. In fact, in May of 2023 Korg was still pumping out iterations of the original, celebrating its multiple decades of success with a Crystal special edition. 

The new version has a very similar form factor, including its small size, gooseneck mic, the ability to be powered by batteries and a large dial for navigating patches that are still sorted by genre. But under the hood is a new sound engine, and there's a 2.8-inch color display on the front which should simplify sound design. There's also a built-in loop recorder which should make it a much more powerful instrument for solo performers.

The KingKorg Neo is expected to start shipping in February for $1,000. We'll have to wait a bit longer for the MicroKorg 2 however, which should be hitting the market in June, though there's no word on pricing. Hopefully it'll fall somewhere in the $500 range like the original. Part of what made the MicroKorg so successful was that it was perfectly accessible to even the lowliest of synth hobbyists. 

Many PC owners wonder when it might be the best time to upgrade parts of their setup that are perhaps getting a little long in the tooth. The answer to that is relatively simple: whenever there’s a good sale. A bunch of Samsung monitors are currently up to 33 percent off over at Amazon. Among them is the 27-inch Samsung Smart Monitor M8, which has dropped to a record low of $480. That’s 26 percent off the regular price.

The M8 can double as a 4K streaming TV, since it has native support for apps including Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. Through Samsung TV Plus, you can access a selection of free live and on-demand programming. In addition, you'll be able to stream games from the likes of Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now. They should run fairly smoothly too, thanks to the 60Hz refresh rate.

Of course, you can use the Smart Monitor M8 for productivity too. For tasks such as web browsing and document editing, you won't even need to hook up a PC. The M8 offers options to connect to another PC remotely, access the Microsoft Office 365 suite and even use the desktop mode of Samsung mobile devices thanks to the DeX feature. There's a built-in camera for video calls too. Moreover, you can use the M8 to control various smart home devices.

In case you don't need all those bells and whistles and you're just looking for a solid monitor that can get the job done on a tighter budget, a 22-inch 1080p model may do the trick. A T350 Series monitor has dropped by a third to $100, which is almost a record low for that model.

It has a decent 75Hz refresh rate and an IPS panel that Samsung claims will support a wide variety of viewing angles. FreeSync will help reduce screen tearing if you have a compatible AMD CPU, while the response time of 5ms isn't too bad for gaming.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

The tech world isn’t taking any breaks after CES! This week, Cherlynn and Devindra are joined by Senior Writer Sam Rutherford to discuss Samsung’s latest Galaxy Unpacked event, where it debuted the Galaxy S24 smartphone line. They don’t look very different from last year, but they’re packing a load of AI smarts. Also, Cherlynn finally got to try out the Apple Vision Pro and tells us all about her spatial computing journey. While it was a mostly eye-opening experience, the headset also hurt Cherlynn’s head and forced her to confront one of nature’s most terrifying creatures: A butterfly.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• Samsung’s Galaxy AI event: S24 line, 7 years of support for new phones, and a Galaxy Ring teaser – 1:05

• Cherlynn’s Apple Vision Pro hands-on experience – 34:42

• Apple is selling Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 again with blood oxygen feature disabled – 1:03:05

• Apple finally allows links to third party websites for purchases – 1:04:57

• Google throws support behind right to repair bill – 1:06:19

• OpenAI laid out its misinformation strategy for a busy 2024 election year – 1:07:58

• Cold temperatures in Chicago led to a lot of dead Teslas – 1:09:44

• Pop culture picks – 1:16:50

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Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Sam Rutherford
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Samsung’s big Unpacked event yesterday unashamedly focused on the company’s annual flagship phone refresh. No smart speakers, no tablets, no wearables (pretty much…) just three more phones, each with entirely different unique features. Just kidding: It’s mostly just changes to cameras and screen size. Same as it’s been since the Galaxy S20.

While introducing the Galaxy S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra, the company wheeled out streamer and YouTuber Pokimane to cheerlead the even brighter screens, while MrBeast — who Samsung couldn’t afford to have there in person? — showcased some of the camera tricks and specs of the flagship S24 Ultra.

However, beyond the predictable spec bumps, Samsung went to town on AI features this year. And they’re intriguing, inching beyond what Google’s been doing on its Pixel series for years.

Samsung

Sure, there are photography-augmenting features, with the S24 sniffing out unwanted reflections and shadows, but now generative AI will power auto-fill features, extending the background of shots to help recompose wonky photos. With video, a new feature will use AI to generate more frames to create slow-mo clips not actually captured in slow motion.

Samsung’s added AI smarts beyond the camera too, with new features for search, translations, note creation and message composition. New transcription tricks, when you record meetings and other conversations, mean S24 will split audio recordings into separate people talking and reformat it on the fly. You can even share selected parts or get the smartphone to summarize meetings and notes for you. I’m intrigued to see what my smartphone thinks is important during my weekly catchups with the Engadget team.

I’ll dig into the specs for the new flagship S24 below (it’s a Samsung-heavy TMA), but this year, it’s really about the software. And the good news is that many of these features will make their way to selected older Galaxy devices later this year.

— Mat Smith

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The biggest stories you might have missed

Sony is making an Until Dawn movie

Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus hands-on

How to pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Alphabet’s Wing shows off a larger delivery drone

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra hands-on

Titanium phones for power users.

Engadget

The $1,300 Galaxy S24 Ultra is Samsung’s biggest AI bet yet. Sure, the hardware design doesn’t appear to have changed much, but there’s now a titanium frame (available in colors beyond monochrome shades, Apple), ensuring the biggest flagship should feel lighter and easier to wield than previous iterations. The S24 Ultra’s telephoto camera is now based on a 50-megapixel sensor (up from 10MP on the S23 Ultra) with a 5x optical zoom. If you’re obsessed with specs, you might recall the S23 Ultra packed a 10x optical zoom. The company apparently chose this tweak based on customer feedback and use patterns, which saw 5x as the most frequently used zoom mode. We’ve got first impressions right here.

Continue reading.

Samsung announces the Galaxy Ring

Look, don’t touch.

Samsung

Near the end of its Unpacked event, Samsung started talking about its health-focused software, Samsung Health, and those watching the show fought to maintain concentration. Then, Samsung teased a new tinier piece of health-focused hardware, the Galaxy Ring. It’ll have lots of sensors and hooks into the Health software suite. But that’s all we know.

But if Samsung’s getting involved with smart rings, all we can say is: Watch out, Oura.

Continue reading.

Google admits it could collect data in Chrome’s Incognito mode

The company updated its disclaimer after settling a lawsuit.

When you open an Incognito browser on Chrome, you’ll see a notification warning that other people using your device won’t be able to see your activity, but your downloads, bookmarks and reading items will still be saved. Now, Google has updated that disclaimer in Chrome’s experimental Canary channel, shortly after agreeing to settle a $5 billion lawsuit accusing it of tracking Incognito users. The plaintiffs of the 2020 lawsuit argued that by tracking users on Incognito, Google was giving people the false belief that they could control the information they were willing to share. The new disclaimer in Canary says Incognito mode won’t change how websites collect people’s data.

Continue reading.

Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta’s board

She spent 14 years as COO and 12 as a board member.

Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta’s board of directors after 12 years, her last official role with the company. Sandberg spent 14 years as Meta’s COO and Mark Zuckerberg’s top lieutenant and 12 years on the company’s board. Her role as a board member will officially end in May. In a post on Facebook, she said, “This feels like the right time to step away,” and she would continue to advise the company. Hey, at least she posted it on Facebook.

Continue reading.

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2024 has come and gone, leaving behind a series of new Galaxy devices. If you missed the event, we've got you covered: You can watch Samsung Galaxy Unpacked S24 in less than 10 minutes right on our YouTube channel. Between new smartphones and a dive into AI — here's what you can expect to see.

The event revealed three new smartphones that make up the Samsung Galaxy S24 series. There's the S24, starting at $799 for the 128GB model — plus, order it by January 25, and Samsung will throw in a free Watch 6. The Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra start at $1,000 and $1,300, respectively, for their 256GB options. The entire S24 series comes equipped with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor in the United States, providing the necessary power for the smartphones' AI features.

The Galaxy S24 series uses Samsung's new Gauss Generative AI model. Galaxy AI, as the company refers to the overall system, allows for quite a few fresh features, including live two-way translations for phone calls. The system works right on the phone and doesn't require Wi-Fi or cellular connections. The same applies to Interpreter, an in-person translator, and Samsung Keyboard, which can translate messages across 13 languages. Speaking of messages, Android Auto can summarize any messages you receive while driving and suggest responses for you to approve with voice commands.

Galaxy AI will also come into play for any photos you take using the S24 series. According to Samsung, it can help with image stabilization, digital zoom and content captured in low-light. Galaxy AI can also suggest photo edits and offers Generative Fill to change the background. However, the latter requires a network connection and will give the photo a watermark.

Overall, the S24 series comes with a lot of changes and new features to test out. Learn more about the smartphones in our video below.

Sony is continuing to mine its back catalog of games for movie adaptations while conveniently continuing to forget that Bloodborne is right there. The next game that's bound for the big screen is Until Dawn, a 2015 interactive horror title that Supermassive Games developed and Sony published.

David F. Sandberg (Lights Out and the Shazam! movies) will direct the adaptation, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Gary Dauberman, who previously worked on Annabelle: Creation with Sandberg, is taking a fresh stab at a script originally written by Blair Butler (The Invitation).

Until Dawn focuses on a group of eight young people who try to survive the night at a perilous mountain retreat. The spooky game has a branching narrative and, depending on the decisions you make (or if you fail at quick-time events), some of the characters may not make it until the group is rescued the following morning.

Given that any or all of the characters may perish during the night, there are hundreds of possible endings to the game, so it'll be interesting to see which direction Sandberg and Dauberman take with the material. Several notable actors appeared in Until Dawn, including Hayden Panettiere, Jordan Fisher and Oscar winner Rami Malek.

Sony has already adapted several of its games into film and TV properties, with live-action versions of Uncharted (another movie pastiche that itself became a film), Gran Turismo, Twisted Metal and The Last of Us popping up over the last couple of years. Sony also has adaptations of Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War and others in the pipeline.

Today as part of its latest Galaxy Unpacked event, Samsung announced a whole host of AI-powered features for the S24 family. However, buried among the news was info that Samsung will also be porting at least some of those tools over to last year's premium phones and tablets.

After asking about specifically which devices were covered, in an email to Engadget, Samsung confirmed that the company is "looking forward to bringing the Galaxy AI experience to the Galaxy S23 series, including the S23FE, ZFold5/ZFlip5 and Tab S9 later this first half."

Samsung's new AI tools include things like Chat Assist which can translate languages in real-time or perform tone correction in texts and emails, Suggested Edits in photos which looks to automatically correct things like shadows and reflections and Circle to Search, which is powered by Google and combines traditional text-based queries with visual search similar to the Google Lens app. 

Currently, it's unclear if the entire suite of Galaxy AI features will be available across every device or if tools will be ported over on a more case-by-case basis. And without the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chips used in the S24 line to power them, it remains to be seen how much of a performance hit there might be on older models. That said, it's really nice to see Samsung commit to bringing at least some of its new software to last year's flagship gadgets as it helps avoid people feeling like they need to upgrade after a year or less. 

Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event today barely let us catch our breath after last week's CES. As we expected, the company revealed its latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra, which rely more than a little on new AI features. There's Circle to Search, Live Translate and Chat Assist to help you find the right words (and the right tone) of your messages — all of which you can read about in our hands-on report on the new handhelds.  

As for the design and hardware, not much has changed since last year's S23. The rear triple camera array remains the same with a 50MP main, a 12MP wide, and a 10MP telephoto lens. The 6.2-inch Full HD+ screen is 1/10th of an inch bigger and the battery adds 100 mAh to the size of the previous generation. The new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor has been optimized for the new Galaxies — which should help them handle all of those nifty AI-powered tricks. Here's how the Samsung Galaxy S24 stacks up against its two closest rivals, the Apple iPhone 15 and the Google Pixel 8. 

Near the end of Samsung's Unpacked event today, the company started talking about its health-focused software, Samsung Health. After touting the Galaxy Watch 6's sleep-tracking features and software tools like medication management and an upcoming update to its health software Samsung gave us a quick tease of an upcoming health-focused piece of hardware, the Galaxy Ring. It... looks like a ring, with a host of sensors clearly visible on the inside of the ring. 

And that is literally all we know. No idea of when it'll come out, what it'll do or how much it'll cost. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether it is actually released, but right now I feel like we're very much in Galaxy Home territory. At least the new Galaxy S24 and S24 Ultra are real — you can read our hands-on stories here and here.

Of course, Samsung is hardly the first to attempt a health-focused ring, though they'll probably be the biggest company thus far to do so. Oura has been at it for a while now, releasing its third-generation Ring back in 2022. It can track your sleep, measure your heart rate during exercise and track your daily activity to make sure you're hitting certain goals. Most wearables do this sort of thing already, though certainly not in such a tiny form factor. It's safe to assume that Samsung's Galaxy Ring will cover the same territory and work alongside the new metrics coming to Samsung Health, like the vitality score that the company just announced. 

Samsung has extended OS upgrades and security updates for its phones, starting with the newly-announced Galaxy S24 series. With these devices, the company says it will offer seven generations of OS updates and seven years of security updates. This is an extension of its 2022 announcement when it committed to four generations of One UI and Android updates alongside five years of security updates during the Galaxy S22 series launch. 

The company is matching Google, which extended its own software update timeline in tandem with the Pixel 8. Google's previous policy was five years, which was still a significant amount of time to extend a product's usefulness. Like Google, Samsung cites a commitment "to extending the product lifecycle" and "to help users reliably experience the optimized performance of their Galaxy devices for even longer." The company said this new policy will start with the S24 series, so it doesn't sound like it applies to S23 or other Samsung devices, but we've reached out to the company for clarification. As part of that 2022 update news, the company gave a list phones, foldables and tablets covered under the policy, including previous-gen models. 

In addition to updates that should help customers keep their phones longer, Samsung says it continues to increase the amount of recycled materials used in the Galaxy line. Recycled plastics, glass and aluminum are used in both internal and external components. What's more, the S24 series features parts made with recycled cobalt and rare earth elements — a first for Galaxy devices. Specifically, the S24 Ultra uses a minimum of 50 percent recycled cobalt in the battery and 100 percent recycled rare earth elements were used in the speakers, according to Samsung. 

The company has also committed to using at least one recycled material in every module of every mobile product by 2023. Samsung defines a "module" as the antenna, battery, camera, display, mechanical components, motor, circuit board, speaker, wireless charging and packaging.