After Apple finally gave us a decent Siri remote last year, I couldn't imagine the Apple TV 4K getting much better. It's not like anyone is clamoring for an 8K upgrade – all we need these days is support for fast 4K streaming, as well as the multitude of HDR (high definition range) formats out there. The new Apple TV 4K can easily meet those demands, but what's truly impressive is that it's far faster than before and it's a lot cheaper at $129 (down from $179)! At last, there's an Apple TV I can recommend to anyone without hesitation.

Let's start with what's new: this year's Apple TV 4K is powered by an A15 Bionic chip, which launched with the iPhone 13 (and is still being used in the iPhone 14). That's a huge leap forward from the 2018-era A12 in the previous model. The new box also ships with 64GB of storage, instead of a meager 32GB. If you're planning to load up a ton of games and apps, there's also a 128GB model for $149, which adds an Ethernet port and support for the Thread internet-of-things protocol. Finally, Apple has integrated HDR10+ support, which works similar to Dolby Vision for delivering more accurate HDR in every scene.

At first glance, the Apple TV 4K looks the same as the previous models: a smooth black box with obscenely rounded corners. Peer a bit closer, though, and you'll notice it's actually smaller, like a prop rendering of its predecessor. Apple says it has 20 percent less volume than before, a result of losing the fan from previous models (this one runs silently) and being powered by more efficient hardware. Apple wouldn't say what, exactly, led to the dramatic price drop. But I'd bet it's down to simpler manufacturing, as well as a dip in component pricing across the board.

If you want to hear me wax poetic about Apple's Siri Remote, just check out my review of the last Apple TV. I'm still enamored with it a year later: It's easy to hold, has all of the basic functions you'd want, and it's far harder to lose than the previous super-thin remote. I'm still baffled why we were forced to use a glass-backed remote with a crummy touchpad on the original Apple TV 4K. Long live the new model and it's touch-sensitive, directional clickpad.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

So sure, the hardware is great, but how's the software? Setting up the Apple TV 4K is now surprisingly easy, assuming you're already beholden to Apple's ecosystem. After plugging it in, I just had to tap my iPhone to the box to send over my WiFi and iCloud credentials. I chose to synchronize my home screens, which made all of the apps from my current Apple TV pop over. At that point, all I had to do was log into my usual streaming haunts, and I was ready to go.

After using every Apple TV the company has put out over the last decade, I had one immediate thought as I started using this new model: Holy hell this thing is fast. That's not to say the last version was slow, by any means. But there's a snappiness to this year's box that just feels freeing. I can swipe through all of the apps on my homescreen with ease, launch Netflix a few seconds faster than before, and drill through my library of movies without breaking a sweat. No more slight loading delays or pinwheels.

It could just be that I'm experiencing the rush of a brand new device, one uncluttered by a year's worth of use. But using the new Apple TV 4K feels like the difference between using an iPhone X and an iPhone 14 — everything just happens faster, with a greater sense of urgency. I found that most useful when I was flipping between apps and different videos. While I was catching up on Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix, I could quickly hop over to check out my YouTube channels while my wife needed a bathroom break, and then resume the creepiness when she returned. Again, this is something I did frequently with the previous box, but now the Apple TV feels completely unencumbered.

Amid my speed viewing, I was also impressed to see that the Apple TV handles HDR 10+ without any issues. The opening chase in No Time to Die looked glorious, with excellent highlights in the brightly-lit European streets, but also solid shadow detail in darker scenes. That's the main appeal of HDR10+. Like the original HDR 10 standard, it delivers both brighter brights and darker darks. But, it can also adjust those settings based on the scene you're viewing, just like Dolby Vision. That avoids some issues commonly seen with HDR 10, where one HDR profile setting may not work well across a wide variety of scenes.

While testing the Apple TV 4K on Samsung's 55-inch Odyssey Ark monitor, I was also able to view Dolby Vision titles from iTunes via HDR10+. That feature is particularly useful on the Ark, since it doesn't support Dolby Vision on its own. You can expect HDR10+ to work across Apple TV+ offerings, as well as many titles available for rent or purchase. Amazon has also been pushing the standard for years, so you'll find native HDR10+ support across all of its originals. (It looked particularly great during the opening of The Peripheral.)

If you weren't a fan of the Apple TV's interface before, this new model won't change your mind. But as someone who has tested plenty of streaming devices, I still feel most at home with the Apple TV. I appreciate its wide variety of apps, its seamless integration with iOS devices, and the overall polish you don't see on Roku's software. Sure, you can use the Apple TV app on competing devices today (including Roku's!), but that's just a gateway to content. It's not the same as living with an elegantly designed streaming interface day-to-day.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Another plus? The Apple TV actually has games you may want to play .I was able to load up Sonic Racing in a few seconds, pair an Xbox controller, and start zooming around the track without much issue. The A15 Bionic should allow for smoother performance on more demanding games, but I've personally never seen anything stress these boxes much.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the Apple TV this year: you don't have to pay as much of a premium to own it. At $129, it's a bit pricier than the $100 Roku Ultra, but in exchange you get a far more robust app platform and more features. The $149 model we reviewed is a smarter buy if you demand Ethernet, or would like to start using Thread IoT devices. (I didn't have any Thread-compatible hardware to test, unfortunately.) But even that model is a decent bit cheaper than the previous $179 Apple TV.

If you already bought last year's Apple TV 4K for its new Siri remote, this new box probably isn't worth the upgrade. But if you picked up an HDR10+ TV recently, it may be worth the step up, just so you're seeing the best HDR picture possible.

It’s taken a while, but Apple has finally managed to craft the ideal streaming box: one that’s relatively inexpensive, filled with modern features and fast. So damn fast.

What’s stopping me (or you) getting an iPad Pro? The cost, for one. And a belief that anything I’d want to use an iPad for, I can already do with my eighth-generation vanilla model. That said, Nathan Ingraham’s review of the M2 iPad Pro did make me check if my bank balance could sustain the purchase. It can’t.

Apple’s top-end iPad hasn’t changed much since last year, with the same compromises around displays evident if you get the smaller model. In fact, aside from the M2, it’s pretty much the same as before, for better and, occasionally, worse. The major changes are all enabled by the even brawnier silicon inside that chassis.

That includes Stage Manager, the multitasking setup Apple hopes will unlock the iPad’s clearly hidden potential. Certainly, the system has not been warmly received by all iPad users, and Nathan found it lacking the usual level of elegance. Oh, and you can now shoot video in ProRes 4K at 30 fps. Useful? Not for many. Cool? Undoubtedly.

Unfortunately, such an iterative upgrade gave Nathan plenty of time to look for things that really should be fixed on a tablet that can cost well north of $2,000. That includes the awkward front camera placement − it’s clear for all to see it’ll be moved to the “top” side, like the new iPad, at some point.

– Dan Cooper

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Sony has sold over 25 million PS5s

And expects to sell a bunch more before March.

Engadget

Sony’s most recent financial results revealed it has sold more than 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles. That’s a staggering figure given the hardware’s high price, poor availability and strong competition. The company says it’s not even done and expects to shift a significant number of units through the holiday season. That’s the only way it’ll be able to hit an ambitious target to shift 18 million units in the financial year, which ends March 2023.

Continue Reading.

Microsoft now implies it will support Call of Duty on PlayStation forever

It needs to quell objections to its proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft’s purchase of publisher Activision Blizzard has met resistance from fans and rivals for obvious monopoly concerns. Once it owns franchises, like Call of Duty, Microsoft could pull those titles to funnel buyers toward buying an Xbox. But Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, has promised that isn’t the case, saying it will support PlayStation for “as long as there’s a PlayStation.” That may not be enough to quell regulators, however, who are still picking through the deal to see if it’s going to hand the software giant too much power.

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SpaceX may send Starship on its first orbital flight in December

A NASA official said it expects to see the flight take place next month.

SpaceX

We may see the first orbital flight for SpaceX’s Starship craft as early as December, according to a senior NASA official. The trip, if successful, will see Starship launch from Boca Chica in Texas, orbit for a while, then land back in the ocean near Hawaii. It would also mean SpaceX has satisfied the FAA’s stringent requirements to ensure a launch is safe, both for SpaceX itself and the environment.

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Twitter has removed 1,500 accounts following a coordinated trolling campaign

The company’s head of safety said the tweets weren’t widely seen.

Shortly after Elon Musk took over Twitter, a campaign of coordinated trolling started, to make people think the platform had relaxed its moderation policies. This included a surge of hate speech and hateful conduct on the site, forcing Twitter to address it. The company’s head of safety has revealed the platform has removed 1,500 accounts identified to be part of the campaign. Yoel Roth added that many instances of hate speech were not widely seen, and that work was continuing to address gaps in its enforcement policies.

Continue Reading.

Elon Musk says Twitter Blue will cost $8 and be required for verification

Perks include fewer adverts and the ability to post longer videos.

Elon Musk says Twitter Blue will be a prerequisite for users looking to be verified, and its price will increase to $8 a month. The Twitter CEO added that Blue users will gain priority in replies, mentions and Twitter’s search feature. Some high-profile users, including author Stephen King and gaming account Nibellion, have already denounced the change. It remains to be seen if users will pay, or if this will just encourage more to look for greener social media pastures.

Continue Reading.

Apple just released two new iPads. One of them, the basic 10th-generation iPad, was rebuilt from the ground up. The new iPad Pro, on the other hand, is a much simpler update. The company took last year’s model, swapped the M1 chip for the M2, made a few other small tweaks, and called it a day. The iPad Pro is still ludicrously fast, and it’s still extremely expensive, starting at $799 for the 11-inch model and $1,099 for the 12.9-inch.

I can’t really fault Apple for this approach, though. Even though the basic design of the iPad Pro was first introduced in 2018, it’s still a marvelously engineered piece of hardware. It features one of the best screens Apple has ever made, and it continues to surprise me that the company can pack so much power into such a compact frame.

While this year’s model closely resembles what Apple was already selling, it does arrive at a significant time for the iPad’s evolution. That is thanks to iPadOS 16, which launched last week. For most iPads, it’s the expected collection of useful improvements — but for the iPad Pro, it offers an entirely new multitasking system called Stage Manager. It’s a clear response to the question we tech reviewers (and many iPad Pro owners) have been asking for years: When will we get software that lets us take advantage of the iPad’s power?

Hardware

First, a quick refresher. The iPad Pro is still available in two sizes: 11 and 12.9 inches. Storage options range from a modest 128GB up to a truly outrageous 2TB, and you can configure it with an optional 5G radio for when there’s no WiFi. And for when you’re at home, it supports the WiFi 6E, whereas last year’s model was limited to WiFi 6. As usual, we reviewers get to play with a near top-of-the-line iPad: the 12.9-inch model with 1TB of storage and 5G service from Verizon. This iPad Pro costs a jaw-dropping $1,999, and that’s before you add on the $129 Apple Pencil and $349 Magic Keyboard. We’re well into MacBook Pro or Mac Studio territory at this point.

At least the iPad Pro still feels like a device worth that kind of money. (Whether it is is a different question.) The fit and finish remains exceptional, and while the 1.5-pound weight makes it a bit more of a burden to hold compared to smaller and lighter iPad models, I’m still impressed at Apple’s ability to cram such performance into a device that’s so compact. There are other well-designed tablets on the market, but I still don’t think anyone has caught up to the iPad Pro.

The 11-inch model still has to make do with the same Liquid Retina LCD display it’s had for a few years now, but the 12.9-inch version has the Liquid Retina XDR panel that was first introduced on the M1 iPad Pro in May of 2021. This screen uses mini-LED backlighting to offer 2,596 local dimming zones to offer a wide dynamic range and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It also has up to 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits peak brightness when playing back HDR content, which can really make movies pop.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

There’s nothing new about the screen this year, but it’s worth highlighting just how good it is. Both iPad Pro models also have the 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate; support for the P3 wide color gamut; a screen that’s fully laminated to the front glass; and an anti-reflective coating.

Just like last year, the iPad Pro has an ultrawide 12-megapixel front-facing camera that supports Face ID authentication. This wide-angle camera supports Center Stage, which crops and zooms around your face to keep you in the middle of the frame on a video call. That’s all well and good, but unfortunately the iPad Pro still has its front-facing camera on the portrait edge of the screen, which means you’re always going to be somewhat off-center and not looking directly at the screen if your iPad is in a keyboard dock. This has been true of all iPads for years already, but now that the basic model has gotten a landscape-oriented camera, we’re going to be waiting impatiently for Apple to implement that across its entire lineup.

The back cameras are also the same: There are 12-megapixel wide and 10-megapixel ultra wide options, along with a flash and LIDAR scanner. However, the M2 processor unlocks a new video trick, as the iPad Pro can now record video in Apple’s ProRes codec in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, a feature first introduced in the iPhone 13 Pro. This is admittedly something of a niche feature, but it shows off the M2’s improvements over its predecessor.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Accessories

From an accessories standpoint, the iPad Pro uses the same 2nd-generation Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard that have been available since 2018 and 2020, respectively. The Magic Keyboard still provides the best typing experience you can find on an iPad, though the whole package is pretty heavy. It’s also crazy expensive, as I already mentioned. And now that the basic iPad’s new Magic Keyboard Folio offers a row of function keys and a slightly bigger trackpad, I’m really missing those features here. But if you make your living with words, as I do, it’s still an essential tool.

The Apple Pencil remains a tool that I’m not particularly great at evaluating, because I am sorely lacking in visual arts skills. I sure wish I could sit down and sketch and doodle and make the wonderful creations I’ve seen others do, but that’s not happening. If you’re a visual artist, chances are you already know how well the Pencil works, though.

The M2 on the new iPad Pro also enabled a new trick called Hover. If the Pencil is within 12mm of the screen, icons and interface elements can react to it. The most simple example is how app icons increase in size when you hover the Pencil over, showing you what you're about to tap on. This works system-wide, at least in Apple apps. Third-party developers will have to build Hover features into their apps, but it should be a nice new tool in the Pencil’s arsenal. One place I was able to demo it was in the Notes app; when using the new watercolor brush, you can hover the pencil over the screen to see how the color will react with other elements you’ve already drawn.

I found another cool Hover implementation in the excellent image-editing app Pixelmator Photo. Hovering and moving the Pencil across a strip of different filters at the bottom of the app automatically applies them as a preview. It’s wickedly fast and a fun way to see what your picture will look like. That said, it’s something you could already do with the trackpad and pointer; so far, a lot of Hover actions I’ve seen are straight up clones of what you can do when hovering over an interface element with the trackpad. I’m looking forward to seeing what developers come up with going forward, though.

M2

But let’s get into that M2 processor, shall we? Thanks to our review of the M2 MacBook Air earlier this summer, we had a good idea of what to expect here. And running Geekbench 5 tests confirmed it. The M2 iPad Pro scored 1,888 and 8,419 on single-core and multicore CPU tests, respectively. Those are 12 percent and 42 percent better than the same tests on the M1 iPad Pro, and similar to the 18 percent and 38 percent gains we saw when comparing the M2 MacBook Air to its M1-powered sibling.

I saw similar improvements in the Geekbench 5 Compute test, which measures GPU performance. The M2 iPad Pro scored 32,834 – 52 percent better than the M1 model and a bit higher than the 27,083 we saw in the M2 MacBook Air’s test. Obviously, synthetic benchmarks like this aren’t the be-all and end-all way to judge performance, but it gives you an idea of what to expect. If you regularly push an M1 iPad Pro to its limits and use it in a setting where your time equals money, these improvements might justify upgrading, but unless your workflow is extremely demanding you can probably skip this generation. When you consider the fact that the iPad Pro’s basic design hasn’t changed since 2018, that’s another reason to hold off; it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple released an all-new Pro in the next year or so.

Stage manager

Finally, there’s the not-so-small addition of iPadOS 16, and more specifically Stage Manager. As a reminder, Stage Manager lets you have up to four apps open in one group at once, with overlapping, resizable windows. Four other groups (with up to four apps in each) show up on the left side of the screen, based on how recently you’ve used them. Only a select few iPads can run Stage Manager: The iPad Pro with either an M1 or M2, the M1-powered iPad Air that was released earlier this year, or the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro models running on the A12X or A12Z chip. (Those older iPad Pro models won’t be able to use Stage Manager on an external display; that’s limited to M1 or M2 devices.)

Ever since Stage Manager arrived in beta versions of iPadOS 16 earlier this year, there’s been a lot of chatter among the iPad faithful about Apple’s execution. On one end of the spectrum you have someone like Federico Viticci over at Macstores.net — he’s well known for being a devout iPad Pro user and writes massive, detailed breakdowns of each iOS and iPadOS release. Viticci, to put it mildly, is not a fan of Stage Manager; he wrote around 10,000 words detailing its inconsistencies and bugs.

On the other hand, I have not run into nearly the same scale of difficulties as Viticci, but I recognize his overall point. There are probably too many different ways to do things in Stage Manager (like adding a new app to a group); window management is more restrictive compared to a Mac (or Windows, or ChromeOS); and the behavior of the Control Strip on the left side of the screen remains confusing. Stage Manager feels like a work in progress — but when it works, I have created app groupings that make me a lot more efficient and productive than I was using the standard two-app Split View multitasking mode with a third app in a small “Slide Over” window.

And while Stage Manager was (and still may be) buggy, I at least have run into a lot fewer problems here on the M2 iPad Pro with the final iPadOS 16.1 release. I’ve been working on this iPad for the entirety of my work day and think I’ve only had one app crash on me (Gmail, which isn’t exactly the best iPad app on its best days). There are some conceptual things about Stage Manager I’m still grappling with, like the best way to add or remove apps from a group, but I think the experience is worth spending a day or two with to see if you can find your flow.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Wrap-up

There’s no question that the new iPad Pro is better than its predecessor. It’s the same price and comes with a more powerful chip as well as a few additional features. That said, I think it’s not as sure a bet as the last iPad Pro was when it came out in early 2021. That’s primarily because of the iPad Pro’s design, which has remained essentially unchanged for the last four years. That’s good news in some ways, because you could have bought an Apple Pencil in 2018 and a Magic Keyboard in 2020 and still use them with the M2 iPad Pro.

But at a certain point, probably not too long from now, Apple will advance the form factor yet again. Not that it necessarily needs to; the iPad Pro remains well designed and continues to be a standout performer, as it should be for the price. But that landscape-edge front camera on the 10th-generation iPad tells me that we’ll see an iPad Pro before long with a more substantial redesign and not just one with a faster chip inside.

Apple just released two new iPads. One of them, the basic 10th-generation iPad, was rebuilt from the ground up. The new iPad Pro, on the other hand, is a much simpler update. The company took last year’s model, swapped the M1 chip for the M2, made a few other small tweaks, and called it a day. The iPad Pro is still ludicrously fast, and it’s still extremely expensive, starting at $799 for the 11-inch model and $1,099 for the 12.9-inch.

I can’t really fault Apple for this approach, though. Even though the basic design of the iPad Pro was first introduced in 2018, it’s still a marvelously engineered piece of hardware. It features one of the best screens Apple has ever made, and it continues to surprise me that the company can pack so much power into such a compact frame.

While this year’s model closely resembles what Apple was already selling, it does arrive at a significant time for the iPad’s evolution. That is thanks to iPadOS 16, which launched last week. For most iPads, it’s the expected collection of useful improvements — but for the iPad Pro, it offers an entirely new multitasking system called Stage Manager. It’s a clear response to the question we tech reviewers (and many iPad Pro owners) have been asking for years: When will we get software that lets us take advantage of the iPad’s power?

Hardware

First, a quick refresher. The iPad Pro is still available in two sizes: 11 and 12.9 inches. Storage options range from a modest 128GB up to a truly outrageous 2TB, and you can configure it with an optional 5G radio for when there’s no WiFi. And for when you’re at home, it supports the WiFi 6E, whereas last year’s model was limited to WiFi 6. As usual, we reviewers get to play with a near top-of-the-line iPad: the 12.9-inch model with 1TB of storage and 5G service from Verizon. This iPad Pro costs a jaw-dropping $1,999, and that’s before you add on the $129 Apple Pencil and $349 Magic Keyboard. We’re well into MacBook Pro or Mac Studio territory at this point.

At least the iPad Pro still feels like a device worth that kind of money. (Whether it is is a different question.) The fit and finish remains exceptional, and while the 1.5-pound weight makes it a bit more of a burden to hold compared to smaller and lighter iPad models, I’m still impressed at Apple’s ability to cram such performance into a device that’s so compact. There are other well-designed tablets on the market, but I still don’t think anyone has caught up to the iPad Pro.

The 11-inch model still has to make do with the same Liquid Retina LCD display it’s had for a few years now, but the 12.9-inch version has the Liquid Retina XDR panel that was first introduced on the M1 iPad Pro in May of 2021. This screen uses mini-LED backlighting to offer 2,596 local dimming zones to offer a wide dynamic range and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It also has up to 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits peak brightness when playing back HDR content, which can really make movies pop.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

There’s nothing new about the screen this year, but it’s worth highlighting just how good it is. Both iPad Pro models also have the 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate; support for the P3 wide color gamut; a screen that’s fully laminated to the front glass; and an anti-reflective coating.

Just like last year, the iPad Pro has an ultrawide 12-megapixel front-facing camera that supports Face ID authentication. This wide-angle camera supports Center Stage, which crops and zooms around your face to keep you in the middle of the frame on a video call. That’s all well and good, but unfortunately the iPad Pro still has its front-facing camera on the portrait edge of the screen, which means you’re always going to be somewhat off-center and not looking directly at the screen if your iPad is in a keyboard dock. This has been true of all iPads for years already, but now that the basic model has gotten a landscape-oriented camera, we’re going to be waiting impatiently for Apple to implement that across its entire lineup.

The back cameras are also the same: There are 12-megapixel wide and 10-megapixel ultra wide options, along with a flash and LIDAR scanner. However, the M2 processor unlocks a new video trick, as the iPad Pro can now record video in Apple’s ProRes codec in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, a feature first introduced in the iPhone 13 Pro. This is admittedly something of a niche feature, but it shows off the M2’s improvements over its predecessor.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Accessories

From an accessories standpoint, the iPad Pro uses the same 2nd-generation Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard that have been available since 2018 and 2020, respectively. The Magic Keyboard still provides the best typing experience you can find on an iPad, though the whole package is pretty heavy. It’s also crazy expensive, as I already mentioned. And now that the basic iPad’s new Magic Keyboard Folio offers a row of function keys and a slightly bigger trackpad, I’m really missing those features here. But if you make your living with words, as I do, it’s still an essential tool.

The Apple Pencil remains a tool that I’m not particularly great at evaluating, because I am sorely lacking in visual arts skills. I sure wish I could sit down and sketch and doodle and make the wonderful creations I’ve seen others do, but that’s not happening. If you’re a visual artist, chances are you already know how well the Pencil works, though.

The M2 on the new iPad Pro also enabled a new trick called Hover. If the Pencil is within 12mm of the screen, icons and interface elements can react to it. The most simple example is how app icons increase in size when you hover the Pencil over, showing you what you're about to tap on. This works system-wide, at least in Apple apps. Third-party developers will have to build Hover features into their apps, but it should be a nice new tool in the Pencil’s arsenal. One place I was able to demo it was in the Notes app; when using the new watercolor brush, you can hover the pencil over the screen to see how the color will react with other elements you’ve already drawn.

I found another cool Hover implementation in the excellent image-editing app Pixelmator Photo. Hovering and moving the Pencil across a strip of different filters at the bottom of the app automatically applies them as a preview. It’s wickedly fast and a fun way to see what your picture will look like. That said, it’s something you could already do with the trackpad and pointer; so far, a lot of Hover actions I’ve seen are straight up clones of what you can do when hovering over an interface element with the trackpad. I’m looking forward to seeing what developers come up with going forward, though.

M2

But let’s get into that M2 processor, shall we? Thanks to our review of the M2 MacBook Air earlier this summer, we had a good idea of what to expect here. And running Geekbench 5 tests confirmed it. The M2 iPad Pro scored 1,888 and 8,419 on single-core and multicore CPU tests, respectively. Those are 12 percent and 42 percent better than the same tests on the M1 iPad Pro, and similar to the 18 percent and 38 percent gains we saw when comparing the M2 MacBook Air to its M1-powered sibling.

I saw similar improvements in the Geekbench 5 Compute test, which measures GPU performance. The M2 iPad Pro scored 32,834 – 52 percent better than the M1 model and a bit higher than the 27,083 we saw in the M2 MacBook Air’s test. Obviously, synthetic benchmarks like this aren’t the be-all and end-all way to judge performance, but it gives you an idea of what to expect. If you regularly push an M1 iPad Pro to its limits and use it in a setting where your time equals money, these improvements might justify upgrading, but unless your workflow is extremely demanding you can probably skip this generation. When you consider the fact that the iPad Pro’s basic design hasn’t changed since 2018, that’s another reason to hold off; it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple released an all-new Pro in the next year or so.

Stage manager

Finally, there’s the not-so-small addition of iPadOS 16, and more specifically Stage Manager. As a reminder, Stage Manager lets you have up to four apps open in one group at once, with overlapping, resizable windows. Four other groups (with up to four apps in each) show up on the left side of the screen, based on how recently you’ve used them. Only a select few iPads can run Stage Manager: The iPad Pro with either an M1 or M2, the M1-powered iPad Air that was released earlier this year, or the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro models running on the A12X or A12Z chip. (Those older iPad Pro models won’t be able to use Stage Manager on an external display; that’s limited to M1 or M2 devices.)

Ever since Stage Manager arrived in beta versions of iPadOS 16 earlier this year, there’s been a lot of chatter among the iPad faithful about Apple’s execution. On one end of the spectrum you have someone like Federico Viticci over at Macstores.net — he’s well known for being a devout iPad Pro user and writes massive, detailed breakdowns of each iOS and iPadOS release. Viticci, to put it mildly, is not a fan of Stage Manager; he wrote around 10,000 words detailing its inconsistencies and bugs.

On the other hand, I have not run into nearly the same scale of difficulties as Viticci, but I recognize his overall point. There are probably too many different ways to do things in Stage Manager (like adding a new app to a group); window management is more restrictive compared to a Mac (or Windows, or ChromeOS); and the behavior of the Control Strip on the left side of the screen remains confusing. Stage Manager feels like a work in progress — but when it works, I have created app groupings that make me a lot more efficient and productive than I was using the standard two-app Split View multitasking mode with a third app in a small “Slide Over” window.

And while Stage Manager was (and still may be) buggy, I at least have run into a lot fewer problems here on the M2 iPad Pro with the final iPadOS 16.1 release. I’ve been working on this iPad for the entirety of my work day and think I’ve only had one app crash on me (Gmail, which isn’t exactly the best iPad app on its best days). There are some conceptual things about Stage Manager I’m still grappling with, like the best way to add or remove apps from a group, but I think the experience is worth spending a day or two with to see if you can find your flow.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Wrap-up

There’s no question that the new iPad Pro is better than its predecessor. It’s the same price and comes with a more powerful chip as well as a few additional features. That said, I think it’s not as sure a bet as the last iPad Pro was when it came out in early 2021. That’s primarily because of the iPad Pro’s design, which has remained essentially unchanged for the last four years. That’s good news in some ways, because you could have bought an Apple Pencil in 2018 and a Magic Keyboard in 2020 and still use them with the M2 iPad Pro.

But at a certain point, probably not too long from now, Apple will advance the form factor yet again. Not that it necessarily needs to; the iPad Pro remains well designed and continues to be a standout performer, as it should be for the price. But that landscape-edge front camera on the 10th-generation iPad tells me that we’ll see an iPad Pro before long with a more substantial redesign and not just one with a faster chip inside.

Apple just released two new iPads. One of them, the basic 10th-generation iPad, was rebuilt from the ground up. The new iPad Pro, on the other hand, is a much simpler update. The company took last year’s model, swapped the M1 chip for the M2, made a few other small tweaks, and called it a day. The iPad Pro is still ludicrously fast, and it’s still extremely expensive, starting at $799 for the 11-inch model and $1,099 for the 12.9-inch.

I can’t really fault Apple for this approach, though. Even though the basic design of the iPad Pro was first introduced in 2018, it’s still a marvelously engineered piece of hardware. It features one of the best screens Apple has ever made, and it continues to surprise me that the company can pack so much power into such a compact frame.

While this year’s model closely resembles what Apple was already selling, it does arrive at a significant time for the iPad’s evolution. That is thanks to iPadOS 16, which launched last week. For most iPads, it’s the expected collection of useful improvements — but for the iPad Pro, it offers an entirely new multitasking system called Stage Manager. It’s a clear response to the question we tech reviewers (and many iPad Pro owners) have been asking for years: When will we get software that lets us take advantage of the iPad’s power?

Hardware

First, a quick refresher. The iPad Pro is still available in two sizes: 11 and 12.9 inches. Storage options range from a modest 128GB up to a truly outrageous 2TB, and you can configure it with an optional 5G radio for when there’s no WiFi. And for when you’re at home, it supports the WiFi 6E, whereas last year’s model was limited to WiFi 6. As usual, we reviewers get to play with a near top-of-the-line iPad: the 12.9-inch model with 1TB of storage and 5G service from Verizon. This iPad Pro costs a jaw-dropping $1,999, and that’s before you add on the $129 Apple Pencil and $349 Magic Keyboard. We’re well into MacBook Pro or Mac Studio territory at this point.

At least the iPad Pro still feels like a device worth that kind of money. (Whether it is is a different question.) The fit and finish remains exceptional, and while the 1.5-pound weight makes it a bit more of a burden to hold compared to smaller and lighter iPad models, I’m still impressed at Apple’s ability to cram such performance into a device that’s so compact. There are other well-designed tablets on the market, but I still don’t think anyone has caught up to the iPad Pro.

The 11-inch model still has to make do with the same Liquid Retina LCD display it’s had for a few years now, but the 12.9-inch version has the Liquid Retina XDR panel that was first introduced on the M1 iPad Pro in May of 2021. This screen uses mini-LED backlighting to offer 2,596 local dimming zones to offer a wide dynamic range and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It also has up to 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits peak brightness when playing back HDR content, which can really make movies pop.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

There’s nothing new about the screen this year, but it’s worth highlighting just how good it is. Both iPad Pro models also have the 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate; support for the P3 wide color gamut; a screen that’s fully laminated to the front glass; and an anti-reflective coating.

Just like last year, the iPad Pro has an ultrawide 12-megapixel front-facing camera that supports Face ID authentication. This wide-angle camera supports Center Stage, which crops and zooms around your face to keep you in the middle of the frame on a video call. That’s all well and good, but unfortunately the iPad Pro still has its front-facing camera on the portrait edge of the screen, which means you’re always going to be somewhat off-center and not looking directly at the screen if your iPad is in a keyboard dock. This has been true of all iPads for years already, but now that the basic model has gotten a landscape-oriented camera, we’re going to be waiting impatiently for Apple to implement that across its entire lineup.

The back cameras are also the same: There are 12-megapixel wide and 10-megapixel ultra wide options, along with a flash and LIDAR scanner. However, the M2 processor unlocks a new video trick, as the iPad Pro can now record video in Apple’s ProRes codec in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, a feature first introduced in the iPhone 13 Pro. This is admittedly something of a niche feature, but it shows off the M2’s improvements over its predecessor.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Accessories

From an accessories standpoint, the iPad Pro uses the same 2nd-generation Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard that have been available since 2018 and 2020, respectively. The Magic Keyboard still provides the best typing experience you can find on an iPad, though the whole package is pretty heavy. It’s also crazy expensive, as I already mentioned. And now that the basic iPad’s new Magic Keyboard Folio offers a row of function keys and a slightly bigger trackpad, I’m really missing those features here. But if you make your living with words, as I do, it’s still an essential tool.

The Apple Pencil remains a tool that I’m not particularly great at evaluating, because I am sorely lacking in visual arts skills. I sure wish I could sit down and sketch and doodle and make the wonderful creations I’ve seen others do, but that’s not happening. If you’re a visual artist, chances are you already know how well the Pencil works, though.

The M2 on the new iPad Pro also enabled a new trick called Hover. If the Pencil is within 12mm of the screen, icons and interface elements can react to it. The most simple example is how app icons increase in size when you hover the Pencil over, showing you what you're about to tap on. This works system-wide, at least in Apple apps. Third-party developers will have to build Hover features into their apps, but it should be a nice new tool in the Pencil’s arsenal. One place I was able to demo it was in the Notes app; when using the new watercolor brush, you can hover the pencil over the screen to see how the color will react with other elements you’ve already drawn.

I found another cool Hover implementation in the excellent image-editing app Pixelmator Photo. Hovering and moving the Pencil across a strip of different filters at the bottom of the app automatically applies them as a preview. It’s wickedly fast and a fun way to see what your picture will look like. That said, it’s something you could already do with the trackpad and pointer; so far, a lot of Hover actions I’ve seen are straight up clones of what you can do when hovering over an interface element with the trackpad. I’m looking forward to seeing what developers come up with going forward, though.

M2

But let’s get into that M2 processor, shall we? Thanks to our review of the M2 MacBook Air earlier this summer, we had a good idea of what to expect here. And running Geekbench 5 tests confirmed it. The M2 iPad Pro scored 1,888 and 8,419 on single-core and multicore CPU tests, respectively. Those are 12 percent and 42 percent better than the same tests on the M1 iPad Pro, and similar to the 18 percent and 38 percent gains we saw when comparing the M2 MacBook Air to its M1-powered sibling.

I saw similar improvements in the Geekbench 5 Compute test, which measures GPU performance. The M2 iPad Pro scored 32,834 – 52 percent better than the M1 model and a bit higher than the 27,083 we saw in the M2 MacBook Air’s test. Obviously, synthetic benchmarks like this aren’t the be-all and end-all way to judge performance, but it gives you an idea of what to expect. If you regularly push an M1 iPad Pro to its limits and use it in a setting where your time equals money, these improvements might justify upgrading, but unless your workflow is extremely demanding you can probably skip this generation. When you consider the fact that the iPad Pro’s basic design hasn’t changed since 2018, that’s another reason to hold off; it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple released an all-new Pro in the next year or so.

Stage manager

Finally, there’s the not-so-small addition of iPadOS 16, and more specifically Stage Manager. As a reminder, Stage Manager lets you have up to four apps open in one group at once, with overlapping, resizable windows. Four other groups (with up to four apps in each) show up on the left side of the screen, based on how recently you’ve used them. Only a select few iPads can run Stage Manager: The iPad Pro with either an M1 or M2, the M1-powered iPad Air that was released earlier this year, or the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro models running on the A12X or A12Z chip. (Those older iPad Pro models won’t be able to use Stage Manager on an external display; that’s limited to M1 or M2 devices.)

Ever since Stage Manager arrived in beta versions of iPadOS 16 earlier this year, there’s been a lot of chatter among the iPad faithful about Apple’s execution. On one end of the spectrum you have someone like Federico Viticci over at Macstores.net — he’s well known for being a devout iPad Pro user and writes massive, detailed breakdowns of each iOS and iPadOS release. Viticci, to put it mildly, is not a fan of Stage Manager; he wrote around 10,000 words detailing its inconsistencies and bugs.

On the other hand, I have not run into nearly the same scale of difficulties as Viticci, but I recognize his overall point. There are probably too many different ways to do things in Stage Manager (like adding a new app to a group); window management is more restrictive compared to a Mac (or Windows, or ChromeOS); and the behavior of the Control Strip on the left side of the screen remains confusing. Stage Manager feels like a work in progress — but when it works, I have created app groupings that make me a lot more efficient and productive than I was using the standard two-app Split View multitasking mode with a third app in a small “Slide Over” window.

And while Stage Manager was (and still may be) buggy, I at least have run into a lot fewer problems here on the M2 iPad Pro with the final iPadOS 16.1 release. I’ve been working on this iPad for the entirety of my work day and think I’ve only had one app crash on me (Gmail, which isn’t exactly the best iPad app on its best days). There are some conceptual things about Stage Manager I’m still grappling with, like the best way to add or remove apps from a group, but I think the experience is worth spending a day or two with to see if you can find your flow.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Wrap-up

There’s no question that the new iPad Pro is better than its predecessor. It’s the same price and comes with a more powerful chip as well as a few additional features. That said, I think it’s not as sure a bet as the last iPad Pro was when it came out in early 2021. That’s primarily because of the iPad Pro’s design, which has remained essentially unchanged for the last four years. That’s good news in some ways, because you could have bought an Apple Pencil in 2018 and a Magic Keyboard in 2020 and still use them with the M2 iPad Pro.

But at a certain point, probably not too long from now, Apple will advance the form factor yet again. Not that it necessarily needs to; the iPad Pro remains well designed and continues to be a standout performer, as it should be for the price. But that landscape-edge front camera on the 10th-generation iPad tells me that we’ll see an iPad Pro before long with a more substantial redesign and not just one with a faster chip inside.

Meta has spent the GDP of a small country trying to make the metaverse a thing, and now we get to see the latest device designed to take us there. The Meta Quest Pro is a $1,500 flagship VR headset that should offer the best experience Mark Zuckerberg’s money can buy. And our Sam Rutherford has spent plenty of time with one and is full of praise for it.

Rutherford lauded the comfort, the design, the power and pretty much everything else about it, at least on a hardware level. The sting, of course, is that fancy hardware doesn’t mean much if there isn’t compelling software to back it up. And while there are some cool new apps able to take advantage of the Pro’s more muscular performance, it’s still a pretty thin selection.

As someone who would love to spend more time in VR but can’t find a headset that offers the right combination of eye (and neck) comfort, I’m excited to try the Pro. But, like many people, I’ll wait a year or two before investing in one, lest I wind up with a very pretty, very expensive piece of furniture gathering dust on my side table.

– Dan Cooper

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HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook review: The best of ChromeOS, but not worth the price

Who wants, or needs, a luxury Chromebook?

Nathan Ingraham

A luxury Chromebook has always been a bit of a paradox because Chrome is designed to work on the dirtiest of dirt-cheap hardware. HP’s Elite Dragonfly Chromebook fits the category, however, with a base model costing more than a grand, and our review model topping $1,500. Naturally, our Chromebook expert, Nathan Ingraham, put it through its paces and had plenty of nice things to say about it. Sadly, no matter how nice it is, it’s still 1,000-plus dollars for a Chromebook.

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UK police fail to use facial recognition ethically and legally, study finds

The process isn’t transparent, with a massive accountability gap.

The UK has been playing around with live facial recognition technology (LFR) for several years, but not in a way that’s ethical or legal. That’s the conclusion made by University of Cambridge researchers after analyzing its use by police forces in London and South Wales. The findings, published in a new study, said key information about how data is used has been “kept from view,” leaving unanswered questions around if the technology is used as a cover to justify racial profiling. Not to mention its overall efficacy, which third-party experts say is far lower than the forces themselves like to boast about.

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Bizarre Instagram outage left some thinking they were banned

Users also saw drops in follower counts and disrupted feeds.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

An Instagram bug caused users to receive notices their accounts were suspended without cause. The issue also saw individual follower counts fall, as well as disruptions to the platform’s main image feed. Around eight hours later, Instagram said it had fixed the bug but declined to elaborate on what caused it. It’s the second high-profile service disruption to the image-sharing network in a month, and another sign not all is well inside Meta’s gilded walls.

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FTC says ed tech company Chegg exposed data belonging to 40 million users

Including students’ religions, sexual orientations and their parental income ranges.

Education provider Chegg is in the FTC’s sights after it exposed the personal information of more than 40 million users. Officials have filed a complaint accusing the company of treating private data “carelessly.” That included letting employees access databases with a single sign-in, storing data in plain text and using outdated password encryption. Chegg has already responded to the complaint, saying it takes its obligations seriously and will fully comply with the FTC’s order when it’s issued.

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Google has been making high-end Chromebooks for almost a decade now, dating back to the $1,300 Chromebook Pixel in 2013. At the time, many people saw it as a beautiful but strange device. In the years that followed, both Google and its hardware partners have made premium Chromebooks more and more commonplace. Though, a still-unconfirmed report earlier this year suggests Google is giving up on making laptop hardware, at least for now. The company hasn’t said anything of the sort yet, but the reality is that Google hasn’t made a new Chromebook since the Pixelbook Go in late 2019.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped other manufacturers from making Chromebooks with gorgeous screens, great industrial design and powerful hardware. But HP’s Elite Dragonfly Chromebook, released earlier this year, might be the nicest I’ve used in a long time. It also has a jaw-dropping price point, starting at well over $1,000. Much like the original Chromebook Pixel, HP’s latest is a joy to use that is very hard to recommend because of that price.

Design

Before we talk about the bummer that is the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook’s cost, let’s go over the good stuff. The Dragonfly is similar in stature to a MacBook Air, weighing in at about 2.8 pounds and measuring only .65 inches thick. Combined with a fairly spacious 13.5-inch touchscreen display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, the Dragonfly is comfortable to work on and easy to travel with.

Design-wise, it’s a spartan affair, with a dark gray finish and only a few silver accents to be found. But given that HP is primarily targeting this computer at enterprise users, it makes sense that they went with a classic look here. There’s a decent selection of ports, despite the Dragonfly’s rather slim profile: it has two USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A connection, a headphone jack, HDMI and a microSD slot. That’s a lot better than you’ll get on a typical ultraportable.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Screen and keyboard

There’s a handful of things that make the Dragonfly really stand out. For starters, it has an excellent display, with a 3:2 aspect ratio that provides a lot more vertical viewing space than your standard 16:9 screen. The configuration I’m testing has a 2,256 x 1,504 resolution, good for about 200 pixels per inch. Sure, there are more pixel-dense displays out there, but this one looks stunning, with sharp text and images and basically no visible pixels. It’s the nicest screen on a Chromebook I’ve seen in a long time. The only minor knock is its unremarkable 60Hz refresh rate, but that shouldn’t be a major issue for most people. Still, HP spared basically no expense on everything else, so it would have been nice to have.

Despite the refresh rate, the Dragonfly’s display is great beyond just the aspect ratio. It’s bright and has nice contrast without things being too over-exaggerated. It’s also rather reflective, which makes it not ideal if there’s a light shining on the display, but the screen is bright enough that it should be usable in all but the harshest of light.

The keyboard and trackpad are also excellent. The keys are firm, but not too firm, and have plenty of travel for a relatively thin laptop. The trackpad, meanwhile, is large and responsive. Nothing quite matches up to the trackpad on a MacBook for me, but this one feels pretty close. HP says it’s a haptic trackpad, with customized vibrations for some specific actions like pinning windows in split screen or switching between virtual desks, but I can’t say I noticed much of anything there.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Good specs (for a Chromebook)

Finally, the Dragonfly mostly has cutting-edge spec options; the model I tested has a 12th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, built-in LTE, 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. LTE isn’t exactly cutting-edge anymore, and 8GB of RAM is a bit stingy on a computer this pricey. But aside from those quibbles, this is plenty of horsepower for basically anything you want to do in ChromeOS; I never experienced any stutters when switching apps or playing back music and video. Despite the high-resolution screen and powerful processor, battery life is solid if not spectacular. I got between six and eight hours of normal usage, which involved a lot of Chrome tabs, Spotify, Todoist, Slack, Google Keep, Trello and the occasional Android app here and there. It managed to play back a movie for 8 hours and 50 minutes in our battery drain test. If battery is your foremost concern, the model with a Core i3 processor or the lower-resolution screen will likely last even longer.

It also does a fine job running the handful of Android apps I tested it with. In the last year or so, you’ve been able to run downloaded apps in tablet, phone or resizable windows, and for the most part I was able to get Todoist, Spotify and Lightroom all working well in resizable windows. Even Instagram finally works properly, although now that the website now allows you to create posts, it’s not really necessary any more. Putting that aside, performance across basically all the Android apps and games I tried was solid. But given how many apps are in the Play Store, there’s still a good chance of running across some that don’t work well.

While Chromebooks aren’t known for gaming, the Dragonfly easily handled some cloud-based play via NVIDIA’s GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming – not a surprise given the powerful (for a Chromebook, at least) hardware. At this point, ChromeOS has pretty solid game controller support, and it obviously works with external keyboards and mice. So provided the titles you want are available, this is probably the best way to play games on a Chromebook at this point. That said, this hardware should more than meet the cut for installing Steam, once Google and Valve start rolling that out beyond its current limited alpha phase.

The catch

The problem that keeps me from recommending the Dragonfly is easy to explain. The cheapest model of this laptop costs an eye-popping $1,150. And that’s with an i3 processor and only 128GB of storage. As usual, HP has a dizzying array of different configurations, though I don’t think they’re actually selling the model I have through their site right now. But there is an option with an i5 processor that costs more than $1,500. That is crazy money for a Chromebook, no matter how nice it is.

For a comparison, Acer’s Chromebook Spin 714 has essentially the same processor, storage and RAM as the Dragonfly for only $730. The screen and build quality aren’t quite as nice, but we’re talking about a computer that’s essentially just as capable but costs half of what HP is offering. For the cost of the Dragonfly, you could also pick up an extremely capable Windows laptop or MacBook Air. As much as I like using Chrome OS, it’s nearly impossible to recommend anyone spend that kind of cash on a Chromebook.

To be fair to HP, the company isn’t positioning this as a broad consumer device. It falls under their enterprise category, and I could imagine some businesses heavily invested in Google’s ecosystem buying these for executives. But, there’s no denying that, at this price point, ChromeOS is a compromise compared to Windows or macOS.

In this way, HP’s Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is a lot like Google’s Chromebook Pixel: It’s the best Chromebook you can buy, and it shows how good the experience of using ChromeOS can be. But, it’s not so much better than the many other reasonably priced options out there for anyone to seriously consider unless they love ChromeOS and have money to burn.

Google has been making high-end Chromebooks for almost a decade now, dating back to the $1,300 Chromebook Pixel in 2013. At the time, many people saw it as a beautiful but strange device. In the years that followed, both Google and its hardware partners have made premium Chromebooks more and more commonplace. Though, a still-unconfirmed report earlier this year suggests Google is giving up on making laptop hardware, at least for now. The company hasn’t said anything of the sort yet, but the reality is that Google hasn’t made a new Chromebook since the Pixelbook Go in late 2019.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped other manufacturers from making Chromebooks with gorgeous screens, great industrial design and powerful hardware. But HP’s Elite Dragonfly Chromebook, released earlier this year, might be the nicest I’ve used in a long time. It also has a jaw-dropping price point, starting at well over $1,000. Much like the original Chromebook Pixel, HP’s latest is a joy to use that is very hard to recommend because of that price.

Design

Before we talk about the bummer that is the HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook’s cost, let’s go over the good stuff. The Dragonfly is similar in stature to a MacBook Air, weighing in at about 2.8 pounds and measuring only .65 inches thick. Combined with a fairly spacious 13.5-inch touchscreen display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, the Dragonfly is comfortable to work on and easy to travel with.

Design-wise, it’s a spartan affair, with a dark gray finish and only a few silver accents to be found. But given that HP is primarily targeting this computer at enterprise users, it makes sense that they went with a classic look here. There’s a decent selection of ports, despite the Dragonfly’s rather slim profile: it has two USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A connection, a headphone jack, HDMI and a microSD slot. That’s a lot better than you’ll get on a typical ultraportable.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Screen and keyboard

There’s a handful of things that make the Dragonfly really stand out. For starters, it has an excellent display, with a 3:2 aspect ratio that provides a lot more vertical viewing space than your standard 16:9 screen. The configuration I’m testing has a 2,256 x 1,504 resolution, good for about 200 pixels per inch. Sure, there are more pixel-dense displays out there, but this one looks stunning, with sharp text and images and basically no visible pixels. It’s the nicest screen on a Chromebook I’ve seen in a long time. The only minor knock is its unremarkable 60Hz refresh rate, but that shouldn’t be a major issue for most people. Still, HP spared basically no expense on everything else, so it would have been nice to have.

Despite the refresh rate, the Dragonfly’s display is great beyond just the aspect ratio. It’s bright and has nice contrast without things being too over-exaggerated. It’s also rather reflective, which makes it not ideal if there’s a light shining on the display, but the screen is bright enough that it should be usable in all but the harshest of light.

The keyboard and trackpad are also excellent. The keys are firm, but not too firm, and have plenty of travel for a relatively thin laptop. The trackpad, meanwhile, is large and responsive. Nothing quite matches up to the trackpad on a MacBook for me, but this one feels pretty close. HP says it’s a haptic trackpad, with customized vibrations for some specific actions like pinning windows in split screen or switching between virtual desks, but I can’t say I noticed much of anything there.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Good specs (for a Chromebook)

Finally, the Dragonfly mostly has cutting-edge spec options; the model I tested has a 12th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, built-in LTE, 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. LTE isn’t exactly cutting-edge anymore, and 8GB of RAM is a bit stingy on a computer this pricey. But aside from those quibbles, this is plenty of horsepower for basically anything you want to do in ChromeOS; I never experienced any stutters when switching apps or playing back music and video. Despite the high-resolution screen and powerful processor, battery life is solid if not spectacular. I got between six and eight hours of normal usage, which involved a lot of Chrome tabs, Spotify, Todoist, Slack, Google Keep, Trello and the occasional Android app here and there. It managed to play back a movie for 8 hours and 50 minutes in our battery drain test. If battery is your foremost concern, the model with a Core i3 processor or the lower-resolution screen will likely last even longer.

It also does a fine job running the handful of Android apps I tested it with. In the last year or so, you’ve been able to run downloaded apps in tablet, phone or resizable windows, and for the most part I was able to get Todoist, Spotify and Lightroom all working well in resizable windows. Even Instagram finally works properly, although now that the website now allows you to create posts, it’s not really necessary any more. Putting that aside, performance across basically all the Android apps and games I tried was solid. But given how many apps are in the Play Store, there’s still a good chance of running across some that don’t work well.

While Chromebooks aren’t known for gaming, the Dragonfly easily handled some cloud-based play via NVIDIA’s GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming – not a surprise given the powerful (for a Chromebook, at least) hardware. At this point, ChromeOS has pretty solid game controller support, and it obviously works with external keyboards and mice. So provided the titles you want are available, this is probably the best way to play games on a Chromebook at this point. That said, this hardware should more than meet the cut for installing Steam, once Google and Valve start rolling that out beyond its current limited alpha phase.

The catch

The problem that keeps me from recommending the Dragonfly is easy to explain. The cheapest model of this laptop costs an eye-popping $1,150. And that’s with an i3 processor and only 128GB of storage. As usual, HP has a dizzying array of different configurations, though I don’t think they’re actually selling the model I have through their site right now. But there is an option with an i5 processor that costs more than $1,500. That is crazy money for a Chromebook, no matter how nice it is.

For a comparison, Acer’s Chromebook Spin 714 has essentially the same processor, storage and RAM as the Dragonfly for only $730. The screen and build quality aren’t quite as nice, but we’re talking about a computer that’s essentially just as capable but costs half of what HP is offering. For the cost of the Dragonfly, you could also pick up an extremely capable Windows laptop or MacBook Air. As much as I like using Chrome OS, it’s nearly impossible to recommend anyone spend that kind of cash on a Chromebook.

To be fair to HP, the company isn’t positioning this as a broad consumer device. It falls under their enterprise category, and I could imagine some businesses heavily invested in Google’s ecosystem buying these for executives. But, there’s no denying that, at this price point, ChromeOS is a compromise compared to Windows or macOS.

In this way, HP’s Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is a lot like Google’s Chromebook Pixel: It’s the best Chromebook you can buy, and it shows how good the experience of using ChromeOS can be. But, it’s not so much better than the many other reasonably priced options out there for anyone to seriously consider unless they love ChromeOS and have money to burn.

Apple won’t release any more new Macs before the end of the year. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company had planned to announce new M2 versions of its 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros “as early as this fall,” but Apple now aims to introduce them in the first quarter of 2023. Gurman adds that the launch will likely coincide with the release of macOS Ventura 13.3.

“Apple has rarely launched new products in January or February during recent years, so I’d expect the new Macs to be announced by the first half of March,” he writes. “That aligns with the planned ship dates for the corresponding software, but also makes sense in light of Apple’s recent history of launching new Macs during that month, including the Mac Studio this year.”

Gurman points to Apple’s recent earnings call for supporting evidence. Earlier this week, Tim Cook told analysts the company’s product line for the holiday season was “set.” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri provided even stronger confirmation, noting he expected Mac revenue to “decline substantially” in December in part because there are no new MacBook Pros to boost sales.

When they finally do arrive, the new MacBook Pros will feature the same design as the current 2021 models. The primary change Apple has planned is the inclusion of its new M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets. According to Gurman, the M2 Max will feature up to 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores.

While Apple users shouldn’t expect any more hardware from the company before the end of the year, the company is still working on new software. Gurman says iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 should arrive by mid-December. The company is currently testing those updates among developers.

Ever since it was first announced in 2020, Chromecast with Google TV has been a solid and affordable purchase for those looking to add more smarts and streaming options to their existing setup. If you’ve been patiently waiting to buy one, now is a good time to do so. Amazon has discounted the 4K version. After a 20 percent discount, the device is $40, matching its previous all-time low price. The retailer has also cut the cost of the recently announced HD variant. At the moment, you can buy the device for $20. That’s $10 less than its usual $30 asking price.

As mentioned above, both versions of Chromecast with Google TV are excellent options if you’re on a budget or prefer Google’s approach over competitors like Apple, Amazon or Roku. Engadget awarded the 4K version a score of 86 in 2020, praising the device for its excellent Google Assistant integration, comfortable and easy-to-use remote, as well as Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. The more affordable HD version is similarly excellent, offering much the same experience at a lower price point for those who don’t own a 4K TV. If there was a reason to buy a competing streaming stick over the Chromecast with Google TV, it was because the dongle could sometimes be slow. That has since changed, with Google releasing a performance update this past summer.