For the second time this year, Meta has given the Quest 2 a permanent price cut. The company has dropped the price of the base headset with 128GB of storage to $199, down from $249. Until January 2, the company was charging $299 for the Quest 2.

Of course, the price cut comes in the wake of the company rolling out the far more powerful and capable Meta Quest 3, which starts at a far higher price of $499. The discount suggests that Meta is trying to get rid of its remaining inventory of the previous model. Still, the Quest 2 is our pick for the best cheap VR headset and the drop to $199 makes the device even more appealing.

For a couple of hundred bucks, you'll get a headset that has fast-switching LCD displays with a resolution of 1832x1920 per eye and a 90Hz refresh rate. It has a solid library of VR apps at this point, along with access to cloud gaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming. However you slice it, the Quest 2 is a solid entry point into VR.

In addition, Meta recently lowered the prices of Quest 2 accessories. The Elite Strap and Elite Strap with Battery have both dropped by 50 percent to $25 and $45, respectively. The Fit Pack, which could help you find a more comfortable fit, has also fallen by half to $20. The official carrying case, meanwhile, is down from $45 to $20.

If you watch movies and TV on a 1080p screen, the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) provides a rock-solid streaming experience on the cheap. This is the HD version of Engadget’s top choice for streaming devices. Today, Amazon has it for $10 off, letting you pick up the HDR10-capable streaming stick for only $20, nearly a record-low price.

The Chromecast with Google TV (HD) plugs directly into an open HDMI port on your TV. (There’s an optional power adapter with a USB cable if your TV can’t supply enough juice.) If you have a 4K television, you’re better off with the more expensive model designed for higher-res displays. But for HD screens, this model is hard to beat. It offers the same terrific user experience as the high-end model, only less expensive and downscaled for 1080p.

Setup is quick and easy. You scan a QR code with your phone to begin the sign-in process in the Google Home app. (That’s also where you add your Wi-Fi network.) So, you don’t need to worry about entering long email addresses and passwords using the remote and a clunky onscreen keyboard.

The device has relatively lightweight specs (1.5GB of RAM and an Amlogic S805X2 chip) that may reveal some nearly imperceptible lag when navigating the UI, especially right after startup. But it provides smooth performance when it matters most: playing content.

The software streamlines things as much as possible, including a Live tab that draws from a handful of streaming services to let you resume or jump into new content straight from the home screen. Google advertises support for over 700,000 movies and TV episodes, and you can install just about any streaming service you can name, including Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Max, Peacock, YouTube TV and much more.

Photo by Sam Rutherford / Engadget

The remote includes a built-in mic and a dedicated Google Assistant button. The latter lets you control TV content and smart home features with your voice. It also has standard IR integration, so you can control some of your TV’s essential functions and potentially leave its remote in a drawer.

If you don’t want to wait for Amazon’s shipping, Target has the same deal. If your local stores have them in stock, you could get instant gratification while saving five percent on your purchase if you check out using a Target RedCard.

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Razer just released the Kishi Ultra mobile gaming controller, a successor to the popular Kishi V2 Pro. It’s filled with improvements, including a larger form factor to accommodate beefier mobile devices like 8-inch tablets and even some foldables like the Galaxy Z Fold 5. The controller also offers USB-C compatibility, so it should work with just about any device out there, as long as it fits. Remember, even modern Apple products now include USB-C ports.

Razer says the controller has been “designed to provide an authentic console experience on the iPhone 15 series, iPad Mini, and Android tablets with 8-inch displays.” To that end, it features the company’s proprietary Sensa HD haptics technology, which includes a haptic coil near each hand to increase immersion. The company says this experience will actually surpass what's found with traditional console controllers. The newly-released Interhaptics SDK will even allow developers to “craft bespoke haptic experiences.”

This immersion is further improved by integration with Razer’s Chroma RGB lighting system. This allows for customizable lighting schemes, which lets players bring “a piece of their gamer room setup with them.” Beyond the lighting and haptics, the controller boasts the company’s proprietary Mecha-Tactile ABXY buttons and 8-way D-pad. There are console-sized hall effect triggers, programmable L4/R4 multifunction buttons and full-sized thumb sticks, complete with anti-friction rings. The expanded form factor also means it should work with most devices without having to remove the case.

Razer

The controller can access Razer’s subscription-free Nexus app, which pulls up custom button-mapping for thousands of compatible games across iOS and Android.. This means that it’ll be a plug and play experience for the vast majority of available content, without having to fiddle with control settings. Additionally, the Nexus app lets users record and share gameplay.

The Razer Kishi Ultra is available right now and costs $150. The controller is joined by an updated version of the Kishi V2, which now connects via USB-C. That one costs $100.

Netflix has renewed The Witcher for a fifth season, but the company says that will bring the series to an end. The final season will be shot back-to-back with the fourth season, which has just started production. The two seasons will cover the events of the last three books in the series: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow and Lady of the Lake. The show is a direct adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, but it does occasionally take inspiration from CD Projekt Red's game adaptations (and vice versa).

The fourth season will mark a significant change for The Witcher, as Liam Hemsworth is replacing Henry Cavill in the lead role. This time around, Geralt of Rivia will find a new family in the Hanza, who will help him track down Yennefer and Ciri after the trio is separated. New cast members who are joining for the fourth season include Laurence Fishburne, Sharlto Copley and James Purefoy.

Cities: Skylines 2 developer Colossal Order is unlisting and refunding purchases of its controversial Beach Properties asset pack less than a month after its release. It’s also significantly delaying the game's future DLC and console port.

Beach Properties was the first paid DLC for Cities: Skylines 2, and has an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating on Steam, with just 4 percent of user reviews marked as positive. In a note announcing the reverse of course, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen said the company had let its community down. 

“We thought we could make up for the shortcomings of the game in a timeframe that was unrealistic, and rushed out a DLC that should not have been published in its current form," Hallikainen said. "For all this, we are truly sorry.”

The asset pack itself worked as advertised, adding a number of zoneable waterfront-style properties to the game, but it was definitely thin for the $9.99 asking price. Most will admit, though, that the content itself wasn’t the problem: The DLC was largely derided because it was released at a time when players were waiting on patches for the base game. Cities: Skylines 2 was released in a poorly optimized state in October 2023, and although it’s in better shape now, many in the community feel there are fundamental issues with the simulation, and there is still work to be done to make the game run better. Mod support — perhaps the reason that the original Cities: Skylines had such a long lifespan — was also slow to arrive, and is still only in beta, with no support for custom assets.

In an FAQ accompanying the announcement, Colossal Order explains how the refund and compensation program will work. Essentially, if you bought the DLC separately, you should be able to get a refund. Those who redeemed a code as part of the game's Deluxe or Ultimate editions will not. Instead, compensation will come in the form of creator asset packs and radio stations which Colossal Order says will "total around $39.99 in added value." The beachfront properties will be added to the base game, free of charge, for all players.

To call Cities: Skylines 2’s launch messy would be kind. Since the game’s release on PC last October, developer Colossal Order has burned through the goodwill it built up over a near-decade of the original game’s lifespan. Things came to a head in late January, when many of the community's loudest and most respected voices broke rank to talk openly about the game's issues.

Another casualty of today's announcement is the game's console release. Cities: Skylines 2 was supposed to launch simultaneously on PC and console, but the PS5 and Xbox versions were pushed back to spring 2024 weeks before release. It has been clear for some time that revised date was not going to happen, and Colossal Order confirmed it's now hoping to have the console ports ready for October.

The final piece of bad news is that Bridges & Ports — the first expansion pack that will go beyond assets — is going to be further delayed to Q1 2025 to allow the developers to "focus on additional free patches and game updates in the coming months." The expansion pack was supposed to be released in Q2 2024, and is included in the game's Ultimate Edition.

Google's wired Nest security camera has dropped to its lowest price to date. The second-gen device is for indoor use and it's motion sensitive. It's capable of capturing 1080p HDR video. You can snap one up for $70, which is $30 or 30 percent off the regular price of $100, at Amazon if you opt for the fog or linen colorway. However, if you go for the snow variant you can save a little more. That one is on sale for $67.59, or 32 percent off.

The Nest Cam uses AI to discern between people, animals and vehicles. It can send you alerts via the Google Home app, and you won't need a subscription for that. You will need a Nest Aware plan if you want up to 60 days of video history. Otherwise, Google will offer three free hours of event video history. Handily, if you have a Wi-Fi outage, up to an hour of event recordings will be stored on the device itself.

There's a two-way audio function, so you can chat with house guests if you're not home. In the event of an unwanted visitor, you can contact emergency services directly from the Google Home app if you're a Nest Aware member who is perhaps using a tablet instead of a phone. You'll be able to view live video feeds on compatible smart displays and smart TVs too.

Nest Aware subscribers can receive notifications when familiar faces are recognized. There's also the option to set up home and away routines so the camera doesn't capture video while you're at your place.

Elsewhere, the Outdoor Nest Cam with Floodlight is on sale too. It has dropped by 29 percent to $200. That's just $10 more than the lowest price we've seen for it to date.

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A speaker doesn't have to be brand new to sound good. Sonos speakers get high marks in our reviews and buying guides and the company has one of the better refurbished programs out there. Right now, you can grab a refurbished Sonos Arc SL soundbar for $509, which is $170 off the refurbished price and $240 off the speaker's full $749 price tag when it was new. A decent selection of other renewed soundbars and speakers are also on sale at Sonos, with up to 25 percent off the refurbished prices.  

We named the Sonos Arc the runner-up premium soundbar in our buying guide, praising its stellar sound quality and ability to calibrate its sound to match the room its in. The difference between the Sonos Arc and the Arc SL is the lack of a microphone, so you won't be able to talk to Alexa or the Google Assistant directly through your speaker. That might be a plus for anyone interested in the extra privacy of a mic-less device. Other than the lack of microphone, the Arc SL hardware is the same. It can even calibrate its sound to the room with the Trueplay feature, which uses the Sonos app on an iOS device to measure how sound reflects off your walls and furniture. The Arc SL is Wi-Fi enabled, supports Dolby Atmos, Apple Air Play 2 and connects to your TV via HDMI ARC or eARC. Though, sadly, there's just one HDMI port. 

Buying a refurbished device from Sonos carries a lot of the same perks of buying new, including the same one-year warranty, all necessary cables and manuals plus all-new packaging. They also donate one percent of refurbished sales to environmental non-profits as part of 1% for the Planet. 

If you'd rather a speaker that does have a mic, the refurbished second-generation Beam soundbar is also on sale. It's down to $299 after a $100 discount off the refurbished rate — which works out to $200 off the brand new sticker price. The Beam is our top pick for a mid-range soundbar in our guide and has great sound quality, supports Dolby Atmos and, like all of the company's wares, does an excellent job of pairing up with other Sonos speakers. 

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Meta just announced a major update for its AI assistant platform, Meta AI, which has been built using the long-awaited open source Llama 3 large language model (LLM). The company says it's “now the most intelligent AI assistant you can use for free.” As for use case scenarios, the company touts the ability to help users study for tests, plan dinners and schedule nights out. You know the drill. It’s an AI chatbot.

Meta AI, however, has expanded into just about every nook and cranny throughout the company’s entire portfolio, after a test run with Instagram DMs last week. It’s still available with Instagram, but now users can access it on Messenger, Facebook feeds and Whatsapp. The chatbot also has a dedicated web portal at, wait for it, meta.ai. You don’t need a company login to use it this way, though it won’t generate images. Those recently-released Ray-Ban smart glasses also integrate with the bot, with Quest headset integration coming soon.

On the topic of image generation, Meta says it's now much faster and will produce images as you type. It also handles custom animated GIFs, which is pretty cool. Hopefully, it can successfully generate images of different races of people. We found that it struggled with this basic concept a couple of weeks back, as it seemed biased toward creating images of people of the same race, even when prompted otherwise.

Meta’s also expanding global availability along with this update, as Meta AI is coming to more than a dozen countries outside of the US. These include Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Pakistan, Uganda and others. However, there’s one major caveat. It’s only in English, which doesn’t seem that useful to a global audience, but whatever.

As for safety and reliability, the company says Llama 3 has been trained on an expanded data set when compared to Llama 2. It also used synthetic data to create lengthy documents to train on and claims it excluded all data sources that are known to contain a “high volume of personal information about private individuals.” Meta says it conducted a series of evaluations to see how the chatbot would handle risk areas like conversations about weapons, cyber attacks and child exploitation, and adjusted as required. In our brief testing with the product, we've already run into hallucinations, as seen below. 

Engadget/Karissa Bell

AI has become one of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pet projects, along with raising really expensive cattle for beef in a secluded Hawaiian compound, but the company’s still playing catch up to OpenAI and, to a lesser extent, Google. Meta’s Llama 2 never really wowed users, due to a limited feature set, so maybe this new version of the AI assistant will catch lightning in a bottle. At the very least, it should be able to draw lightning in a bottle, or more accurately, slightly tweak someone else’s drawing of lightning in a bottle.

TSMC is the world’s biggest chipmaker and its products are found in everything from phones to game consoles and computers. But devices using TSMC chips could become more expensive if manufacturers opt to buy ones that the company makes outside of its home base of Taiwan.

“If a customer requests to be in a certain geographical area, the customer needs to share the incremental cost,” TSMC CEO CC Wei said on an earnings call. “In today’s fragmented globalization environment, cost will be higher for everyone, including TSMC, our customers and our competitors.”

Talks with customers over price increases have already started. As the Financial Times points out, it’s more expensive for TSMC to manufacture chips outside of Taiwan (where over 90 percent of the planet’s most advanced semiconductors are made). But the company will be passing on those costs amid a push by companies and governments to increase chip supply outside of Taiwan, over which China is attempting to control.

TSMC has plants in Japan and is building several in Arizona, the first of which started operating this month and is expected to go into full production this year. It’s also constructing a plant in Germany.

In addition, the US government last week agreed to provide the company with $6.6 billion in funding under the CHIPS Act, which seeks to bolster semiconductor manufacturing in the country. In return, TSMC pledged to up its US investment by $25 billion to $65 billion. Aligned with that, the company announced plans to build a third US plant by the end of the decade and to start making more advanced 2nm chips by 2028.

Meanwhile, TSMC expects its manufacturing costs to increase in Taiwan. That’s because power prices there are soaring. An earthquake earlier this month is also expected to have a negative effect on the company’s profitability, as is its struggle to make the manufacturing of its most advanced 3nm chips more efficient.

Apple, NVIDIA, AMD and Qualcomm are among TSMC’s more notable customers. So if they end up buying chips from the company’s US, Japan or Germany fabs, their manufacturing costs could go up. Take a wild guess who’d end up having to eat the cost of those increased expenses so device makers can maintain their profit margins.

There’s a new invite-only app going semi-viral among VCs, tech execs and other Silicon Valley personalities. It’s called Airchat and it’s trying to revive the concept of an audio-first social media app.

The premise is similar to Clubhouse, the audio app that had a viral moment at the height of the pandemic in 2021 and inspired copycat features in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit before gradually fading into obscurity. But unlike the original version of Clubhouse, Airchat isn’t built around live audio streams that require users to all tune it at once. It’s more like Twitter or Threads, except posts can only be shared as voice notes.

The app uses a timeline format, and automatically plays audio clips as you scroll your feed. You do have the ability to pause the playback and read text instead — each post is accompanied by an AI-generated transcript — but posts and replies can only be shared by recording an audio clip. There don’t seem to be any time constraints on how long individual clips can be, I found at least one post where a user spoke for a full hour just to see if it would work (it did).

It sounds a bit gimmicky (because it is), but the app has all the hallmarks of the kind of social apps that briefly go viral among a certain segment of extremely-online Silicon Valley nerds. It’s led by a pair of well-connected tech founders: AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder exec Brian Norgard. It’s invitation-only and has drawn a number of well-known tech personalities among its early users: Y Combinator CEO and San Francisco political provocateur Gary Tan, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, VC and Elon Musk confidant Jason Calacanis.

Over on X, Airchat’s high-profile user base is building hype and creating FOMO for those who haven’t been able to score an invite. (The app had to briefly shut off invites over the weekend due to “an influx of new users,” according to Ravikant, Airchat’s CEO.)

It’s not clear exactly how many users Airchat has just yet, but it seems to be in the low tens of thousands. The app has been downloaded close to 50,000 times, research firm Appfigures told Engadget, but it’s likely some of those downloads have come from people who don’t yet have an invite. Ravikant, who seems to be one of the most-followed users, currently has just over 11,000 followers in the app.

Using Airchat is, well, noisy and a bit confusing. Upon joining, the app asks to tap your contacts list to find friends who are already on the app, but finding people to follow beyond that can be challenging. The app doesn’t have the equivalent of a “for you” feed with recommended content so your only options are to manually search for users or lurk in conversations that do appear in your feed and check out other users’ posts and follows.

When I signed up, there were four people from my contacts in the app, only two of whom are actual friends. I followed them and the app’s founders and a couple other familiar names. I then began randomly following other users as conversations began to appear in my feed. This was a terrible strategy as my feed was quickly dominated by the voices of a few especially active (but not terribly interesting) posters. With so many new users all joining at the same time, at one point my feed was just a bunch of people talking about Airchat.

It’s also somewhat jarring to actually hear the voices of people you’ve followed on social media for ages but haven’t interacted with IRL. The app defaults to playing back audio at 2x speed, which tends to make people’s speaking voices sound a bit unnatural, but is also kind of necessary for long-winded posts.

The bigger issue, though, is that it’s not entirely clear what Airchat is for. There are a handful of “channels,” smaller groups dedicated to chatting about specific topics like coffee or astrology or AI or war, but conversations are disjointed and hard to follow. There seem to be some corners with spirited discussion. The “coffee” channel has 755 members and has lots of earnest discussion of pour-over techniques and photos of latte art. The channel is also “moderated heavily,” according to Ravikant (Airchat’s moderation policy is “self moderation,” which means they expect you to make good use of blocking and muting features, though an FAQ states they will remove users for “harassment, impersonation, foul behavior, and illegal content.)

More creative users are also finding ways to play with the audio-centric format. I found an ASMR group that consisted mainly of people speaking in breathy whispers that kind of gave me the ick (one person did post a nice clip of their cat purring). I listened to a few poetry readings in the “poetry” channel, but didn’t have the patience, even at 2x speed. There’s also a lot of talk of in-app karaoke, though I have yet to see it actually happen.

Some might see these kinds of gimmicks as the start of some new paradigm, where people use their voices to unlock new ways of interacting. But all I can think about is how Clubhouse, at its peak, had similar gimmicks: in-app game shows, open mic nights and (very NSFW) “moan rooms.” It was new and interesting at a time when most people were stuck at home with nothing to do, but the novelty wore off quickly.

While Clubhouse’s initial success sparked copycat features from almost every other major social media company, many of those have since shut down due to lack of interest. Even Clubhouse itself is a shell of what it once was. While the app still exists, it’s an entirely different service than the one that briefly captured the attention of bored tech workers. The company laid off half its staff in 2023 and has since pivoted to audio-centric group chats.