I’ve been interested in solar generators for a long while, but very few of them ever felt worthy of specific comment. Many of them historically boasted of running laptops, TVs or coolers, but their constrained outputs made them incapable of powering kettles, washing machines or air conditioners. CES 2024 has shown that the industry has moved beyond those limitations, with newer units capable of fulfilling the promise inherent in their names.

Take the new EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra, the company’s flagship whole-home backup, which can pump out 7,200W. The company claims the unit is strong enough to power a three ton central air unit, one of the most demanding appliances in the home. Plus, because it’s a modular design, you can add up to three of these units to the same home for a cumulative output of 21.6kW — and, with enough batteries, a total storage capacity of 90kWh.

Solix, Anker’s big battery division, was here at CES showing off its new F3800 portable power station. The company moved into the home battery market in the summer of 2023 but even something designed to be wheeled around is shorn of the older limitations. The F3800 can pump out a peak of 6,000W – a figure you can double if you buy two – enough to add juice to an EV in a pinch. And, best of all, it’s currently available to buy for $3,499 which, depending on how much solar you pair it with, should mean payback considerations are less than five years.

Jackery, which has been a name in this market for a long while, will sell you its 2000 Plus, complete with two 200W solar panels, for just $3,300. That small unit, if you use the right accessory, can be wired into your home’s breaker box and similarly has a surge peak of 6,000W. It’s not quite as muscular as some of its competitors, but the low cost means that it’s hard to argue against if you’re looking to dip a toe into this world.

Cost for solar panels and batteries have fallen dramatically in the last few years, with Our World in Data reporting that the cost of a panel has dropped from $2.32 per watt in 2010 to just $0.26 per watt in 2022. BloombergNEF reported that lithium ion battery prices have fallen from $780 per kWh in 2013 down to $139 per kWh in 2023. And it’s this that has enabled this surge in home battery uptake.

Emma Ross, who heads up communications for Jackery, says that customers are drawn to these falling prices. She added that, second to cost, the plug-and-play element of the gear is key, offering “the perfect combination of convenience and environmental friendliness.” The low cost and ease of installation means these systems “require less investment than other, larger solar options,” making it a “less intimidating” way for wary neophytes to get involved.

Nick Bowers, head of business development at EcoFlow in the US, says that consumers are frustrated with the domestic energy market. He claims rate increases, natural disasters, power outages and climate change have all driven people toward buying solar gear. “The pain points pushing people toward renewables,” he said, “will only grow more acute,” with users looking to “be less reliant on the grid.”

And the solar industry writ large is gearing up to address a surge in demand expected to come as these prices fall. Eric Villines, head of global communications at Anker, says that the only roadblock right now is the fact most homeowners aren’t investing in storage alongside their solar gear. “In 2022, only ten percent of installed home solar systems in the US included energy storage,” he told Engadget, “preventing homeowners from securing protection against blackouts.” To address this, the company surveyed users and found most were either put off by the high price, or didn’t even know that it was a viable option for them.

Which is why the knock-down prices on hardware the likes of which we’ve seen at CES 2024 is hopefully going to address some of those issues. After all, whereas some of this gear would have cost tens of thousands of dollars a few years ago, they’re now less than half that price. Perhaps these units will serve as a gateway drug to investments into more expansive whole home batteries further down the line. And that’s a good first step towards our bigger, and hopefully brighter solar future.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Swarovski has turned up at CES 2024 in Las Vegas with its first ever pair of smart binoculars that will identify the bird you’re looking at. All you have to do is point the gear at a bird and make sure the view is in focus, and then press down an action button. Within a few seconds, the system will overlay a bird’s name over your view, using data pulled from the Merlin Bird ID database. That has over 9,000 species tagged, and will even let you know the degree of certainty it has if the bird in question is in an unexpected location. And if this was the only feature these binoculars had, it’d be enough to justify the purchase, but that’s only the beginning of what these things can do.

Between the eyepieces, there’s a function wheel similar to one you would find on a camera that lets you cycle between various features. That includes a Wildlife ID version which hooks into its built-in Mammal, Dragonfly and Butterfly ID databases. Plus, there’s a camera which lets you send pictures and video to a paired smartphone, which would similarly be plenty to justify the expense. But the system is also designed to be expandable, with the focus wheel including space for any future custom databases you might need. For instance, one idea could be to build a database for stars, or airplane types for aviation fans to spot the make and model of what’s flying overhead.

Then there’s the discovery sharing feature, which enables you to share something you’ve found with whoever you’re outdoors with. All you need to do is tag whatever you’ve found, and then hand the AX Visio over to them, where a series of flashing arrows will guide them to where you were looking. Even in the busy halls of CES, one of the company’s representatives was able to pinpoint a far-off fire exit sign before handing me the binoculars and asking me to find it. All you need to do is follow the arrows straight to what you’re meant to be looking at with a system that’s as elegant as it is useful. There's even a built-in compass that'll let you identify which direction you're gazing toward to help you navigate.

You might notice from the pictures that there are three lenses, with the central one holding the 13-megapixel sensor shooting HD-quality (1,920 x 1,080) pictures and video. There’s 8GB storage, which should hold up to an hour of video or 1,700 photos before needing to be cleared off. Beyond the smarts, the binoculars magnify up to 10x with 88 percent light transmission, thanks to the company’s high-end lenses. Swarovski says its glassware offers almost flat, distortion-free images with plenty of contrast and color fidelity.

Now, here’s the thing, my father-in-law is a serious ornithologist who is respected, at least among his peer group. His ability to spot the genus and species of a bird in flight is extraordinary and I’m often left bewildered at the depth of his knowledge. I don’t think I’d have the ability, patience or time to even get within a hundred miles of his capability. But, with a device like this, it might mean that I can at least vaguely keep up with him when we’re out on the trails.

The AX Visio is, however, not messing around with price, and Swarovski is charging €4,600 (around $5,000) for you to get this into your hands. While bird fans often have to be patient, this should start arriving at people’s homes at some point in February.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The following article discusses medical procedures.

On the fringes of each and every CES, there are products worthy of attention, even if they can’t be called “consumer electronics.” A prime example is Adam-X, a medical training tool that takes the idea of a CPR dummy and dials it up to eleven… thousand. Unlike the dolls you learned basic CPR with, Adam-X is a fully-featured robotic patient used for a wide variety of medical training.

Adam-X is equipped with a realistic skeleton, muscles and lungs that’ll behave much like the real things do. Depending on the scenario, the dummy will give you physical feedback depending on how successful you are at treating it. For instance, the pupils will dilate, cheeks will flush, the tongue will swell and the extremities will turn blue, depending on what you’re doing at the time. Right now, Adam is even able to make some vague noises but his makers pledge that an update at some point this year will add in a GPT-enabled communication feature to train medics how to keep patients engaged and calm. 

As well as CPR training, you can use this device to teach intubation, administering an IV, applying a blood pressure cuff and using a defibrillator. And much as the system itself will respond to what you’re doing, its suite of sensors can examine your technique and offer feedback. For instance, Adam-X was set into CPR mode and required me to keep it alive, but I wasn't sure I was getting my chest compressions correct; after all, I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. But, by looking at the laptop Adam was connected to, I could see how far my hands were away from the ideal position. 

There's plenty of other things I wasn't able to test in the crowded show floor at CES, including the fact that Adam has pressurized blood vessels. Medics who need to clear the airway by cutting the trachea, for instance, may be surprised to see a spurt of (artificial) blood. Similarly, if one of the independently-pressurized lungs collapses, you'll be able to use a real needle to puncture the chest to reinflate it. Not to mention swapping out the regular limbs for ones that have simulated wounds, that require surgical intervention or to add in an intravenous drip to a vein. (Adam even has working genitalia and can pass urine or blood depending on the training scenario.)

Unfortunately, unless you're a medical school or other training facility with $70,000 grand or so lying around, you probably won't be able to buy one. But you should watch the video and see how very cool it is to practice keeping someone alive while getting a little more feedback than with the regular CPR doll. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Dashlane’s subscription-based password manager is on sale for $40 per year, as part of a New Year’s offer. This is for the Premium Plan, which typically costs $60 each year. So this represents a savings of 40 percent or $20 per year. The sale ends on January 15 at 8PM ET, so you only have four days to take advantage of the discount.

Here’s how you can access the deal. Just sign up for the company’s Premium Plan and type in “NY24” at checkout. That’s it. You’re good to go. The Premium Plan includes password protection for unlimited devices, with no limit on the number of passwords and passkeys. You also get a VPN for web-browsing, real-time phishing alerts and access to a sharing portal that allows you to safely share passwords and private information with friends and family.

Dashlane is a reputable service, up there with market leaders like 1Password, NordPass and LastPass. As a matter of fact, the service made our list of the best password managers. We loved the secure sharing feature, mentioned above, and the company’s VPN, which is included with the Premium Plan. The only downside is that there’s no support for Linux.

The company offers other plans, but those aren’t covered by this deal. The friends and family plan, for instance, offers complete access for up to ten people. There are also a couple of robust plans intended for commercial use. Again, the discount on the Premium Plan ends on January 15.

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

Hertz says it's selling around 20,000 electric vehicles from its US fleet, which constitutes approximately a third of its total number of EVs in its global fleet. It claimed that "expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high" in the most recent financial quarter, "thereby supporting the company’s decision to initiate the material reduction in the EV fleet." Hertz said it plans to reinvest some of the proceeds into purchasing gas-powered vehicles.

"The company expects this action to better balance supply against expected demand of EVs," Hertz said in an SEC filing. "This will position the company to eliminate a disproportionate number of lower margin rentals and reduce damage expense associated with EVs."

There were already signs that Hertz was having cold feet over its decision to invest heavily in EVs over the last few years. It was reported in 2021 that the rental company had ordered 100,000 EVs from Tesla. The following April, it emerged that Hertz planned to buy up to 65,000 EVs from Polestar over five years.

However, in October 2023, Hertz said it was slowing down plans to electrify its fleet. At the time, CEO Stephen Scherr said EVs cost Hertz "about twice in terms of damage cost repair than a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle."

As Reuters notes, Tesla is currently selling more than 700 EVs through its used car website. The vast majority of those are Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

Look, we can all sit around debating wether it’s worth teaching a dog to play the piano, or if that’s even something they’re capable of doing. But it’s also too late since, here at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, a Hong Kong-based startup has actually developed a device to do that. Zoo Gears was at the show demonstrating TheButter, a four-key instrument with light-up pads your pup can “play.”

Essentially, the pooch has to follow along the sequence of lights, each one triggering another few notes of whatever song you’ve equipped it with. Once done, you should reward their effort with a treat or some other form of encouragement, much as Dr. Pavlov would have done. The hope is that eventually, your beloved friend will get the knack of accompanying you during your next jam session.

Zoo Gears was a smash hit on Kickstarter in 2023, making more than four times its initial goal when getting backing for TheButter. That’s currently available to buy in the US for $99, and for that you’ll also get the companion app that’ll help you set your dog’s training routine. You know, so when they’ve mastered something fairly simple they can move onto harder songs like The Beatles’ Let It Be.

More importantly, the company is working on the second part of the product, TheBiscuit, priced at $299 which adds an automatic food dispenser to the setup. If your dog successfully learns how to hammer out some of The Beatles’ greatest hits, they’ll be able to feed themselves. After that, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to being the next big name in whatever musical genre your best friend opts to specialize in.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Google has announced that it will eliminate at least 17 features from its Assistant product, following news that it had laid off "hundreds" of employees from the division. The company is cutting "underutilized features" to "focus on quality and reliability, it wrote in a blog post, even though a good number of people may still rely on those functions.

"Beginning on January 26, when you ask for one of these features, you may get a notification that it won't be available after a certain date," wrote Google Assistant VP Duke Dukellis. 

The company didn't specify how removing certain commands will improve Assistant, nor did it describe any specific quality and reliability problems. It did say, though, that improvements in the past were aided by user feedback, so it may have been receiving complaints about Assistant's core usability of late.

The 17 functions being removed include: accessing or managing your cookbook; using your voice to send an email, video or audio message; rescheduling events in Google Calendar with your voice; and using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media. It also describes what Assistant can still do related to those functions, or alternate ways of doing them. A list is here, though Google said they're just "some" of the affected features.

The company is also changing the way Assistant works on your phone. The microphone icon in the Google search bar will no longer pull up Assistant, but merely start a Google voice search, "which is its most popular use case," Dukellis wrote. The "Hey Google" hot word and power button long-press will continue to activate Assistant as before. 

After laying off 12,000 people last year, Google said it planned to focus on AI in the future, so it's interesting that one of its early AI products is being pruned. Earlier today, Google confirmed that it had laid off hundreds of people from at least three divisions, including Assistant, hardware devices and core engineering. 

At its October Pixel 8 event, the company announced plans to launch Assistant with Bard, a version that generates personalized answers based on events, dates and conversations stored on your phone. However, Google didn't say if that version has anything to do with cutbacks in current Assistant functionality. 

CES 2024 is in the books and that means the tech world can kick back and re— oh, wait, there's the small matter of a Samsung Unpacked on the horizon. Samsung is running its first event of the year a little earlier than usual. It will start on January 17 at 1PM ET. However, barring a major shock, Samsung will unveil its Galaxy S24 smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup

As is always the case, the rumor mill has been churning for weeks when it comes to Samsung’s Galaxy S24 smartphones. Thanks to leaker Evan Blass, who claimed to have obtained a spec sheet for all three of the devices, we have a decent idea of what Samsung has in store for the Galaxy S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra. As in years past, Samsung has a "reserve" page up now on its site as well for those who want to be first in line to buy the latest smartphones.

It’s likely to be another year of iterative changes on the hardware front. There will very likely be spec bumps to most of the components and the S24 devices will probably offer faster and more efficient performance than their predecessors. However, you shouldn't anticipate having a wildly different looking phone if you tend to upgrade to the latest handset every year or two... except in the case of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is slated to have a flat display and a titanium frame.

The most important hardware upgrade is arguably in the engine room. Samsung is expected to employ the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. That’s significant given Qualcomm’s efforts to support on-device AI operations with its CPUs and Samsung’s recent work in the generative AI space.

To that end, the biggest change to the Galaxy lineup this year is likely to come in the form of AI features. Samsung recently unveiled its own generative AI models, which can handle tasks such as translations, summarizing documents, drafting emails, helping out with coding and, yes, whipping up images based on text prompts. 

It's widely believed that Samsung's Gauss generative AI tech will make its public debut in the Galaxy S24 smartphones, and it's likely to be labeled as Galaxy AI. The company has been hinting at some of the AI updates, such as with this tease of a feature called Zoom with Galaxy AI.

Everything else: Generative AI, fitness trackers and laptops

The new smartphones will undoubtedly be the star of the show and Samsung will probably spend quite a bit of time going over the generative AI functions. That might not leave much bandwidth for other announcements. There is a chance that we might see the Galaxy Fit 3 fitness tracker, according to some rumormongers. The event may mark the release of One UI 6.1 for Galaxy devices too.

Beyond that, there have been suggestions that Samsung will show off several Galaxy Book Pro laptops, while there's also a possibility the company will unveil new tablets, smartwatches and earbuds. We'll find out soon enough just what the company has planned for its first mass market devices of 2024.

Sony might have an updated PlayStation 5 controller available soon. GamesRadar+ spotted a brand new V2 DualSense Wireless Controller on Best Buy's Canadian online shop, and anyone who is sick of finding their wireless controller dead when gaming is in for a treat. The device is listed as having 12 hours of battery life — up from a maximum of five hours in its current iteration. 

Apart from the major boost in battery life, the listed Sony V2 DualSense Wireless Controller is pretty much a mirror of its predecessor. It has a headset jack, built-in microphone, and haptic triggers across its rear and face. It's listed for 90 CAD (about 67 USD), almost identical to the previously released V2 DualSense Wireless Controller's $69 retail price. Though the 12-hour model is visible on the website, it's not actually available for purchase, so it's unclear when (or even if) Sony will release it. 

Interestingly, a patent filed by Sony in November 2023 described a new controller outfitted with a touchscreen instead of a touchpad. It also potentially employs predictive AI assistance to light up certain buttons, analog sticks and shoulder triggers as hints for gameplay. Just like the controller currently sitting on Best Buy's website, this one's fate is up in the air. 

SpaceX sent and received its first text messages sent via T-Mobile using its D2D (direct-to-device) Starlink satellites launched just over a week ago, the company announced. First revealed in August 2022, the project aims to provide satellite internet connectivity to regular cell phones so that T-Mobile customers can stay online even when they're in a terrestrial dead zone. 

T-Mobile said that it aims to publicly launch text services with T-Mobile in 2024, with voice, data and IoT (internet of things) plans coming in 2025. Globally, SpaceX has partnered with Rogers in Canada, Australia's Optus, KDDI in Japan and others. 

The scheme requires larger, special versions of the Starlink satellites with D2D capability. SpaceX launched the first six of those on January 2, completing early tests with no issues. "On Monday, January 8, less than 6 days after launch, we sent and received our first text messages to and from unmodified cell phones on the ground to our new satellites in space using TMobile network spectrum... [indicating that] the system works," SpaceX wrote in a blog post. 

SpaceX

When the plan was announced, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the technology is like putting a cellular tower in the sky. He added that it could one day eliminate dead zones, allowing people to easily get in touch with loved ones even if they're in the middle of the ocean. 

SpaceX said that the system, which uses LTE/4G (not 5G protocols) is a bit more complicated than cell towers in the sky, though. Since the satellites move at tens of thousands of miles per hour relative to the Earth, data must be handed off seamlessly between them. Doppler shift, timing delays and the relatively low transmission power of smartphones must also be accounted for. 

The two companies aren't the first to test such a system. Working with communications specialist AST SpaceMobile, AT&T successfully conducted the first two-way satellite audio call on its network in April, calling a number in Japan with a stock Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone. AT&T also complained to the FCC that SpaceX and T-Mobile's plan was "woefully insufficient" regarding the risk of harmful interference to ground-based networks.