One of JBL’s best-sounding portable speakers is on sale via Amazon, with the Charge 5 matching a record low price of $120 in an early Black Friday deal. This Bluetooth speaker usually costs $180, so this represents a discount of 33 percent. We’ve seen this speaker go on sale before, but the price hasn’t been this low since July.
This sale is not just for the plain-jane black speaker, as you have your pick of colors, from gray, red and turquoise to unique patterns like camouflage. All told, choose from six colorways for the speaker.
JBL’s Charge 5 made our list of the best portable bluetooth speakers, and with good reason. The sound quality is great and we praised its “bright output and capable low end.” The battery lasts up to 20 hours per charge, which is a decent metric, and the whole thing is actually waterproof, with an IP67 rating. This means that if it accidentally falls in the pool during a backyard soiree, you won’t have to head immediately to Best Buy for a replacement.
There’s also a built-in powerbank that lets you use the speaker to charge other devices, and this unit boasts access to JBL’s proprietary PartyBoost feature. This lets you combine multiple wireless speakers to instantly create a stereo setup. As a matter of fact, the only potential downside to this portable speaker is the original asking price, as $180 is pretty steep. For today, at least, that issue has been solved.
JBL also has a number of wireless earbuds and headphones on sale right now, to complete the personal audio package. You can snag the company’s new high-end Quantum 910 headphones for $230, a savings of $70, or the budget-friendly Tune 230NC earbuds for $50 instead of $100.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/jbls-charge-5-speaker-drops-to-a-record-low-in-an-early-black-friday-deal-152651436.html?src=rss
Apple's M2-powered 12.9-inch iPad Pro with 256GB of storage is $150 off its regular price at Amazon. That drops the tablet down to $1,050 just a few days ahead of Apple's Scary Fast event. The company is widely expected to reveal its first M3 chipsets but it's not certain that Apple will offer M3-powered iPad Pros immediately. You may have to wait until next year for a high-end tablet with the upcoming chipset.
Still, the M2 iPad Pro is our top pick for the best tablet you can buy right now. Even if Apple does announce an M3 iPad Pro in the coming days, it's hard to go wrong with the current model. It runs on the same chipset as MacBooks, so you'd be hard pressed to find a faster or more powerful tablet.
We gave the M2 iPad Pro a score of 87 in our review. Apple didn't give the tablet many upgrades compared with the M1-powered model, other than a few small tweaks and, of course, plugging in a more powerful chipset. However, the iPad Pro already had arguably the best display of any tablet around with the 120Hz ProMotion mini-LED screen. The design remains top notch, while battery life is strong.
Accessories such as the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil are helpful for productivity too. The 12.9-inch M2 model is our pick for the best iPad for power users thanks to the extra real estate compared with the 11-inch variant.
The 128GB version of the M2 iPad Pro, meanwhile, is available for a record low price. It has dropped by 10 percent to $990 at Amazon for a model without cellular connectivity.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-m2-129-inch-ipad-pro-is-150-off-ahead-of-apples-scary-fast-event-143023375.html?src=rss
Double Tap is arguably the killer feature in the new Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. The gesture is Apple’s answer to the problem of using a smartwatch when your opposite hand is holding a bag of groceries, dog leash, flashlight or anything else. In addition, it can be a splendid accessibility feature for people with disabilities that could limit arm or hand mobility. Although the company only offers limited customization of the feature at launch, you can tweak a couple of settings to fine-tune Double Tap to your liking.
Update to watchOS 10.1
Before you can use Double Tap, you’ll need to ensure your Apple Watch is up-to-date. It requires at least watchOS 10.1, which Apple rolled out to customers on October 25. First, you need to update your paired iPhone to at least iOS 17.1, which became available the same day. You can do that on your phone in Settings > General > Software Update.
After upgrading your phone’s firmware, open the Apple Watch app on your paired phone, and then go to General > Software Update. Tap “Install” and wait for the update to complete. Your watch must be charged to at least 50 percent while on its charger to initiate the installation.
How to customize Double Tap on your Apple Watch
Image by Cherlynn Low / Engadget
Although Apple may offer more customization in future software updates, Double Tap currently only lets you change how it handles audio playback and the Smart Stack. The latter, new in watchOS 10, is the pile of widgets you view from your watch face by swiping up from the bottom of the screen or scrolling up with the Digital Crown.
First, open the Apple Watch app on your paired iPhone to customize these categories. Select Gestures > Double Tap, and then choose from the available options:
Playback lets you choose between pinching your fingers to play / pause (the default) or skip to the next track while listening to music or podcasts.
Smart Stack chooses how Double Taps navigates the pile of widgets. “Advance” means each tap moves to the next widgets (default), while “Select” will select the first widget with a subsequent tap.
Everything you can do with Double Tap on Apple Watch
After activating Double Tap, you can play around with all the things it can do. They include:
Audio playback: Pause / resume or (after changing the setting above) skip to the next track.
Phone calls: Answer or hang up a call.
Notifications: Initiate the primary action from any alert. For example, reply to a message or snooze a reminder. (It works with third-party apps too.)
Smart Stack: Scroll through widgets from any watch face.
View messages: Read a full message when you receive a new text.
Reply to messages: Reply with voice dictation when you get to the end of the message. Another Double Tap will confirm sending after you finish speaking.
Read longer notifications: After opening an alert that doesn’t fit entirely on the screen, double-tap again to scroll through one that’s too long to display on your Apple Watch’s screen. You can repeat this until you’re at the end.
Alarm: Snooze an alarm.
Stopwatch: Stop or resume a stopwatch.
Timers: When viewing a timer, pause (if it’s running), resume (if paused) or end the timer.
Remote shutter: Take a photo on your iPhone when using the Apple Watch’s Camera Remote.
Workout: Start or stop automatic Workout reminders if it detects that you’re exercising without having started a workout on your watch.
When you use Double Tap, a blue hand icon appears at the top of your watch’s screen. If you try double-tapping on something that isn’t compatible with the feature, the icon will appear and shake back and forth like it’s saying, “No.”
How to disable Double Tap on Apple Watch
If you navigate back to Settings > Gestures > Double Tap on your paired iPhone, you’ll see an option to disable the feature if you’re in a situation where you worry about triggering it accidentally. If you do that, you can always return to the same settings screen to re-enable Double Tap.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-is-now-live-with-double-tap--heres-how-to-customize-the-gesture-on-watchos-101-133021753.html?src=rss
It seems like just about every streaming service has raised their price this year – most recently, Apple TV+, Netflix and Disney+. In this episode, we chat with Janko Roettgers, author of the newsletter Lowpass, about the state of streaming media. Why are these companies pushing their prices up now, and what does that mean for you, the viewer? Does this mean the dream of cord cutting is over? (Spoiler: No, not really.)
Also, we chat about Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips, adult film star Riley Reid’s new AI chatbot, and why Super Mario Wonder is the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
You can snag a pair of the well-reviewed Google Pixel Buds Pro earbuds for just $117 via Wellbots, a savings of $83. This matches the previous low for the product which was set during Amazon’s Prime Day event a few weeks back. Just pop in our exclusive discount code “ENGPIX83” at checkout and you’ll be good to go.
We called these earbuds the company’s best effort to date in our official review, praising the deep and punchy bass, the useful touch controls, wireless charging options and more. As a matter of fact, it even made our list of the best wireless earbuds for 2023. In other words, these are the real deal.
Our biggest complaint was the price, so this deep discount is more than welcome. However, we also called out the relatively lengthy pairing process and the half-baked transparency mode. The ambient sounds provided by the earbuds come in as muffled when this mode is activated, defeating the purpose of providing exterior noises in the first place. Beyond that short list of cons, however, these are considered the best earbuds on the market for Android devices. In most scenarios they sound absolutely fantastic.
This deal from Wellbots also extends to another big-time Google device. You can get the Google Nest Hub Max for $130, a savings of $100. Make sure to put in our exclusive discount code “ENGMAX100” to save all of that sweet, sweet cheddar. We praised the smart home controller upon launch, touting its accurate facial recognition tech, the integrated Nest camera, and the above-average sound quality, in addition to wide integration with smart home platforms.
In this dizzy world of digital tricks and image manipulation where you can erase objects and alter images with a smartphone swipe, Leica wants photos taken on its camera to leave a digital footprint, known as a Content Credential. The M11-P also has a 60-megapixel sensor, and the typical understated layout and Leica styling.
Content Credentials capture metadata about the photograph – like the camera used, location, time and more— and locks those in a manifest that is wrapped up with the image using a cryptographic key. Those credentials can be verified online and whenever someone subsequently edits that photo, the changes are recorded to an updated manifest, bundled with the image and updated in the Content Credentials database.
Users can click on an icon to pull up all of this historical manifest information, and is being described as a "nutrition label" for photographs.
– Mat Smith
You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
On All Hallows’ Eve… eve, Apple is hosting another event. This one is dubbed “Scary Fast,” which is a good indicator that Apple will have some powerful new hardware (or chips) to show off. It's been nearly 17 months since Apple's M2 system on a chip (SoC) debuted. With many chip rivals following an annual cadence for their chipsets, it may be time for the M3.
Most rumors suggest a new iMac, possibly powered by the new chip, and the 24-inch iMac is well overdue for a refresh. Or maybe the company will scare us all with even more subscription price increases.
Xiaomi has only just introduced its 13T phone series outside of Asia, and the company is already revealing more flagship phones back in China. The Xiaomi 14 Pro has a 6.73-inch screen offering an industry-leading peak brightness of 3,000 nits and variable refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz. Its main camera has a variable aperture ranging from f/1.42 to f/4.0, a telephoto camera capable of 3.2x zoom, and a 50-megapixel f/2.2 camera for ultra-wide shots. Xiaomi 14 Pro starts from 4,999 yuan (around $680) but if you want the titanium edition, it'll cost you 6,499 yuan (around $890).
Spotify's royalty model will get a massive revamp next year to give "working artists" a bigger cut. It’s planning three changes, starting with establishing a minimum number of annual streams a track must reach to generate royalties. While these tracks make up a tiny percentage of music on the platform, their royalties still cost Spotify tens of millions of dollars a year. The second change is detecting illegal activity, like using AI tools to repeatedly stream tracks and artificially boost play counts. The third part is aimed at "non-music noise content," such as white noise and binaural beats. Many noise tracks on Spotify are only 31 seconds long because the platform pays for every play over half a minute. The listener then naturally leads onto another track, and possibly another royalty check. But not for much longer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-leicas-new-camera-was-built-to-fight-disinformation-111541633.html?src=rss
If you're looking for a new laptop to brighten up the long winter ahead, now's your chance. Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip is back at its lowest price since October Prime Day. The 256GB model is currently marked down to $1,049 from $1,299 — a 19 percent discount.
The $250 savings is also available on Apple's 512GB 15-inch MacBook Air, with a 17 percent discount dropping its price to $1,249 from $1,499. While every color is on sale, the silver option is still a little pricier than its counterparts — available for $1,300 and $1,149 for the 512GB and 256GB models, respectively.
The 2023 15-inch MacBook Air came on the scene in June, and we were immediately big fans. In fact, we gave it a 96 in our review thanks to factors such as its excellent battery life, keyboard and (large) trackpad. The M2 chip also means it's well-performing, and the six-speaker sound system — the 13-inch model only has four — produces high-quality sound.
The larger MacBook Air also has a 2,880 x 1,864 resolution, 500 nits of brightness and a 60Hz refresh rate. Sure, it's missing some of the bells and whistles of the MacBook Pro, but considering that even the 14-inch Pro starts at $1,999, the savings are likely worth it.
In 2021, Hertz announced that it was going to order 100,000 electric vehicles from Tesla by the end of 2022. Turns out the car rental company is far from being able to reach that number still, and it may take a while to get to 100,000, if it even gets there, because it's slowing down its plans to electrify its fleet. During the company's third-quarter earnings call (PDF), CEO Stephen Scherr said Hertz's "in-fleeting of EVs will be slower than [its] prior expectations."
Hertz reported a 13 percent margin for the quarter, which Scherr said would've been "several points higher" if not for the cost challenges associated with EVs. One of the factors that affected the company's margins was depreciation, compounded by the one-third drop in retail prices of the electric cars in its fleet. Tesla had implemented several price cuts over the past year, slashing the Model S and X prices by nearly 20 percent in September.
In addition, the CEO said that EVs are costing Hertz "about twice in terms of damage cost repair than a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle." He said the company is working directly with Tesla to look at its cars' performance and lower the risk of damage, as well when it comes parts procurement and labor. The company disclosed in its earnings report that 80 percent of its EVs is made up of Tesla vehicles, which means it has 35,000 Tesla in its fleet out of 50,000. As CNBC explains, EVs come with their own set of maintenance challenges, potentially brought about by their heavier weight. Aside from those two factors, moving a portion of its EV fleet from ridesharing use to leisure had affected its margins, as well. Hertz rents Tesla EVs to Uber and Lyft drivers, and it's now planning to move the vehicles it removed from the pool back to its ridesharing business.
Scherr said Hertz remains committed to its long-term plan to electrify its fleet, but it's going to pace itself while it looks for solutions to its EV-related issues. The CEO talked about how taking on EVs by other manufacturers like GM could address some of the problems it's facing. He expects Hertz to be able to purchase them at an "appreciably lower price point" than the prices it paid for its Tesla vehicles. He also thinks that those cars "will likely speak to lower incidence of damage," as well as to "a lower cost of parts and labor." GM and other traditional automakers have a broad parts supply network nationwide established over the decades, which will make it easier — and potentially cheaper due to aftermarket availability — to procure components.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hertz-decides-to-slow-down-its-ev-expansion-094012885.html?src=rss
Samsung's Galaxy S23 FE only just arrived, but Amazon already has a tempting deal on the budget-oriented smartphone. You can grab the 128GB model with a $100 Amazon Gift Card for $600, saving the full price of the card — equivalent to a 14 percent discount. The deal applies to all colors (cream, graphite, mint and purple), the 256GB model (save 13 percent) and with the Galaxy S23 FE/Galaxy Buds FE bundle, which is $150 off including the gift card.
Samsung didn't make an FE version of the Galaxy S22 last year, but it's now brought it back with a twist. Instead of denoting "fan edition," the FE moniker is simply used for devices sharing features and traits with flagship devices. In other words, you'll get near-flagship performance at mid-range prices — similar to the "a" version of Google's Pixel phones.
As we detail in our hands-on look, the S23 FE looks very much like the S23, but offers slightly reduced specs. It comes with an older Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip instead of the Gen 2 processor used on the flagship version, along with a 6.4-inch 120Hz display (sized between the Galaxy S23 and S23+) that's slightly less bright.
Otherwise, it comes with a similar rear triple-camera setup (50-MP main sensor, 12-MP ultra-wide and a slightly lower-res 8-MP telephoto with a 3x optical zoom). Best of all, it still uses a glass and metal design, unlike Samsung's A-series models with cheaper materials. Other features include a 4,500mAh battery and IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. If you've been eyeing the device but waiting for a sale, now is the time to act.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-giving-away-100-gift-cards-with-samsung-galaxy-s23-fe-purchases-083745563.html?src=rss
Cruise has paused all its driverless operations, the company has announced on LinkedIn and X. The GM-backed self-driving firm explained that it's taking time to examine its "processes, systems and tools" and that it will "reflect on how [it] can better operate in a way that will earn public trust." Cruise has been thrust under the spotlight recently after the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended its permits to operate driverless vehicles in the state due to several safety related issues. The California Public Utilities Commission also suspended the license giving Cruise the right to charge passengers for robotaxi rides.
(2/3) In that spirit, we have decided to proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.
One of the latest incidents involving a Cruise vehicle happened in early October when a woman was hit by another car and was hurled in front of one of the company's driverless vehicles. Cruise's robotaxi stopped on top of her leg and pinned her underneath until first responders arrived and could extract her. The DMV suspended the company's permits a few weeks afterward.
As CNBC notes, this move comes shortly after GM CEO Mary Barra said the automaker will support Cruise's expansion with "safety" as its "gating factor." TechCrunch says it also comes just a day after an all-hands meeting, wherein CEO Kyle Vogt told his staff that Cruise hasn't paused operations outside of California. To note, the company has driverless fleets in Phoenix, Austin, Houston, Dallas and Miami, as well.
The company didn't elaborate on what examining its tools and systems entail and how exactly it intends to "rebuild public trust." For now, Cruise will only be deploying autonomous vehicles with drivers behind the wheel.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cruise-puts-robotaxi-operations-on-pause-following-california-license-suspension-051300118.html?src=rss
