Google has announced a policy change to push YouTube creators to produce and publish higher-quality content for kids. Starting next month, the company will demonetize channels that primarily target young people or market themselves as "made for kids" if the content they upload is of low quality. By YouTube's definition, that can include overly commercial videos and ones that encourage bad behaviors. Per the new guidelines, YouTube warns those videos may see limited or no ads. Additionally, the company says violating its new content guidelines could lead to removal from the YouTube Partner Program. 

The move is part of a recent push by Google to make YouTube and YouTube Kids a more appropriate destination for children and their families. At the start of the year, the company announced the availability of expanded parental controls for tweens and teens. More recently, it implemented new safety measures to protect kids across its various platforms. One of those changes saw the company change the default upload setting for users between the ages of 13 and 17 to the most private option available. 

"Our ultimate goal is to foster a safe and enriching environment for families while rewarding trusted creators who are making high-quality kids and family content," Google said of this latest policy change. It may take some time before the new guidelines elevate the quality of content on YouTube. So it doesn't hurt to keep an eye out on what your children are watching. 

If you’ve ever damaged your phone, you may have run into a situation where you found it difficult to find a place that can repair it. Samsung is trying to help owners of its flagship devices avoid that situation with a newly announced Best Buy partnership. Starting on October 26th, more than 100 Best Buy stores across the US will begin offering Galaxy S and Galaxy Note repairs. Then, early next month, those same locations will start repairing Samsung’s Galaxy Z foldables.

If you bring your phone into one of the stores, they’ll be able to help with front and back screen replacements, battery swaps as well as port and camera repairs. Best Buy’s Geek Squad will complete the repairs with parts and training provided by Samsung.

For the South Korean company, this partnership is all about expanding its repair footprint. The 100 Best Buy stores add to the more than 550 in-person authorized care locations the company already has in place across the US. They won’t help you if you own a more affordable Samsung device like the Galaxy A52 (and you may not like the idea of the Geek Squad handling your device), but it’s still a step in the right direction. Outside of Apple, most tech companies have struggled to make it easy for their customers to find in-person support, and that's something that can have a significant impact on someone's relationship with a brand.

Fans of Mythic Quest have much more of the show to look forward to. Apple TV+ has renewed the series for seasons three and four. The second season of the workplace sitcom aired this spring, and season three will arrive in 2022.

Co-creator Rob McElhenney (who plays Ian Grimm in the show) made the announcement with the help of a couple of familiar faces: Jason Sudeikis, the Emmy-winning face of fellow Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso, and Anthony Hopkins, who received an Emmy nomination for narrating Mythic Quest's standalone "Everlight" episode. The series picked up another Emmy nomination this year for its sound editing.

Mythic Quest, which is from some of the folks behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, focuses on the developers of a hugely successful fictional MMORPG. Ubisoft co-produces Mythic Quest, so there's certainly a degree of authenticity to the show and how a game studio might actually operate.

Never in my life did I think it would be important for me to know when someone else had pooped, but then I became a mom and here we are. The amount of stuff that mom’s need to keep track of is, in a word, immense. Since I brought my twins home from the hospital, I’ve used an app to note every bottle, diaper change, nap, medication, bath time and more. That’s worked well so far, but now that my kids are older, I’ve had a harder time immediately logging their events. That’s partially because our routines were interrupted with a recent move and partially because they really want to play with my phone every time they see it. Regardless, I’m trying to get us all back into an established pattern of meals and nap times so I’ve been wanting to re-establish my habit of logging all their details.

Talli sells a $99 physical gadget for this purpose: a single-touch tracking device that lets busy, sleep-deprived parents push a button to log activities like bottle feeds and bedtimes. The Talli Baby one-touch tracker includes seven pre-assigned buttons and a miscellaneous eighth, and it pairs with an app to provide you the best of both worlds. A single-function device to track kids’ care may not sound like a big deal, but if you’ve ever tried to operate a touchscreen with diaper cream all over your hands, you may be able to see the utility here.

Hardware

Amber Bouman/Engadget

The Talli is a white and faux-woodgrain box with rounded edges, roughly the size of a small but stuffed wallet. It has two rows of four activity buttons with icons to indicate which action the button is assigned to: bottle feeding, solid food, wet diaper, dirty diaper, sleeping, nursing, pumping or “miscellaneous,” which can be customized within the app. Events that happen at the same time — say, a wet and dirty diaper — require simultaneous button presses. There’s also a small WiFi button on the lower right that’s used during setup, and the company says that WiFi is only used when the device is transmitting an event. The rear contains slots to wall-mount the Talli using the included hardware.

Setting up the Talli is fairly uncomplicated and follows the same steps as many other app-connected devices: download the app, create an account, add a device, connect to a WiFi network and you’re done. When I first set up the device, it kept flashing an error message, which the included start-up pamphlet instructed me was a WiFi connection issue likely due to an incorrect network name or password.

Only I hadn’t gotten to that step yet, I was only trying to sync the device. I contacted Talli support and tried again and was able to connect and set up the device without any further issue. It’s worked normally since then so I’m not certain what the issue was, but it did make me realize that adding a hardware device to my tracking process meant there would be another potential point of failure. Since Talli pairs with an app that can be used independently to track what you’re doing with your kids, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the hardware wasn’t working. However, it would detract from the main advantage of the system: the convenience of pressing a button on the tracker and continuing with your day.

Amber Bouman/Engadget

Taking out my smartphone, opening an app and typing in an entry isn’t exactly heavy lifting, but doing that while two toddlers wind themselves between my legs, grab at my phone, whine, harass the cat, throw everything out of the kitchen drawers and try to climb over child gates is another story. Being able to press a button and be done was an unexpected relief: My kid’s data was logged, so I knew when they were last changed and I could always flesh out the entries with more detail in the app later (though I’ll admit that rarely happened). It was extremely easy to use the Talli instead of my previous app, and it was oddly satisfying, too — not unlike crossing something off a to-do list.

Because Talli runs on four AA batteries, it has a portable design allowing it to be moved anywhere or handed off to any caretakers or babysitters. It can also be mounted on a wall, which has advantages and disadvantages depending on how you’ll use it. I kept my Talli untethered because my changing table area doesn’t have the best WiFi coverage, so I kept it on a nearby shelf where I could touch the buttons on my way in and out of the room.

Talli

Frankly, I would have preferred to mount the thing; when grabbing for the device, I would often accidentally hit a button and register an incorrect event, which I would then have to remember to delete later. But I also often had to move the Talli out of sight, because my son is particularly enamored with pushing buttons and things that light up, so the Talli was like forbidden candy to him. It was hard to find the perfect location where the device was connected to my WiFi network, easily accessible to me and didn’t draw his attention.

Each Talli device gets assigned to one child, that is to say you’ll need one Talli per child. But you can assign multiple devices to the same child if you end up getting more than one for different areas of your home. And Talli works with Alexa, so you can have the assistant log events for you if you say “Alexa tell Talli Baby that Sam had a dirty diaper.” You can also request that Alexa read you the most recent activity reports. I don’t currently have an Alexa-enabled device, so I wasn’t able to test this out yet. The company says Google Home compatibility is coming soon, too.

Software

Much like the device itself, the Talli app is simply designed and straightforward to use. The home screen contains the same icons as the device; when a button is active — it turns green for a pumping session or a nap time, for example. Near each button is a date and time stamp for the last logged event and tapping on the icon brings up an entry page to edit and add details. I sometimes had to tap commands a few times — say, to pause or start a sleep timer — but this otherwise worked fine.

Engadget

The rest of the app is organized into a Daily List, which is exactly what it sounds like: a list of your child’s daily events. There’s also a Details view which provides an hour-by-hour graph of events and can be toggled to show any of your child’s metrics over a time period. My favorites were the Averages view, which shows totals for each event, and the More tab, which has selections for account sharing, reminders and children’s profiles. I’m trying to switch the twins over to all solid foods and being able to track what they’ve eaten, how much and when has helped me establish routines and menus. And because it was easy to press a button on the way in or out of the room, Talli made it possible for me to log how often my son woke in the middle of the night and how long before he went back to sleep.

However, the app frequently (albeit briefly) flashed a “Refreshing your data” screen when I navigated around the options. I had to wait an extra beat or two for the data to refresh when I did almost anything in the app: changed screens, edited data, deleted an event and the like. I’m hoping this is due to my satellite internet connection, because it was one of my biggest pain points with the Talli system. I will say I appreciated that there was no subscription component: Talli offers all its information and your data without any additional fees, whether you purchase the tracker or simply use the free app.

Wrap-up

The Talli device offers something that isn’t otherwise available: a hardware device dedicated to tracking everything you do with your child on a daily basis. It’s nicely designed, easy to use and has an app that charts and graphs the data for you. I liked using it a lot more than I expected to, given that tracking all my kids’ various activities through an app had become a bit of a chore. But using the Talli tracker wasn’t a chore — and having a physical device (even more, a single button) that I could tap and walk away from did indeed help me stay more consistent with tracking habits.

I only wish that I had found a better location for the device in my kids’ room — and I wish that the app didn’t lag so much — but otherwise I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Talli Tracker fit into my lifestyle. I can see it being particularly useful for those who have family or multiple caretakers tending to children or for people who prefer physical logging methods like calendars or notebooks. But it’s also a $99 gadget — and when a free app just requires more work but will ultimately do the job, it makes the Talli a bit of a luxury.

Facebook is finally testing Novi, the digital wallet it’s been teasing for more than two years. Facebook’s payments chief David Marcus announced that the company is launching “a small pilot” of Novi in the United States and Guatemala with the goal of enabling family members to send remittances across borders.

“We’re doing a pilot to test core feature functions, and our operational capabilities in customer care and compliance,” Marcus wrote. “We’re also hopeful this will demonstrate a new stablecoin use case (as a payments instrument) beyond how they are typically used today.”

The fact that Novi is finally launching, even in a limited way, would seem like significant step forward for Facebook’s long-troubled crypto plans. However, the company is launching the wallet without Diem, its planned cryptocurrency (previously called Libra) that’s faced a wave of pushback from lawmakers and regulators around the world.

Instead, the initial pilot will use the Pax Dollar (USDP), a stablecoin that Marcus said has “been operating successfully for over three years and has important regulatory and consumer protection attributes.” He added that Facebook has partnered with Coinbase during the pilot.

News of the pilot has already sparked renewed criticism from lawmakers. On Tuesday, hours after Marcus’ initial announcement, a group of five Democratic senators sent a letter to Facebook asking the company “to immediately discontinue your Novi pilot and to commit that you will not bring Diem to market.” The letter cited the recent disclosures from a Facebook whistleblower, and the company’s “relentless pursuit of profits at the expense of its users.”

“Given the scope of the scandals surrounding your company, we write to voice our strongest opposition to Facebook’s revived effort to launch a cryptocurrency and digital wallet, now branded ‘Diem’ and ‘Novi,’ respectively,” the senators wrote. “Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient.”

A spokesperson for Novi said that “we look forward to responding to the Committee’s letter,” but didn't elaborate. In his initial announcement, Marcus said the company remains committed to launching Diem. “I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasn’t changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live,” he wrote.

Amazon is reportedly aiming to bring some of the tech it uses at cashierless Amazon Go stores to your kitchen. According to Insider, the company has been working on a smart fridge that can monitor items and help you order replacements if you're running low on something.

The team behind the Amazon Go systems is said to be heading the charge on the project, which has been in the works for at least two years. The Just Walk Out tech used at Go stores tracks what shoppers put in their carts and automatically charges them when they leave. Members of the Amazon Fresh and Lab126 hardware teams are reportedly involved with the fridge project too.

The fridge would monitor the items inside and keep tabs on your purchasing habits, according to the report. If you run low on something you buy frequently, the fridge would notify you and make it easier to order more from Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh, which could give the company's grocery division a boost. The fridge could offer recipe suggestions too, which may prove useful if you forget about an item that's about to expire.

Amazon wouldn't make the fridges itself, Insider's sources said. It's looking to team up with an appliance manufacturer. There's a possibility that Alexa voice control could be included. That's said to not be a major concern, but given Amazon's propensity for stuffing Alexa into nearly every other type of product, including home robots and its own TVs, it wouldn't be a surprise if the fridge has voice assistant support.

The company has reportedly spent upwards of $50 million per year on the project so far. Even so, there's no guarantee that the fridge will come to market as it's possible Amazon will shelve the plans. If the fridge does come to market, it likely won't come cheap. An Amazon spokesperson told Engadget the company doesn't comment “on rumors or speculation.”

The concept isn't entirely new. In 2016, Samsung revealed a fridge that can help you keep track of what's inside without having to open the door. You can even order groceries using the built-in touchscreen. Amazon's fridge would take the idea a little further, though, since it would flag items that you're about to run out of and help you order more through the company's own grocery ecosystem.

Microsoft has been trying to straddle two different worlds with the Surface Go. When it launched in late 2018, Microsoft positioned it as an inexpensive way to get the 2-in-1 Surface experience. Three years later, that’s still true: The Surface Go 3, which Microsoft unveiled in late September, is an exceedingly well-built tablet, with a lovely screen and strong kickstand. For a device that starts at $400, it feels great.

But the full truth of the Surface Go 3 is a little more complicated. You need to shell out at least another $100 for a keyboard. And, seeing as Windows still doesn’t offer a great tablet experience you need the keyboard. Not to mention the basic $400 Surface Go 3 is underpowered – so by the time you’re buying a keyboard and bumping up the processor, storage and RAM, you’re spending as much money as you might on a full-fledged laptop with a larger display and more powerful internals.

Our review unit came with a 10th-generation Intel Core i3-10100Y processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. But that configuration costs $630, not including the $130 Alcantara-clad Type Cover and $100 Surface pen Microsoft sent along as well. It’s a fairly capable machine despite its tiny size, making it a potentially great travel companion. But if you’re going to spend $860 for the kit that I’m testing, you should know exactly what you want to do with it that you can’t do with a standard laptop.

When we reviewed the Surface Go 2 last spring, we noted that it was nearly identical to the first version, with the notable exception of a larger screen. This time out, I’m pretty sure the external hardware is completely identical. The Surface Go 3 is the exact same size and weight as its predecessor, and the display is the same 10.5-inch, 1,920 x 1,280 touchscreen as before.

That’s not a knock on the hardware, though, as the Surface Go 3 is a wonderfully designed and constructed device. I haven’t used previous Surface devices extensively, but Microsoft’s reputation for thoughtful hardware is well deserved. The screen is bright, sharp and colorful, with great viewing angles. I also very much appreciate the taller 3:2 aspect ratio – a 16:9 panel here would feel very cramped for vertical space.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

I’m also a big fan of the infinitely adjustable kickstand. I’m no visual artist, but the way you can push it nearly all the way around to prop up the tablet for drawing is a brilliant design decision, and the way the Surface Pen magnetically snaps to the side for easy access is very handy. It really makes me wish I could draw, but alas.

As before, the Surface Go 3 only has a few ports and buttons. There’s a USB-C port on one side as well as a headphone jack and Microsoft’s proprietary charging port. The good news is you can use the USB-C port for faster charging (as well as any other peripherals you have) and use the cables you probably already have instead of the slower charger. Up top, there’s a power button and volume rocker; an 8-megapixel camera stares out from the back of the tablet. Two stereo speakers flank the display, and there’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with a 1080p resolution for video calls. It also works with Windows Hello for face unlock. Finally, under the kickstand you’ll find a Micro SDXC card reader, but you really have to go searching for it.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Every time Microsoft releases new Surface tablets, questions follow about whether Windows is actually a viable platform for touchscreen use. With Windows 11, the answer is still “not really.” But purely on the strength of its hardware, the Surface Go 3 is a lovely tablet. The 3:2 aspect ratio makes it work well when holding it in either portrait or landscape mode. And at 1.2 pounds it’s a little heavier than an iPad, but not so much so that you’ll get tired of holding it.

We typically recommend Surface buyers use the device with some kind of keyboard, so nearly all my time testing the Go 3 was with Microsoft’s Type Cover attached. It’s unchanged from last year’s version, but that’s OK because Microsoft’s Surface keyboards are surprisingly good. Given the Go’s small size, it felt a bit cramped at first, but after giving my hands a little time to adjust it wasn’t an issue. 

The keys have decent travel and feel very solid, despite the Type Cover’s extremely thin design, and the magnets that attach it to the Go are very strong. The touchpad is fine given its rather small size, but – like the keyboard – it's not something I want to use for hours on end. When I was using the Go 3 at my desk for extended work sessions, I preferred using a Bluetooth mouse.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

The Type Cover weighs just over half a pound, so the tablet plus its keyboard cover is a good bit less than two pounds total. While the overall design hasn’t changed, the Surface Go 3 and its keyboard cover are still a very compact and well-designed set. There aren’t many devices that can provide the full Windows experience in such a portable package.

Unfortunately, as with the prior Surface Go models, you’re trading portability for performance. The Core i3 powering the $630 Go 3 that I’ve been testing is enough for basic tasks, but if you try and push things too much you’re going to be disappointed. My workflow is fairly modest: I mostly live in a browser (I used Edge for this review), and I also run apps including Trello, Slack, Todoist and Spotify. I also wrote this review in Word, to get the full Windows experience. Usually, the Surface Go 3 kept up with these tasks, but I had occasional music stutters and tabs often had to be reloaded if I navigated away from them for more than a minute or two.

Occasionally, things got worse. The Surface Go 3 mostly ran Adobe Lightroom fine, but moving through the interface definitely required patience as UI elements and photos took a while to load. And if I had it open along with any other programs, things slowed down significantly. Browser tabs were more likely to reload, and opening or switching between other apps took a lot longer. Lightroom performance itself was not terrible, though exporting an edited RAW file to a JPG took long enough that I did most of my photo editing and exporting for this review on my MacBook Pro. Exporting a single image probably took about 10 seconds, compared to a second or two on my Mac.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that being on a video call also led to serious performance issues. When I was on a Google Meet call with some co-workers, switching that and Slack was painfully slow, and Slack had to refresh entirely as if I just opened it. While we’re at it, Slack performance was mediocre on this machine; jumping between different channels and conversations led to noticeable delays. (I’m willing to put some of the blame on Google and particularly Slack, because Slack's Windows app is not good. But not all of it.) That sums up the Surface Go 3 experience pretty well — I often just had to wait a lot for things to catch up.

Running our usual suite of Windows benchmarks confirmed my impressions – indeed, according to Geekbench 5 and PCMark10, the new Core i3 processor is nearly identical to the m3 that it replaces. This just highlights that Intel still doesn’t have a great solution for smaller devices. Apple’s $330 iPad, which I just reviewed, hit 1,336 (single-core) / 3,349 (multi-core) on Geekbench 5, compared to the 859/1,450 I got running it on the Surface Go 3.

The battery situation also leaves something to be desired. I got about five hours using the Surface Go 3 during normal use doing my normal work routine — not awful, but given how low-powered the processor is, I expected more. It also makes the Go’s portability less useful, because if you can’t be away from a charger for a full work day, what’s the point of having such a small device? The device did last quite a long time in a lower-power test. The Go 3 lasted almost 11 hours while playing back HD video, which matches up with Microsoft's estimates for 11 hours. 

The Surface Go 3 isn't the fastest to charge, either. I had the device plugged in while running some benchmarks, and it took a whopping three hours to charge from 50 percent to 100 percent using the included charger. I was pushing the system pretty hard during that time, but even when I was doing less intense work, it took a good long while to charge. When the Go 3 was asleep, it still took about two hours to fully charge it up from 20 percent. 

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Benchmarks don’t tell the entire story, but they should give you a good idea of what to expect with the Surface Go 3. I could see the Go 3 making sense as a second computer, a companion to a more powerful Windows desktop for travel. If I was still commuting, I’d be happy to use the Go 3 on my hour-long train ride to go through email, do a little writing and manage all my to-dos. I could also see it being a good companion for running around at events like CES or E3. But I’d probably get tired of writing on that tiny screen.

But $630 plus another $100 minimum for the Type Cover is a lot of money for a device that feels rather slow and rather cramped. For that kind of money you could certainly get a more capable Windows laptop. Apple’s iPad is also a great option for a secondary computing device, and has the benefit of an OS that was built with tablets in mind; it’s also far more responsive than the Surface Go 3, and there are plenty of keyboard covers out there for getting real work done.

The value calculus does change if you’re a visual artist, I think. I have zero drawing ability, so the Surface Pen isn’t terribly useful for me. But it’s a very good stylus, and I could see artists who like to use Windows appreciating the Go 3 as a portable drawing tool that can also be a full-fledged computer when you need it. But once again, an iPad probably has better app support for artists who prefer a stylus.

Nathan Ingraham / Engadget

Probably the biggest issue with the Surface Go 3 is that nothing has significantly changed since Microsoft released the Go 2 almost a year and a half ago. The design is still good, but performance and battery life are essentially unchanged, despite the new chip. I can’t recommend that anyone get a Surface Go 3 with the Pentium Gold processor; it feels like the low-end model exists only so Microsoft can say it sells a $400 tablet.

Just like its predecessors, the Surface Go 3 can be a pretty useful tiny Windows device, though you’re paying a premium for the portability. And the price for performance ration is seriously out of whack. If you’re a Windows fan, it'a decent option as a secondary device for casual work and for when you want something extremely portable. There aren’t a lot of comparable Windows devices out there, and the hardware’s design and built quality remains outstanding. Just make sure you buy the Type Cover, don’t expect much from tablet mode and be patient if you’re running a lot of apps.

Amazon came out with the Fire Kids Pro family earlier this year to give parents with older children a secure tablet option. But since they have a couple more bells and whistles when compared to the standard Fire Kids tablets, these slabs come at a premium. However, Amazon has discounted the entire lineup, so you can grab one of the tablets for as low as $60. That's the price of the Fire 7 Pro, while the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro has dropped to $90 and the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro is on sale for $140.

Designed for kids ages six and up, the Fire Kids Pro tablets are similar to the standard kid-friendly slabs in that they come with a two-year warranty, a protective case and one year of Amazon Kids+. The latter also includes more content better suited for school-aged children rather than toddlers, including things like content from National Geographic, LEGO, Rabbids Coding and others. Kids Pro tablets also have a digital store in which parents can approve all apps purchases and downloads that their children request. That's on top of the standard parental controls that come with all Fire Kids tablets, making these slabs good options for parents that want to keep a close eye on what their children are doing while on their devices.

The biggest difference between the various Kids Pro tablets is their screen sizes — 7-, 8- and 10-inch models are available, and unsurprisingly, the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro also has the most power. It runs on an octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM, and should last up to 12 hours on a single charge. While the Fire 7 Kids Pro is best for those with tight budgets, we'd recommend upgrading to the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro for, at the very least, its USB-C charging port (the 7-inch tablet relies on a dated microUSB port).

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Amazon Prime members can now use the mobile Amazon Shopping app to send gifts to friends using just their phone number of email address — even if they don't have their street address. The new feature makes it easier to give, receive and even exchange presents for a gift card, the company announced. 

To do it, you just need browse for "millions of products" available to gift on Amazon's Shopping smartphone app, according to the company. Once you've selected a product, you can select "add a gift receipt for easy returns" and go to check out. You can also select a new option to "let the recipient provide their address." To complete the transaction, you just enter their email address or mobile phone number. 

Once sent, recipients receive a gift message by email or text. From there, they can choose to accept the gift and enter their preferred delivery address. If they're not keen on your choice, they can exchange the item for a gift card and use that to purchase something else with no need to notify the gift giver. 

The feature requires the gift recipient to also have an Amazon account, much as Venmo or PayPal's Mobile Cash app requires the sender and receiver to have an account. The key benefit of Amazon's app is that you can still personalize a gift, even if you don't feel comfortable hitting shops with a pandemic still raging. The new feature arrives to Amazon Shopping in the US today (October 4th) — if you get a chance to try it, let us know how it went in the comments below. 

As promised, Jeep has detailed its first Grand Cherokee plug-in hybrid. The company has confirmed the Grand Cherokee 4xe will arrive in North American dealers in early 2022, and will sport more capabilities than you might have expected. The estimated 25 miles of all-electric driving (440 miles total) won't necessarily cover your entire commute, but Jeep is promising a rough-and-ready PHEV that can climb hills without touching the 2.0L turbo gas engine. You can also drive in a full hybrid mode for peak performance and an "eSave" mode to preserve the 17kWh battery for later.

You can also expect new technology inside, such as 10-inch front and rear passenger displays with built-in Fire TV — your kids can stream Prime Video in the backseat. The driver, meanwhile, gets a 10-inch display with a much faster Uconnect 5 platform that supports over-the-air updates.

The 4xe and its regular counterparts are improved off-roaders with semi-active damping for air suspension as well as a front-axle disconnect when the SUV senses it doesn't need all-wheel drive. You'll also get semi-autonomous help through an optional Active Driving Assist system that takes over so long as your hands are on the wheel and your eyes are on the road. Jeep is promising a 6,000lbs maximum towing capacity.

Jeep hasn't divulged pricing for the Grand Cherokee 4xe, although it will be available in increasingly loaded Limited, Trailhawk, Overland, Summit and Summit Reserve editions. It's already safe to say this is an important vehicle for the brand, though. Parent company Stellantis is racing to catch up with rivals in electrifying its vehicles, with plans for a fully electric version of every SUV by 2025. The plug-in hybrid is a critical first step in that direction.