To say the pandemic threw off my exercise routine would be an understatement. I was a gym regular who thrived on treadmills and weight machines, and I suddenly had to improvise with pushups and runs. I struggled to maintain a routine, and for a while gave up entirely. How was I going to stay fit at a time when merely ordering dumbbells was a challenge? Late last year, though, I resolved to get back into shape and bought a $599 Echelon Connect Sport exercise bike to use in tandem with an $80-per-year Apple Fitness+ membership. I haven’t regretted it.

The math behind my decision was simple: I wanted a quality bike that wouldn’t tie me to one service or empty my bank account in record fashion. That quickly ruled out Peloton, whose Bike ($1,495 as I write this) and full subscription ($39 per month) were overkill for someone who mainly wanted to shake off some cobwebs. The Connect Sport was appealing precisely because it didn’t chain me to anything; I could put my phone on the built-in stand and use a lower-priced service like Fitness+ to guide my workouts. I was poised to save hundreds of dollars per year, even if I had to buy the virtually mandatory Apple Watch. (I already own a Series 5.) An iPhone is also required, of course.

Yes, the Connect Sport amounts to a Peloton Bike doppelgänger without the screen, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Echelon’s machine feels solidly built, and it’s stable even in the midst of an intense workout. The flywheel-based mechanism is also remarkably quiet. Apart from a clacking sound that disappeared after the first three weeks, the loudest noise I’ve heard was my own breathing. The handlebars and seating are highly adjustable, and the pedals use cages to keep your feet in place (thus letting you use ordinary shoes) instead of clips. This is a bike that’s easy to live with, letting me concentrate on the task at hand rather than my equipment.

Jon Fingas/Engadget

The quirks mostly stem from the inherent nature of full-size spin bikes like this. The Connect Sport isn’t as compact as some alternatives, particularly folding models like Echelon’s own Flex Ultra. At 92 pounds, it’s also too heavy to casually move between rooms. And while you don’t need electricity unless you intend to use the built-in Bluetooth telemetry, the included power cord isn’t lengthy. I wouldn’t choose this bike if I was a space-conscious apartment dweller.

I’m happy with its Apple Fitness+ performance, though. To start a cycling workout, I just need to put my iPhone on the stand, launch the Fitness app and go. The exercise data I care about (heart rate, calories burned, duration) comes from the Apple Watch, so I don’t even need the Connect Sport’s Bluetooth functionality. I would only want to plug the bike into power if I craved the Echelon Fit app’s cadence and resistance info, which aren’t necessary with Apple’s service. Just be prepared to buy a tablet if you plan to use Echelon’s app (in its open-ended “free ride” mode) and Fitness+ at the same time, as you can’t juggle both on one screen.

Fitness+ works about as well as it did when Engadget tried it on launch, but that’s plenty for someone getting back into shape on the Connect Sport. Apple’s cycling coaches are friendly, helpful and accommodate a wide range of ability levels. Instead of demanding precise cadence and resistance ranges like you might see with some services, they frequently ask you to match a song’s beat or tweak the resistance to feel enough leg strain. That may be too fuzzy if you’re eager for consistent numbers, but for me it’s perfect: I’m measuring progress in terms of how well I can sustain an all-out push, not how closely I mimic someone else’s settings. The bike’s resistance knob is easy to adjust, so it’s trivial to ramp up the difficulty if a ride is too much of a cakewalk.

Jon Fingas/Engadget

I’ve found Apple’s cycling workouts challenging enough as someone relatively new to spin bikes while still well-acquainted with structured exercise. For one, there’s a healthy variety of classes now that Fitness+ has been available for over a year. Many of them rely on a familiar hill climb metaphor that alternates between intense pushes and easy recoveries, but I’ve sometimes encountered welcome twists, like rides that get progressively harder without significant breaks. While these classes likely wouldn’t push a pro athlete or dedicated amateur to their limits, they’ve gracefully scaled with me as my abilities improved.

More importantly, the sessions are engaging. I find myself picking workouts based on well-chosen music with some surprisingly deep cuts. Ever rally to nostalgia-inducing late ‘90s dance tracks, or a coach’s favorite heavy metal band? I have. And while the inspirational talk is borderline cliché, the personalities often shine through and help me look forward to classes from my favorite instructors. I just wish there were more episodes suiting my exact music tastes. It’s no fun to “settle” for a rock workout when I really hoped for dance, no matter how thrash-worthy that rock might be.

Jon Fingas/Engadget

As a result, the combination of a Connect Sport with Fitness+ works very well for me. Exercise is a pleasure I look forward to, and I’ve seen tangible improvements to my leg power and even my posture. I wouldn’t recommend the pairing to everyone, though. As you might have guessed, Fitness+ is a no-go if you’re either an Android user or seriously considering a switch. You’re thoroughly locked into Apple’s ecosystem if you sign up between the iPhone, Apple Watch and subscription. I would also pass if I were a pro or serious amateur racer — you just won’t get the detailed stats needed for targeted improvements. Spring for a dedicated sports watch and a more demanding membership instead.

If you do live in Apple’s universe and aren’t competing for glory, though, this duo is easy to recommend. It’s an affordable, effective way to cram some cycling into a packed schedule. Moreover, Echelon’s bring-your-own-device strategy offers a convenient escape hatch if you ever want to ditch a service without replacing your bike or rigging an ad hoc solution. For me, the results speak for themselves: I’m in the best shape I’ve been for two years, and I can’t ask for much better than that.

It’s been about a year since Sonos released the Roam, the company’s smallest and least expensive speaker yet. As with most modern Sonos speakers, the Roam has a built-in microphone that lets you use the speaker with Amazon’s Alexa or the Google Assistant. Today, Sonos is releasing a variant of the Roam that omits that microphone, the Roam SL.

Aside from removing the microphone, the $159 Roam SL is identical to the original Roam, which costs $20 more. It's a small speaker that can connect to your WiFi network and be part of a Sonos multi-room audio system. But it also has a built-in battery and Bluetooth capabilities, so you can take it with you and use it away from a WiFi connection. It's also waterproof and dust-resistant (IP67 rated), and the battery is rated for about 10 hours. 

Aside from losing voice assistant capability, losing the microphone takes away another feature from the Roam SL. The original Roam features Auto Trueplay, which uses the microphone to tune the speaker to sound better wherever you place it. With no microphone, the Roam SL won't be able to do this, and Sonos confirmed that you won't be able to manually tune the speaker with an iPhone as you can do with most of the company's other speakers. It's not a huge surprise, as the Roam SL is meant to be moved, so a manual tuning process isn't something that'll make sense for most people, but it's still worth knowing if you're choosing between the Roam and the Roam SL. 

The Roam's battery life isn't as good as other speakers in its class, but it sounds great and is a relatively inexpensive way to see how the Sonos experience works. As such, we imagine the Roam SL will also be worth checking out for people who don't want a microphone on their speaker. Sonos has tried this before, with the One SL, a mic-less version of the Sonos One, so it's not a huge surprise to see the company offer the Roam without a mic as well. You can pre-order the Roam SL now on the Sonos website, and it'll be available on March 15th.

Many of Amazon's attempts at fighting climate change have revolved around policy promises and investments, but now it's focusing more on the goods it sells. The company has launched an Aware product line devoted to eco-friendly items like bedding, clothing, home essentials and skincare. In every case, they're made with "bio-based ingredients," recycled materials and other more sustainable elements.

All Aware products have received at least some form of independent environmental certification. Skincare products are certified as free of "chemicals of concern," for instance. Bed and bath products, meanwhile, are verified as made in "socially responsible working conditions" on top of their reduced ecological footprint.

Amazon has long been accused of contributing to waste through its dominance of online shopping. In 2018, it accounted for 5 billion out of 165 billion packages shipped in the US — that's a lot of cardboard, foam and other packing materials. The company has taken steps to minimize its impact, such as insisting on efficient packaging and developing reusable boxes you can turn into cat condos, but many of its own-brand products haven't been designed with the environment as a top priority.

Green products like the Aware range might be necessary, though. Amazon has made much ado about its Climate Pledge target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. While the company can reduce the impact of its facilities, packaging and transportation, it might have a harder time reaching that goal if its catalog doesn't make a similar pro-climate shift.

If there’s one thing that really defined that murky period just after the turn of the millennium, it was the Razor Scooter craze. A thin-and-light scooter with impractically-small wheels, these vehicles were the ride of choice for tweens all over the US, at least before they got their own cars. Now, however, Razor is hoping to juice the nostalgia gland of all those kids by electrifying its original thin-and-light kick scooter. The Razor Icon is a scaled-up version of its original Model A, remade in the form of an e-scooter with the original-ish styling and detail.

The Icon is packing a 36V lithium-ion battery connected to a 350-watt motor that the company promises has a range of 18 miles, and a top speed of 18 miles per hour. Crafted with “aircraft grade aluminum” it’s designed to evoke those memories of kicking around your neighborhood or mall back when life was sweet. You’ll also find a LED headlamp and brake light to ensure you’re safe tootling around on those 8.5-inch airless tires.

Of course, this isn’t actually Razor’s first (second, or third) e-scooter, and it has a fairly beefy business offering a number of models. Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with Jeep to craft the RX200, an “off-road” scooter with a slow top speed but inflated tires and a 40-minute battery life. The models that Razor currently sell, however, do lack that certain stark something compared to its original, foot-powered design. It’s perhaps this issue more than the rest that the Icon is designed to address (although the E-Prime, I’ll admit, does come close).

Given that this is a nice piece of nostalgia it’s no surprise that the Razor Icon is being launched at Toy Fair today. And, naturally, it’s decided to take pre-orders for this thing via Kickstarter (Kickstarter! Another thing we can get nostalgic about) with early birds able to pick up a model for $549, while latecomers who spent their mornings pretending that listening to Warning was a good idea will have to spend $599.

If you missed the sale earlier this month, now's your chance to grab Apple's Mac Mini M1 at its best price yet. The compact desktop has returned to a record low of $570, thanks to a discount and a coupon that knocks an additional $80 off the sale price. You'll get the best deal on the 256GB version, but the 512GB model is also cheaper than usual: it's on sale for $799, but an automatically applied coupon will bring the final price down to $750.

The Mac Mini M1 was already the most budget-friendly M1 machine in Apple's lineup, so it's a steal at this sale price. You can expect performance similar to that of the MacBook Air M1, which is to say, speedy and efficient with near instantaneous wake times and even zippy iOS app performance. The Mac Mini M1 has an eight-core CPU, an eight-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine, and both models on sale have 8GB of RAM. If you want to future-proof your machine a bit, consider springing for the extra-storage model. But most people will likely find their needs met by the base, 256GB version.

The small desktop's exterior will look familiar if you've had a Mac Mini in the past. Apple focused its efforts updating the inside, so the outside is mostly unchanged. The compact silver box should be able to fit into even the most cramped desk setups, and it has a number of ports on its back edge, including two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI connector, an Ethernet port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. While we're still waiting to hear whether Apple will have a hardware event in March, there's no guarantee an updated Mac Mini will make an appearance at such an event. So if you've been on the hunt for a powerful desktop upgrade, Amazon's latest sale on the Mac Mini M1 is one to consider.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Reddit has made r/Russia harder to find and stumble across in a move meant to minimize misinformation on the website. It has added the group to the list of "quarantined subreddits," which means it won't show up in search and recommendations, as well as in non-subscription-based feeds. Also, anyone who loads an r/Russia URL it will go through a portal where they'll have explicitly agree to visit the subreddit before seeing its content. Those who do choose to visit will see a warning at the top of the page that says "This Community contains a high volume of information not supported by credible sources."

Engadget

According to Mashable, the Russia subreddit mostly contained posts that justified or supported the country's invasion of Ukraine. Some accused Ukraine of being the one to spread misinformation, and some reportedly likened Ukrainian soldiers to Nazis. While there were some verifiable posts in the group, it also had a lot of content that could be quickly debunked. "We are clear in our policies that moderators and users may not attempt to manipulate and interfere with the conversations or communities on our platform," a Reddit spokesperson told the publication. 

Over the past few days, a number of tech companies have blocked access to Russian state-owned media in Europe following the EU's decision to ban them so they could "no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin's war." Facebook restricted access to RT's and Sputnik's pages across EU territories in addition to blocking them in Ukraine. Microsoft banned them from its ad network and de-ranked them in Bing search results. YouTube blocked access to their channels across Europe, and even TikTok made their accounts inaccessible within the EU.

I grew up in the era of VHS board games and later, DVD special features that occasionally included little trivia games or interactive fiction (the Home Movies box sets have some particularly good ones). I find them sort of interesting in a “car crash” sort of a way, because they never really worked. Today’s streaming platforms would seem ripe for a revival of the “game video” concept, but even with better technology and storytelling available to creators the examples are still few and far between.

The one that’s made the biggest splash thus far is probably “Bandersnatch,” the interactive episode of Black Mirror. I “played” it and like many I found it somewhat underwhelming: Your choices were somewhat limited and the story fell rather flat (and I never found the scene where you the main character fights his therapist to my infinite and everlasting sadness). Still, it was an intriguing effort. Last week Charlie Brooker tries his hand at the format once again on Netflix, but in a decidedly different genre: old school cartoons.

Cat Burglar is a 12-minute showdown between a cat trying to steal a painting from an art museum and the dog that works as the night guard. As a cartoon it’s a fairly pitch-perfect copy of a Looney Tunes short down to the exaggerated expressions, physical humor and occasional fourth-wall breaking. It could in fact, stand alone without the interactive elements, but if you really wanted an old-school cartoon both Warner Bros. and Disney make dozens of their best animated shorts available on HBO Max and Disney+ respectively. There’s also the Cuphead show on Netflix — which doesn’t interest me as I have never played the game (and never will because I’m just not that good at platformers).

Netflix

So the real draw of Cat Burglar is its interaction, and it even bills itself as a “trivia game” instead of just an “experience.” How does it fare as a game? The gameplay consists of various quicktime events in which you must answer three quiz questions in a short period of time. When you answer correctly the cat succeeds and the scene continues, if you answer incorrectly the cat dies and you are sent back to make the choice again.

If you’re looking for tricky trivia this isn’t it, as most of the questions are easily guessed by anyone over the age of eight. There’s clearly a “right” answer and a “wrong” answer, and the game gives you three lives to lose before you get sent to heaven. As such, it feels even more restrictive than “Bandersnatch,” since you don’t really get to make choices.

However, while I said “most” of the questions are meant to be easily answered, the game will occasionally try to trick you up. I’ve died a few times in the game because my thumb twitched or I misread the answers (there’s one sequence full of double negatives) or, in one particular case, I just hated the question. (I still maintain that an Emperor Penguin is more powerful than the Emperor of Japan; I knew what answer the game wanted but it just made me mad for being so dumb.) The game will throw three questions at you each time but even getting one wrong will lose you the scene and thus, a life. But dying just means going back to the beginning and doing it all again, and even then it’s not everything — the game will skip over short bits of animation you’ve seen before that aren’t relevant to the overall plot.

Netflix

When you beat the game by successfully stealing a painting, your new acquisition goes on display in a gallery that carries over to subsequent playthroughs. There’s six of them but so far I’ve only played enough to get half. When you win — or even when you lose — the game lets you start over, with the characters promising a “completely new” experience. That, in my evening of playing, is decidedly not true as I’ve already seen certain interchangeable scenes more than once. Either there aren’t that many options or I just have weird luck. But you’d hope the game would be programmed to avoid repeats at first.

Ultimately I think Cat Burglar works better as an experience than “Bandersnatch” did because it’s just much shorter; if I wanted to replay “Bandersnatch” I have to ask myself if I have an hour or more to kill just to see one or two story paths. Knowing that Cat Burglar is going to be quick certainly makes it less daunting, and it’s not even a bad option for kids as long as you don’t mind gratuitous cartoon violence.

We most likely won't see the ExoMars mission blast off and start its journey to the Red Planet this year. The European Space Agency has announced that it's fully implementing sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states following the country's invasion of Ukraine, and it expects the move to affect its joint projects with Roscosmos. One of those joint projects is ExoMars, which is being developed to search for past life on the Red Planet, as well as to assess its water and atmospheric trace gases.

The ESA is working on the rover that will travel across the Martian surface, while the Russian space agency is in charge of its lander and some instruments the rover will use. In the ESA's announcement, it said "the sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely." The agency still has to analyze all its options before it can finalize a decision on how to proceed. 

ExoMars was supposed to launch in 2018 before it was rescheduled for 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple technical failures during testing prompted the space agencies to postpone it yet again. To be able to reach Mars from Earth, a spacecraft has to leave our planet within 10-day launch windows that only occur every two years when the two planets are properly lined up. If ExoMars is missing the this year's window, then it will definitely be delayed for another couple of years at the very least.

The ESA has also acknowledged that Roscosmos halting Soyuz launches and withdrawing its workforce from the vehicle's usual launchpad in Kazakhstan will affect some of its projects and payloads. In addition, as The New York Times notes, the war calls the fate of the ISS into question. At the moment, NASA and Roscosmos are working together to maintain the space station. But Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin recently said that US sanctions against his country could degrade its space program and destroy its partnership with NASA.

He said:

"If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station (ISS) from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or...Europe? There is also the possibility of a 500-ton structure falling on India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, therefore all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?"

While the US side of the ISS provides life support and power, the Russian side provides propulsion to maintain its altitude. NASA's human spaceflight program head Kathy Lueders said operations are going well thus far, but that Northrop Grumman and SpaceX have offered to help look for ways to add capability to the US side of the space laboratory.

Uber is rolling out a feature designed to help people discover new things in the areas around them. Through the Explore tab in the Uber app, you can make dinner reservations, check out concert listings and learn about cultural highlights. You'll be able to see Yelp reviews, photos and directions for a variety of experiences.

Uber

For the first time, users can book experiences and buy tickets through the app with their Uber wallet and payment profile. With one-click rides, you can instantly book a trip to the restaurant or concert venue.

Based on your Uber and Uber Eats history, you'll see recommendations for things like food and drink, art and culture, music and nightlife. There will be offers available, including discounted rides to certain restaurants. Uber says the deals will change depending on what's popular in a given area.

Uber isn't charging restaurants a booking fee for reservations made through Explore. However, it may add a service or booking fee for some experiences. The company will reveal more about ticketing partners at a later date. It's not yet clear what kinds of benefits Uber One members will receive through the Explore tab, though Uber promised to share more details in the coming months.

The feature goes live today in 15 areas: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis - St. Paul, New Orleans, New Jersey, Upstate New York, Orlando, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle and Mexico City. Uber plans to bring Explore to more locations and to add other types of events and experiences.

Uber

Uber Explore could be useful for spontaneous trips to a new city if you don't have much time to plan beforehand. It could also come in handy for downtime on business trips or to just learn about new things in a place where you've lived for a while.

Offering recommendations about local experiences, events and places to check out is hardly new. Foursquare, Airbnb, Google Maps and Eventbrite (to name a few) have been offering people recommendations for things to do for years. Still, by baking Explore into its ridehailing app, Uber not only wants to help you find cool spots and events, but to help you get there and back home.

Finnish software outfit Jolla has announced that it is attempting to disentangle itself from the Russian state interests that hold a significant stake in its business. Samuli Simojoki, current chair of Jolla’s board, posted (in Finnish) on LinkedIn, saying that Jolla is currently 45-percent owned by Rostelecom. The Russian telecommunications giant is itself 45-percent owned by the Russian government, and so while it’s not a majority stake, it is significant. Simojoki added that Jolla has been “actively” driving down its Russian business through 2021 and, at this point, does not make any money from the nation. But, until it can find a way of buying Rostelecom out, or somehow otherwise arranging a separation, the thorny issue remains.

Those with short memories might not recall that Jolla was the company that rose from the ashes of Nokia’s homegrown smartphone OS, MeeGo. Jolla, itself formed by former Nokia engineers, developed MeeGo into Sailfish, which was intended to offer a second alternative to Android in the then-burgeoning mobile world. After a not-too-successful attempt at launching its own handset in 2013, Sailfish pivoted to supporting Android devices as a replacement operating system for those tired of Google. By early 2015, having failed to make much of a dent in the world with that strategy, Jolla received positive overtures from the Russian government.

Russia’s interest in Sailfish was, broadly speaking, part of a trend back then reflecting a wariness on behalf of other major nations of western technology. Both China and Russia, concerned that computers, tablets, smartphones and industrial applications were becoming entirely dependent on American-owned hardware and software, looked for alternative platforms to adopt. In late 2016, the Russian government approved Sailfish as a platform that could be used by government departments and officials. It subsequently signed similar deals in China and Latin America, where Jolla licensed its source code to a local partner. This was sufficient to help it avoid a second bankruptcy, although its financial woes have always been an issue.

It’s not clear, and we have emailed Jolla for further comment, what this will mean for Jolla’s future as a standalone business. In his LinkedIn post, Simojoki said that the company has received plenty of positive interest from European companies, but they will only sign up after Rostelecom’s stake is gone. That, for now, leaves the company stuck in something of a Catch-22.