Apple's sweet-spot earbuds are now at their best price to date. Amazon is selling the third-generation AirPods at an all-time low of $140, or $29 off. That makes it an easy choice if you're interested in perks like head-tracking spatial audio and wireless charging, but don't need the active noise cancellation and snug fit of higher-end models.

The third-gen AirPods address many of the concerns you might have had about Apple's mid-tier wireless buds in the past. They offer dramatically improved audio quality, with a more immersive sound, cleaner highs and consistent bass response. They're more comfortable, and the six-hour battery life is long enough for a cross-country flight. And you might even prefer the more open design to that of the AirPods Pro — you won't need a transparency mode to listen to a colleague.

These won't be for everyone. You can use AirPods with Android and Windows devices, but they're still best-suited to the Apple ecosystem. And while they're sweat-resistant, you might not want to wear the third-gen models during vigorous workouts. At this price, however, they sit in a good middle ground and are more competitive with rivals' earbuds.

Thankfully, you also have choices if you're looking for discounts on Apple's other models. The second-gen AirPods remain at $90 if you're happy with no-frills audio and wired charging. The latest AirPods Pro, meanwhile, are still down to $230 if you want the company's best in-ear listening experience. It's just a question of your needs and budget.

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Black Friday has come early for Sony and those who love the company's audio gadgets. A bunch of our favorite headphones and earbuds are already on sale, including the excellent WH-1000XM5. They're currently discounted by 13 percent, so you can grab them for $348. That's still a steep price for a pair of ANC headphones, but considering they're our favorites at the moment, this discount is a good one. Meanwhile, the still solid WH-1000XM4 cans are $122 off and down to $228; the budget-friendly WH-CH710N cans are down to only $68; and the Sony LinkBuds S earbuds are on sale for $128.

Sony built upon the solid foundations in the XM4 to make this year's XM5. The new design makes them even more comfortable to wear for long periods of time, and they have noticeably better active noise cancellation as well. Now, the ANC in the XM4 was already stellar, so Sony just took it up a notch with the XM5 by adding a separate V1 chip to accompany the QN1 chip that was the star of the show in the XM4. In addition to that, the XM5 have a total of eight ANC mics, double the number in the XM4, and all of that adds up to a system that does a fantastic job of blocking out all kinds of noise.

Aside from that, the XM5 have all of the same features that the XM4 had: good sound quality, solid touch controls, multi-device connectivity, Speak-to-Chat and a 30-hour battery life. It's not surprising that they topped our list of best wireless headphones, nudging its predecessor off the list, so it's also not surprising that you'll have to pay a premium for them. We don't expect them to drop much lower than $348, so this is a good deal that you can get even before Black Friday proper. However, if you're willing to skip the enhancements in the XM5, the XM4 are still really great headphones that are made much better by this Black Friday sale price of $228.

If you're sticking to a strict budget this holiday season, Sony's WH-CH710N headphones are a steal at $68. They don't have as slick of a design as the XM5 (or the XM4, really), but they are comfortable and have decent ANC. We also like their 35-hour battery life, plus the fact that you can take calls hands-free if you link the headphones up with your phone's virtual assistant. As for the LinkBuds S, they are some of Sony's newest wireless earbuds and their key feature is smart playback. The buds will automatically play and pause music depending on your activity, plus they support ANC and high-resolution audio.

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Black Friday is good time to pick up a robot vacuum for less than usual, especially considering these can be some of the most expensive smart home gadgets out there. Thankfully, you don't have to spend an arm and a leg to get a decent one. Right now, iRobot's affordable Roomba 694 is even cheaper than usual at $179, which is $95 off its normal price.

iRobot's early Black Friday sale makes our favorite budget robo-vac even more compelling. Typically priced at $274, the Roomba 694 impressed us with its sleek design, good suction power that cleans carpeted and hard floors well and its ability to navigate around most household objects. There are more expensive machines that do a superior job sucking up pet hair, but the 694 was surprisingly good at it, too.

You can start a cleaning job by pressing the button on the robo-vac itself, or by using the iRobot mobile app. That's one of the biggest selling points of a Roomba – iRobot's app is quite easy to learn how to use, and it lets you do things like set cleaning schedules, send your robot home and more. The latter is useful if you want to abruptly stop a cleaning job, but the Roomba 694 is smart enough to automatically go back to its charging base when its battery gets to low. It'll then recharge on its own and be ready for the next time you call upon it. Overall, it may not have a ton of bells and whistles, but the Roomba 694 is a solid starter robo-vac that's made even more compelling by this Black Friday price.

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Twitter might lose even more employees following the mass layoffs that halved its workforce earlier this month – and after the company fired engineers who publicly called out its new owner. Elon Musk gave the remaining staff an ultimatum and asked them to commit to an "extremely hardcore" Twitter, going forward. "If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below," he reportedly wrote in an email that links to an online form.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

The executive apparently said it will mean "working long hours at high intensity." He added: "Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade." The email said those who don't sign the form by 5 PM ET today would be let go and receive three months’ severance pay.

The work is stacking up, too. Alongside the Twitter Blue subscriptions and verification drama, the company seems to be working on end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for its direct messaging feature. Researcher Jane Manchun Wong spotted code in Twitter's Android app suggesting E2EE is on its way.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Toyota's 2023 Prius is the most fuel-efficient vehicle in the lineup

• Apple's Major League Soccer Season Pass debuts February 1st for $99 per year

• Evernote, once the king of note-taking apps, has been bought by Bending Spoons

• Samsung brings game streaming to its 2021 TVs

• The best gifts for space lovers in 2022

• The Instant Pot Duo drops to $50 ahead of Black Friday

• A ‘Streets of Rage’ movie written by John Wick's creator is on the way

• Genesis unveils a sleek X Convertible concept EV

Yes, you can now play 'Solitaire' and 'Minesweeper' in Microsoft Teams

Don't tell your boss.

Microsoft has added a new app called Games for Work to Teams, so you can dive into some casual multiplayer titles with your coworkers. As many as 250 people can play Microsoft Solitaire, Microsoft Minesweeper, Microsoft IceBreakers and Microsoft Wordament together. With Wordament, there's even a leaderboard for extra competition.

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The best gifts for travelers in 2022

Make sure friends and family have great the best gear for their next trip.

Now many of us are traveling (or planning to travel) again, are you ready for it? We’ve curated a list of upgrades you or your friends and family might appreciate, including things like sleep masks and packing cubes – not to mention tech gear like battery packs and noise-canceling headphones.

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Black market fears are hampering cannabis waste recycling efforts in California

This is why you can't drop off your expended carts at the dispensary.

HighGradeRoots via Getty Images

Cannabis is more popular than ever in the US — 44 percent of adults have access to it, either medically or recreationally. What’s more, edibles and concentrates continue to rise in popularity among all age groups. This increased demand for vape cartridges — both near-ubiquitous 510-threads, like those from Rove, or more specialized carts, like the Pax Era Pods — has led to their increased production and, in turn, their inevitable arrival in American landfills. In California, the nation’s largest legal cannabis market, due to the state’s strict hazardous waste disposal regulations, it’s a major challenge to dispose of components responsibly. Andrew Tarantola explains why.

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NASA's mighty Artemis 1 rocket finally launches

It's now following an elliptical orbit around Earth.

NASA's mighty Artemis 1 rocket has launched for the first time, headed toward the moon. It has passed through key milestones, including solid rocket booster jettison and space launch system (SLS) first-stage separation without issue.

The agency had penciled in a launch attempt for November 14th, but Hurricane Nicole forced a slight delay to those plans. NASA kept the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft on the launch pad as the hurricane battered the Kennedy Space Center. They sustained minor damage, but not enough to force a lengthier delay.

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GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini review

This smaller camera may be perfect for some.

Engadget

If you don’t want all the bells and whistles and want an honest-to-goodness action camera with all the Hero 11 Black video credentials, then the Mini ($300) might be the camera for you. While it lacks a screen, Engadget’s James Trew says it makes a good secondary camera for a different angle. And if you use a full-size GoPro for drone FPV footage (rather than its dedicated Bones camera) then the Mini is also a great option.

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Google has started its Black Friday deals early, offering solid discounts on many of its Pixel and Nest devices. That includes offers of up to 33 percent of the Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, Pixel Watch and Pixel Buds Pro, along with home products like the Nest Thermostat, Nest Security Cam and Nest Doorbell. 

For smartphone shoppers on a budget, Google's Pixel 6a is on sale for just $299 (33 percent off the regular $449 price), matching the best sale we've seen so far. It has top-notch performance, while giving you the purest Android experience possible. At the same time, you get excellent camera quality, thanks to the two 12-megapixel rear cameras and 8-MP front sensor delivering bright, colorful pictures and video. It also comes with a distinctive design, sharp 6.1-inch OLED screen covered with Gorilla Glass 3, long-lasting battery, IP67 water/dust protection and more.

Google's latest phones are also on sale. The Google Pixel 7 128GB (5G, unlocked) is available for just $499 instead of $599, while the top-end Pixel 7 Pro (5G, unlocked) is priced at $749, or $150 off the regular $899 price. Both models have the new Tensor G2 chip, excellent cameras and new software and features like Direct My Call and Photo Unblur — helping them both achieve high scores in our Engadget review. The main differences between the two are in the display, with the Pixel 7 Pro being better for mobile gaming thanks to the 120Hz display, compared to 90Hz on the Pixel 7.

Engadget

If you've had your eye on Google's sleek Pixel Watch, now is the time to act, as it's on sale for $300, or $50 (14 percent) off the regular price. It's easily one of the prettiest Wear OS watches out there, offers excellenbt health and fitness tracking and useful new faces. Meanwhile, Google's Pixel Buds Pro are discounted by 25 percent, bringing the regular $200 price down to $150. We called them "Google's best earbuds yet," thanks to the solid ANC performance, punchy bass and reliable touch controls. 

Finally, multiple Google Nest products are available at some of the lowest prices we've seen. You can grab the Google Nest Thermostat for $90, a savings of $40 (31 percent) off the regular price. The Google Nest Security Cam (wired) has been reduced by 30 percent to $70, and if it's a Google Nest Doorbell you're after, that item is on sale for $120, for a savings of $60 (33 percent). The sale runs nearly two weeks until November 28th, but it's still best to act soon in case any of the items run out. 

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

If companies are going to make augmented reality glasses you'd actually want to wear, they'll need chips that are powerful but won't require a large battery on your head. Qualcomm thinks it can help. The company has unveiled a Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 platform that's built with slim AR glasses in mind. The multi-chip design reportedly delivers 2.5 times the AI performance of the company's XR2-based reference design while using half the power. You could have eyewear that intelligently detects objects in the room while remaining slim and light enough to use for hours at a time.

Part of the trick is to spread the computing load across the glasses' frame, Qualcomm says. The primary, 4nm-based AR processor includes a CPU, Tensor AI processing, graphics and engines for features like visual analytics. It can support up to nine simultaneous cameras for tracking both your body and the world around you. A co-processor elsewhere in the glasses includes an AI accelerator for tasks like eye tracking and computer vision, while a third chip handles connectivity to networks and phones. This not only better-balances the weight, but leads to smaller circuit boards and fewer wires than you'd see with a single do-it-all chip.

That networking is also important, Qualcomm says. Like Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in phones, AR2 Gen 1 is one of the first platforms to support WiFi 7. That's crucial not just to provide the gobs of bandwidth for connecting to a handset (up to 5.8Gbps), but to reduce latency (under 2ms to your phone, according to Qualcomm). Combined with lag reduction in the processor and co-processor, you should have a more natural-feeling and responsive experience.

Hardware built on AR2 Gen 1 is in "various stages" of progress at multiple well-known companies, including Lenovo, LG, Nreal, Oppo and Xiaomi. Importantly, Microsoft had a hand in the platform requirements. Don't be surprised if you're one day using AR2 for virtual collaboration in Mesh, not to mention other Microsoft apps and services.

Qualcomm has also introduced meaningful updates to its audio technology. New S3 Gen 2 Sound and S5 Gen 2 Sound platforms promise to make the latest listening tech more commonplace, including spatial audio with head tracking, lower latency for games and the latest take on adaptive active noise cancellation (think of the transparency modes found on some earbuds). You won't see real-world products until the second half of 2023, but these chips could democratize features that were previously reserved for pricier buds and headphones. 

Notion, the company behind the popular note-taking app of the same name, has started testing a new feature called Notion AI that uses a generative AI to write notes and other content. The Verge got a chance to use the software before today’s announcement. The interface is straightforward. You first select the type of writing you want help with from a list that includes options like “blog post,” “marketing email” and “to-do list.” You then provide the software with a suitable prompt, hit the blue “Generate” button and then watch as it creates text in real-time.

Judging from some of the writing the tool produced for The Verge, it benefits, like other generative AIs, from the user being as specific as possible about what they want. For instance, when the outlet asked Notion AI to write a blog post about the state of the smartwatch industry, the resulting draft mentioned the Apple Watch 4, Samsung Galaxy Watch and Tizen. In other words, it wrote about the state of the market in 2018, not as it exists today.

Notion CEO Ivan Zhao was quick to acknowledge the feature is a work in progress. It’s currently labeled as an alpha, with no release date announced. To try Notion AI, you’ll need to sign up for a waitlist and wait for an invite from the company. As for who this is for, Zhao said he envisions the software solving the “cold start” problem a lot of people face when they sit down to write something. The idea isn’t so much for Notion AI to produce a piece that’s ready to publish right away, but it could give you a first draft you can revise and polish into something that you’re comfortable sharing with the world. Zhao suggests the software is also handy for brainstorming and translating text you’ve written.

“The truth is sometimes we all just get stuck. In those cases, Notion AI can help you write,” Notion says of its new tool in a one-minute promotional video the company shared. With today’s soft launch, Notion AI is free to use, but Notion notes it will likely cost extra in the future. The company also says it will open the feature to more testers as its AI gets better.

It looks like Evernote's 2020 redesign wasn't enough to keep it independent. Today, the former darling notetaking app for productivity hounds, which was once valued at 1 billion dollars, announced that it has been purchased by Bending Spoons. If that name sounds unfamiliar to you, you're not alone. It's a Milan-based developer behind mobile apps like the video editor Splice, and the AI image editing tool Gemini. They look like well-designed and genuinely useful apps, but they're far from Evernote's once lofty goal of helping you to remember everything.

In a blog post, Evernote CEO Ian Small said the company is currently testing out collaborative editing between multiple users, and it's close to launching beta tests for deep Office 365 calendar integration. While that's good to hear, especially for the few remaining Evernote addicts like this reporter, those are also features that have existed in other platforms for years. It may also be tough to convince friends and colleagues to collaborate on an Evernote document — which may involve signing up for an account and learning a new interface — when Google Docs has made that simple for years.

"While ownership is changing hands, our commitment to keeping your data safe and secure remains as steadfast as ever, and the Evernote you know and love will continue to thrive," Smalls said in the post. "Joining Bending Spoons allows us to take advantage of their proven app expertise and wide range of proprietary technologies." 

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. But the fact that Evernote was purchased by a small app firm, rather than a notable tech giant, may be telling. Evernote raised nearly $300 million during the initial hype cycle around mobile apps. But the company eventually lost focus, branching out to real-world products like a smart notebook with Moleskin. Its apps were incredibly buggy for years, and it did a poor job of convincing users to actually pay for its product. 

Somehow, I stuck with it though. I have over a decade's worth of notes living in Evernote — countless news stories, interviews (with their accompanying audio), reviews and PDFs. My attempts at finding replacements have typically ended in failure (sorry OneNote, I just don't like your editor). This acquisition isn't exactly the death knell for Evernote, but it certainly feels like the end of an era. Will my data be safe under a new owner? Can I rely on fast and accurate synchronization? I'll probably stick around for a bit longer, but all of a sudden, the alternatives are looking a lot more compelling.

Microsoft is now rolling out the Xbox November update, which includes a heap of useful features. Starting today, all Xbox One and Series X/S owners will be able to connect to Discord voice channels directly through their console — you'll no longer need to set things up with your phone. That should make it easier for you to chat with friends even if you’re all playing different games on different platforms (or you're playing, say, Halo Infinite together across console, PC and mobile). 

Once you've connected your Discord account to Xbox, simply go to the Parties & chats menu and select Discord. You’ll see your available servers and be able to pick a voice channel. You can check which of your friends are in a server or voice channel before you hop in.

Although Sony has invested in Discord, Microsoft beat it to the punch with voice integration on Xbox (including a noise suppression option on Xbox Series X/S). PlayStation is reportedly due to gain deeper Discord integration next year.

Elsewhere, Xbox users can more easily start a livestream via Twitch, Lightstream or Streamlabs thanks to built-in options. From the guide, go to Capture & share, Live streaming and then More options. In the Destination section, you’ll be able to start a stream with the Twitch, Lightstream or Streamlabs Studio apps. As part of this move, the Xbox Twitch app will now only be used for watching other streamers.

Microsoft

Additionally, there's the option to ask a friend if you can join their game by going to their profile. Previously, you had to do this from the Happening now page.

There’s a new Capture app, which is in the Capture & share tab of the guide, as well as in My games & apps. Microsoft says the app improves the viewing, management and editing of your captures. You’ll be able to copy screenshots and clips to an external drive, while Xbox Series X/S systems have higher bitrate options for 720p and 1080p clips.

Other features Microsoft is now rolling out include notifications when someone shares their wish list with you (in case you want to gift them a game) and alerts when items on your wish list go on sale. You’ll be able to view more details about power consumption when your console is off versus when it’s in sleep mode.

On top of all that, Microsoft now supports controller rumble (including on third-party gamepads) for Xbox Cloud Gaming on PC and Mac if you opt to play via Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. Rumble support for Samsung TVs will be available later this month — Samsung just announced that it’s rolling out cloud gaming services on some older smart TV models.

The wait is over. One of the best mobile gamepads you can buy is finally available to use with Android phones. Starting today, you can order the Backbone One for Android from the company’s website and select retailers. At $100, it’s in the same price range as options like the Razer Kishi, but the Backbone One has a few things going for it over some more affordable controllers.

To start, it features an intelligent design that incorporates a USB-C passthrough for charging and a 3.5mm audio connection. If you’ve used an Xbox controller in the past, you’ll feel at home with the Backbone One thanks to its asymmetrical stick layout and standard A, B, X and Y button layout. A PlayStation version of the controller for Android phones isn’t listed yet, but back when Backbone announced it was partnering with Sony, the company told Engadget it was working on a USB-C variant. The new Android variant still comes with the company’s excellent companion app. The software makes capturing and sharing screenshots and footage from your games easy. It also simplifies finding games that are compatible with the controller.

The Backbone One is compatible with “most” Android handsets. As with the iPhone version, you will probably need to remove your phone from its case to ensure a snug fit. If you pre-ordered the Backbone One for Android before November 1st, the company says it will fulfill your order before the end of the month. All purchases come with a one-month trial to Google Play Pass.