A reader email landed in my inbox last month that I’ve received, in one form or another, maybe forty times this year: “I want to buy my first drone. Which one won’t end up in a tree?” I’ve been testing consumer drones since they were carnival gimmicks with four screaming motors and a battery life …
On the first of September, in Paris, James Dyson stood on a stage and revealed a toothbrush. Not a vacuum, not a fan, not a hair tool — a toothbrush with a camera in its head, a water jet in its handle, and a $499.99 price tag. The CameraJet is the company’s first swing at …
When I wrapped up the four-ring experiment back in August, I thought the smart ring story was settled for a while. Oura made the best hardware and charged rent for the software; RingConn and Samsung made very good rings and charged nothing beyond the sticker. Pick your philosophy, sign accordingly. Then Oura did something nobody …
I measured it before I tore it apart. The stock stand under my 27-inch monitor — the plastic wedge the manufacturer threw in the box — was eating a 9-by-7-inch slab of my desk. That’s 63 square inches of prime real estate devoted to holding a screen at exactly one height, exactly one tilt, forever. …
Something quietly historic happened in the handheld world this month, and it wasn’t a new gadget. Valve pushed the SteamOS 3.8.25 beta, and for the first time the operating system that makes the Steam Deck feel like a console — sleep that actually works, shaders pre-cached before you launch, zero Windows update interruptions — is …
I did everything in the wrong order. Monitor first, then a mechanical keyboard, then a standing desk, then the desk lamp, then the dock. For roughly six years I sat inside whatever office chair happened to survive the previous upgrade cycle — a broken-armed hand-me-down that reclined when it felt like it and rolled only …
The most common question I’ve fielded in twenty-five years of this job has nothing to do with laptops, phones, or whatever chip NVIDIA announced on Tuesday. It’s some version of “what TV should I buy?” — usually from a friend, a neighbor, or a reader whose patience died three smart-TV interfaces ago. And for most …
It was 6:10 on a Tuesday morning when the crossover answered my key turn with a single apologetic click. Not the rapid stutter of a dying starter — just one click, the automotive equivalent of a shrug. I had a 7:30 call, a phone at 14 percent, and a trunk containing one ice scraper, a …
The laptop foot broke on a Tuesday. Not the laptop — just the tiny rubber foot on the bottom, the one that keeps the chassis tilted so the fan can breathe. A genuine replacement part does not exist. The manufacturer will happily sell me a $79 bottom chassis assembly with the feet molded in, but …
I have a drawer in my workshop that I’ve started calling the earbud graveyard. Inside it: six pairs of true wireless earbuds from the last seven years, every single one of them dead for the same reason. Not blown drivers. Not broken Bluetooth chips. Batteries. Tiny lithium cells that charged three hundred times, quietly lost …