Apple’s third-generation AirPods are a big improvement over the previous model and only came out late last year. But you can now grab a pair at Amazon for just $150, a significant 16 percent ($29) off the regular price and only $10 higher than the cheapest deal we’ve seen to date.
Apple’s latest earbuds garnered an Engadget review score of 88, and we noted that they were “better in nearly every way” than the 2nd-gen models. That’s due in part to a new, more comfortable design that’s a better fit for more people. Sound quality is equally improved thanks to the rich bass and overall clarity and you get an excellent 30 hours of battery life with the included charging case. And on top of improving performance, the H1 chip enables hands-free Siri, spatial audio support with head tracking and pairing with multiple Apple devices.
If you really have trouble with earphones fitting, the one-size-fits-all AirPods might not be right for you — for a more custom fit and noise cancellation, the AirPods Pro might be a better choice. Those are also on sale as well, luckily, for $197 or 21 percent off the regular price. Just remember that both models are really designed for Apple’s ecosystem of devices, so Android users had best look elsewhere.
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HP is sprucing up its gaming laptop lineup with an upgrade for an existing model and the addition of a new system. The company is refreshing the Omen 16, which it introduced almost exactly a year ago, with thermal upgrades.
The cooling optimizations include a fifth heat pipe and fourth outflow vent. HP said it found in testing that these can reduce GPU hinge and bottom SSD temperatures by three percent and 14 percent, respectively, while making the laptop five percent quieter. As such, GPU and CPU performance has been boosted, the company claims.
A Dynamic Power feature in the Omen Gaming Hub can help with that as well. HP says that, using a built-in IR thermopile sensor, it can monitor CPU and GPU capacity in real time and allocate power as needed. Not only will this optimize in-game framerates, according to the company, it should boost CPU performance by up to 36 percent compared with the 2021 Omen 16.
HP
The laptop can house up to an Intel Core i9-12900H series CPU or AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX Mobile Processor. On the graphics front, the Omen 16 will support up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or AMD Ryzen RX 6650M. You’ll also be able to trick out the machine with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and up to a 2TB SSD.
There are multiple display options as well, topping out at a 1440p 165Hz IPS screen with 3ms response time and 100 percent sRGB color gamut. Other features include a keyboard with per-key RGB lighting and a white color option for the shell.
Engadget Senior Reporter Sam Rutherford got some hands-on time with the new Omen 16:
Meanwhile, HP is expanding its mid-tier Victus line (which was also introduced last year) with a new model. The Victus 15 is joining the 16-inch version and a desktop system. Display options include a 1080p 144Hz screen with Eyesafe low-blue light tech.
You can have up to an Intel Core i7-12700H or AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU with 16GB of RAM. On the GPU side, the Victus 15 supports up to a GeForce RTX 3050 Ti or Radeon RX 6500M. You can also have up to 1TB of SSD storage.
HP
HP said it also made improvements to the thermals with this model. The Victus 15 has four-way airflow and a dual heat pipe design. The company claims these provide a seven percent overall airflow improvement and a 146 percent inlet vent area improvement over the previous model.
The Victus 15 will be available in three color options: mica silver, performance blue and ceramic white. It will have a standard backlit keyboard as well.
Both of the laptops come with Omen Gaming Hub software, which has a new optimization feature that can free up system resources and make adjustments to low-level operating system settings to max out performance.
The systems will both be available this summer from HP’s website and other retailers. The Omen 16 will start at $1,200, while the Victus 15 will have a base price of $800.
We’ve tested a lot of Macs (and even iPads) running on Apple’s M1 chip. But now we have the M1 Ultra and power to burn. As a quick reminder, the M1 Ultra fuses two M1 Max chips together to give you a processor with 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores — yikes. That comes with up to 128GB of RAM, ensuring it’s one of the fastest processors ever in Engadget’s offices — or at least WFH offices and spare rooms.
Engadget’s Chris Schodt, our Upscaled series host, assembled a list from readers and YouTube viewers aimed at pushing the new chip as hard as we could. Think Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve and Fusion, 3D modeling in Blender, machine learning tests like TensorFlow and Pytorch, and some gaming. Of course.
However, Apple’s M1 ecosystem still feels, at times, unfinished — Chris experienced a few strange bugs, and software compatibility can still be an issue. Check out his full test over on the latest episode of Upscaled.
The all-electric campus’ design focuses on sustainability.
Google
Google has finally opened its Bay View campus to employees almost 10 years after revealing its initial plans for the new facility. It’s the first Google campus the company has developed itself, and it’s covered in a “dragonscale skin” of 90,000 silver solar panels capable of generating almost seven megawatts of energy, or up to 40 percent of the new offices’ energy needs.
Google has launched an Interview Warmup tool that uses AI to help you prepare for interviews. The site asks typical questions (such as the classic “tell me a bit about yourself”) and analyzes your voiced or typed responses for areas of improvement. You’ll know when you overuse certain words, for instance, or if you need to spend more time talking about a given subject.
With a long, hot summer of high gas prices imminent and the writing on the wall for two-stroke engines in your yard, what better time to electrify your lawn care equipment? Before you head down to your local home improvement center, here’s some advice on what to look for in an electric mower, directly from the people who design them.
‘We have insiders in your government,’ the Conti group said.
Last week, Costa Rica declared a state of emergency following a massive Conti ransomware attack on its government. Now, Conti has boosted its threat, saying its aim is nothing less than to overthrow the government. “We have our insiders in your government,” the group said. “We are also working on gaining access to your other systems, you have no other options but to pay us.”
As part of Cooking Week, we tested some of the most niche (and, in some cases, most ridiculous) kitchen gadgets we could find. We wanted to know if these impressive-looking appliances were actually worth the splurge. Alongside yesterday’s kinda-smart toaster, we tested Almond Cow, a big, high-powered blender with just enough moving parts to make alt milks at home, with an attached blade, a filter basket, a big base and a motor inside that makes all the magic happen.
Yo! Egg expects to have its products in restaurants by the end of 2022.
There are plenty of meat-free burgers and ‘chicken’ nuggets, but there aren’t many plant-based eggs. Sure, you can find powdered substitutes, but a whole egg with a runny yolk is a different bag. Yo! Egg claims to have developed the first plant-based poached and sunny-side-up eggs. Following a limited rollout in Israel, the company is bringing its products to the US.
Since its eggs are made from soy, sunflower oil, water and flour, they’re more sustainable to make. With one gram of protein, they’re not a one-for-one replacement for chicken eggs in nutritional value, but they don’t have any cholesterol. We also need to taste them. Do they go well with hot sauce?
The Mustang Mach-E GT suffers from long-name syndrome – Ford just had to cram ‘Mustang’ in there, which has really angered some ‘classic’ Mustang owners on the internet. They can be mad all they want because the GT is a great addition to the family, even though it’s an electric SUV. Check out our test drive video.
Last year, YouTube debuted a feature that let viewers shop products directly from a livestream. It’ll take that feature a step further later this year by allowing creators to co-host live shopping streams across two channels, it announced at its annual Brandcast event. It also unveiled a new “redirects” feature that will let YouTubers work more closely with brands.
YouTube said the features will be a way to help creators and advertisers make more “meaningful connections” with their audiences. The first allows two channels to go live and cohost together, “uniting their communities in a single live shopping stream,” YouTube said. The other is called live redirects, letting creators start a shopping livestream on their own channel, then redirect to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching.
With the new features, YouTube is taking live shopping to a new level in order to take on terrestrial shopping channels. It’s not a coincidence that it hosted Brandcast at the so-called “Upfronts” sessions used by TV channels broadcasters to promote new content to advertisers, rather than the digital equivalent, NewFronts.
While most broadcasters flaunt original programming at Upfronts (the first live version in three years), YouTube focused on live shopping, short-form video and high-profile creators like Mr.Beast, Patrick Starr and Marques Brownlee. It also noted that the Media Rating Council accredited YouTube again for content-level brand safety, making it the only platform with the rating. As mentioned, the co-hosting feature will arrive sometime in 2022, but there’s no word yet on when we’ll see the brand redirects feature.
NASA’s Mars InSight lander will soon no longer be able to send back data and images scientists can analyze to better understand the red planet. It’s been gradually losing power for a while now as dust continues to accumulate on its solar panels. The darker skies expected in the next few months — also due to having more dust in the air — won’t be doing it any favors, as well. InSight’s solar panels used to be able to generate around 5,000 watt-hours of energy each Martian day, which is enough to power an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes. These days, they can only produce roughly 500 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, enough to power an electric oven for 10 minutes at most.
The space agency believes the lander will no longer be able to sustain its seismometer by the end of summer, putting an end to its science activities. InSight’s non-seismic instruments will be switched on every once in a while after May, but NASA expects it to be become completely unresponsive around December. The only way to prevent those events is for the lander to encounter a strong dust-cleaning phenomenon, such as a dust devil. Removing even 25 percent of the dust off its solar panels will allow the spacecraft to continue its science activities.
The InSight lander arrived on Mars in November 2018 and has spent the past few years gathering information on marsquakes to help us measure the depth and composition of the planet’s crust, mantle and core. It has a robotic arm that was used to deploy its seismometer and heat probe, which was also once used to clean some dust off its solar panel. InSight’s ground team will put the arm into its “retirement pose” for the last time later this month.
Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said:
“InSight has transformed our understanding of the interiors of rocky planets and set the stage for future missions. We can apply what we’ve learned about Mars’ inner structure to Earth, the Moon, Venus, and even rocky planets in other solar systems.”
