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Product Reviews

Spotify now directly integrates with DJ software

by admin September 24, 2025

Spotify just announced integration with popular DJ software platforms like rekordbox, Serato and djay. This will make it much easier to build out sets from playlists and to do cool stuff like blend tracks.

The company says that users “will be able to access their entire library and playlists directly within desktop DJ software,” with just one caveat. This is only for Premium subscribers. The integration is available in 51 global markets.

It looks pretty easy to get started. Just log into a Premium account directly inside of the preferred DJ software. That’s pretty much it.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a brand-new idea. Spotify offered something similar for years, but stopped supporting third-party DJ platforms in 2020. This was a business decision that was believed to be based on rights constraints.

The platform has been busy lately. Spotify recently introduced lossless streaming and an in-app messaging feature. However, it still pays artists peanuts while making nearly $17 billion each year. It’s also worth remembering that CEO Daniel Ek is heavily invested in a military AI company called Helsing.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

A screenshot of the official poster for Marvel Zombies, which shows Wanda commanding her undead horde

Product Reviews

‘Marvel Zombies’ review: comic book giant’s new Disney+ show bites off more than it can chew in frightfully fun yet frustrating fashion

by admin September 24, 2025

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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Spoilers follow for all four episodes of Marvel Zombies.

Marvel Studios has a patchy record when it comes to its animated projects. Sure, there have been hits like X-Men 97, but other productions – in the main – like Eyes of Wakanda and What If…? have flattered to deceive.

It’s the latter that Marvel’s latest animated show, Marvel Zombies, takes its cue from. A continuation of the story told in What If…? season 1 episode 5, titled ‘What If… Zombies!?’, the comic giant’s first adult animated TV series is undeniably its most mature offering to date.

The new avengers

Marvel Zombies opens five years after What If…? season 1 episode 5’s cliffhanger ending (Image credit: Marvel Television/Disney Plus)

A four-part miniseries, Marvel Zombies is set five years after the initial zombie outbreak. A cataclysmic event caused by a virus that Dr Hank Pym brought back from a trip to the Quantum Realm in ‘What If… Zombies!?’, the planet Earth of this universe, one that sits adjacent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), has become a dystopia overrun by the undead.

Pockets of humanity remain, though, including a desperate groups of superpowered individuals who cling to survival against the odds. But, when a trio of heroes – Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel, Riri Williams/Ironheart, and Kate Bishop/Hawkeye – discover a key that could end the zombie scourge, the group embark on a dangerous, globetrotting journey to save their world.

It’s highly satisfying to see the next generation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes take center stage

Marvel Zombies opening with the aforementioned triumvirate is intentional. Khan is arguably the protagonist of this story, with the optimistic and empathetic New Jersey-hailing hero being the center point that the plot is built around, as she reluctantly and then boldly leads the charge to end the zombie plague.

In Williams, Bishop and Khan, though, Marvel Zombies immediately sets out its stall to primarily focus on the new wave of superpowered beings who have begun to populate the MCU post-Avengers: Endgame.

Zombies doesn’t solely rely on that intrepid trio, either. From Shang-Chi and members of the Thunderbolts* to Moon Knight and Blade – the latter pair are admittedly spliced together to form a new yet incredibly cool individual called Blade Knight – it’s highly satisfying to see the next generation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes take center stage.

Marvel Zombies puts the next generation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes at the center of its narrative (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)

That said, it’s somewhat bittersweet that animated projects, such as What If…? and its zombie-based spin-off, mark the first time we’ve seen some of these popular heroes since their live-action MCU debuts – or, in Blade’s case, who’s only ‘appeared’ via an off-screen cameo in Eternals, at all.

The walking dead

Marvel Zombies pays tribute to some great horror-fuelled episodes of television (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)

Speaking of the hair-raising universe that Marvel Zombies exists in, Marvel doesn’t hold back in making its first TV-MA project as gruesome as possible.

Marvel Zombies‘ first trailer teased its brutality and, while I had hoped for a bit more in the way of ultra-violence, it goes harder than any other Marvel Studios movie or TV show to date. I cannot stress this enough, but it’s absolutely not family-friendly, nor is it for those who are squeamish or of the faint of heart.

Some of Marvel Zombies’ best set-pieces and scenes add real cinematic flair to proceedings

If you can stomach its hyper-violent tendencies, though, Marvel Zombies will reward horror fans through its clear homages to some fan-favorite genre fare. Indeed, whether it’s the dread-inducing ‘Hardhome’ episode of Game of Thrones, or scenes that reminded me of similar sequences in World War Z and Train to Busan, some of Marvel Zombies‘ best set-pieces and scenes add real cinematic flair to proceedings that occasionally conceal the mid-tier art style it retains from What If…?.

Parts of Marvel Zombies’ story, as well as its action sequences, leave a lot to be desired (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)

However, all the horror genre references in the world, nor positive things I’ve said about Marvel Zombies, can disguise my frustration with its wider narrative, though.

I’ll preface my criticism by saying there’s the skeleton of an engrossing story here. Indeed, its plot makes some interesting revisions to the world-building aspect of the MCU. The recycling of certain MCU technology to try and thwart the threat posed by the undead is put to good use, too.

Add in the previously discussed new-look Avengers team, the camaraderie that exists between them, and the prospect that none of them are immune from becoming the zombie horde’s next victim, and I actually appreciate some of the creative and narrative swings that Marvel Zombies takes.

Spider-Man’s appearance in Marvel Zombies is the main reason why it was turned into a TV show (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)

Nevertheless, Marvel Zombies is hamstrung by irritating storytelling components.

Whether it’s the rudimentary MacGuffin positioned as the answer to our heroes’ prayers, the decision not to pick up the story immediately after the cliffhanger ending in ‘What If… Zombies!?’ or a spate of character deaths that are significantly lacking in the gut-punching and/or tear-jerking department, at times Marvel Zombies can feel as emotionless as the reanimated corpses that inhabit its world. That’s before we even get onto my biggest gripe about a major narrative inconsistency that occurs in its final episode, which not only changes a key moment near the end of ‘What If… Zombies!?’, but is practically waved away without explanation.

Marvel Zombies is hamstrung by irritating storytelling components

Part of Marvel Zombies‘ plot-based problems might be the fact it’s a glorified TV show. Originally, it was designed to be a two-hour movie but, due to the complexities of the rights surrounding Spider-Man – don’t worry, the lead of ‘What If… Zombies!?’ plays a part of proceedings, albeit in a reduced role – that prohibits Marvel from using him in a feature film capacity without Sony’s consent, Marvel Zombies was turned into a limited series.

As a Spidey fanboy, I’ll always take any webslinger-based storytelling and action where I can. However, there’s no denying that his ongoing inclusion in this What If…? spin-off upsets Zombies‘ narrative rhythm.

My verdict

Marvel Animation’s Marvel Zombies | Official Trailer | Disney+ – YouTube

Watch On

I really wanted to like Marvel Zombies more than I did. That doesn’t mean it’s another average or poor offering from Marvel – indeed, there’s frightful fun to be had with its gratuitous violence, unexpected team-ups and universe-altering stakes. Based on its ending, there’s clearly an appetite to continue its story, too.

Nonetheless, if X-Men 97 is the high bar with which we judge projects developed by Marvel Animation, Zombies is something of a let down. That might be overly critical of me to say, especially when I also consider Zombies to be a better and more enjoyable Marvel TV Original than What If…? and Eyes of Wakanda.

Given my high expectations and excitement for Marvel’s first adult animated show, though, I can’t mask my disappointment for Marvel Zombies as an overall package. If its creative team gets another bite at the cherry with another season, I’d love nothing more for them to cure Zombies‘ narrative ailments. For now, though, Marvel Zombies is another project from the comic giant that’ll shuffle onto Disney+ and likely be forgotten about within a week or two.

Marvel Zombies is out now in full on Disney+.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Baby Steps review | PC Gamer

by admin September 24, 2025

Need to know

What is it? There is only one set of footsteps in the sand, because you are on your fuckin’ own, mate.
Expect to pay: $18/£15.30
Developer: Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Reviewed on: Windows 11, Intel Core i9, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060
Multiplayer? No
Link: Official site

I fell while navigating some tricky rocks, rolling downhill like a wet sausage until I was caught by a grassy ledge. The only paths back up involved even tricker rocks, and predictably I fell again, tumbling off the grassy ledge to land next to a mudslide. Fortunately there was a dry path beside the mud, and unfortunately I found a single rock on that path, tripped, hit the mudslide, and slid to the bottom of it.

Walking back up that path I managed to slip into the mud twice more, the second time achieving such slippery velocity I flung myself back to a previous biome, landing in a lake. That motivated me to try a different route entirely, heading back toward a labyrinth of cardboard called Box Hell, at which point I spotted a ladder leaning against the hill I somehow completely missed the first time through this area, and which let me bypass all that mud-and-rock nonsense.

It still took me three goes to get up the ladder, of course.

This is Baby Steps, a parody of open world games, and our collective punishment for using the phrase “walking simulator”. You play Nate, a basement-dwelling loser mysteriously teleported from his couch to the wilderness like the Pevensie children being magicked to Narnia, only instead of plucky youngsters full of Blitz spirit you are a 35-year-old failure full of pizza.

There is a mountain in the wilderness and maybe if Nate climbs it he’ll be able to go home. It’s as reasonable an assumption as any, so off you set, taking your first steps, and almost immediately falling on your dumptruck ass.

(Image credit: Devolver)

Baby Steps recommends you play with a controller like a real yakuza, so I did. Squeezing one trigger lifts your foot, and pushing a stick moves that foot. You’ve got a fine degree of control over where that foot ends up before you put it back down, which will not save you. Nate has all the balance and grace of a moose on ice, and he’s doing this hike barefoot.

He could have got shoes at the start of the climb, but he turned them down. In the first of many delightfully improvised cutscenes, Nate meets a cheerful Australian hiker who offers help and he immediately says no. Nate is a man so awkward he wants every social interaction to end the moment it begins, if not sooner, rejecting every offer of help, including a map I would actually really have appreciated.

Baby Steps takes the idea of games as challenges, of hard modes and iron man runs and proud declarations that yellow paint is ruining videogames, and personifies it as a specific kind of man—the man who will not ask for directions no matter how lost he is. The next time someone dresses their victory over a videogame as some kind of macho triumph, I’ll be thinking of Nate, his onesie turning brown as he falls in the mud over and over.

Because it was there

In addition to the challenge of working your way from one campfire to the next as you ascend through a series of zones, there are optional challenges to hurl your wobbly cheeks at. Hats you can wear are precariously placed on top of trees or broken piles, and so are lost objects to return to nearby firetowers. But every time you tumble there’s a high chance you’ll lose your hat or whatever’s in your hand, and the act of leaning over to pick it back up can sometimes send you tumbling again. I lost a hat when I fell through the roof of a barn and couldn’t find it in all the straw, a moment so dispiriting I gave up on hats entirely and did the rest of the climb bareheaded.

(Image credit: Devolver)

But the moments that are most dispiriting are when you’re completely at a loss as to which of several hardscrabble climbs is even doable. Sometimes there’s only one way up (like the ant tunnels leading out of the sandcastle), but sometimes there are multiple paths of varying difficulty. How many times do you throw yourself at a broken rockface or a cactus bridge or a wet plank before you trundle off to see if there’s an easier way?

More than once I gave up on something that turned out to actually be the easy option because I blundered my first couple of attempts, then wandered around for an hour trying things that were far harder. At one point I knocked down a yellow shovel I could have used as a bridge and spent an age trying other ascents before learning that if I just quit out and went back in again the shovel returned to its original location.

(Image credit: Devolver)

Odds are you’ll find at least one moment in Baby Steps you think crosses the line from “funny satire of videogame design and difficulty discourse” into “actual bullshit someone should be ashamed of.” It’ll probably happen somewhere different for everyone, though the odds of it being one of the many bullshit moments in the sandy zone are high.

Scale Sheer Surface

I’ve heard people say they stopped enjoying Skyrim the moment they realized they could fast-travel. Once they started teleporting from one quest goal to the next all the fun went out of it. I enjoyed Skyrim even with the fast-travel, but I understand their position. Bouncing directly from objective to objective can be draining and joyless in a way that ambling around isn’t.

Baby Steps makes ambling into slapstick comedy, and I laughed a lot while Nate groaned and swore and blubbered. At least, for the first seven or so hours. The seven hours after that started to edge into being draining and joyless in their own way—honestly, sand can fuck right off forever, Anakin was right, just a hateful substance—but by that point the story had hooked me. The snappy dialogue of those cutscenes stays funny when the physics lols have worn out their welcome.

(Image credit: Devolver)

The reward for persevering in Baby Steps isn’t anything as ephemeral as a sense of triumph over adversity or whatever nonsense the masocore people get out of their boring games. No, it’s cutscenes where a character who is probably voiced by Bennett Foddy menaces Nate through sheer overbearing force of personality and Australian-ness.

Normally satire makes it hard to take the thing it’s satirizing seriously, but after almost 15 hours of waddlebitching my way up one mountain I loaded up Borderlands 4 and doing a doublejump-glide into a jetbike felt incredible. Baby Steps is a masterpiece, but I think actually I will just chill in a game with quest markers for a while.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Study Promoting Apple Cider Vinegar for Weight Loss Was Complete Bunk

by admin September 24, 2025

Anyone who’s tried to lose weight knows there’s no shortage of products or fad foods out there that will supposedly speed up your slimming. One such advertised food, apple cider vinegar, will have less credibility behind it now, as a clinical trial claiming to show its weight loss success has just been yanked by the publisher.

BMJ Group announced the retraction of the study this afternoon. Originally published last year, the small trial purportedly showed that people who drank apple cider vinegar daily lost more weight than controls over a three-month period. The publisher cited several factors, including implausible data, as reasons to yank the study.

“Tempting though it is to alert readers to an ostensibly simple and apparently helpful weight loss aid, at present the results of the study are unreliable, and journalists and others should no longer reference or use the results of this study in any future reporting,” said Helen Macdonald, Publication Ethics and Content Integrity Editor at BMJ Group, in a statement from BMJ.

Too good to be true

Researchers in Lebanon conducted the study, first published in March 2024 in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. The trial reportedly involved 120 teens and young adults who were overweight and obese. The volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four groups: three groups were asked to drink different doses of apple cider vinegar (diluted in water) once a day in the morning, while the fourth was asked to drink a placebo liquid.

The trial reportedly ran for 12 weeks, and by the study’s end, the researchers claimed that people drinking apple cider vinegar lost significantly more weight than those on the placebo. On average, people taking apple cider vinegar were said to have lost between 13 and 17 pounds, and those who drank the most apple cider vinegar also tended to lose more weight than the other groups—a potential sign that the ingredient was truly improving people’s odds of weight loss (in medicine, this is called a dose-response effect). People on the apple cider vinegar diet were also said to have improved their levels of blood glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol as well.

It wasn’t long before outside scientists began to raise red flags about the statistical analysis underpinning the study’s findings, however. The BMJ Group initially saw fit to publish some of these critiques alongside the study itself, a common practice in science. But after further review, they determined that this wasn’t a mere disagreement about some figures here and there, but something more concerning. They enlisted statisticians to examine the raw data and to try replicating the study results from said data.

Ultimately, the outside experts were not able to replicate the authors’ analyses; what’s more, they identified other sketchy stuff. They determined that the data contained “implausible values” and found potential evidence that participants were not truly randomized into their group as claimed. The authors also failed to proactively register their trial prior to performing it—a common precaution against later data tweaking that’s required by the BMJ Group—and didn’t explain their methods thoroughly enough, the publisher determined.

The study authors, according to the BMJ, maintain that the statistical oddities were only honest mistakes in how they presented, exported, or calculated the data. But they’ve nonetheless agreed with the publisher’s decision to retract the work.

Gizmodo reached out to the study authors for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

The weight loss takeaway

Even before this retraction, though, there really wasn’t much evidence to suggest that apple cider vinegar—or any single food, for that matter—can supercharge your weight loss attempt.

Yes, people can certainly lose weight, even lots of it, through healthy changes in their diet and lifestyle. The much harder part is maintaining this weight loss for a sustained period of time, which is why many, if not most, people eventually regain the weight back. Newer options like GLP-1 therapies have made it easier to treat obesity, though these too aren’t miracles with no drawbacks.

Unfortunately, long-term successful weight loss still remains a challenge, and no amount of apple cider vinegar will change that reality.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

For One Glorious Morning, a Website Saved San Francisco From Parking Tickets

by admin September 24, 2025

He suspected this absurd-seeming pattern was due to limitations baked into the software used by parking control officers. Whatever its reason for existing, the pattern of sequential ticket IDs, paired with parking officers likely claiming batches of ticket numbers, meant Walz was able to track their routes by plotting each parking ticket on a map as soon as it was entered into the system. A car owner could look at the activity of the officers currently out on patrol and see if any of them were slowly descending on their neighborhood.

Last year, parking officials in San Francisco issued over a million tickets within city limits, which amounted to over $100 million in fines for car owners. “I actually don’t have a car, but I have plenty of friends that talk about it,” says Walz. Like most costs in San Francisco, these tickets can quickly add up. For example, forgetting to move your car during the weekly street sweeping—an error my household has made more than once—will cost you $90 every time.

Dude, Where’s My Parking Cop?

The website’s live updates were pulled from the city government’s website and visualized on an Apple Map. Find My Parking Cops tracked the routes of individual parking control officers, giving them each unique visual identifiers, as well as their cadence of tickets.

On Tuesday, for example, the site displayed one officer seemingly starting their shift around 10:30 am and handing out 35 tickets over the next few hours as they patrolled a neighborhood in Lower Pacific Heights. The citations logged were primarily for expired meters, which costs $107 per ticket, and not having a residential permit, which costs $108 per ticket. In total, the fines racked up by that one officer over a few hours amounted to almost $4,000.

Who’s handing out the most tickets each week? Walz included a leaderboard on the website that ranked just how much in fines each officer handed out. While officers were only identified on the map by a number and their initials, their cumulative ticket cost was tracked. When WIRED was last able to check Walz’s website on Tuesday, the top fine giver had issued 157 tickets so far, handing out over $16,000 in fees for violations.

Prior to Find My Parking Cops, Walz created another San Francisco–specific website. This one used a phone, placed on a street corner in the Mission District, to identify what songs people were listening to in public. He then uploaded a live feed of the songs, captured and identified through the Shazam app, onto the Bop Spotter website. It provided a little peek into what neighborhood residents were bumping at the time while also slyly nodding at the abundance of surveillance in the city. He’s also previously built a site, called IMG_0001, to surface old YouTube clips uploaded by everyday people in the platform’s early days. Those grainy, private videos stand in stark contrast to the stuff that dominates the platform today.

The parking ticket tracker was another side project for Walz. “I worked in my free time on the weekends the last few weeks to make it happen,” he says.

While Walz’s websites sometimes come with a dose of social commentary, he didn’t envision this project as making some kind of grand, sweeping statement about parking tickets or what it means to drive in 2025. Rather, it’s another entry in his repertoire of cool websites powered by unique data sources.

“I’m not ‘pro’ parking cop. I’m not ‘anti’ parking cop,” says Walz. “It’s just data I was able to unearth, and I thought it would be cool to visualize it.”

And now it’s gone. Representatives for Apple did not respond to immediate requests for comment. I reached out to Walz after the city’s data feed was cut off, but he didn’t pick up.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Apple TV+ indefinitely delays its domestic extremism thriller ‘The Savant’

by admin September 24, 2025

Apple has delayed the release of its new series The Savant just three days before it was supposed to premiere on September 26, Deadline reports. The series follows an investigator, played by Jessica Chastain, who infiltrates a domestic extremist group in the US. Apple hasn’t provided a new release date for the show.

“After careful consideration, we have made the decision to postpone The Savant,” the company shared in a statement to Deadline. “We appreciate your understanding and look forward to releasing the series at a future date.” The timing of the sudden delay, and the lack of explanation for why the company is delaying the show, could be telling. Disney made a similar knee-jerk reaction in placing Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus following a joke Kimmel made about the reaction to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Given that The Savant likely focuses on preventing acts of political violence, it might make you wonder who Apple is worried its show will offend. But it’s also entirely possible that the company is trying to avoid people making any kind of association between its TV show and a very public assassination.

Apple generally avoids rocking the boat whenever possible, particularly when it could hurt its business interests. The Problem With Jon Stewart was reportedly cancelled when Jon Stewart wanted to cover topics Apple deemed controversial, like China and artificial intelligence. Apple does business in China, so it seems likely the company was skittish about airing anything that could be viewed as criticism, even if having difficult conversations was the premise of Stewart’s show. The decision to pull The Savant, even if despite reading like the company is worried about offending right-wing extremists, was likely made from a similar place of caution.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Laifen Wave SE Toothbrush review: is gentle the new movement?

by admin September 24, 2025

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Laifen Wave SE Toothbrush: One minute review

The Laifen Wave SE is the second electric toothbrush from the Chinese manufacturer. This Special Edition variant is a follow-up to the original Wave which looks – and is in most ways – very similar.

The standout difference in the SE over the Wave is that this offers what the company calls a more “cozy” brushing experience. How? It vibrates less. Yup, while the original Wave pushed out a brain buzzing 66,000 vibrations per minute, this variant is a far more gentle 26,000. There are also a few more color variants available in the SE, too.

So while this might make the best electric toothbrush list alongside sonic and traditionally oscillating models, this brush both oscillates and vibrates, carving its own niche in electric toothbrush options.

One other big shift in the SE is that this model has been certified by the American Dental Association. That makes this the first dual-action toothbrush to achieve this accolade, helping this unique offering stand out even more.

The battery life is another area this manages to perform very well in thanks to a 50-hour top-end, possibly due to its lower power. The brush can be charged to full in only three hours using a standard USB-C port, meaning you may only need to take one cable when travelling.

Most Laifen replacement heads will work with the SE, and you get two with the unit including travel cases for each. But you can also use Philips SonicCare heads, which is great if you need to pick one up in a physical shop, where you likely won’t find Laifen anytime soon.

Laifen Wave SE review: Price and availability

(Image credit: Future)

Priced at $90 in the US
£90 in the UK
AU$200 in Australia

The Laifen Wave SE follows up the original, which arrived earlier in 2025, and is priced at $89.99 in the US, £89.99 in the UK and AU$199.99 in Australia.

That price gets you the brush unit, two replacement heads with their own travel cases, and a USB-A to USB-C charger cable. You also get an impressive two-year warranty and a 30-days “no hassle” guarantee.

Usefully, depending on your region, you can buy via Amazon for a quick and secure delivery – which can be free for Prime members.

You can buy a set of three replacement heads in various designs and levels of stiffness, including Super Clean, Gum Care, or Ultra-Whitening. In all cases, the price is the same at US$15.99 / £15.99 / AU$14.99 for a set.

(Image credit: Future)

Laifen Wave SE review: Specifications

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Component

Value

Battery life

50 days

Sonic vibrations

26,000 per minute

Charger

USB-C

Timer

Yes, two minute with 30-second haptics

Noise

55 dB

Charge time

3 hours

Laifen Wave SE review: Design

(Image credit: Future)

Two colors
IP68 waterproof
Cushioned heads

At first glance you’d struggle to spot the difference between the Laifen Wave SE and the original model. That’s because they’re almost identical, only this version comes in two new colors: the Matte Yellow you see in these photos, plus a Meadow Green option.

In both cases, the outer is a soft matte PU coating that gives it a gentle feel but also adds plenty of grip, even when wet. At the top is a soft-to-touch power button topped by three LED lights to show which of the three settings you are using.

At the base is a cover which can be lifted to access the USB-C charging port. When closed, this creates a flat base so the brush can be stood up effectively. Up top is a metallic connector allowing you to swap heads with an easy slide on-and -off action. This is thanks to what the company calls an “advanced copper-free tufting process” which apparently prevents rust while keeping the heads in place.

The heads themselves are coated in soft food-grade TPE. The bristles themselves are ultra-fine to ensure they give the most accurate clean. Everything is IP68 waterproof which should mean you can give this a rinse under the tap without any worries.

Laifen Wave SE review: Features

(Image credit: Future)

50-day battery life
Fast 3-hour charging
USB-C port

Despite this offering both 60-degree oscillation movement and sonic vibrations at 26,000 per minute, this manages to deliver an impressive 50-day battery life, providing it’s kept on the softer setting. Then, when it comes to charging, the brush reaches back up to full in less than three hours. Crucially, the USB-C connection means you can use any old charging cable – a great feature when traveling, as you could use your phone charger if needed.

The oscillations themselves are a big part of the appeal: oscillating brushes are slightly higher by dentists, as you can see in our rotating vs sonic toothbrush examination. The oscillation mimics the kind of up and down action your dentist may have told you to do.

The app offers setting variations so you can find the ideal brush setup for you, including adjusting the level of vibration intensity, oscillation range and oscillation speed. These are presets available, so you can set up three separate presets on the brush and jump between them depending on what you want that day.

Brush heads are available from Laifen, but if you’re stuck out you can always pick up a Philips Sonicare head from a shop and that will also fit on the brush. It’s nice to see it’s not entirely proprietary.

(Image credit: Future)

Laifen Wave SE review: Performance

(Image credit: Future)

Powerful top-end
Long battery life
Highly adjustable

This brush offers a quiet setting at just 55db and an impressive 50-day battery life. But that’s on the gentle mode, which I found it to be far too weak. With the settings pumped up, I noticed the battery life did drop, and that noise jumped quite a bit louder. However, neither was to the point of being a problem and this will still get you more than a month of use – and the noise isn’t annoyingly loud – it brings the toothbrush more in line with its high-power contemporaries. What you have here, essentially, is a toothbrush with a low-power option.

The power button won’t allow you activate with a long hold or double-tap to change mode. So while you can have three preset modes, you’ll need to dig out the app to change them, which is frustrating, and it reset after charging. I had to dig out the app to get back to how I like it. Not ideal.

The brush handle did a great job of absorbing vibrations while the head still delivered a powerful brush to your teeth. It strikes that perfect balance of being comfortable in the hand while giving your teeth a good, deep clean. Changing heads was easy, charging was fast and simple, cleaning was a doddle and the brush packed a soft, grippy outer that makes using this a pleasure.

Laifen Wave SE: Scorecard

(Image credit: Future)Swipe to scroll horizontally

Laifen Wave SE: Should I buy?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Component

Oral-B iO Series 6

Colgate Hum Smart Rhythm

Battery life

20+ days

90 days

Movement

8,800 oscillations+ 20,000 pulsations per minute

30,000 vibrations per minutes

Charge time

12 hours

AAA batteries

Modes

Five

Two

How I tested

I used the Laifen Wave SE multiple weeks in order to test the effectiveness of the brush itself, along with battery performance. I used this for travel, overnight, and in various bathrooms with multiple chargers.

My brushing was twice daily with its two-minute timer and haptic half-minute guidance vibrations used to get a full and fair brush. I was also testing other brushes from Oral-B, which allowed me to see the difference between features like extra modes, oscillations versus sonics, battery life, apps and more.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Super Sounding Wireless Earbuds, Not-So-Super Mic

by admin September 23, 2025

From the start, Nothing was designed to be an antidote to Apple and its omnipresent AirPods. While Apple focused on a sort of all-purpose minimalism, Nothing adopted a hallmark transparent look that, if not altogether disparate (both pairs of wireless earbuds have a similar stem design), at least gave its Ear products a unique design language. That quest for being different extended into features, too. In 2023, Nothing introduced personalized EQ, giving it a visual and technological difference over Apple’s AirPods and eventually a ChatGPT integration, which was a first in the category.

But a lot happens in a few years, especially in a space as saturated as wireless earbuds, and while Nothing’s Ear are still a solid pair of earbuds, they feel… a little less of an earful. Apple now has its AirPods Pro 3 with high-tech features like real-time translation and heart rate monitoring, while non-Apple competitors in the same price range, like OnePlus and Google, aren’t pulling any punches with their own entrants into the space that offer personalized EQ, AI features, and noise-canceling that compete with pro-level gadgets.

Nothing Ear 3

The Nothing Ear 3 have solid sound, but flub the one thing that makes them unique.

Pros

Great sound
Solid ANC
They look very cool
Case feels premium

Cons

Super Mic is a super letdown
May not be worth the premium over last gen

But just in the nick of time, as Nothing’s flagship wireless earbuds seem to be falling behind, the company is back with its $180 Ear 3 that offer a new look and one truly unique feature for improving voice calls. As usual, Nothing is taking some chances, and not just in the visual department. For me, some of those risks are really paying off, but others… well, they’re not so super.

Nothing Ear 3 gets a visual update

So much of Nothing is about looks. That’s not a knock on the company. This is technology that you wear, and because of that, appearance can be make-or-break. Chances are, if you’ve bought Nothing products in the past, you agree, which also means, if you saw Nothing teasing its Ear 3 wireless earbuds before its release, your eyebrows may have been raised.

I’m going to get straight to the point: the Ear 3 look great. I was worried at first that the Ear 3 may scale back on the transparent part of its wireless earbuds, but that’s not the case here at all. Sorry for the alarm bells, anyone who reads my blogs. Instead of a homogeneous black look on the outside of the stems, the Ear 3 goes with a metallic silver that really makes them look like a capital “G” Gadget. As Gizmodo’s Senior Editor, Consumer Tech, Raymond Wong, noted to me, this thing has big Talkboy vibes (shout out to Macaulay Culkin). There’s still a transparent shell that lets you see the internal components through the sides and back of the earbud stems.

The case also adopts the same metallic look, shedding the white version (there’s also still black) for an aluminum that both looks and feels genuinely different. The “Talk” button (more on that later) is also nice and shiny, inviting you to push it. This case now has some weight in your hand, and I really love that. No one wants to carry around heavy gadgets, but Nothing did a good job here of balancing the weight to make the case and buds feel premium without making it feel chunky.

The design language also feels more aligned across flagship audio products now, bringing together the Ear 3 and the Headphone 1, which have an aluminum finish. If you’re a fan of the Headphone 1, or prior Nothing buds, you’ll love the look of the Ear 3. Another thing you’ll love? The sound.

A much-needed audio upgrade

I thought the Ear were nice wireless earbuds when I first listened to them in 2024, but I’ve tested a lot of newer earbuds since then, and in that testing, my opinion has shifted. The Ear still hold it down, but the sound and ANC aren’t quite as premium as I’d like them to be, especially with a slight cost premium over brand new buds like the OnePlus Buds 4. In short, it was time for an upgrade.

According to Nothing, the Ear 3 now has a redesigned 12mm dynamic driver and “patterned diaphragm surface” that is meant to “lower total harmonic distortion from 0.6% to 0.2% versus the previous in-ear generation.” Nothing also says that the redesigned architecture increases bass response and delivers a wider soundstage. That’s all rhetoric, though, and at the end of the day, what you really want to know is, “Do these sound better than the last generation?” and in my anecdotal testing, they definitely do.

I tested the Ear 3 back to back with the Ear (which is actually newer than the Ear 2) and found that there was a lot less distortion when listening to C.W. Stoneking’s “Desert Isle”. There’s more spatiality in the Ear 3 than the Ear, making guitars and vocals sound like they’re in their own place instead of muddled together competing. Vocals in particular sound clear and natural, which is great if you’re like me and tend to listen to a lot of rock music. One vast improvement over the Ear is in the bass department. As I’ve said many times, I don’t particularly care about having a ton of bass in wireless earbuds, but I do appreciate a pair that can still provide low end without sounding over-compressed or super simulated. I’d say the Ear 3 do just that, especially after testing bassier music by listening to Daft Punk’s “Da Funk”.

As usual, I also dove into the Nothing X app and used Nothing’s personalized audio test to tune the Ear 3 to my specific hearing. I can’t overstate this enough: stop sleeping on your wireless earbuds’ companion app. There’s a big difference in the sound before using the personalized EQ and after, and while this won’t be the case with everyone, I’m 33 years old and a couple of decades of going to shows and listening to loud music means I could probably use a little assistance in the hearing department. The Ear 3 sound great out of the box, but personalized EQ really sends the audio over the top. In short, Nothing is still holding it down with its flagship-level sound, and the Ear 3 is an even bigger improvement generation-to-generation than its jump from Ear 2 to Ear.

Active noise cancellation (ANC), however, I found a little less improved generation-to-generation. Though to be fair, Nothing isn’t touting better noise canceling this time around. I gave the Ear 3 the obligatory subway test, and while they passed, they weren’t quite as formidable as my favorite noise-canceling wireless earbuds, Bose’s Quiet Comfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen). They’re still much better than the similarly priced Galaxy Buds 3 FE from Samsung that I recently tested. I do think they’re slightly more noise-canceling than the last generation, though that could be due to Nothing’s redesign of the buds, which are meant to provide a better and more comfortable fit in your ears—that could create better passive noise cancellation and the illusion of stronger ANC.

Battery life is also only slightly improved. Nothing says the Ear 3 will get 5.5 hours of listening with ANC on, while the Nothing Ear was rated for 5.2 hours. This is nowhere near the best battery of wireless earbuds in this class; in fact, it’s a little under. Six hours is generally the standard nowadays. In my testing, I went from 100% to 80% battery in a little over 1 hour of listening at 70% volume with ANC on high.

So, that’s the good, pretty good, and just okay news about the Ear 3. But there are some things I really don’t like, so let’s talk about them.

Super Mic? More like soupy mic.

There’s one aspect of the Ear 3 that can’t be compared, since Nothing is the only company really trying it. I’m talking about the “Super Mic,” a new exclusive feature in the Ear 3 that lets you use microphones in the case for clearer calling and voice recording. By pressing the “Talk” button on the case, you can activate the feature and get recording or calling—one push activates the feature until you release the button, while a double-tap will turn the feature on until you turn it off.

According to Nothing, there are two Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) mics inside the case that use beamforming to zero in on your voice and cancel out environmental noise at the same time. The Ear 3 also take advantage of bone-conducting capabilities that detect “microvibrations” in your jaw that are meant to detect speech. The process of relaying the results of your Super Mic voice is a bit convoluted. Nothing says your voice is “sent to the case antenna, relayed to the earbud antenna over Bluetooth, then passed to the phone.”

Per Nothing, Super Mic “focuses on your voice, cutting through surrounding noise (up to 95 dB) for clearer calls and voicenotes.” In theory, I love the idea. Wired earbuds are a big thing again, and a major part of that (outside the superior audio quality) is that they usually come with an on-cable mic for clearer calls. This theoretically makes the Ear 3 a best of both worlds situation, giving you wired earbud-level mics for calling (or better) while not having to deal with annoying wires.

The only problem is… the Super Mic doesn’t work as advertised. I ran the feature through a few different tests, and the results were varying degrees of muddy. At first, I played background music while using Super Mic to record my voice through my iPhone’s Voice Memo app. Instead of canceling out the background music (lo-fi beats playing at 75% volume from a Chromebook about a foot away from me), it mixed my voice and the beats together, creating a kind of muddled amalgam that wasn’t very pleasant to listen back to.

Similarly, I simulated subway noise (something more “environmental”) on YouTube at the same volume and distance, and the results were similar. My voice was still mixed in with the ambient sound that I hoped it would filter out. Super Mic did seem to work better out on the street near my office (a fairly busy part of downtown Manhattan), though I still wouldn’t describe the results as “super” in any way. Even when Super Mic effectively filters out environmental noise, I find the fidelity to be choppy and compressed-sounding at times. It’s nowhere near as pleasing to listen to as recording through the native mic on my iPhone 13.

Super Mic did filter out noise effectively while walking on the street next to ongoing construction and in a fast casual restaurant that was playing music, but it still picked up other people’s voices in settings where people were talking nearby, which would make using the feature in an environment with other people potentially problematic.

There’s also the issue of compatibility. Nothing says Super Mic is designed for voice calling in apps like Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, WhatsApp, WeChat, and is also supported in native voice memo apps on iOS and Android. However, Nothing makes it clear that the feature “isn’t optimized” for in-app voice messaging through third-party apps like Snapchat or native voice features in iOS Messages and the like. This is a long way of saying that your mileage may vary when it comes to Super Mic, and while compatibility can’t be blamed on Nothing—it’s up to Apple and Android to allow third-party mic access, and in what apps—it still limits the Super Mic feature, making its use a lot more restricted than it ought to be.

I reached out to Nothing about the issue I had with Super Mic, but haven’t yet determined if there’s an issue with the wireless earbuds or a problem with the feature. (Yes, I was using the right firmware and Nothing X build). Other reviewers have reported their own issues with Super Mic, too.

Good buds, but a little (ear)itating

When you make a big bet, you might lose a little money—no risk, no reward. No matter your rote idiom of choice, that sentiment tends to be true. Super Mic could be a cool feature if it’s refined, but for now, I would file it firmly in the “undwhelming” folder. Maybe it will improve with future software, but I can’t really guarantee that, so all I have to work with is what we have right now, which is to say a Super Mic that seems to be plagued by a serious case of Kryptonite.

The annoying part is that everything else about the Ear 3 is pretty solid. They look great, they sound great, and ANC is sturdy. The battery life leaves something to be desired, but it’s not so bad that it’s disqualifying. But this is what happens when you try to do something different sometimes, you gotta take the hits with the misses. Alright, I’m done with the corny euphemisms now, I swear.

The Ear 3 might falter out of the gate with a shoddy Super Mic feature, but if you like the way Nothing wireless earbuds look and you want solid sound and ANC, the Ear 3 are still worth a look. Just don’t expect to be taking any Zoom calls from a construction site with these things just yet.

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

OpenAI Teams Up With Oracle and SoftBank to Build 5 New Stargate Data Centers

by admin September 23, 2025

OpenAI is planning to build five new data centers in the United States as part of the Stargate initiative, the company announced on Tuesday. The sites, which are being developed in partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, bring Stargate’s current planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts—roughly the same amount of power as seven large-scale nuclear reactors.

“AI is different from the internet in a lot of ways, but one of them is just how much infrastructure it takes,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a press briefing in Abilene, Texas, on Tuesday. He argued that the US “cannot fall behind on this” and the “innovative spirit” of Texas provides a model for how to scale “bigger, faster, cheaper, better.”

Three of the new sites, in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and a yet-to-be-disclosed location in the Midwest, are being developed in partnership with Oracle. The move follows an agreement Oracle and OpenAI announced in July to develop up to 4.5 gigawatts of US data center capacity on top of what the two companies are already building at the first Stargate facility in Abilene.

OpenAI claims the new data centers, along with a planned 600 megawatt expansion of the Abilene site, will create more than 25,000 onsite jobs, though the number of workers required to build data centers typically dwarfs the amount needed to maintain them afterwards.

The two remaining sites are being helmed by OpenAI and SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary that develops solar and battery projects. These are located in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County, Texas.

Stargate is one of several major US technology infrastructure projects that have been announced since President Donald Trump took office at the start of the year. OpenAI said in January that the $500 billion, 10 gigawatt commitment between the ChatGPT maker, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX would “secure American leadership in AI” and “create hundreds of thousands of American jobs.”

Trump touted the mammoth initiative just two days after he returned to the White House, promising that it would accelerate American progress in artificial intelligence and help the US compete against China and other nations. In July, Trump announced an AI action plan that called for speedy infrastructure development and limited red tape as the US tries to beat other countries in the quest for advanced AI. “We believe we’re in an AI race,” White House AI czar David Sacks said at the time. “We want the United States to win that race.”

OpenAI initially framed Stargate as a “new company” that would be chaired by Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son. Now, however, executives close to the project say it’s an umbrella brand name used to refer to all of OpenAI’s data center projects—except those developed in partnership with Microsoft.

The flagship site in Abilene is primarily owned and operated by Oracle, with OpenAI acting as the primary tenant, according to executives close to the project. The buildout, which is being managed by the data center startup Crusoe, is on track to be completed by mid-2026, sources close to the project say. It is already running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and supporting OpenAI training and inference workloads, those sources add.

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Major League Baseball will adopt an automated challenge system in 2026

by admin September 23, 2025

Next year, baseball reasons will have one less reason to rage at the umpire. Major League Baseball announced today that it will introduce the Automated Ball Strike challenge system in the 2026 season for all spring training, championship season and postseason games. In other words, next year there will be a way for the players to attempt to overturn an umpire’s call about whether a pitch counts as a strike or a ball if they disagree with the initial decision.

ABS uses a network of a dozen camera to record every pitch thrown. The umpire will still call the pitch a ball or strike as usual, but under the new system, the pitcher, catcher or batter can immediately challenge that decision. Coaching staff and other players cannot offer input on whether or not a challenge is initiated. If the cameras show any part of the ball touching the batter’s strike zone, the pitch will be counted as a strike. All teams will begin a game with two challenge opportunities, and only lose them if they challenge unsuccessfully. For games that go into extra innings, a team will get an additional challenge if it has none remaining at the start of the additional gameplay.

Baseball has taken a gradual path to introducing this tech. ABS has been tested at the Triple-A level since 2022, and it finally got a chance in the majors during spring training and in the All-Star Game this year. Other sports have also been leveraging electronics to ensure that gameplay rules and scoring are consistent. Football/soccer has implemented a video assistant referee (VAR) system in several leagues, including FIFA and the UK’s Premier league. Tennis is also adopting electronic line calls at Wimbledon and other tournaments. Even the electronic systems are not infallible, but considering how much any high-level athletic endeavor can be won or lost by millimeters, having a backup for the human eye seems like a net positive.

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September 23, 2025 0 comments