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Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft hands-on
Product Reviews

Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft hands-on

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This marks the third generation of the company’s larger 11-inch e-readers aimed at professionals, students, and people who just want… a big screen for magazines, books, or to jot notes on. The addition of a color display is one highlight, but these Scribes are also super light (14.1oz) and thin. At 5.4mm, they’re thinner than the iPhone Air and come with new AI features that will help users quickly summarize notes. I dig the new look with the thinner bezels. No more beefy side-chin.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, which starts at $629.99 and is set to launch later this year, appears to be the one to get. I know it’s expensive considering it’s not a tablet. But that’s Amazon’s point: it’s not a tablet, so you can’t get distracted by things like email, Slack, games, or whatever naughty things you do on your iPad. That won’t appeal to everyone, but it appeals to me and is one reason I’ve liked these in the past. Also, it has two weeks of battery life and lets you draw or write in a bunch of colors (or highlight in five colors), and syncs with Microsoft OneDrive (and soon, Google Drive).

I know some folks have questioned the appeal of color e-readers, since books are typically black and white, and color is only useful for highlighting or viewing book covers. But it works really well on a larger screen where folks are more likely to view work documents like PDFs, textbooks, and magazines. It made me wish yet again that Amazon hadn’t killed off its newspaper subscriptions, because I’d love to read those on this.

In addition to the Colorsoft, there’s also an entry-level model that starts at $429.99 and launches early next year, as well as a mid-tier model with a frontlit display, which starts at $499.99 and will also launch later this year. All three models have a whole new user interface that I dig, too. There’s this small area at the top where you can launch into Quick Notes, kind of like if you had a never-ending Post-it note.

I also had a demonstration of a new AI search feature. It provides summaries of your documents and seems to work pretty fast. You need a Wi-Fi connection, though, since it’s not powered on-device and also searches for documents in the cloud. I’m excited to see if it works well to find and summarize the seemingly infinite number of work documents I have stored in Google Drive.

There’s a new pen that comes bundled with the Kindles. It’s a bit larger and more round, easier to hold, and has stronger magnets so you can stick it to the side of the Scribe without worrying about it knocking off too easily. My quick test writing with the pen felt more fluid, at least compared to the first-generation Kindle Scribe I purchased when it came out. Amazon said that it added textured glass so the screen doesn’t feel slippery when you’re writing. I didn’t notice this during my brief hands-on, so I’m curious to see how it feels once we have a review unit.

The new front lighting looked balanced, although I haven’t really had any complaints with the lights on my first-gen model. I’m not sure I’d buy the model without a front light. But you do you.

Photography: Todd Haselton | The Verge



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Pokemon Legends Z-A's new structure and battles have the power to make a Pikachu terrifying - hands-on
Game Reviews

Pokemon Legends Z-A’s new structure and battles have the power to make a Pikachu terrifying – hands-on

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Even after a little under an hour of hands-on play, it’s clear that Pokemon Legends: Z-A is the most interesting and unique Pokemon title since, er… the last one of these, when Game Freak and The Pokemon Company put out 2022’s Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Now established as what looks like a permanent secondary strand of the ‘main line’ Pokemon titles, Z-A continues with the more bold and experimental development philosophy of Arceus – though this time, I expect further temerity of design – and with it, perhaps a more mixed measure of success.

Back when Legends: Arceus was released, we at VG247 were positively frothing with excitement at the thought of where this series could go. Seeing Z-A, we clearly approached this differently to Pokemon’s developer stewards. We envisioned ‘Legends’ coming to mean Pokemon stories set in the past – Galar as Victorian England, Unova’s Poke-New York in the roaring 20s, or Kalos in the grip of a less bloodless version of the French Revolution where the people and nobility settled matters with Pokemon battles.

In the end we did get Pokemon’s version of France, but not during the revolution. Z-A is once again set in Pokemon’s version of ‘today’, but this time it has a unique twist: the entire game is set in one enormous city, leveraging the status of Paris (in Pokemon’s world known as Lumiose City) as a major built-up area to provide a network of buildings, backstreets, tiny city parks and the like as a new sort of Pokemon world. In this, the spirit of Legends: Arceus is alive but in a mirror image – that game was sparse, full of rolling fields and the like where you’d crawl through long grass to try to surprise an unsuspecting critter or trainer. Z-A is dense, and while things like stealth still exist you’ll instead be hiding around the corner of buildings or behind a parked car.

There is a structural difference to the design of the world, then – but the real significant change comes in combat. For the first time in such a prominent Pokemon release, Z-A shifts to real-time battles. This is still absolutely a role-playing game – but battles now have an extra shot of action-like feeling to them.

Starter for 10-year-olds. | Image credit: Pokemon/Nintendo

Moves are no longer limited by ‘PP’ which drains with each use, for instance – they’re now on a cooldown. New alongside this shift is the fact that battle placement matters – if a Pokemon isn’t physically in the way of a move, that attack will simply whiff. Those previously-mentioned narrow city streets make tactical battlegrounds; a parked taxi is suddenly not just set dressing, but something you as a trainer or your Pokemon can duck behind to avoid incoming attacks.

The act of moment-to-moment play feels a little more segmented, too. The city is a civilized place, so battles can’t happen just anywhere. ‘Wild Zones’ are designated areas where untamed Pokemon roam free, and this is where you’ll be able to enter to catch and battle unaccompanied Pokemon.

Once night falls, trainers can head to the similarly-defined Battle Zones for fights. This is where the titular Z-A Royale takes place: the protagonist tasked with battling their way up from Rank Z through to Rank A. Gym showdowns are replaced with ‘promotion matches’ – gather enough points by defeating opponents in Battle Zones and you’ll gain a ticket that can then be used to go and fight a specific challenger in order to rank up.

The structural change is relatively fascinating and feels like it’ll satisfy. Such regimented segmentation always has the risk of feeling suffocating, but in this hands-on it all tracks and makes sense – and within each zone, some delightful moments await.

Gotta match em all up. | Image credit: Nintendo

I enjoyed, for instance, how perilous the Wild Zone I got to test could feel. The majority of Pokemon there were breezy to battle and acquire, and catching in particular feels more kind in this game because you get a shot (though no guarantee) at catching any defeated wild Pokemon even if you deplete all of their HP. This leads to a generally chill time that channels tooling around the world of Legends: Arceus chain-catching stuff looking for shinies. But then when exploring I clamber atop a rooftop and discover a high-level ‘Alpha’ Pikachu. Its eyes glow red, and it’s absolutely feral.

I try to fight it, expecting the usual Pokemon stuff – being relatively able to cheese through such a fight with healing items and the like. My notes tell a different story. Scrawled hurriedly in my notepad is the following, with grammar tidied and one word not suitable for a preview of a game for children replaced with a bit of blasphemy: “Terrifying level 40 Pikachu. Careful strength and weakness use gives you a chance. Actually, it’s too hard. Oh god, it followed me off the rooftop.”

It’s in this moment, jumping off a rooftop to what I think is safety only to be followed by this hulking, evil Pikachu, that Z-A most thoroughly clicks. Though it feels like tradition with Pokemon, such emotions do inevitably come with caveats.

For one, let’s talk about those environments. They shine in the battle zones, where those tight city streets lend themselves well to light-touch stealth encounters. Back in 1996, Pokemon introduced the concept of line-of-sight between Pokemon trainers initiating battle. If you meet gazes, you fight. Here, in an action RPG, with seamless fights, that concept comes to a pretty glorious natural conclusion. The tall grass stalking of the last game is a foundation; you add to that an urban labyrinth and you’re crouching behind a parked vehicle, or a conveniently-placed crate, waiting for a trainer to turn their back in order to land a sneak attack. Missions given to you in Battle Zones encourage you to engage in such tactics, too. In exploration, the fact you’re using such moves in real time out in the world means the act of using classic Pokemon skills to open up new areas and such feels much more organic than ever before.

But then there’s the flip side: in battle, these things are as much a frustrating obstacle as they are a tactical boon. I watched as a breathtakingly thick Pokemon took my orders to directly attack the enemy as one to stand behind a parked vehicle and whiff its key attack into it, because the enemy was on the other side. The world oscillates in that sense; the brilliance of simple stealth, but then frustration in combat. How static and dead it can often feel, but then a real sense of explorative joy when you stand high on a rooftop and see a distant collectible elsewhere in the city’s sprawl.

Hippos on the roof!? | Image credit: Nintendo

I guess what I’m saying is that it feels like Pokemon, right? These games have long felt like a jumble of strange and fascinating contradictions; of boons and trade-offs. Legends: Z-A feels like it too will strike that balance; sometimes brilliant, sometimes frustrating, but always strangely gripping.

All of this is said, of course, from the standpoint of an extremely short hands-on experience. These games run to as much as 40x longer than what I played; and so it is too early to judge. What I see, in the end, is Pokemon’s caretakers taking a characteristically large swing – with equally characteristic restraint. The result seems to me to be most likely more reminiscent of Legends: Arceus than not – and for my money, that was the best Pokemon game in 20 years. It perhaps is therefore no surprise that I’m eagerly awaiting its release next month – when I can judge the complete package in full.



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Product Reviews

Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-on: Discreet and intuitive

by admin


I’ve been testing smart glasses for almost a decade. And in that time, one of the questions I’ve been asked the most is “oh, but can you see anything in them?” For years, I had to explain that no, glasses like that don’t really exist yet.

That’s no longer the case. And while I’ve seen a bunch of glasses over the last year that have some kind of display, the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses feel the closest to fulfilling what so many people envision when they hear the words “smart glasses.”

To be clear, they don’t offer the kind of immersive AR that’s possible with Meta’s Orion prototype. In fact Meta considers “display AI glasses” to be a totally separate category from AR. The display is only on one lens — the right — and its 20-degree field of view is much smaller than the 70 degrees on Orion. That may sound like a big compromise, but it doesn’t feel like one.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

The single display feels much more practical for a pair of glasses you’ll want to wear every day. It’s meant to be something you can glance at when you need it, not an always-on overlay. The smaller size also means that the display is much sharper, at 42 pixels per degree. This was especially noticeable when I walked outside with the glasses on; images on the display looked even sharper than in indoor light, thanks to automatic brightness features.

I also appreciated that you can’t see any light from the display when you’re looking at someone wearing the glasses. In fact the display is only barely noticeable at all when you at them up close.

Having a smaller display also means that the glasses are cheaper, at $799, and that they don’t look like the chunky AR glasses we’ve seen so many times. At 69 grams, they are a bit heavier and thicker than the second-gen Meta Ray-Bans, but not much. As someone who has tried on way too many pairs of thick black smart glasses, I’m glad Meta is offering these in a color besides black. All Wayfarer-style frames look wide on my face but the lighter “sand” color feels a lot more flattering.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display (left) and second-gen Ray-Ban Meta glasses (right.) The display glasses are a little thicker.

(Karissa Bell for Engadget)

The Meta Neural Band wristband that comes with the display glasses functions pretty much the same as the band I used on the Orion prototype. It uses sensors to detect the subtle muscle movements on your hand and wrist and can translate that into actions within the glasses’ interface.

It’s hard to describe, but the gestures for navigating the glasses interfaces work surprisingly well. I can see how it could take a little time to get used to the various gestures for navigating between apps, bringing up Meta AI, adjusting the volume and other actions, but they are all fairly intuitive. For example, you use your thumb to swipe along the the top of your index finger, sort of like a D-pad, to move up and down and side to side. And you can raise and lower the speaker volume by holding your thumb and index finger together and rotating your wrist right or left like it’s a volume knob.

It’s no secret that Meta’s ultimate goal for its smart glasses is to replace, or almost replace, your phone. That’s not possible yet, but having an actual display means you can look at your phone a whole lot less.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

The display can surface incoming texts, navigation with map previews (for walking directions), and info from your calendar. I was also able to take a video call from the glasses — unlike Mark Zuckerberg’s attempted live demo during his keynote — and it was way better than I expected. I could not only clearly see the person I was talking to and their surroundings, I could turn on my glasses’ camera and see a smaller version of the video from my side.

I also got a chance to try the Conversational Focus feature, which allows you to get live captions of the person you’re speaking with even in a loud environment that may be hard to hear. There was something very surreal about getting real-time subtitles to a conversation with a person standing directly in front of me. As someone who tries really hard to not look at screens when I’m speaking to people, it almost felt a little wrong. But I can also see how this would be incredibly helpful to people who have trouble hearing or processing conversations. It would also be great for translations, something Meta AI already does very well.

1 / 5

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses.

You can just barely see the display from the front of the lenses.

I also appreciated that the wristband allows you to invoke Meta AI with a gesture so you don’t always have to say “Hey Meta.” It’s a small change, but I’ve always felt weird about talking to Meta AI in public. The display also addresses another one of my longtime gripes with the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley glasses: framing a photo is really difficult. But with a display, you can see a preview of your shot, as well as the photo after the fact, so you no longer have to just snap a bunch and hope for the best.

I’ve only had about 30 minutes with the glasses, so I don’t really know how having a display could fit into my daily routine. But even after a short time with them, they really do feel like the beginning of the kind of smart glasses a lot of people have been waiting for.



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Oakley Meta Vanguard hands-on: what athletes actually want
Product Reviews

Oakley Meta Vanguard hands-on: what athletes actually want

by admin


When the Oakley Meta HSTN arrived earlier this year, it wasn’t what I thought Oakley-branded smart glasses would be. Sure, they had Oakley’s famous PRIZM lenses, but where was the wraparound design? Where were the athlete-focused features like stronger water and sweat resistance? Confusingly, it felt like the HSTN glasses were just Ray-Ban Meta glasses by another name. But that’s because Meta had the real athlete-focused glasses in its back pocket. Today, the company unveiled the new $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard — and it has everything outdoorsy athletes could want and then some.

“When we started building HSTN, it was an easier process of developing because most of the things we wanted for low-impact sports, like skating, don’t require a lot of technology in the eyewear from a performance standpoint,” says Oakley global president Caio Amato. Conversely, Amato says, the Vanguards were envisiond as a “revolution” not just for elite sports stars, but weekend warriors and everyday athletes.

Jabroni mode unlocked.

Putting on the Vanguards, I felt myself morph into Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights. They’re the quintessential wraparound Oakleys beloved by sports coaches, hardcore outdoors enthusiasts, and Patagonia-clad dads. At 66g, they’re slightly more hefty than the regular Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but still feel lightweight and secure enough for more intense activity. That’s partly because the Vanguards will ship with three swappable nosepads to ensure a good fit. The design has also been crafted with hats and cycling helmets in mind, which is why the control buttons are placed underneath the arms instead of above.

Switching the camera to the nosebridge was a huge technological challenge, says Oakley Global President Caio Amato. Photo: Colt Bradley / The Verge

Speaking of buttons, there’s also a new Action Button that acts as a shortcut for the various camera modes. Yes, you read that right: modes. The Vanguards have a 12MP, 122-degree camera placed smack-dab in the nose bridge, with a recording indicator light placed right above it. You can now record in 1080p with 30 frames per second for five minutes, 1080p at 60fps for three minutes, 3K at 30fps for three minutes, and 720p at 120fps in a new slo-mo mode. There’s also a new hyperlapse mode that lets you stitch together and compress in a sort of highlight reel. (Hyperlapse and slo-mo will come in a software update to all of Meta’s glasses later this fall.) There’s also adjustable stabilization, so you can customize based on the intensity of the activity you’re doing. Athletes can also program the glasses to start recording at certain milestones — like when they’re nearing a race’s finish line, for instance. It’s basically like putting a GoPro on your face without a silly little face-mount.

The camera, Amato says, was the biggest challenge in developing the Vanguards. The desire was to capture a first-person point of view, but “from an engineering and design standpoint, it change[d] everything completely from where Ray-Ban Meta were before.” For example, to get that first-person perspective, Amato says the camera required a much wider field of view, stronger stabilization, and 3K quality.

The Vanguards have also been tweaked to cater to outdoor performance. The lenses are swappable, and a low-light option will be available later this year. Amato says the different colors are optimized for certain activities. For example, if you’re into fishing, you may want the blue lenses as they neutralize blue hues more.

The speakers are 6db louder. That might not seem like much, but having pushed the volume, I assure you, they can get quite loud. Amato says that the speakers were tested on bicycles going up to 30mph with crowds present, as well as at road races, so that runners could have confidence their tunes wouldn’t be drowned out on race day. Unlike the regular Ray-Ban glasses, these also have an impressive IP67 water- and sweat-resistance rating. Meaning if you fall out of a kayak, you don’t have to worry about the glasses getting wrecked. Battery life also has an estimated max of nine hours, and six hours of continuous music playback — enough for most people to finish a marathon. With a case, you get a total of 36 hours and can also charge roughly 50 percent in 20 minutes.

Note the Meta AI glasses icon on the Garmin I’m wearing. Photo by Colt Bradley / The Verge

But the athlete-focused features don’t stop there. Meta is also partnering with Strava and Garmin. For the former, you can upload your footage straight to the platform. You’ll also be able to ask Meta’s AI about your historical Strava data. But perhaps what’s cooler is that the glasses can pair directly with certain Garmin watches. (I was told “most newer Garmins should work.”) You can see a Meta AI icon on the Garmin watch, and, mid-run, you can ask the glasses to give you a readout of your heart rate and other stats. Afterward, you can put an overlay with your workout’s key metrics on your video footage for sharing on social media. Garmin users can also program the glasses to automatically capture snippets at key moments — for example, each time you finish a mile.

“We wanted to have Garmin and Strava [as partners] because they’re leaders and because they have a community of sports people around them,” says Amato. “We really like the whole idea of this eyewear as enabling those sport communities to not only be their best version, but also to communicate and record better while capturing life.”

There’s more good news if you like heart rate zone training. There’s a new LED light above the right eye that turns red if you venture outside the target zone for a given workout. The LED light can also be configured to provide pacing alerts.

The glasses come in four colors and the lenses are swappable. Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

I took the glasses for a brief spin on a treadmill run and used them to record regular and slo-mo video. It was simple and easy via the action button, but you can also just ask Meta’s AI to start recording. There was next to no latency when I asked the glasses to give me a readout on my heart rate. That’s not enough to deliver a complete verdict, but my first impression is that this is an impressive feature set that will appeal to all sorts of athletes. I was such a huge fan of the Bose Frames Tempo that I ran a whole half-marathon in them. I’ve felt a bit bereft since they were discontinued. However, those were simply audio glasses, and I still had to use my phone to capture moments from my race. The ability to condense sunglasses, headphones, and a camera into one piece of equipment is hugely appealing when you’re trying to manage a water vest, salt chews, energy goos, and sunscreen.

Amato says the response from elite athletes so far has been incredibly promising. The company had superstars like cyclist Mark Cavendish, NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé help develop and provide feedback on the device. According to Amato, the glasses left the usually opinionated Cavendish speechless over all the possibilities. Mahomes purportedly said that the Vanguards “were not eyewear anymore” but “something completely new.”

I’m no professional athlete, and we’ll have to put these to the test in the coming weeks. But if they can replace my Bose Tempo? I’m down to be the captain of Team Jabroni.

The Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses are available for preorder today and will ship October 21st.

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Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-on: the best smart glasses I’ve ever tried
Product Reviews

Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-on: the best smart glasses I’ve ever tried

by admin


I want to preface this hands-on by saying that I’ve been a smart glasses skeptic for many years. In 2019, I even made a two-part mini documentary with a thesis that consumer smart glasses couldn’t happen without massive societal and technological shifts. Well, color me pink and let me find a shoe to eat. After getting a demo of the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display, I’m convinced this is the closest we’ve ever gotten to what Google Glass promised over 10 years ago.

The glasses look just like a chunky pair of Ray-Bans. But put them on, pinch your middle finger twice, and a display will appear in front of your right eye, hovering in front of your vision. It’s not augmented reality overlaid on the real world so much as on-demand, all-purpose menu with a handful of apps. You can use it to see text messages, Instagram Reels, maps, or previews of your photos, letting you do all kinds of things without having to pull out your phone. In fact, since it pairs to your phone, it sort of functions like a pop-up extension of it.

The display shows apps in full color with a 600-by-600-pixel resolution and a 20-degree field of view. It has a whopping 5,000 nits of maximum brightness, yet only 2 percent light leakage, which means it’s nigh impossible for people around you to see that it’s there. Each pair of the Display glasses comes with transition lenses, and the brightness adjusts depending on ambient UV light. Since it’s monocular, the display only appears in the one lens, and while it can be a little distracting, it doesn’t fully obstruct your vision.

It was difficult for us to capture our own still photos of what the display looked like for me at the hands-on. This is a decent approximation. Image: Meta

My colleague Jay Peters was looking at me dead-on while I was reading a text message, and he couldn’t see a trace of it. I stepped outside into a sunny area, and while the display was hard to see at first, it came into clearer focus as the transition lenses took effect. (Though even 5,000 nits can’t compete with the sun if you stare directly at it. Side note: don’t stare directly at the sun.)

When you are looking at the screen, your conversation partner may not see what you’re looking at, and will be able to tell you’re a little distracted. Jay noticed this immediately in my demo, and after, we joked: forget phones at the dinner table — now you’ve got to worry if your spouse, date, or friend is secretly watching videos or texting while you’re telling them important news.

The glasses are bolder than the Ray-Ban Metas. The frames are thicker, the edges are more rounded, and the overall Wayfarer shape is more square. The nose bridge, I’m told, is designed to have a universal fit. As someone with a low nose bridge, I appreciated that it didn’t slip down my face. Also, good news if you have a wide face: there are now overextension hinges so the temple arms can bend slightly outward for a more comfortable fit. Battery life lasts around six hours with “mixed use,” and you get 30 hours total with the new collapsible charging case. And at 69 grams, it’s still relatively light.

I’m tracing letters into my leg to write a text message. You can hold your arm by your side to control the device with the Neural Band. Photo by Colt Bradley / The Verge

Another big new addition is the Meta Neural Band. We’ve seen this before with last year’s Orion prototype, but using it was eye-opening. The band utilizes something called electromyography to read the signals from your muscles so that you can control the display with gestures. It was a lot to take in at first, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. And the coolest part? You don’t have to hold out your arm as with a headset like the Apple Vision Pro. You can just hold your hand at your side — behind your back, under a table, anywhere really — and perform all the gestures discreetly.

Pinching once with your index finger selects an item in the menu, while the same action with the middle finger acts as a back button. Pinching your middle finger twice summons and dismisses the display. You can also make a sideways fist and swipe your thumb left, right, up, and down to scroll through options. Pinching while rotating your hand will raise or lower the volume while listening to music, as well as zoom in when you’re taking photos.

Here are some examples of how you can’t see the display, but you can tell my attention is elsewhere.

Adding a display plus this wristband suddenly unlocks a range of hands-free capabilities. On the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, you have to pull up Instagram Live on your phone if you want to see what your photos or videos look like. With the Display glasses, you have a built-in preview window. My smart glasses photos will no longer be plagued by my bangs or my infernal tendency to tilt my head. You can also take video calls directly to your eyeballs in WhatsApp. You’ll be able to see whoever’s calling, and they’ll be able to see your point of view, too. I tried a video call with Jay. While it was incredibly cool to see his face floating in my vision, I couldn’t help feeling like a spy about to steal some corporate secrets in a high-stakes heist.

Messaging is another obvious plus. You can read, view photos and Instagram Reels, and reply to messages without ever having to take out your phone. (The Reels part is a little annoying; my friends send me TikToks.) And later this year, Meta is planning on introducing a handwriting feature where you can trace letters on any surface and discreetly reply to messages without having to dictate things aloud. I got to try it, and it worked shockingly well. There’s also predictive text, so you don’t even have to “write” that much.

Meta Ray-Ban Display and Neural Band specs

  • Display: 600 x 600 pixels with 20-degree field of view, 90Hz refresh rate (30Hz for content), and 30–5,000 nits of brightness
  • Battery life: 6 hours of mixed use for glasses, 18 hours for Neural Band. The glasses case holds 4 extra charges.
  • Lenses: Transition lenses that support prescriptions from -4.00 to +4.00
  • Camera: 12MP with 3x zoom; 3024 x 4032 pixel photo resolution with 1080p at 30fps for video
  • Weight: 69g
  • Water resistance: IPX4 for glasses, IPX7 for Neural Band
  • Storage: 32GB of storage, capable of storing up to 1,000 photos and 100 30-second videos.

A live caption demo was impressive. When you’re speaking to someone, the screen can display text or translations for live speech right in your line of sight. The wildest thing, however, is that thanks to the multidirectional microphone array, the glasses can tell who you’re looking at and will only show captions for that person. I got my demo while multiple people were speaking at once, and cross-talk was never an issue. When switching who I looked at, there was nearly zero latency in the captions catching up. The original Ray-Ban Metas were a game-changer for visually impaired people, and I suspect these glasses will be the same for people who are hard of hearing.

I’m excited by turn-by-turn walking directions. While my hometown of New York City has always had a grid system, I somehow always manage to get turned around. I hate looking down at my phone, trying to figure out where I’m going. With the Display glasses, I could look up directions to the nearest Jack in the Box and then orient myself on a map as I would on a phone. While I didn’t get to go to said hamburger joint, I was told you can dismiss the screen and still get turn-by-turn directions when you need them all while staying present in your surroundings.

You can’t see that I’m video calling my colleague Jay Peters, though you can see what I see on the laptop on the table behind me. Photo by Colt Bradley / The Verge

Meta’s Live AI features also get a boost. I used it to give myself a mini self-guided museum tour by taking a picture of an Andy Warhol Campbell’s soup can painting. Meta AI offered a short description, while the display showed info cards with further examples from the rest of that series of paintings. I also asked the AI to show me a chai latte recipe. It gave me step-by-step instructions, and then I hid the display and brought it back up again. The idea is you can review the steps, get cooking, and only review the next steps when needed. This seems useful as someone with many waterlogged cookbooks.

There haven’t been many consumer smart glasses, but I’ve tried everything from the original Google Glass and the enterprise edition to the defunct Focals by North. I have pairs of Rokid Glasses, XREAL glasses, and the Even Realities G1 that I’m currently testing. I’ve even received multiple demos of Google’s new prototype XR glasses. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like consumer smart glasses might really take off. Not just because Meta’s execution is excellent, but because I can see use cases I want in my daily life.

The glasses will come in two colors: black and sand, with matching neural wristbands and collapsible charging cases. Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Still, after the initial wonder and excitement tempered, I remembered my colleague Liz Lopatto’s recent column on how none of us truly has anonymity anymore. Surely these glasses will only exacerbate that. I thought about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments that people without AI smart glasses will be at a “significant cognitive disadvantage.” I winced at how a Border Patrol agent was spotted wearing a pair of Ray-Ban Metas during an immigration raid. Then I mulled the huge advances these glasses could pioneer in accessibility tech, enabling disabled people to live more independently. Are we perhaps rushing to open Pandora’s box without first thinking through what might break in the process? That question will linger in my mind until I get a pair for myself.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses go on sale on September 30th for $799, and you’ll be able to try them for yourselves at Best Buy, LensCrafters, Ray-Ban Stores, and Verizon. They’re US-only to start, but Meta will expand sales to Canada, France, Italy, and the UK in early 2026.

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‘Play Instantly on Discord’: Fortnite will be Nvidia and Discord’s first instant game demo
Product Reviews

Hands-on: Nvidia’s GeForce Now RTX 5080 is better and worse than I hoped

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Today, Nvidia is soft-launching its latest gaming GPUs in the cloud — upgrading its $20-a-month GeForce Now Ultimate cloud gaming service with RTX 5080 graphics for select games, with more to come down the road. At the same time, it’s also adding thousands more titles to the bring-your-own-games service by letting you install them yourself, while also unlocking a 360Hz mode for ultra-fast desktop monitors, launching a 90Hz version of its Steam Deck app, and more.

Do all these changes make GeForce Now fundamentally better? Absolutely, and it was already pretty good! But while playing I couldn’t escape the thought: it’s a good thing Nvidia isn’t charging extra for most updates, because they’re a little underwhelming right now.

Cyberpunk 2077 is playable with all the Nvidia eye candy — if you use all the Nvidia tricks.

For the uninitiated, Nvidia’s GeForce Now is a game streaming service that farms the graphical processing power out to the cloud. Instead of controlling a game running locally on your Steam Deck or MacBook or phone, you’re effectively remote-controlling an RTX 5080 or 4080-powered* gaming rig in a server farm many miles away, which you sync with your existing Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Xbox, and Battle.net accounts to access your games and savegames from the cloud.

*Nvidia’s GeForce Now also technically has a free tier, and a “Performance” tier, but I recommend you ignore both. For me, it was the difference between playing many games through a clean window or a dirty window, the difference between playing Alan Wake II and Indiana Jones with full ray tracing or none at all, the difference between comfortably stretching to 4K or not.

Don’t get me wrong, more power is always welcome, and more power is what I saw. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Cyberpunk 2077’s built-in benchmarks, two of the few I was able to run, Nvidia’s cloud-based RTX 5080 offered anywhere from 25 to 50 percent gains over the old RTX 4080 servers at 4K resolution.

That’s enough to play the former at near-max settings on a 4K TV, and the latter at 4K if you either sacrifice ray tracing or let Nvidia’s DLSS 4 frame generation add an extra fake frame for every real frame to smooth things out. My Cyberpunk framerate is better than we saw with the physical card!

But I quickly discovered that, like with that physical RTX 5080, the company’s marketing is moving faster than its tech can actually go.

There are so few RTX 5080-enabled games as of launch that I had a hard time finding them, and there’s currently no way to tell until after you launch Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 or Shadow of the Tomb Raider that it’s still running on a 4080-class GPU instead.

GFN RTX 5080 vs RTX 4080 (4K)

Game and mode

RTX 5080 (average/low fps)

RTX 4080 (average/low fps)

Percent increases

Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Native 4K max spec50 / 3936 / 2938 / 34 percentAssassin’s Creed Shadows, Native 4K less RT65 / 4850 / 3830 / 26 percentCyberpunk 2077, Native 4K Ultra85 / 6956 / 4751 / 46 percentCyberpunk 2077, RT Overdrive DLSS Quality45 / 4131 / 2745 / 51 percentCyberpunk 2077, RT Overdrive DLSS Balanced55 / 4939 / 3441 / 44 percentCyberpunk 2077, RT Overdrive DLSS Balanced 2x FG99 / 9171 / 6339 / 44 percent

And to get the huge framerate gains that Nvidia’s promising from RTX 5080, you’d need to have its servers generate three fake frames for every real one — which, when you combine it with the lag of cloud gaming, dramatically slows the speed a game reacts to your movements. I didn’t need to spend long trying 3x and 4x frame gen in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to find it was a non-starter for me: the game portrays Indy in his prime, but he suddenly felt like a sluggish old man.

But I’ll admit 2x frame gen actually felt pretty viable over a cloud connection, at least when plugged directly into my desktop over ethernet.

On the speedier side of things, my colleague Tom Warren tried out Overwatch 2 in Nvidia’s new 360Hz mode, and says he found it “easy to be competitive with,” but unfortunately that mode’s only limited to 1080p resolution. “Streaming at 1080p on a 4K monitor wasn’t the best,” he says.

It’s important to note the point of buying a 360Hz monitor is typically for better reaction times in esports games, not the smooth framerate itself, and Nvidia is getting you nowhere near a true 360Hz (2.78ms) reaction time this way. But Nvidia claims it does deliver up to 360fps and can get you down to 30 milliseconds, which is incredible for cloud gaming and should be better than a console in your living room. In the Overwatch 2 example, Nvidia says it’s only adding 1.8ms of encode, 0.3ms of decode, and 9ms of game engine activity and rendering, to the time it takes for you to press a button and send data across the internet to Nvidia’s servers and back.

Expedition 33 runs smoother at 90Hz, but may not look prettier than when I took this GFN RTX 4080 photo. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Meanwhile, though the 90Hz Steam Deck app is unequivocally an upgrade for the Steam Deck OLED’s 90Hz screen, making a smoother experience overall, I was surprised to find an RTX 5080 doesn’t necessarily improve performance beyond that. In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the RTX 5080 wasn’t enough to run the game at 4K on max settings any more than the RTX 4080 was, so I tested at 1440p, and saw roughly the same framerate of 55fps (lowest in big outdoor battle) to 90fps (indoor environment) regardless of which GPU I was using.

(Yes, I do recommend streaming at much higher resolutions than 800p to the Steam Deck’s 800p screen, because oversampling makes for a clearer and crisper image with fewer cloud gaming artifacts.)

1000xResist somehow wasn’t on GeForce Now, but Install-to-Play lets you stream it. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Revisiting a 2012 classic: Sleeping Dogs. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Last but not least, I tested Nvidia’s new “Install-to-Play” feature, which should drastically increase the number of games you can play on GeForce Now by letting you install any game that’s opted into Valve’s Steam Cloud Play, even if Nvidia hasn’t taken the time to test. There, GeForce Now basically just exposes its copy of Steam so you can install and launch any game you own that wasn’t supported before:

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Those games install even faster than I imagined: it took 17 seconds to install the 1.4GB Aces and Adventures; 53 seconds to install the 8GB 1000xResist, the game I haven’t stopped thinking about all year, 1 minute 22 seconds to install 2.2GB worth of Knights of the Old Republic, and and 2 minutes 9 seconds to install Sleeping Dogs’ 10.5GB of data.

But while Install-to-Play works, and quickly enough it might even be OK not to bother paying extra to avoid having to reinstall them every session (persistent storage is $3 for 200GB, $5 for 500GB, or $8 for 1TB per month), it doesn’t yet fill in the majority of GeForce Now’s gaps the way I’d hoped.

Here are all the games I own that I couldn’t stream before. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It only added 21 more games to my GeForce Now library. Without Install to Play, I could only access 162 out of my 472 Steam games via Nvidia’s cloud, and that number has only slightly budged. Now I can play Deus Ex and System Shock 2 and Tomb Raider Anniversary and the Golden Idol games, sure, but realistically I’d just play those natively on the Steam Deck. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I only had a phone or a Chromebook, though. And perhaps we’ll really see the advantage going forward, as it lets Nvidia add new titles far more quickly than before.

Just don’t expect Sony or Rockstar to bring their PC games to the service.

Lastly, while I expect this is a symptom of the pre-launch test servers, I ran into unusual bugs testing GFN RTX 5080 and Install-to-Play. The client sometimes forgot my streaming settings; GeForce Now sometimes thought I was trying to log in from Virginia and Steam blocked that login; I had other sign-in issues and an occasional black screens, issues syncing games with Steam and Uplay, found some games wouldn’t launch right away anymore after I clicked them, and so on.

If you see those same issues, or if you find Install-to-Play brings surprising new gems, let me know!

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Apple iPhone 17 hands-on | The Verge
Product Reviews

Apple iPhone 17 hands-on | The Verge

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Apple’s big fall event just wrapped up, and we rushed out of the Steve Jobs Theater to get our hands on the latest iPhones. Here’s a look at the new iPhone 17, Apple’s base model this year, which is joined by the thinner iPhone Air and beefier iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max — there’s no Plus this time around.

The first place to start is the rear camera. Not because a lot has changed here, but rather because it hasn’t: while the iPhone 17 Pro and Air have both adopted new horizontal camera “plateaus,” the regular 17 has the same two vertically stacked lenses as last year. That means this is the only iPhone 17 that actually looks like the iPhone 16 range — which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on your perspective.

The dual rear cameras look the same, but there’s been a big change. Both lenses now use 48-megapixel sensors — a big upgrade for the ultrawide, which was previously 12 megapixels. Apple claims that the main camera will double as a 2x telephoto, while the ultrawide handles macro duties, but don’t expect a camera as versatile as those on the Pros — still, it’s better than the single lens on the Air. The selfie camera has been upgraded too, with an 18-megapixel sensor supported by Center Stage for automatic framing and even orientation adjustment.

The regular iPhone is always the last to get whatever shiny new features Apple rolls out to the Pros, but it looks especially left behind this year with the Air in the mix and a new design for the Pro. But the selfie camera improvements will be appreciated here by anyone upgrading to the base model, and the colors are pleasantly saturated in person.

You’ll get five color options with the base iPhone 17: lavender, mist blue, black, white, and sage. They’re all at the subdued, pastel end of the spectrum, though — bizarrely, you’ll have to opt for the 17 Pro’s bright orange to get a truly punchy finish this year.

That’s not to say that nothing has changed. The iPhone 17 has followed in the footsteps of last year’s 16 Pro models by shrinking its bezel for a slightly larger display, jumping from 6.1 inches in the iPhone 16 to 6.3 inches now. That means it has the same size display as the iPhone 17 Pro, giving you one less reason to upgrade.

Size isn’t the only upgrade, either. This is the first year that the base iPhone has included support for up to 120Hz refresh rates, finally matching a feature you can find on $200 Android phones. That should mean smoother scrolling and more fluid animations, helped along by the upgraded A19 chip — it’s a change that’s sometimes hard to notice at first, but is immediately apparent when you go back to a 60Hz screen. It’s also a brighter screen than before, with a peak outdoor brightness of 3,000 nits, and is protected by the new, tougher Ceramic Shield 2.

Throw in more power thanks to the updated A19 chipset, longer battery life, and support for faster 25W MagSafe charging, and the iPhone 17 is a bigger update than many of us expected.

The iPhone 17 starts at $799, the same price as the 16, but you get double the storage at 256GB. It’ll be available to order from this Friday, with devices hitting store shelves on September 19th.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge



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Hands-on with all the new Apple Watches: Series 11, Ultra 3, and SE 3
Product Reviews

Hands-on with all the new Apple Watches: Series 11, Ultra 3, and SE 3

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Following Apple’s “Awe dropping” event today, we’ve been able to try out all the new Apple Watch models announced today including the Series 11, the Ultra 3, and the refreshes SE 3.

The entry-level Apple Watch SE was last updated in 2022 with the second-generation model, but the new SE 3, which starts at $249 for a 40 millimeter model, has gained some features from older Apple Watch models released since the SE 2’s debut, as well as the new Ultra 3 and Series 11 announced today. It will support both faster 5G cellular speeds and now charge twice as fast, with battery life getting a boost to up to 18 hours. It will also feature Apple’s new more scratch resistant Ion-X glass, an always-on display for the first time, sleep apnea detection, and the ability to use its speaker for playing music and podcasts – not just phone calls.

In person, the SE 3 feels surprisingly similar to the Series 11. In fact, at first I thought the SE 3 I was trying on was the Series 11. The only thing that visually set them apart for me was the profile and the colors. That’s huge for the SE 3, given the $250 price point. I’ll have to see how they feel in testing, but it truly doesn’t feel like you’re giving up much.

The Apple Watch Series 11 is also getting the 5G cellular upgrade as well as the sleep score, notifications of potential high blood pressure, a battery life bump to up to 24 hours, and the stronger glass. Its design isn’t that much different than the Series 10 but will be available in slightly larger 42mm and 46mm sizes and, according to Apple, will be the thinnest Apple Watch yet.

The high-blood-pressure demos weren’t available just yet, but we did get to see demos of the satellite SOS feature. It looks neat, but a crowded hands-on space isn’t the best place to get a sense of how 5G or satellite SOS will play out. I did get a look at the new Sleep Score screens, which are just about what you would expect.

The Apple Watch Ultra 3, which starts at $799, has a larger screen than the Ultra 2 but with smaller bezels so the actual size of the ultra-durable wearable remains the same. It’s also gaining 5G cellular capabilities with the addition of satellite connectivity, a boost to up to 42 hours of battery life, new health features including a sleep score and notifications when the signs of high blood pressure are detected, and the stronger Ion-X glass.

The Ultra 3 didn’t look all that different in person (though I appreciated the new minty Ocean strap). That said, I dug the new watchfaces in person. You can see a slight difference compared to the Ultra 2 in terms of display size, but it’s sight.

Apple isn’t charting an entirely new course with the design of its latest wearables, but there are still some notable upgrades and changes coming this year, and we’ve gone hands-on to let you know if they might be worth the upgrade.

Photography by Victoria Song



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Dyson V16 Piston Animal cordless stick vacuum
Product Reviews

Dyson V16 Piston Animal hands-on review: a powerful new flagship, but not quite a slam-dunk

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Dyson V16 Piston Animal: two-minute review

The V16 Piston Animal is Dyson’s brand-new flagship stick vacuum, and it boasts a number of upgrades over its predecessors. Based on specs, this is the best Dyson vacuum on the market – and it should be one of the best cordless vacuums from any brand. I’ve been testing it out for a couple of days now, and I have lots of thoughts.

Based on my first impressions – I’ll be writing a full review when I’ve had more time with it – the V16 Piston Animal an incredibly good vacuum, but with one particular issue that could be a deal breaker for some potential buyers.

Let’s start with the good bits. The dust compactor works extremely well and is a logical, solidly useful addition. It gives you more cleaning time without having to empty the bin so often, and when you do come to empty the bin, the same mechanism expels the contents easily, with no need for fingers to get involved.

Dyson has redesigned the attachment mechanism so that you can connect and release attachments on the end of the wand without having to bend down. This seems like an effort-saver, and should also help those with mobility issues.

It almost goes without saying that the suction is excellent, and the battery gives you ample cleaning time without having to stop to recharge. Like its predecessors, the Gen5detect and V15 Detect, there’s an Auto mode that offers intelligent adjustment based on floor type and dirt levels. On the V16, though, it’ll adjust not just suction but also roller speed, for the most effective, battery-efficient clean.

Dyson has also given the floorhead an entirely different design – and this is where my main issue lies. The conical rollers do work well to prevent hair tangles, but the tapered shape means the floorhead comes to a slight point on the front side, which is a pain when you’re trying to clean along the straight edge of a room.

Read on for more information about the new Dyson flagship and my experiences with it so far, and check back in a week or two for my full and in-depth verdict.

(Image credit: Future)

Dyson V16 Piston Animal review: price & availability

  • List price: £749.99 / AU$1,349 (US TBC)
  • Launched: September 2025
  • Available: UK and AU now, US sometime in 2026

The V16 Piston Animal was unveiled at the start of September, and is on sale now in territories including the UK and Australia. It will be available in the US, but not until sometime in 2026.

The regular version has a list price of £749.99 / AU$1,349 (the US list price will be released closer to the launch date). A Submarine version is also available, with an extra mopping floorhead, at a list price of £899.99 / AU$1,599.

For comparison, this model’s predecessor, the Gen5detect, is £769.99 / AU$1,549. The model down from that, the V15 Detect, is £649.99 / AU$1,449.

Those prices position the the V16 firmly in the premium price bracket, and make it one of the most expensive vacuums on the market. It’s interesting to note that it’s actually slightly cheaper than the Gen5detect in the UK (although that older model will attract more discounts).

I’ll make a final call on value for money once I’ve had more time to test the V16 out, but on first impressions, it looks and feels premium. It has been meticulously designed and is packed with features – including some you can’t find anywhere else on the market. I’m not going to pretend it’s not an awful lot to spend on a vacuum, though.

Dyson V16 Piston Animal specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Weight:

7.5 lbs / 3.4kg

Bin size:

1.3L

Max runtime:

70 mins

Charge time:

3hrs 30

Dimensions (H x L x W):

10.2 x 51.1 x 9.8 inches / 25.9 x 129.8 x 25cm

Filter:

99.9% to 0.1 microns

Max suction:

315 AW

Dyson V16 Piston Animal review: design

  • Redesigned anti-tangle floorhead with conical rollers
  • Manual compression lever on bin
  • Automatic power and roller speed adjustment based on floor type

The V16 Piston is a premium cordless stick vacuum with a number of useful features, many of which are brand new to this machine.

Key amongst these – and the reason for the ‘Piston’ of the name, is a compression lever on the dust cup. This can be pushed down to squish dust and hair and increase dustbin capacity, and is also designed to wipe fine debris off the inside of the cup, and to be helpful in efficient emptying.

(Image credit: Future)

A second addition is the red cuff at the top of the vacuum’s wand. This can be pushed down to release the floorhead without having to bend down. The docking section of the floorhead is designed to sit upright at an angle, so you can also snap it on the wand from a standing position.

(Image credit: Future)

Speaking of the floorhead: this looks very different to anything I’ve seen before. Rather than being tube-shaped, the rollers here are conical. The idea is that the tapering shape shifts long hair down to the narrow end where it can be sucked up, rather than leaving it to tangle. This floorhead is designed for both hard floors and carpet, and is kitted out with a laser to illuminate dirt that might otherwise be missed.

(Image credit: Future)

The main body of the vacuum has a matte finish, and Dyson has added a padded section above the hand grip for added comfort. It switches on with a button rather than a trigger, and the battery is removable and swappable.

This is the first Dyson vacuum to be properly ‘connected’, with the companion app providing cleaning summaries and offering advanced setting options. There’s a screen on the machine itself to deliver information, including how long you have left on the battery.

The screen will also provide you with real-time reports on the size and number of particles you’re sucking up, as you clean. This works with the V16’s ‘Auto’ mode, where the vacuum will automatically adjust suction and (newly) brushroll speed based on the kind of floor it’s on and how dirty it is.

(Image credit: Future)

Detail tools will vary slightly depending on which model you opt for, but there are a couple of notable upgrades. The Hair screw tool now has a rubberized band across the front to help loosen hair that’s ‘stuck’ to upholstery fabric. Hidden inside the wand are two stubby Crevice tools – one at the top, attached to the main part of the vacuum, and the other at the bottom of the wand, revealed if you remove the floorhead. Because of the redesigned docking mechanism, none of the tools are compatible with other Dyson stick vacuums.

Dyson V16 Piston Animal review: performance

  • Dust compaction is great, and design makes emptying super-easy
  • Suction excellent, but not notably different to previous models in practice
  • Angled floorhead is a pain for vacuuming the edges of rooms

After one whole-house clean with the V16, I’m impressed in some ways but less so in others. I’ll start with the general suction performance. As I expected, this is excellent. I tested the vacuum in a four-floor house with hard floor, plenty of carpets, and a black Spaniel, and it had no trouble sucking up impressive volumes of dust, dirt and hair.

In Auto mode, I could hear the power and brushroll ramping up and down as I moved into different areas and onto different floor types. I found the on-screen dust reports as mesmerizing as ever, although I’m still not sure they’re that useful.

Officially, the V16 has the most suction of any Dyson stick vacuum, but on first impressions, I didn’t really notice a difference in cleaning power compared to cleaning using the V15 (this house’s usual vacuum, and two models down from the V16 – despite what the number might suggest, the Gen5detect sits in the middle). I’ll run some side-by-side suction tests with all three to see if there is a difference I’m not seeing.

(Image credit: Future)

The V16 feels a little weighty in the hand, but the padded section above the hand-hold is a welcome addition and does help boost comfort. I’m in two minds about the button operation. For longer cleaning sessions, it’s nice not to have to continually compress the trigger, but for quick cleanups, it’s a bit cumbersome to have to keep a hand free to turn the machine on and off (you can’t reach the button with your gripping hand).

I’m also not entirely sold on the new floorhead. While it does work well to siphon off hair, the new design requires the front long side of the floorhead to come to a slight point rather than being in a straight line. This means you can’t approach the edges of rooms front-on – instead, you have to go in from the side. That quickly becomes very annoying.

Otherwise, it pivots well but feels a little harder to push than previous Dysons (and other vacuums I’ve tested). I did find the laser useful for highlighting dust in dingy corners, though.

(Image credit: Future)

The quick-release works well and is an effort-saver, but the joints in general are a little stiffer than on other Dyson stick vacuums I’ve used. It’s also a shame that existing attachments won’t work with the V16.

More of a success is the dust compactor. This is a solid win; the mechanism works a treat, and means you can fit in more cleaning without having to make so many trips to the trash. It also makes it far easier to empty than most cordless vacuums I’ve used.

Those are my thoughts so far – check back for the full review, including the results of TechRadar’s official suction tests, when I’ve had more time to put the V16 Piston Animal through its paces.

Dyson V16 Piston Animal: Price Comparison



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My brief hands-on with Acer’s new convertible Chromebook has me cautiously optimistic
Gaming Gear

My brief hands-on with Acer’s new convertible Chromebook has me cautiously optimistic

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Acer’s new Chromebook Plus Spin 514, announced at IFA 2025 in Berlin, is the company’s first laptop to use the Arm-based MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 processor. That chip was used in the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 that launched earlier this summer, and it was key to delivering excellent performance and marathon battery life in that fanless laptop. I dubbed the Lenovo “the new king of Chromebooks,” and this $699.99 Acer, launching this month, seems poised to be a solid alternative — especially if you prefer a touchscreen convertible and don’t mind hearing a fan on occasion.

Acer sent me the new Chromebook Plus Spin 514 for early testing, and after some brief hands-on time I can already tell battery life is again likely to be one of the Kompanio Ultra’s strengths. The IPS display options with 1920 x 1200 or 2880 x 1800 resolution aren’t going to hang with the punchiness of the OLED panels in the Lenovo. But the draw of the Acer is its Gorilla Glass-covered 14-inch touchscreen with support for USI 2.0 styluses (which are sold separately), allowing you to use it like a tablet, draw on it, or take handwritten notes.

That, and it has more, faster ports than the Lenovo. The Chromebook Plus Spin 514 has two 10Gbps USB-C ports with DisplayPort and Power Delivery, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The Acer also has a 70Wh battery compared to Lenovo’s 60Wh, and like the Lenovo it comes with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. For a webcam, it offers either 1080p or 5-megapixel options.

What the Acer doesn’t have, however, is a side-mounted power button. Which is a little odd on a 2-in-1, because if it goes to sleep in tablet mode you have to reach around to the keyboard deck for the power button. Its up-firing speakers are also on the keyboard deck, so in tent mode or tablet mode you’re moving its already meager, thin-sounding speakers away from you.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge



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