gadgets

Motorola G and E-series have long been affordable stalwarts of the smartphone market, but their design often betrayed their budget nature. This time around Motorola is cranking things up a notch with the G6 and E5, refreshing its value-priced phones with an attractive glass-sandwich design in addition to the usual spec bump. The company is announcing four models, so let’s … [Read more...] about The Moto G6 and E5 bring premium design at budget prices

My current phone does not have a headphone jack. My favorite headphones need one. After being fed up with losing and forgetting dongles, I thought there must be a better way. Despite a plethora of excellent wireless options currently available, my favorite portable headphones are a pair of in-ear monitors (IEMs) from a little known company outside of audiophilia, the VSonic … [Read more...] about How to add Bluetooth to your wired headphones

Chinese technology company ZTE issued a statement today in response to the US government’s banning of American exports to the company. The US Department of Commerce says ZTE didn’t uphold a plea agreement after the company pleaded guilty last year to illegally shipping US equipment to Iran and North Korea. The department specifically says the company still gave … [Read more...] about ZTE says the US export ban will “severely impact” its survival

I’m here to quell your health concerns: staring at a screen doesn’t damage your eyes. They won’t make you go blind, and your doctor isn’t going to worry about your health if he or she hears that you’re spending a lot of time in front of them. However, you might feel uncomfortable after a long time in front of a backlight, and you might even … [Read more...] about No, staring at a screen won’t damage your eyes

Amazon has updated Alexa with a clever feature that makes it a whole lot more useful around the house: you can now build your own skills for the voice assistant without having to touch a line of code. Using Alexa Blueprints, you can now set up custom skills and responses to do things like leave instructions for your babysitter or an Airbnb guest, put together a family trivia … [Read more...] about Amazon now lets you create Alexa skills without a single line of code

Back in the sepia-tinged olden days, all stoners needed to have a good time was a bit of paper and some marijuana. Now? There’s an entire industry catering to their needs. To celebrate 4/20 and our bleary-eyed brethren, we’ve put together a list of some of the… odder products the enterprising blazer definitely doesn’t need, but will probably want anyway. … [Read more...] about 10 weird weed products to celebrate 4/20 with

The Red Magic is the new phone from Nubia (a ZTE sub-brand in China), and it’s built for gaming. But you probably didn’t need me to tell you that. The Red Magic is practically screaming “extreme gamer,” with its sharp, hexagonal cutouts for the camera and fingerprint sensor, aggressively red vents and details, and the glowing LED strip on the back, via … [Read more...] about Nubia’s Red Magic smartphone is designed for gaming, down to the glowing LEDs on the back

Zink is a printing technology that makes me worried about the future of our species. My dad used to work at a print company. Truck-sized printing presses were a hassle to set up, maintain, and clean. To print a photo, you had to use multiple plates, one for each color. It was expensive and messy, but the prints were beautiful. After high school, I moved to California, where I … [Read more...] about Canon’s new mobile photo printer is just like all the other mobile photo printers

Pipe cleaners probably played a large role in your life when you were a kid. Remember all those hours spent twisting the furry wires into weird and fun shapes? If the thought of doing that for hours hurts your hands, a Japanese tinkerer named Yoshihito Isogawa has created a robot that does the bending for you (as spotted by Gizmodo). When a pipe cleaner is fed into the machine, … [Read more...] about Watch this robot bend pipe cleaners into hearts and stars

After showing off its promising Vaunt smart glasses just a couple of months ago, Intel is now shuttering the division that built its wearable device. The devices group was formed in 2013 with a view to develop fitness trackers and smart glasses – but its products didn’t really see the light of day for long, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the … [Read more...] about Intel kills off its smart glasses project