Abigail Smith

More of a refinement than last year’s full-on revamp, the latest HP Spectre x360 shaves off nearly an inch of depth, crams a tiny IR camera into its super-slim display bezel, and boasts crazy battery life. Oh, and Ice Lake! Set for release in October, the new HP Spectre x360 13 features the same classy gem-cut design as its predecessor, although a ruler will tell you that it’s nearly an inch (or 23mm, to be precise) less deep. Specifications CPU: Core i7-1065G7 or Core i5-1035G1 Graphics: Integrated Iris Plus (Core i7) or Intel UHD G1 (Core i5) Memory: Up to 16GB LPDDR4 Storage: Up to 1TB SSD with 32GB of Intel Optane memory Display: 13.3-inch 1W FHD (400 nits), UHD AMOLED (400 nits), FHD with Sure View privacy toggle (1,000 nits, available January 2020) Networking: Wi-Fi 6, optional Gigabit LTE with 4x4 antennas Connectivity: Two Thunderbolt 3 ports, one USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A port, combo audio jack Dimensions: 15.5 x 7.66 x 0.67 Weight: 2.88 pounds ...

The Apple Watch Series 5 is so far ahead of anything that professes to be a peer, there’s only one reason not to buy one: You want multi-day battery life. Otherwise, you’re not going to find a smartwatch with a better screen, more advanced sensors, nicer design, or stronger app support. I’ve tested smartwatches from just about every manufacturer—Samsung, Fitbit, Fossil, LG, Huawei, Mobvoi, Withings, etc.—and nothing really comes close to the polish and performance Apple has delivered. Apple haters will scoff at that notion, but the truth of the matter is, if Apple offered an iPhone-free version of the Series 5 watch, it would instantly become the best selling Android wearable. Nothing under the Wear OS umbrella even comes close, and even Samsung’s Tizen-based watches pale in comparison to the seamless, frictionless experience the Apple Watch brings. If anything, it’s so good it’s becoming old hat at this point, and its deficiencies are becoming more glaring. Always O...

The Fall harvest has brought us new crop of Lenovo Yoga laptops. This season, the password is "10th gen." PCWorld walks you through a stack of 10th gen laptops and tells you which one is the most 10th-gen of the 10th gens. At the more affordable end of the pool you get the Yoga C740 14 and Yoga C740 15.6. Both feature 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs, the last of the 14nm chips, officially "14nm++." For this lineup, Lenovo skips discrete graphics for the integrated Intel UHD graphics. For those who want more power, Lenovo's Yoga C940 15.6 keeps the 15.6-inch screen of the C740, but can handle up to the more powerful 9th-gen Core i9 CPU. Rather than rely on Intel's UHD graphics alone, Lenovo also integrates an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. Because it's a convertible laptop that you might want to take with you and use as a tablet or mini-movie theater, Lenovo drops in a screen capable of hitting 500 nits of brightness for use outdoors. For thos...

If your brain broke this morning when Intel announced its 10th-gen Comet Lake laptop CPUs, which will sell alongside its 10th-gen Ice Lake chips, we understand. Among the two different manufacturing processes (one advanced and one very refined) as well as very different graphics cores, core counts and power levels, it’s confusing enough to make you want to switch to a Windows on ARM laptop (just kidding, we’re not that frustrated). Even Intel itself admits there “might be some confusion” between its different 10th-gen   CPUs. How to use our chart On the far left are the individual model numbers of each new 10th-gen CPU. As you look across the table, you’ll see important performance criteria and how we’re rating each CPU model. As you move from left to right, ask yourself how important each criterion is for what you do or might do, and note how it balances against the other CPUs. New instructions With the 10th-gen Ice Lake CPUs, Intel has added s...

AirPods are great, but they’re prone to bouncing out of your ears when you’re exercising. BeatsX wireless headphones thus make a nice alternative for active folks, particularly when they’re selling for just $69.99 on Amazon’s Woot service like they are today. That’s around $30 off the price they’ve been selling for on Amazon proper lately, and we’ve never seen the price drop below $99.95 there. At launch, BeatsX cost $149.99, so this is technically more than a 50 percent discount. Beats is an Apple company, so you’ll get some perks if you’re using an iPhone. You can easily set them up thanks for Apple’s W1 chip, for instance, and you can use Siri to take calls and listen to music. You can even use Lightning cables to charge the case. As you might expect from the Beats brand, though, these buds are heavy on the bass. In our review of BeatsX from last March, we also weren’t too hot on the build design, but found them to be a “fast-charging, good-looking pair of Bluetoo...

While Google and Apple are working to deliver typing prompts and custom profile photos in their message apps, OnePlus is beefing up its own messaging app in a different way: with a healthy dose of AI-powered organization. On the OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro, the upcoming OnePlus 7T, and coming soon to older handsets, OnePlus’s stock Messages app will gain a “Smart SMS” feature. No longer will your messages merely populate your phone in chronological order, cluttered with bill reminders, payment notifications, and one-time passwords. Texts from businesses will clearly be separate from the ones your friends send, all sorted automatically based on content. The system went live in India Thursday, with expansion planned for additional countries, including the United States. It’s similar to how Google’s Gmail works, and very much a why-didn’t-someone-think-of-this-sooner feature you’d normally expect from Google or another tech juggernaut. Instead, OnePlus has partnered with an AI ...

In a massive storage data dump, Intel laid out its Optane roadmap and claimed an edge in Penta Level Cell NAND technology. That's not even mentioning the company's plans for fatter SSDs, and how long it'll take to get persistent memory to consumer PCs. The announcements were made Thursday morning at a storage event in Seoul, South Korea, where Intel showed off some new technology coming down the pike. Intel also announced that, after the very public and amicable divorce from Micron, it's moving its Optane development to Rancho Rio, New Mexico. Optane Roadmap: Barlow Pass If you've had a hint that Intel's been closely aligning its storage efforts with its CPU efforts, that hint turned into a nudge on Thursday: Intel confirmed that its upcoming Cooper Lake and Ice Lake CPUs will have support for its 2nd-generation Optane DC Persistent Memory modules. Codenamed Barlow Pass, the Optane modules will be closely tied with the upcoming Xeon CPUs. An...

Most of Microsoft’s Surface product lineup is scheduled for a potential refresh at Microsoft’s October 2 event in New York City, and educated guesses, rumors, and potential reports of new Surface hardware are beginning to, er, surface. But which ones make sense? Last October, Microsoft’s Surface launch included the Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, the Surface Studio 2, and the Surface Headphones. Earlier in 2018, Microsoft announced the Surface Go and the Surface Book 2.   Theoretically, Microsoft could refresh all of these products, which would make for an epic Surface event next month. Surface Pro 7 using USB-C: Credible Thurrott’s Brad Sams begin making claims last year that the Surface Pro 7 (and probably the Surface Laptop 3, too) would include a USB-C interface, as part of Beneath A Surface, a book he wrote about the past and future of Surface devices. To be fair, most people expected Microsoft to migrate to USB-C last generation, as virtually all...

The GE Signal Finder HD Amplified Antenna is an indoor TV antenna with a built-in signal meter that will help you find the best place to install it. You’ll need it. In TechHive’s tests the antenna exhibited mediocre reception and didn’t displace the Winegard FlatWave Amped as our favorite indoor antenna. The antenna is about the same length and width as a magazine and looks good with a smart black plastic front. A couple of rows of LEDs in the lower right-hand corner are the antenna’s main selling point. Towards the end of the antenna’s 10-foot cable is an inline amplifier that requires power from a small wall-wart adapter. It uses a barrel-connector, and so it cannot be powered via a USB port on your television. This is unfortunate as it means you’ll need a spare outlet and installation probably won’t be as neat. Performance TechHive tests antennas by performing several scans to see how many channels are received. A pattern emerges over the course of the scans and ...

If this particular model of the Acer Aspire 5 looks familiar, it's probably because it's been sitting atop Amazon’s laptop bestseller list for months. It’s easy to understand why. With a list price of $350 but usually selling for closer to $310, this AMD Ryzen 3-powered Aspire 5 packs some enticing features for the price, including a Full-HD 15.6-inch display, a slim-and-trim chassis, and solid performance when it comes to day-to-day computing tasks. Price and configuration Acer offers nearly two dozen configurations in its budget Aspire 5 line, ranging from $350 (list price, as opposed to Amazon's sale price) for the somewhat bare-bones AMD model we’re reviewing here all the way to $850 for a considerably beefier quad-core Core i7-8565 model with a healthy 12GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics. Most Aspire 5 versions boast a 15.6-inch display (although I spotted at least one 14-inch model), with a mix of 1080p and 720p resolutions...

If you would have told me that my favorite smartwatch of 2019 would have a brilliant OLED display, great battery life, effortless fitness tracking, Spotify support, and an on-board assistant, I would have guessed it was the Series 5 Apple Watch. It’s not. It’s the Fitbit Versa 2. Fitbit hasn’t reinvented the wheel with the Versa 2. Rather, a series of small but meaningful changes make it feel like a completely new device that’s ready to compete with the Apple Watch at half the price. Where the original model had clear shortcomings that I was willing to overlook due to its price tag, the Versa 2 plays in the feature-rich deep end, and feels like a veritable bargain as a result. The Fitbit Versa 2 isn’t perfect, nor does it match up spec-for-spec with the latest Apple Watch. But the improvements it brings put it on equal footing with the cream of the smartwatch crop, marrying Fitbit’s fitness acumen with the features we want in a cutting-edge wearable device. OL...

Windows 10’s Your Phone app may allow you to leave your phone in your pocket, but that’s no good if the phone quietly runs out of juice. An update to the app is adding a battery indicator, with something more exciting possibly waiting in the wings: the ability to place calls. Analy Otero Diaz, a senior program manager lead at Microsoft, tweeted an image of the new battery feature that Microsoft is making available to Windows Insiders, the participants in its Windows 10 beta program. Because Your Phone already sends notifications from supported Android phones to your PC, allowing you to interact with them, it’s probably fair to say that you’ve already been able to monitor your phone’s battery life to some extent—with a low-battery warning, for example. This new feature adds to your peace of mind. Diaz did not make clear what version of the Your Phone app would include the new beta capabilities, nor whether it would be rolled out as part of a more general Windows 10 up...

Acer's latest Nitro 5 shows you just how affordable gaming laptops have become. Last year we reviewed the 2018 version of the Acer Nitro 5, which promised a great entry-level gaming experience for a mere $800 or so—cheaper even than some entry-level desktops  I’ve built. Now 2019’s Nitro 5 (available at Best Buy) has come across my desk, touting the usual annual upgrades. That means slightly more than usual though, as we’ve had both CPU and GPU generation changes this year. What can $800 buy you in 2019? Is it actually good enough for a modern gamer-on-the-go? Let’s find out. This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best gaming laptops. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested. Variants We took a look at the $830 Nitro 5, which features an Intel Core i5-9300H clocked at 2.4GHz, an Nvidia GTX 1650, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and a 128GB SSD boot drive. It’s not quite the most expensive Nitro 5, but i...

Now that Apple's finally debuted Night mode for the iPhone 11, it's time to compare it to the Android competition. It was just about a year ago when Google launched its innovative Night Sight mode to critical acclaim. With the ability to turn unusable low-light scenes into spectacular, backlit, frame-worthy photos, Night Sight was the prime example of just how far ahead Google was when it came to photography. Since Night Sight's launch, Samsung, OnePlus, Huawei, and LG have all developed low-light modes for their cameras. Keep reading as we take a close look at how Apple's new low-light camera stacks up against the best Android has to offer. TABLE OF CONTENTS •            The interface •            The shooting •            The results The interface While the iPhone bakes night mode into the camera ...