It can’t be used as a speakerphone, but at $24.99, Soundcore’s new Select 4 Go Bluetooth speaker is claimed to have 20 hours of battery and can be paired for stereo sound. | Image: Soundcore Soundcore has launched another ultralight wireless speaker called the Select 4 Go. It’s priced at $24.99, making it the most affordable option in Soundcore’s current lineup of Bluetooth speakers and much cheaper than similarly sized options such as Ultimate Ears’ recently launched $79.99 Miniroll. Image: Soundcore A cutaway illustration of the Select 4 Go revealing a 1.75-inch speaker with a passive radiator next to it. The Select 4 Go pairs a 1.75-inch 5W full-range speaker driver with a passive radiator to help bolster the intensity of lower frequencies. That’s only a slightly smaller speaker than you’ll find inside the pricier Miniroll, which has a claimed 12 hours of battery life. Soundcore says the Select 4... Continue reading…

If you aren't intrigued by the Steam Deck OLED, the consensus is that the Asus ROG Ally is the great PC gaming handheld you should buy instead. It has more power than any other handheld on the market, and generally performs well. Some of the device's flaws have been fixed on the Asus ROG Ally X, which is the absolute best Windows gaming handheld money can buy.

A radio device exploded in the city of Baalbek is seen as wireless communications device explosions continued for a second day across Lebanon. | Photo by Suleiman Amhaz / Anadolu via Getty Images A day after exploding pagers targeting Hezbollah members killed 12 people, including two children, and injured nearly 3,000 people in Lebanon and Syria, the attacks started again. The New York Times reports 14 people have died, along with hundreds injured in the second wave of explosions. Lebanese state media agency NNA reports they resulted from wireless devices like walkie-talkies and fingerprint analysis devices that also damaged cars and motorcycles and started fires, including one at a lithium battery store.At least one of the exploding devices on Wednesday went off in the middle of a funeral procession for several of the people killed in the previous attack, causing additional panic as people ran for safety and were asked to... Continue reading…

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge Google is rolling out an update that’ll let you adjust the brightness levels of its newest Nest Learning Thermostat, fixing a key issue that made it difficult to read, according to Android Authority.The Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen) is Google’s biggest redesign of the smart thermostat since it launched in 2011. Released in August, one of the thermostat’s major new features was the 2.7-inch display, which was double the size of its predecessor and more customizable. For example, you can have the main display be a clock or show the weather or indoor temperature. As you get closer, it can then transition to display the humidity, outdoor temperature, or even the outdoor air quality index score.There was one huge drawback, though: o... Continue reading…

Backup by BioLite doesn’t require an electrician to install it. | Image: BioLite Instead of wiring into a home’s breaker box, the Backup by BioLite home backup power solution relies on thin battery panels that can fit behind appliances to keep them running for days at a time. It’s built around two 1.5kWh lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4, or LFP) batteries, the Backup Core and Backup Extend. Like any uninterruptible power supply, the Backup Core keeps itself perpetually charged from a wall outlet while power is available, then switches to keep whatever’s plugged into it running during a power outage.If you need more backup power, up to five Backup Extend units can be connected to a Backup Core unit to expand the total capacity to 9kWh, and you don’t need a contractor or electrician to install any of it. BioLite’s... Continue reading…

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Saida on September 17th. | Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images Thousands of people have reportedly been injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon and Syria. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said nine people, including a child, have been killed, and around 2,800 others have been injured, as reported by Lebanese state media agency NNA.Later Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported:Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.Reuters reports, based on information from a “senior Lebanese security source and another source,” that this spring, Hezbollah imported 5,000 pagers that were supposedly from Gold Apollo,... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge From the unbeatable Switch Pro and comfy Joy-Con alternatives to a dongle that lets you use your Xbox or PlayStation controllers with your Switch, these are the best Switch controllers you can get. Continue reading…

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is one of the harder smartphones I've had to review in recent years, because most of what the Apple marketing focused on this year Apple Intelligence is not quite ready. Consumers who pick up the new iPhones in a few days will find that Apple's take on generative artificial intelligence is not actually in the phone yet. Instead, they'll have to wait until October to get a software update which gives them some (but still not all) of the announced AI features; and that's if they don't live in the EU and China, whose strict regulatory government bodies have not yet confirmed if Apple Intelligence will be allowed.

There's a lot of development going on in the AI space right now, but a lot of that development is in ways that typical consumers may not care about. However, a lot of what Arm is doing in the space right now is some of the most interesting developments out there that consumers should care about, as it's being designed in a way to safeguard privacy and be useful.

Image: The Verge The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has advanced two high-profile child safety bills that could remake large parts of the internet: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). The proposed laws passed on a voice vote despite discontent over last-minute changes to KOSA, in particular, that were aimed at quelling persistent criticism. KOSA and COPPA 2.0 would give government agencies more regulatory power over tech companies with users under 18 years of age. The former imposes a “duty of care” on major social media companies, making them potentially liable for harm to underage users. The latter raises the age of enforcement for the 1998 COPPA law and adds new rules around... Continue reading…

When you want to play games on the go, a gaming laptop (or even a top-tier tablet) is a natural choice, but gaming handhelds are getting increasingly popular. Asus' updated ROG Ally X is bringing some key upgrades to the table, while MSI's Claw is an interesting Intel-powered machine. To help you decide between the two, we've put together the ultimate Asus ROG Ally X and MSI Claw comparison.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s been nearly six years since we warned you that ads were coming for your pause button and 18 months since Google revealed that YouTube would serve them up, too. Now, YouTube confirms advertisers can broadly target your paused screentime: “As we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response, we’ve since widely rolled out Pause ads to all advertisers,” YouTube comms manager Oluwa Falodun confirms to The Verge.Technically, YouTube started piloting pause ads in 2023 with a limited selection of advertisers, but Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler revealed this April that they were unsurprisingly a big hit with ad firms and lucrative for Google. Last week, Redditors started posting that the pause ads seemed to be... Continue reading…