Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sonos is teasing, both in emails and on social media, that its “most requested product ever” is “coming soon” on May 21st (this Tuesday). This, of course, is almost certainly the Sonos Ace, its first wireless headphones. Sonos has been expected to launch the Ace in June, but given the company’s “most requested” phrasing here and the fact that the headphones recently appeared for sale by authorized dealer Schuurman, it seems they’re coming sooner than that. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sonos (@sonos)A launch this week could help Sonos with some of the ire surrounding the roll-out of its new app earlier this month. The app was ostensibly created in part to support the Sonos Ace, but i... Continue reading…

Portable gaming machines are more popular than ever, like with Valve's Steam Deck and all the best Steam Deck alternatives. Then, of course, you've got the best gaming laptops that are excellent portable gaming machines, while even the best cheap gaming laptops can handle more than a few games on the go. However, if you're looking for something that fits in your hands and excels at retro gaming, which machine is the best buy for your purposes?

A 2023 Mac Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Mac Studio and Mac Pro aren’t due for an upgrade to Apple’s M4 chip until the middle of next year. That means both machines will still be on Apple’s M2 generation this year, unlike all other Macs except the MacBook Air, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote to Power On subscribers today. Throughout 2024, though, all of Apple’s laptops (except the MacBook Air) will move to the M4 chip that the company just gave the iPad Pro, Gurman writes. Amusingly, this herky-jerky chip upgrade cycle means that the iPad Pro is currently the single-core performance champ of Apple’s lineup — and it will continue to be for about another year, when compared to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. Screenshot: Geekbench It’s not even close, according... Continue reading…

Online gaming is much more than simply connecting to a matchmade game and shooting a few bad guys, or perhaps also choosing to chat and stream while gaming. An online match is mostly affected by ping with network speed playing a much smaller role. But when it comes to streaming your gameplay, that requirement flips. If you want to play online with the option to stream and chat, you'll need to have a router with enough power to handle all of those connections smoothly. Additionally, since regional restrictions play a major role in who is allowed to play, a router with VPN support is more important than ever to some players.

Image: John William Evelyn “I couldn’t walk away from the pen and ink thing,” says John Evelyn, creator of The Collage Atlas, a dreamlike storybook adventure recently released on Steam. The entire game is hand drawn, from tiny flowers and insects to huge buildings and the clouds that float over them. Exploring this world unwraps its dreamlike story, with environments folding out in response to your approach.“I had been drawing for many years before that […] and I’d always draw with ink straight away, without any kind of prior pencil work or sketching,” he says. “I liked all the incidental details and the accidents that come out along the way.” He compares it to improv music — “actually, sometimes it goes horribly wrong!” — but says that the feeling of getting... Continue reading…

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are an effective means to enhance your privacy. By disguising your IP address, a VPN prevents third-parties from tracking your online activities on top of protecting your data from network-based hacking attacks.

Screenshot: YouTube Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company flew humans to space for the first time since 2022. Continue reading…

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 38, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and you can also read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been writing about iPads and the future of Google, watching American Fiction and Bodkin, rewatching Her because of… reasons, endlessly replaying the songs of Windows95man, learning how to make better sandwiches, testing Claude for AI stuff, and listening to the new-old Childish Gambino album.I also have for you a new AI model, literally thousands of new Lego pieces, a new way to Google, the fanciest mop you’ve ever seen in your life, more emulators for iOS, and much more.And I have a question: W... Continue reading…

Although Apples M2 iPad Pro was already one of the best tablets outright, the new M4 iPad Pro has raised the bar with yet another new SoC that few were expecting. But while this new tablet represents the top performance tier for Apple products, it is also Apples most expensive tablet to date. This begs two key questions.

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge As video games and movies become more immersive, it may start to become apparent what sensations are missing in the experience. Is there a point in Gran Turismo that you wish you could smell the burning rubber and engine exhaust? Would an experience playing beer pong in Horizon Worlds not be complete unless you could taste the hops? On this episode of The Vergecast, the latest in our miniseries about the five senses of video games, we’re tackling the topics of smell and taste in video games — and whether either could actually enhance the virtual experience for gamers. In other words: Smellovision is back for a new generation of media. First, we try out a product (actually available to buy today) called the GameScent, an AI-powered... Continue reading…

The air cooling vs. watercooling debate is not new. Ever since liquid AIOs entered the market, PC users have argued fervently for both sides. There was a time when air coolers couldn't hold a candle to the power and efficiency of liquid coolers. But, for over a decade now, we've seen high-performance air coolers go head-to-head with AIOs, with products like Noctua NH-D15 and Thermalrigt Peerless Assassin beating many 240mm and even some 360mm AIOs in performance.

If youre running the same hardware for a long time, running some maintenance tasks will go a long way in keeping your precious battlestation of a PC in top shape. While you should back up your important files and defragment drives on a monthly basis, tasks like replacing your thermal paste should also be performed every few years to improve the longity of your PC. Over time, the thermal paste between your processor and the heatsink can dry out and lead to high temperatures. Not to mention, overclocking a processor with a dried thermal paste can lead to certain stability issues when you attempt to push its frequencies past their default values.