Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge A collection of cool, calming, and creative gifts to show your appreciation for that special maternal figure in your life. Continue reading…

Despite their huge storage capacities and better terabyte-per-dollar ratio, even the best hard drives have extremely slow read and write speeds compared to a solid-state drive, especially if you're using your HDD as the boot drive. If your PC takes ages to launch an app and even longer to boot up, swapping your mechanical hard drive with an SSD is the cheapest and easiest way to improve its performance.

Black Friday deals might already be popping up in your feeds, but while you get swept up in the wave of Nvidia and AMD GPU Black Friday deals, don't forget to look back at that longstanding monitor upgrade to fully appreciate your fancy new GPU. If you have a budget of around $300 for one of the best 1440p high refresh rate monitors to come out in recent years, you're in luck. The LG 27GP850-B is currently down to its lowest price ever at $280 in this hard-to-miss Black Friday deal.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has finally released a successor to the Raspberry Pi 4, and the latest version of the Arm-based single-board computer series packs more horsepower than ever. Sadly, the hardware improvements come with a significant price bump as the base Raspberry Pi 5 model costs $60, which is almost double the $35 starting price of the Pi 4. Factor in the cost of SD cards, cases, and the other gizmos you’ll need to make the most out of the Pi 5, and you could end up spending more than $150!

PokéTsume. | Image: TV Tokyo The new live-action show PokéTsume is a full-circle moment for the franchise. Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge From color-changing lights to gadgets that’ll take care of dinner for you and your pets, here are some of our favorite smart home gifts. Continue reading…

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Many Peloton users were unable to get into Thursday’s Thanksgiving ride, prompting the company’s CEO to apologize. At 10AM ET Peloton kicked off its 10th annual “Turkey Burn” event, with the goal of breaking the Guiness World Record for “largest live cycling class.” But the company struggled with the demand, and many users were unable to participate at all. “We let you down,” CEO Barry McCarthy said in a statement.According to McCarthy, over 37,000 people were able to participate, while it’s unclear how many couldn’t get in. “The number of members trying to join the ride overwhelmed our technical infrastructure and we were unable to support all those attempting to participate in the class,” he said. The Peloton status page notes... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge We’ve assembled a collection of quick-hit gifts that can be issued within seconds, freeing you of shipping concerns and in-store shopping. Continue reading…

Scavengers Reign. | Image: Max Thanksgiving is a time to spend with friends and family, and also a time full of periods where you definitely don’t want to move from the couch. You could spend that time mindlessly scrolling on your phone, or you could squeeze in a game or streaming show that fits nicely into a long weekend. If you aren’t planning to catch up some of the big recent TV shows or video games, here are a few things that I’ve been digging lately.Scavengers ReignStreaming on MaxThis show manages to be silly, scary, and strange all at once. It’s a story about a group of humans stranded on an alien planet, but it’s the latter that’s really the star here. Each episode of Scavengers Reign is packed with absolutely bizarre alien life, from hypnotic killer... Continue reading…

I recently built one of the fastest gaming PCs out there using some of the best PC components on the market right now. It's an incredibly powerful machine that can handle pretty much any modern AAA title you throw at it without a hitch, be it Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing or Alan Wake 2 at max graphics settings. I was able to get some discounts on a few components to save me enough for a couple of case fans, but — if I’m being honest — I should've just waited for Black Friday before getting new parts for my PC.

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge The world can be an expensive place. Fortunately, we’ve assembled 30-odd gifts that are designed to keep your holiday spending (mostly) in check. Continue reading…

Image: Atlus More than just about any other game studio, Vanillaware is known for its style. At the same time, the developer is constantly shifting between genres. It originally made waves with the side-scrolling action RPG Odin Sphere, and more recently released the sci-fi epic 13 Sentinels, which is part visual novel, part turn-based mech-vs-kaiju combat. Holding all of these disparate ideas together is Vanillaware’s incredible 2D art, along with a clear to desire to experiment.Given how the studio loves to jump around so much, it’s probably not too surprising that its next project, Unicorn Overlord, will be a grand-scale tactical RPG inspired by the classics. Ahead of the game’s launch next March (it’s coming to PlayStation, Xbox, and the Switch)... Continue reading…