Can’t wait to put a Sparkle Orc into my computer. | Image: Sparkle One YouTuber says it humiliates Nvidia’s RTX 3050! Another says it takes on AMD’s RX 6600. But while both these things are true and it sounds like a decent 1080p card, the new $180 Intel Arc A580 probably isn’t the budget GPU you’ve been waiting for. For one thing, both that Nvidia card and that AMD card weren’t great when they were new! Ars Technica called the RTX 3050 “an overpriced 1080p GPU” over 20 months ago. The AMD RX 6600 is two years old this month. Still, those are the cards in the same price band as the new Intel A580 — since the RX 7600, RTX 3060, and RTX 4060 cost more.The better comparison, and problem for Intel, is that the company’s own Intel Arc A750 is a superior gaming card for just $10-$20 more, as Tom’s Hardware... Continue reading…

Illustration by Lucia Pham / The Verge It’s that time of the year again. Amazon’s latest Prime Day event, Prime Big Deal Days, is now upon us. The exclusive sales event unofficially kicks off the early, early holiday shopping season, and with it comes a cavalcade of deals and discounts. Some are bound to be repeat deals you may have encountered during a random sale, while others are matching their best price to date or dropping even lower.If you’re in the market for earbuds, headphones, smart home devices, smartwatches, or Android phones, you’re likely to find a worthwhile deal. For each great deal, however, there are likely to be 20-odd trash ones that are crowding the space for your attention. That’s why our team of reviewers and expert deal hunters is working tirelessly... Continue reading…

Yes, you can even get a smart speaker for less than 25 bucks. | Image: Amazon Amazon’s fall Prime Day event is underway. For more deals we recommend across all categories, check out our full roundup here.There’s arguably no better deal than one that makes a handy, low-cost item drop to a price that falls into impulse-buy territory. While big ticket items like iPads and noise-canceling headphones may be more showy and attention-grabbing than something like a USB-C charger or a simple smart speaker, it’s often those smaller items that get the most use in our day-to-day life.Saving a few bucks on some excellent and affordable tech can go a long way without breaking your budget. And if you’re doing some very early holiday shopping, they can make great stocking stuffers or small gifts for any fall birthdays in your... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google is enabling the ability to stream 1080p-quality webcam feeds during group calls for Workspace subscribers. The company first enabled the high-quality video feature back in April; however, it only worked during one-on-one sessions at the time. Now, the feature is extending to group calls on the web that include three or more participants.To opt in to the new feature, participants who have Full HD (or better) webcams will need to turn it on by accepting a prompt that’ll automatically appear on the join screen. Once enabled, a 1080p icon will appear on the upper right of the video box to confirm it’s on. People in the meeting can view the higher-quality video if the enabled user is pinned or if the viewer has a large enough screen... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s fall Prime Day event is underway. For more deals we recommend across all categories, check out our full roundup here.We’re moving deeper into fall and inching toward the holidays, which means enticing discounts on wireless earbuds and headphones are starting to become more frequent. Amazon’s October Prime Day 2023 is a great opportunity to nab enticing deals on products from Apple, Beats, Bose, Google, Samsung, Sony, and other brands. Whether you’re shopping for noise-canceling buds or something with a semi-open design for outdoor workouts, there’s a nice selection to pick from. We’ll be updating the list of deals over the course of both days to highlight our favorite sales.Apple / Beats headphones and earbudsThe recently... Continue reading…

Amazon’s latest Echo Show 8 is one of many discounted Alexa smart home devices. | Photo by Alex Cranz / The Verge Amazon’s fall Prime Day event is underway. For more deals we recommend across all categories, check out our full roundup here.Aside from Black Friday, there is no better time to buy an Alexa-infused smart device than one of Amazon’s own Prime Day events. Amazon is more than happy to chuck tons of deals your way in an effort to convince you to adopt an Echo smart speaker or smart display and put one (or a dozen) in your home. Yes, it’s kind of a small Trojan horse to ensure you’re hooked on Amazon’s smart home ecosystem, but many of these devices offer some handy utility when it comes to around-the-house helpfulness — like playing music in multiple rooms, getting weather and news alerts, making video calls, and controlling connected... Continue reading…

She didn’t even get equity! | Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Bloomberg, Getty Images Bankman-Fried thought Alameda’s brand wasn’t as good as FTX’s — so he put his sometime-lover in charge of it. Continue reading…

A screenshot of Dropbox Dash, an AI-powered search tool that pulls together information from across apps and services, not just Dropbox. | Image: Dropbox Dropbox has announced several changes coming to its file hosting service including a new web interface, an open beta for its AI-powered universal search feature, upgrades to another AI feature that’s in alpha, and another early alpha of a new video collaboration tool.Let’s start with the new web interface, since it’s something most Dropbox users are likely to encounter as it rolls out, regardless of whether they engage with the service’s more advanced features. There’s a new action bar that’ll sit across the page to offer quick access to features like screen recording, folder creation, and file uploading. File previews have also been redesigned, with Dropbox claiming these will make it easier to edit images, videos, and PDFs. There’s a... Continue reading…

Even the updated second-gen AirPods Pro with USB-C are on sale right now. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s fall Prime Day event is underway. For more deals we recommend across all categories, check out our full roundup here.Apple rarely discounts its own products, so if you want to score a great deal on a pair of AirPods or a MacBook, it’s best to set your eyes on third parties like Amazon. If you missed out on the Apple discounts we saw during the first Prime Day, however, Amazon’s October Prime Day event has brought some of them back. We’re once again seeing steep discounts on Apple Watches, tablets, and even the new second-gen AirPods Pro with USB-C, which launched less than a month ago.Below, we’ve rounded up the best Apple deals you can currently get at Amazon and other retailers, so even non-Prime members can save.... Continue reading…

Sony’s WF-1000XM5, our favorite pair of wireless earbuds, are on sale. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s fall Prime Day event is underway. For more deals we recommend across all categories, check out our full roundup here.Despite what the name might suggest, Amazon’s fall Prime Day event isn’t just a day filled with deals for Prime members. Thanks to competing sales from retailers like Best Buy and Walmart, everybody can take advantage of steep discounts without needing to pay a monthly premium to join in on the fun.In some cases, retailers are matching Amazon’s pricing, meaning you can score the same discounts available to Prime members on items like the Kindle Paperwhite and Echo Pop. There are also terrific deals available on other gadgets, including noise-canceling headphones, tablets, and smartwatches. To make the deal... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit’s new usage-based API pricing is now in effect, and while the potential costs forced many third-party apps to shut down, a handful of apps are pivoting to paid subscriptions to help pay for Reddit’s API fees. On Monday, the developer of one surviving iOS app, Narwhal, announced the monthly fee for the app: $3.99 per month.Narwhal’s developer, who goes by det0ur on Reddit, went into more detail about the fee in a Monday post. “Reddit is now charging a substantial fee to use the API to power Narwhal,” det0ur wrote. “This fee will be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands a month depending on how many people subscribe. The only goal of this subscription is to cover the costs of using the API.” The monthly fee is set to come... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mozilla is testing a new built-in “Review Checker” feature for its Firefox browser that rates how reliable a product’s customer reviews are. The experimental feature was initially spotted by MSPowerUser, and Firefox’s senior director of product management Byron Jourdan confirmed that the company is testing the functionality “with a limited audience in the United States,” in a statement given to The Verge. Fake reviews are a big problem for online retailers, which have had to take increasingly aggressive measures to stop malicious actors from using them to boost the ratings of their products. Amazon has previously taken down tens of thousands of reviews deemed to be fraudulent, and has even taken legal action against individuals who... Continue reading…