AOC’s 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED gaming monitor is down to $380
It’s tough not to gush about a 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED gaming monitor that costs under $400 (I’ve done it before!). AOC’s G-Sync-compatible model with a 240Hz refresh rate and a near-instant response time is down to $379.99 at Best Buy, which matches the lowest price I’ve ever seen for a model with these specs. This seems like a great entry-level OLED for your gaming desktop or laptop setup; it has a similar 111 pixels per inch (PPI) as its competitors, it has a three-year warranty that protects against burn-in from normal use (when you use its panel protection settings), and its 16:9 aspect ratio makes it ideal for PC and console gaming. AOC 27-inch QD-OLED gaming monitor (Q27G41ZDF) Where to Buy: $549.99 $379.99 at Best Buy The benefits of QD-OLED over IPS and TN panels commonly used in monitors are immediately obvious when you compare them side-by-side. QD-OLED offers deeper blacks (no more black appearing as hues...
It’s tough not to gush about a 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED gaming monitor that costs under $400 (I’ve done it before!). AOC’s G-Sync-compatible model with a 240Hz refresh rate and a near-instant response time is down to $379.99 at Best Buy, which matches the lowest price I’ve ever seen for a model with these specs. This seems like a great entry-level OLED for your gaming desktop or laptop setup; it has a similar 111 pixels per inch (PPI) as its competitors, it has a three-year warranty that protects against burn-in from normal use (when you use its panel protection settings), and its 16:9 aspect ratio makes it ideal for PC and console gaming.
AOC 27-inch QD-OLED gaming monitor (Q27G41ZDF)
Where to Buy:
$549.99 $379.99 at Best Buy
The benefits of QD-OLED over IPS and TN panels commonly used in monitors are immediately obvious when you compare them side-by-side. QD-OLED offers deeper blacks (no more black appearing as hues of gray) and better contrast with more color and brightness accuracy. Games and movies will look better than ever. Google Docs? Not so much. Brightness and text clarity are areas where this tech falls behind; viewing a huge, white Google Doc on this and other OLEDs will make it appear somewhat dim. And, while newer OLED monitors boast clearer text thanks to vertical RGB stripes in their panels, you might notice some fringing around letters with this monitor (and many others on the market) if you look closely.
Other Verge-approved deals
Sony has discounted a fleet of PS5 games and accessories on its PS Direct site, and you’ll also find many of them on Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop. The most notable game discount that exists only on Sony’s site (for now, at least) is on Ghost of Yōtei, one of the PS5’s best exclusives from 2025. Previously $69.99, you can grab it on disc for $49.99 through March 10th. The third-person action game is set 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima, and you control vengeance-seeking Atsu. As predicted, the t**le offers absolutely stunning graphics and the return of the previous game’s deep, satisfying fight system. Read our review.
Woot is offering a stellar deal on Beats Studio Buds wireless earbuds that offer active noise cancellation, IPX4 protection against sweat, and compatibility with iOS and Android. Through Monday, February 23rd (or until supplies last), you can get the black or white model for $59.99, which is 60 percent off its original $149.95 price from when they debuted in 2021. We thought they were a so-so value in our original review, and its major cons (no wireless charging, noise cancellation that’s not as good as AirPods) were tough to settle for with a $150 price tag. These are a great buy at this discounted price.
One of Best Buy’s deals of the day (lasting through Monday, February 23rd) is on a discounted bundle of high-end components for a desktop PC. If you’ve had your eyes set on AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D processor (the successor to the best gaming CPU), you can grab it paired with 32GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at up to 6400MHz for $649.99. The CPU alone costs $499.99 at most retailers, so snagging this much speedy RAM for an extra $150 is great, considering how costly RAM has become these past few months.
I stopped forcing every coding job through Claude and started using this instead
I like Claude Code, but I don't like its limitations. You're largely restricted to Anthropic's models like Claude Sonnet and Opus. They're excellent models, but they can get expensive quickly, even for relatively simple tasks. Claude Code is also closed-source. Whether you're an enterprise concerned about data governance or an...
I like Claude Code, but I don't like its limitations. You're largely restricted to Anthropic's models like Claude Sonnet and Opus. They're excellent models, but they can get expensive quickly, even for relatively simple tasks. Claude Code is also closed-source. Whether you're an enterprise concerned about data governance or an individual who prefers transparent tools, that can be a drawback.
Mathias Mortensen Denmark
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Microsoft’s big Copilot rollback continues as Office now lets you move its b***on to the ribbon
Microsoft is in a little bit of a pickle. It spent the better part of 2025 getting excited over Copilot and rolling it out to every app it has. Now, in 2026, the company is clearing up the mess it made after people told Microsoft that they'd actually prefer not...
Microsoft is in a little bit of a pickle. It spent the better part of 2025 getting excited over Copilot and rolling it out to every app it has. Now, in 2026, the company is clearing up the mess it made after people told Microsoft that they'd actually prefer not to have an AI in everything they use.
Sindre Welde Norway
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Microsoft’s consumer marketing chief to leave next year
Yusuf Mehdi launching Copilot Plus PCs in 2024. | Image: Getty Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, is leaving the company after 35 years. Mehdi announced his departure in an internal memo on Thursday, noting that he will leave Microsoft next year. He will...
Yusuf Mehdi launching Copilot Plus PCs in 2024. | Image: Getty Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, is leaving the company after 35 years. Mehdi announced his departure in an internal memo on Thursday, noting that he will leave Microsoft next year. He will remain focused on marketing for Windows, Copilot for consumers and the Microsoft 365 consumer business until 2027."As I thought about this decision, one thing was crystal clear: I want to ensure I have the time and space to set the team - and our mission - up for continued success," says Mehdi in his memo. "We are in the middle of an incredibly important moment for Microsoft and for our customers." …Read the full story at The Verge.
Michael Johnson Chicago
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I tested TrueNAS, Unraid, and OpenMediaVault to the perfect NAS OS, and there’s a clear winner
If you’ve set your mind on putting together a NAS for your home lab, there are a bunch of factors you’ll want to consider. On the hardware front, the drive bays and Ethernet provisions are the most obvious factors you’ll want to keep an eye out for, with the RAM...
If you’ve set your mind on putting together a NAS for your home lab, there are a bunch of factors you’ll want to consider. On the hardware front, the drive bays and Ethernet provisions are the most obvious factors you’ll want to keep an eye out for, with the RAM capacity being just as important for ZFS-powered pools. But the operating system you choose for your NAS matters at least as much as its specs, if not more.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Microsoft is letting Office users remove an annoying Copilot b***on
Microsoft is rolling out Office app updates next week that allow users to disable a floating Copilot button. The button appeared in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in recent weeks, and floats above the bottom right-hand section of spreadsheets or documents. It has angered many Excel users in particular, because it...
Microsoft is rolling out Office app updates next week that allow users to disable a floating Copilot button. The button appeared in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in recent weeks, and floats above the bottom right-hand section of spreadsheets or documents. It has angered many Excel users in particular, because it obstructs cells and you can't fully disable it."While we are seeing increased engagement with Copilot in Office apps with this update, we are also hearing the need for more control over how Copilot appears," admits Katie Kivett, partner group product manager at Microsoft. "While one of our goals is to evolve Copilot to be more adapti …Read the full story at The Verge.
Olivia Miller Seattle
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Someone built a full Wayland compositor inside Minecraft, and it actually works
Wayland has been the center of a few big Linux stories this year. We've seen some distros adopt it, we've seen some drop X11 in favor of it, and we've seen people creating alternatives to X11 to stave off Wayland. But nobody asks, "What about adding Wayland to Minecraft?" mainly...
Wayland has been the center of a few big Linux stories this year. We've seen some distros adopt it, we've seen some drop X11 in favor of it, and we've seen people creating alternatives to X11 to stave off Wayland. But nobody asks, "What about adding Wayland to Minecraft?" mainly because, why would they? Minecraft is a game, not an operating system.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
PC gamers are leaving 20-30% performance on the table with this one setting
Let's say you spent months picking out parts or researching a pre-built PC. You made sure to get 16GB of fast dual-channel RAM, so your games would run smoothly, and your desktop wouldn't choke under heavy multitasking. But somehow your system feels strangely sluggish. You notice erratic 1% low frame...
Let's say you spent months picking out parts or researching a pre-built PC. You made sure to get 16GB of fast dual-channel RAM, so your games would run smoothly, and your desktop wouldn't choke under heavy multitasking. But somehow your system feels strangely sluggish. You notice erratic 1% low frame rate, which is stuttering, in CPU-bound games like Cyberpunk or Counter-Strike. Alongside this, opening heavy apps feels slightly delayed. For some reason, despite the fact that you opted for 16GB of RAM, it just feels like your PC is a machine with half of the memory capacity it has.
Adam Pedersen Denmark
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Stop treating the Raspberry Pi 5 as a smart home hub — it’s actually built for something bigger
The Raspberry Pi has always been easy to recommend for home automation, but the Raspberry Pi 5 complicates that recommendation in a useful way. If all you need is a box to run Home Assistant, a few Zigbee devices, and some basic automations, it’s more machine than the job really...
The Raspberry Pi has always been easy to recommend for home automation, but the Raspberry Pi 5 complicates that recommendation in a useful way. If all you need is a box to run Home Assistant, a few Zigbee devices, and some basic automations, it’s more machine than the job really needs. A Raspberry Pi 4 can still handle that workload comfortably, and older models can remain useful for modest setups. The Pi 5 starts to make more sense when the home automation hub becomes part of a wider home lab rather than a single-purpose appliance.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Someone built a Simpsons-style retro TV that plays NES games and 90-minute movies on a tiny display
We love the Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) here at XDA. If you've never heard of it, it's basically an ESP32 hooked up to a display, and it's, well, cheap and yellow. We've crowned it one of the best additions you can make to a smart home, and we've even made...
We love the Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) here at XDA. If you've never heard of it, it's basically an ESP32 hooked up to a display, and it's, well, cheap and yellow. We've crowned it one of the best additions you can make to a smart home, and we've even made a distributed computer with three of them.
Olivia Miller Seattle
Published by: aplhsindia.in
My favorite alternative to VS Code isn’t Cursor or Claude Code: it’s something way cooler and productive
Like most developers, I have spent the last few months hunting for the ultimate VS Code successor. I have jumped between the slick context-awareness of Cursor and the command-line power of Claude Code.
Like most developers, I have spent the last few months hunting for the ultimate VS Code successor. I have jumped between the slick context-awareness of Cursor and the command-line power of Claude Code.
Roxane Leclerc France
Published by: aplhsindia.in
AMD is giving older Radeon cards an unexpected upgrade, but it’s a bigger deal than it appears
AMD officially confirmed on Thursday last week that FSR 4.1 will be coming to RDNA 3 GPUs in July 2026, with RDNA 2 hardware following in early 2027. It's a game-changing feature expansion by itself, but it becomes considerably more significant than the announcement lets on.
AMD officially confirmed on Thursday last week that FSR 4.1 will be coming to RDNA 3 GPUs in July 2026, with RDNA 2 hardware following in early 2027. It's a game-changing feature expansion by itself, but it becomes considerably more significant than the announcement lets on.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Samsung’s memory chip employees negotiated $340,000 bonuses this year
48,000 Samsung workers had threatened to strike unless bonus caps were lifted. | Photo: Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images Details have emerged about a tentative deal struck between Samsung and semiconductor employees who had threatened to strike. The deal reportedly makes some workers eligible for average annual bonuses...
48,000 Samsung workers had threatened to strike unless bonus caps were lifted. | Photo: Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images Details have emerged about a tentative deal struck between Samsung and semiconductor employees who had threatened to strike. The deal reportedly makes some workers eligible for average annual bonuses of $340,000.The proposed 18-day strike had hinged on Samsung's bonus cap for employees in the semiconductor division and followed a substantial rise in the possible bonuses available to employees of SK Hynix, another South Korean chipmaker enjoying a boom thanks to demand for AI components.Under the terms of the new deal, Reuters reports that all chip workers will receive 50 percent of their annual salary as a regular bonus in cash. Further …Read the full story at The Verge.
