WiiM’s capable HomePod-esque smart speaker is almost $50 off
The smart speaker market is more or less dominated by major tech companies: Apple, Google, Sonos, and Amazon. But WiiM’s powerful 100W Sound smart speaker is an attractive alternative because it’s not locked down to play nicely with select music services. It supports over 20 services, and it sports Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and ethernet, giving you multiple ways to connect. Additionally, it taps into standards used by other speakers, including Chromecast, Spotify Connect, DLNA, Alexa Cast, and more (AirPlay 2 is off the table, though its Pro Music Streamer supports it). In other words, it can be added to multi-room setups you may already have in the Google Home or Amazon Echo ecosystem. The black and white versions are rarely discounted, but they’re each 15 percent off at Amazon and directly through WiiM. Normally $299.99, they’re $254.15. WiiM Sound Smart Speaker Where to Buy: $299 $254.15 at Amazon $299 $254.15 at WiiM WiiM also makes the...
The smart speaker market is more or less dominated by major tech companies: Apple, Google, Sonos, and Amazon. But WiiM’s powerful 100W Sound smart speaker is an attractive alternative because it’s not locked down to play nicely with select music services. It supports over 20 services, and it sports Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and ethernet, giving you multiple ways to connect. Additionally, it taps into standards used by other speakers, including Chromecast, Spotify Connect, DLNA, Alexa Cast, and more (AirPlay 2 is off the table, though its Pro Music Streamer supports it). In other words, it can be added to multi-room setups you may already have in the Google Home or Amazon Echo ecosystem.The black and white versions are rarely discounted, but they’re each 15 percent off at Amazon and directly through WiiM. Normally $299.99, they’re $254.15.
WiiM Sound Smart Speaker
Where to Buy:
$299 $254.15 at Amazon
$299 $254.15 at WiiM
WiiM also makes the Sound Lite, which is also discounted by 15 percent. Originally $229, it’s $194.65 at Amazon and WiiM. It has the same dimensions, connectivity and performance output as the Sound (plus, the ability to use AI to adapt its sound quality to your room), but it lacks the 1.8-inch touch display that can show off album art, and there’s no voice remote included — those are around $33. That said, you can wirelessly pair these speakers and other recent WiiM products to each other to build a surround sound setup. Read more in our coverage.
Other great Verge-approved deals
All colors of Apple’s AirPods Max 2 over-ear, noise-canceling headphones are down to $429 at Best Buy as part of its 60-year anniversary sale. Originally $549, this sale brings them down to their second-best price, only bested by Prime Day’s $399 deal. Amazon has fewer colors available at this price. In our review, John Higgins praised their improved sound quality and noise cancellation effect, but wished certain things about it had changed. At their original price, he would have liked a proper carrying case included with purchase. But, at least with this discount, you can get a nicer case with the cash you’ll save.
Look, sometimes you just need a cheap TV, not an amazing one. If that’s you, there might be a 58-inch Hisense 4K QLED Roku TV that’ll do. Normally $399.99, the QD5 is down to $189.99 at Best Buy. It doesn’t seem particularly impressive, but it’s a feature-packed TV at a good price. Beyond having built-in Roku guts for streaming movies and TV shows, it supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10 and HLG, and its game mode supports variable refresh rate and auto low latency mode (though, it tops out at 60Hz refresh rate).
We highlighted a deal on the Godox ES45 key light recently, and the deal is back on at Amazon. The $20 off sale brings the powerful key light setup down to $119, and while it doesn’t match Elgato’s Key Light one-for-one with specs, it’s a great value that costs $60 less. It has adjustable color temperature and brightness, and its settings can be easily tweaked with its controller, which gets recharged by sticking magnetically to the back of the light. A key light is great for adding a strong light source to your room. It can be used to light you directly, or aim it at the wall to be softly illuminated in light that bounces off.
Lenovo confirms Legion Go issues after gamers report bricked devices
Cursed BIOS. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge When a company's software update turns your computer into a useless brick, should fixes be free? Framework, the modular computer startup, apparently thinks so. But it's not clear that computing giant Lenovo will go that far. Three weeks after a...
Cursed BIOS. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge When a company's software update turns your computer into a useless brick, should fixes be free? Framework, the modular computer startup, apparently thinks so. But it's not clear that computing giant Lenovo will go that far.Three weeks after a Redditor presented a nearly $300 repair bill for their handheld gaming PC - among other reports of damage and high repair bills - the company is breaking its silence. It says, in short: try holding down the power button longer, and if that fails, contact customer support.Here's the statement Lenovo provided to The Verge, via communications director Jeff Witt:Lenovo is aware that some Legion Go d …Read the full story at The Verge.
Maëlle Clement France
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Android is getting its own weird dots to cure car sickness
Motion Assist as found in Android 17’s settings. | Image: Android Authority (cropped by The Verge) Google is rolling out a new Android feature that's been proven to reduce, or even eliminate, motion sickness when using a phone inside a moving vehicle. Dubbed Motion Assist by Google, it's very similar...
Motion Assist as found in Android 17’s settings. | Image: Android Authority (cropped by The Verge) Google is rolling out a new Android feature that's been proven to reduce, or even eliminate, motion sickness when using a phone inside a moving vehicle. Dubbed Motion Assist by Google, it's very similar to Apple's Motion Cues, first introduced in 2024. The Android 17 feature appears to be rolling out in phases, with some Pixel phones getting it first, according to Android Authority. The science behind these magic dots is sound, and addresses the motion sickness felt when staring at a static display while the inner ear feels the car turning, braking, and accelerating. Motion Assist taps into your device's accelerometer and gyroscope to plac …Read the full story at The Verge.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I turned two mini PCs into a local AI that reads my whole codebase, and now it reviews my code for me
I've been spending some time with two DGX Sparks recently, with DeepSeek V4 Flash, a 284-billion-parameter model, being my go-to model of choice running across both of them. They're connected over a ConnectX-7 cable with 128 GB of unified memory each, and can push anywhere from 30 to 50 tokens...
I've been spending some time with two DGX Sparks recently, with DeepSeek V4 Flash, a 284-billion-parameter model, being my go-to model of choice running across both of them. They're connected over a ConnectX-7 cable with 128 GB of unified memory each, and can push anywhere from 30 to 50 tokens per second most of the time.
Michael Johnson Chicago
Published by: aplhsindia.in
This forgotten PC building hack can help offset the cost of RAM for your build
Amidst the ever-surging price of RAM, it's easy to overlook the relatively smaller (but still impactful) price increases for other components. Notably, the price of older midrange CPUs, like the Ryzen 5 5600X, has gone up, as demand for DDR4-compatible CPUs increases. Where you could once get this chip in...
Amidst the ever-surging price of RAM, it's easy to overlook the relatively smaller (but still impactful) price increases for other components. Notably, the price of older midrange CPUs, like the Ryzen 5 5600X, has gone up, as demand for DDR4-compatible CPUs increases. Where you could once get this chip in the ~$120 range, it's now increased in price up to $170.
Josef Färber Germany
Published by: aplhsindia.in
The TCL Note A1 is a kinder, gentler tablet
Website design is my passion. Without thinking, I scribbled over what I'd just written. It's what I would have done if I was writing with pen and paper. But I didn't have a pen in my hand; my canvas was an LCD and the letters on my page were just...
Website design is my passion. Without thinking, I scribbled over what I'd just written. It's what I would have done if I was writing with pen and paper. But I didn't have a pen in my hand; my canvas was an LCD and the letters on my page were just pixels. Score one point to the TCL Note A1.TCL's Note A1 Nxtpaper tablet (its full government name) is supposed to make you forget that you're using a tablet. It has one of the company's signature low-glare matte displays and ships with a stylus. The pen's haptics even mimic the scratching of a pencil on paper.On the software side, the A1 takes a lot of cues from the Remarkable tablet. Instead of a typical Android home scr …Read the full story at The Verge.
Emily Brown Houston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
Greenworks’ MaximusZ electric riding mower has five motors and a few compromises
The current EV market is flush with variety. I've driven single-motor economy-minded machines, dual-motor EVs with all-wheel drive, tri-motor vehicles that dial up the performance stakes, and even wild quad-motor performance cars, like the Rimac Nevera. But this is the first time I've ever driven a five-motor EV, one with...
The current EV market is flush with variety. I've driven single-motor economy-minded machines, dual-motor EVs with all-wheel drive, tri-motor vehicles that dial up the performance stakes, and even wild quad-motor performance cars, like the Rimac Nevera.But this is the first time I've ever driven a five-motor EV, one with the agility and speed to turn a 360 even more smoothly than an electric G-Wagon. It also makes quick work of terrible turf.This is, of course, a lawn mower, and it only uses two of those motors to drive the wheels. The other three turn a trio of blades that cut a 54-inch-wide swath in a single pass. It also promises four …Read the full story at The Verge.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I stopped force-shutting down my PC after Windows 11’s August update fixed this one thing
I confess I don’t turn off my main PC that often, but the times I have over the last year have felt like a struggle. It’s set to shut down when I press the power button because I don’t use hibernate or sleep on my desktop. But I’ve pressed the...
I confess I don’t turn off my main PC that often, but the times I have over the last year have felt like a struggle. It’s set to shut down when I press the power button because I don’t use hibernate or sleep on my desktop. But I’ve pressed the button and wondered whether my PSU or front-panel connector was failing, since the fans kept spinning even as my peripherals and screen went dead. The only thing that got it back was a ten-second press of the power button for a hard reset, and that’s not my intended behavior.
John Doe New York
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I widened my Wi-Fi channels for speed and watched the whole network collapse instead
Wi-Fi routers are a set-and-forget kind of networking hardware. At least it has been in mine. I have been using a TP-Link Archer C6 for ages. After configuring it, I only opened the admin dashboard a few times just to change the Wi-Fi password.
Wi-Fi routers are a set-and-forget kind of networking hardware. At least it has been in mine. I have been using a TP-Link Archer C6 for ages. After configuring it, I only opened the admin dashboard a few times just to change the Wi-Fi password.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
LibreOffice takes another swing at Microsoft, claiming the Office Ribbon isn’t as good as people say it is
A few times now, the LibreOffice blog has been a platform for people to argue that Microsoft's practices with Office 365 are detrimental to the development of productivity apps. Now, a new post has been uploaded that specifically targets the Office suite's Ribbon that goes across the top of the...
A few times now, the LibreOffice blog has been a platform for people to argue that Microsoft's practices with Office 365 are detrimental to the development of productivity apps. Now, a new post has been uploaded that specifically targets the Office suite's Ribbon that goes across the top of the window. While it may be fine for intermediate users, it argues, it leaves beginners and power users wanting more, something that LibreOffice is working toward fixing.
William Garcia Boston
Published by: aplhsindia.in
I built a fully local agentic AI setup with one open-source app, and it never touches the cloud
Handing an app permission to browse, write files, and execute on your behalf is powerful, but there's a whole category of work that I think you shouldn't give to a cloud-based agent. Basically, I feel like if you wouldn't send it in a DM or post it on social media,...
Handing an app permission to browse, write files, and execute on your behalf is powerful, but there's a whole category of work that I think you shouldn't give to a cloud-based agent. Basically, I feel like if you wouldn't send it in a DM or post it on social media, then it's probably best left on your machine, such as bank statements, contracts, or health info. Every big agentic cowork tool right now, Claude Code, Antigravity, Codex, etc. ships all that context off to servers out of your control.
Jane Smith Los Angeles
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35 years ago today, Linus Torvalds made a Usenet post that introduced Linux to the world
Sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get to see the exact moment a huge part of our lives first got its legs. The good news is, if something started on the internet, there's a very good chance we have it logged somewhere. Such is the case with the Usenet post...
Sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get to see the exact moment a huge part of our lives first got its legs. The good news is, if something started on the internet, there's a very good chance we have it logged somewhere. Such is the case with the Usenet post that Linus Torvalds made to announce the existence of Linux, and 35 years later to the day, the "just a hobby" OS would become a powerful force in the open-source world.
Sophia Wilson Atlanta
Published by: aplhsindia.in
OpenAI subpoenaed by Alabama AG over Hugging Face hack
Alabama's attorney general issued a subpoena to OpenAI on Monday as part of an investigation into how one of its AI agents escaped a supposedly secure testing environment and autonomously hacked another company last month. The investigation seeks to determine whether OpenAI's safety practices violated state consumer protection laws and...
Alabama's attorney general issued a subpoena to OpenAI on Monday as part of an investigation into how one of its AI agents escaped a supposedly secure testing environment and autonomously hacked another company last month. The investigation seeks to determine whether OpenAI's safety practices violated state consumer protection laws and pose a risk to Alabama citizens, the AG's office said in a statement. "This AI lab leak showed that Alabamians' and Americans' worst fears about artificial intelligence are not just theoretical," said Attorney General Steve Marshall. "Our investigation seeks to uncover the facts and address hard truths abo …Read the full story at The Verge.
