Ring’s home security drone is now available in the US via invite only

Last year, Ring announced a futuristic (slightly dystopian?) take on in-home security with its Always Home Cam, a drone equipped with sensors and a camera that can navigate the interior of your home along custom paths laid out by a user, in response to triggers, including Ring Alarm sensors, or a m

Amazon takes on Fitbit with the $80 Halo View

A year after launching its original exercise band, Halo, Amazon just dropped the follow-up, Halo View. The company's not quite ready to go full bore into the smartwatch category just yet, but it clearly has the Google-owned Fitbit brand directly in its sights with the newly announced Halo View.

New Amazon Echo devices will have local voice processing, giving users more privacy

When you speak to an Amazon Echo device, so far in its history, Alexa would connect to the internet to process requests and deliver a response. Of course, this has sparked concerns among some consumers, since it might feel worrisome to have a Wi-Fi-connected smart device listening for you to say a

Amazon introduces Amazon Glow, an interactive, video calling device for kids and families

Amazon today introduced Amazon Glow, a new, interactive device aimed at families that allows kids to interact with family members and other remote loved ones over video calls. While something of a competitor to Facebook’s line of Portal devices, which are also largely aimed at connecting fami

Amazon's newest Echo Show is a 15-inch, wall-mounted digital picture frame

Amazon just took the wraps off the latest — and largest — addition to the Echo Show family. The Echo Show 15 takes the company's smart screen technology to the wall in the form of a 15.6-inch 1080p display that doubles as a massive digital picture frame. The $250 device is certainly

Amazon launches a $60 smart thermostat

Amazon kicked off its big hardware event today by announcing a new smart thermostat. The company worked with Honeywell (and Resideo) to create the device, but is keeping its own branding on the product (rather than, say, Ring, Blink or any of the other smart home companies it owns). The device runs

Playing Metroid Dread on the Nintendo Switch OLED Model

It's been a big year for Nintendo news. Between the impossible fever dream of last week's Super Mario movie casting and the eagerly anticipated sequel to the Switch's best game, it's easy to lose track of the other big developments from the gaming giant. Nintendo recently held an in

Facebook's wearable glasses can succeed where Google Glass flopped

Facebook recently announced its highly anticipated wearable sunglasses that can record video from a user's perspective. Despite many of our legitimately squeamish reactions to this new product, one of Facebook's decisions in this launch is likely to make it a success where Google Glass fail

FCC showers schools across the US with $1.2B from Emergency Connectivity Fund

The FCC has sent out the first checks from its Emergency Connectivity Fund, an effort to help close the “homework gap” at schools by covering the cost of computers and internet services. Thousands of school districts, in every state plus D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico, will split this first

Ex-Apple designer’s ultra-premium audio hardware startup Syng raises $48.75 million

Audio startup Syng has been building on quite a bit more hype than the average fresh hardware startup, largely because of the team behind it. Founder and CEO Chris Stringer was Jony Ive’s first hire at Apple and worked at the company for 21 years. In an interview, Stringer referred to the fir

Google powers up assistive tech in Android with facial gesture-powered shortcuts and switches

Making smartphones more accessible is always a good idea, and Google’s latest features bring quick actions and navigation to people whose expressions are their primary means of interacting with the world. Project Activate and Camera Switches let users perform tasks like speaking a custom phra

Europe will finally legislate for a common charger for mobiles

EU lawmakers are finally set to standardize charging ports for consumer electronics devices like smartphones and tablets — announcing a proposal today that, once adopted, will see the region settle on USB-C as a universal charging port for gadgets which will also include cameras, headphones,

Sofar and DARPA look to standardize ocean monitoring gadgets with Bristlemouth

The ocean is important to countless industries, but we still only have a rough idea of what it’s like as a whole at any given time. To foster a new generation of ocean-monitoring floats and other devices, Sofar Ocean Technologies and DARPA are publishing an open hardware standard called Brist

Microsoft announces Surface Laptop Studio and Duo 2 ahead of Windows 11 launch

With the first major Windows release in a half-dozen years looming over the horizon, Microsoft has just unveiled a big slate of new hardware. The Surface line has always been viewed as a sort of proof of concept line for an operating system that hasn't always inspired the most cutting-edge hard