samedi 15 octobre 2022

One designer’s quest to build the world’s greatest desk accessories

Ugmonk founder Jeff Sheldon sits at his desk in front of a window. — *Jeff Sheldon’s desk is a well-known thing on the internet – now he’s trying to upgrade it.*

Ugmonk started as a T-shirt store — now founder Jeff Sheldon is trying to turn it into something much more ambitious. But as he knows, hardware is hard.

Jeff Sheldon’s desk is sort of famous. You might have even seen it before: Sheldon, the founder and CEO of a high-design shop called Ugmonk, uploaded a few photos to Unsplash several years ago, and his ultra-clean setup filled with natural wood and white colors has since been viewed more than 400 million times. People have been asking him for a decade where he got his cool monitor stand, even though it’s actually just an Ikea hack. The desk sits in Sheldon’s home office in suburban Pennsylvania, in the corner of a sun-soaked room with so many windows and so many trees just outside the windows that commenters occasionally ask if he lives in the jungle.

The day I meet Sheldon, he’s looking at that desk from the other side of his home office on a bright, hot day near the end of summer. He’s in jeans and a black T-shirt, and limping ever so slightly thanks to a recent soccer injury. His workspace looks normal enough — a little cleaner than usual, maybe, and Sheldon did just spend a few minutes making sure all the accessories were at perfect 90-degree angles. But a few feet away stand a handful of people and a heaping mound of camera gear. Two of them push a makeshift dolly with a Red camera on it, slowly, steadily in the direction of the desk, as Sheldon walks into frame and sits down. The shot ends in a perfect modern still-life: Sheldon hard at work, his dog Pixel lying on a bed a few feet behind him.

The crew is here to shoot a video for Ugmonk’s latest Kickstarter project for a line of desk accessories called Gather. Gather’s unofficial mission statement is, essentially, that it’s okay to be messy, but it should also be easy to clean up. Sheldon, who has young kids, seems to wage a perpetual battle between his minimalistic and fussy designer tendencies and the simple realities of life. And so Gather is, in one sense, just a set of beautiful containers: a wooden pen holder, a padded stand for your phone, an all-metal bin where you can stash business cards and random detritus, a monitor stand with a dedicated slot for your papers. A place for everything, Gather promises, even if everything’s not always in its place.

For Sheldon, though, Gather is also the most complicated, most ambitious, most difficult thing he has ever made. It’s actually his second attempt to make these kinds of products after the first didn’t go to plan. This time, all the pieces are extremely high quality and extremely high priced. Sheldon admires designers like Dieter Rams, Saul Bass, and Paul Rand and aspires to build things akin to the classic Eames chair. Maybe they won’t be heirloom desk accessories, maybe that’s not even a thing, but Sheldon’s aiming for “definitely heirloom quality.” In a world of cheap crap and planned obsolescence, Ugmonk wants to make things that last as long as you need them.

As the crew resets and director Jon Rothermel watches the footage on a monitor in the hallway, Sheldon obsesses about the details of the shot. He notices the clock on his computer and the clock on his wall are different; will anyone notice? He’s also worried about too many cables being visible and the way the desk shakes when he sits down and the way the sun hits his face when he leans slightly forward and the fact that, whoops, Pixel just left. They do five takes of this shot — which will be the all-important intro for the Kickstarter video — before Sheldon and Rothermel are happy with it.

A few minutes later, after a lot of close-up shots of Sheldon’s desk and the stuff on it, a grand switchover happens. The Ikea-hack monitor stand, the phone holder, the various bins and containers for all of Sheldon’s stuff, almost everything in those viral photos — all gone, all replaced with Gather components. The whole thing feels oddly ceremonious: Sheldon spent years working on a new set of desk accessories but hasn’t upgraded the home office that started it all until right now. His home office and his desk reflect more than a decade of work since he started Ugmonk to sell T-shirts. And now, with a few new pieces, he’s just moved into a new era.

Maybe I’m reading too much into all that. But after spending time with Sheldon, I can tell you confidently he felt it, too. To him, Gather is much more than a bunch of desk accessories.

Several organizational devices on a white desk, with an iMac on top. — *The Gather pieces include a monitor stand, a headphone stand, and a bunch of organizing tools.*

Learn by shipping

Sheldon started a company in 2008 as a side project. He was working full-time at a design firm in Vermont, not making much money and not having much to do thanks to the ongoing recession. Since college, he’d enjoyed entering T-shirt design contests hosted by companies like Threadless, Woot, and DesignByHumans and eventually started to win them. “You’d get, like, $500, and they send you five of the shirts.” In college, this felt like a fair trade, but as Sheldon started to win more often and enter the working world, he realized he was getting the short end of the stick. “They owned all the rights to my artwork,” he says, “and they’re printing five, 10, 15,000 of these shirts, and they’re making all the money. And I’m sitting here with a $500 check.”

Confident that people liked his designs, Sheldon decided to start selling the shirts himself. He borrowed $2,000 from his dad, set up a store on the Big Cartel platform, drew up some new designs in his trademark minimalistic style, printed them onto 200 American Apparel T-shirts, and started posting his stuff in forums and online. He named his shop Ugmonk — a meaningless word that Sheldon doesn’t want to explain because he’s worried people will be disappointed with how boring the story is — mostly because he didn’t want to call it something like “Jeff’s T-Shirt Designs.” He and his wife did most of the shipping, and much of the inventory lived in his parents’ basement.

In 2017, Sheldon decided to take a bigger swing and design a product from scratch. He wanted a place to put his phone, a home for his pens, just a simple organizer to stick behind his keyboard. So he designed a small, modular set, named it Gather, and launched a Kickstarter campaign. Sheldon hoped to get about $18,000 in preorders through the campaign and instead ended up with $430,960. It was a big enough deal that the Shark Tank producers called, he says, though Sheldon had to turn them down since he hadn’t actually made the product yet.

At the time, this seemed like a good problem to have. Sheldon even launched Gather as a separate brand on a separate website, thinking it might be bigger than Ugmonk and could ultimately replace it. He thought Gather might end up in Target. This was going to be huge.

Eager to fill all those orders and capitalize on the interest in Gather, Sheldon turned to a company in Texas that had a factory in China. And he quickly discovered exactly how it works to make products at scale. “We were injection-molding the parts,” he says, “which means the parts cost less than $1, but the molds cost between $20,000 and $30,000.” That meant no small batches, no experiments, only giant orders. The factory in China had never worked with wood before, it turned out, and the first models that came back were warped and wonky and generally nowhere near Sheldon’s standards. So he gave feedback to his contact in Texas, who took that feedback to China, and weeks later, more products showed up at his door. Rinse and repeat, over and over. For months.

Even after all the back and forth, Sheldon estimates now that 30 percent of the products he shipped to Kickstarter backers ultimately had to be replaced. Most users actually liked the product, and he eventually sold out his inventory, but too much of it just wasn’t up to Sheldon’s standards. He thought more than once about just scrapping the whole idea. “I was so disconnected from the process,” he says now. “I didn’t go to the factory, and I should have. I wasn’t the person communicating. I would just wait for photos or prototypes to show up at my house.” He decided, right then and there, that he didn’t want to be a big Target brand if this was what it took.

A table filled with parts that make up Gather’s accessory lineup. — *Gather has been two years in the works, with a huge amount of prototyping with local manufacturers.*

“Hardware is hard” is a much-repeated maxim in the tech industry, and for good reason. Countless companies have built and marketed cool prototypes, only to discover that there’s a massive difference between making one product and 100 and an even bigger one between 100 and 100,000. Sheldon learned this lesson every step of the way. One of his first-ever batches of shirts came back unusable, which he says taught him a valuable lesson: “how to eat costs.” As the stakes got higher, he decided the only way to get what he wanted was to exert much more control over the process — and to aspire to making a few great things instead of countless crummy ones.

Even that was harder than it sounded, though. With his next product, a paper-based productivity system called Analog, another Kickstarter hit, Sheldon resolved to think smaller and more locally. He contracted with a printer in Indiana for the cards, hoping working domestically would help. It didn’t. There were just too many orders, and the quality suffered as a result. Sheldon had to throw away most of what was produced — though he kept a few of the failures as a reminder of how things really work. But then, through a friend, Sheldon got connected to a woodworker down the road in Pennsylvania who grew up working for his Amish father’s furniture business and eventually started his own. “They bailed us out of the Analog Kickstarter by replacing all the bad ones,” Sheldon says, “and got us connected to the Amish and Mennonite communities.”

Analog is now Ugmonk’s biggest product — Sheldon says it accounts for about 80 percent of Ugmonk’s sales. But he never stopped thinking about Gather. He still wanted to design desk accessories and had lots of ideas for new components. He found an industrial designer, Jack Marple, who agreed to help him figure out how to design and manufacture desk accessories in a more local, more predictable, higher-end way. They started sending 3D-printed prototypes back and forth and began reaching out to more local shops and fabricators.

They ultimately built a local supply chain, made up of largely Mennonite and Amish manufacturers, who they hoped could make Gather at a much higher quality. But getting up and running took a huge amount of work. A Mennonite-run company that mostly does metalwork for dairy farms agreed to be one of Ugmonk’s suppliers, for instance, but only after some convincing. “They’re making cattle shoots and plow pieces,” Sheldon says, “and I tell them it’s a stand for an iPhone... they still have flip phones.” But once Sheldon told them about the quality and craftsmanship he was looking for, they were in.

Over the last couple of years, Sheldon and his team — which was, for a long time, mostly Sheldon’s wife and family but now includes five part-time helpers and Tim Fortney, who became Ugmonk’s second full-time employee earlier this year — have spent countless hours driving between factories and warehouses, looking at prototypes and endlessly refining the Gather products.

A wood desk with Gather accessories on it

Sheldon and Ugmonk spent years obsessing over every tiny detail of the Gather system.

Sheldon offers one example: “the edges of the metal” for the large monitor stand, he says, “when they came off the laser cutter, [the manufacturers] were doing the bending and the powder coating. Well, if you don’t file the edges just right, the powder coating will stick to the edge. And it’ll glob up and actually accentuate little imperfections.” If you’re cutting metal for a construction vehicle, nobody cares about the globs. But close up, those details matter — at least, they do to Sheldon. So now there’s another step in the process, “where they’ll file all the edges where it gets powder coated.” It’s more work and costs more to do, but for Ugmonk, it’s worth it.

All this makes everything slower and vastly more expensive. Sheldon estimates that building the new generation of Gather this way costs “four or five times” more than doing it the old way, with injection molds in foreign factories. But he likes that he can stand in the factory and watch the test runs happen. He likes being able to take the four or five bad eggs back and have them quickly replaced. “There’s a level of relationship,” he says, “of looking someone in the eye and sitting across the table from someone that you can’t hide from.” He acknowledges he’s a bit of a control freak but says he’s willing to do what it takes — and push others to do the same — to make great stuff. “It doesn’t scale,” he says, “and I’m okay with that.”

A woman sits at a desk inside of a large concrete room. — *Making the Gather video required building beautiful office sets in otherwise rugged spaces.*

Embrace the mess

After a few hours of shooting inside Sheldon’s house, the crew finishes by mimicking their opening shot — the slow roll toward Sheldon’s desk — with the full line of new Gather accessories now in place. Satisfied they’ve gotten it right, they relocate to Ugmonk’s new headquarters, a converted paper mill a few miles down the road from Sheldon’s house.

In a backroom of the building, Sheldon and Rothermel have spent weeks building two separate office sets into an otherwise barren and messy concrete space. In one corner, a dark, gamer-style setup with a full suite of black Gather gear. In the other, next to the window, a lighter wall with white accents, plants spilling off of shelves, a pink iMac, and all the white Gather components. Both are clean and camera-ready, at least once Sheldon finishes taping all the cables to walls and table legs. (Yes, he knows accepting some untidiness is part of the point. But he can only take so much.)

The point of these setups is to show how Gather can work for anyone. It drives Sheldon crazy that people are content to prop their monitor on a stack of books or put up with a crappy Amazon Basics laptop stand that is perpetually falling apart. But when he looks around at the people who work on their spaces, he says, caring about your setup is a tech-geek thing, somehow. He wants to bring a design-geek energy to the space.

After a 12-hour day, they’re still not done; another long shoot day follows soon after. Finally, with the video shot, the Ugmonk team spends weeks on every other detail of the launch. They oversee a test run of 30 full Gather sets, in both color options, to see how things come off the manufacturing line. (There are some small defects, like a slightly wobbly headphone stand, but those are quickly fixable.) They touch up the photos, debate the Kickstarter taglines, and sort out the prices. At the last minute, Sheldon remembers he needs to get the project approved by Kickstarter before it can go live, but luckily that goes well.

The Kickstarter launches on October 18th with a modest goal of $12,500. By the end of its first day, it hit $80,000. Sheldon knew this would happen — he just picked a low number because Kickstarter’s recommendation algorithms like projects that crush their goal quickly. By the time the campaign ends in December, he’s hoping for a number closer to $500,000, and if he’s really dreaming, it might even hit seven figures.

It’s a big dream and hardly guaranteed. Even with a Kickstarter discount, the Gather laptop stand is $129, the organizer set is $159, and the full 10-piece set — large monitor stand, laptop stand, organizers, and a magnetic base plate to hold them all in place — is $779. When everything goes on sale in April 2023, that set will cost $1,000. A grand for some desk accessories is a lot to ask.

Sheldon’s confident that people will see the value, though. He has collected a lot of devoted customers over the years — when he announced Ugmonk would stop selling T-shirts, which Sheldon says was because his supplier had become a problem, people flocked to the site to buy as many as they could. What he’s really worried about is whether he can deliver. “What if we get 5,000, 10,000 pieces,” he says, “and they’re all bad?” That would be an expensive and time-consuming problem.

But he has a decade of hard-won lessons in how the industry works and rests secure in the knowledge that, at the very least, that problem would be down the road and not across the world. “We’ve looked everybody in the eye, and we can go there,” he says. “That feels a lot better than the container coming from China, we open up the doors, and we’re like, ‘Oh no.’”

I asked Sheldon if the long-term goal was to become a full-on furniture manufacturer, to move from desk accessories to desks and chairs and tables and everything else. He initially said he might but then immediately began to fret about how the shipping logistics alone would change his small company for the worse. It might be more fun, he says, to find other places where these small things could be useful. “Maybe it goes on your kitchen table or your entry table.”

Then he starts to riff: “I want to do special editions of Gather, like, in a bright orange and just do 100 of them. I want to lean more into the artists’ way of doing it. I could literally just make one.” For him, making one is way more fun than making millions. And he knows exactly how to get it done.

Photography by David Pierce / The Verge

AT&T ‘committed to ensuring’ it never bribes lawmakers again after $23 million fine

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

AT&T Illinois will pay $23 million after it admitted to making payments to former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan’s political ally in return for his “vote and influence over a bill,” according to a Friday press release from the Department of Justice (via Ars Technica). The company will also have to cooperate with the government’s investigation into the alleged misconduct and will have to set up a compliance and ethics program that the government will receive reports on. If the company keeps up its end of the bargain, the government will dismiss its prosecution.

According to the DOJ, in 2017 AT&T paid one of Madigan’s allies $22,500 through a lobbying firm that it worked with. AT&T employees tried to make it seem as if the ally had been hired for a specific purpose, but the person wasn’t actually expected to do any work. The president of AT&T Illinois was aware of the deal, and signed off on it being done covertly through the firm, saying in an email that the method was okay “as long as you are sure we will get credit and the box checked.” (In other words, as long as Madigan and his cohorts knew the company had scratched their backs.)

According to Ars Technica, AT&T Illinois was trying to influence a bill that would let it off the hook for providing landline telephone service to everyone in the state. The bill ended up passing, with the state house and senate voting to override the governor’s veto.

An unnamed AT&T spokesperson told Ars Technica: “We hold ourselves and our contractors to the highest ethical standards. We are committed to ensuring that this never happens again.” Given the hefty compliance program it signed with the government (the details take up seven pages in a document posted by the Department of Justice, and you can read them all below if you really feel like it), you’d hope that wouldn’t be the case.

Of course, that’s not to say that AT&T won’t try to use money to influence politics; it, along with other carriers and ISPs, spend millions in donations and lobbying to try and make sure the government passes laws that benefit them. All that’s usually above board, though; just don’t try to directly buy votes via a shady deal.

Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy

Re-energized this election cycle, the tech entrepreneur joins other mega-donors apparently out to undercut the political system

Peter Thiel is far from the first billionaire who has wielded his fortune to try to influence the course of American politics. But in an election year when democracy itself is said to be on the ballot, he stands out for assailing a longstanding governing system that he has described as “deranged” and in urgent need of “course correction”.

The German-born investor and tech entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley “disrupter” who helped found PayPal alongside Elon Musk and made his fortune as one of the earliest investors in Facebook, has catapulted himself into the top ranks of the mega-donor class by pouring close to $30m into this year’s midterm elections.

Peter Thiel, Major U.S. Political Donor, Is Said to Pursue Maltese Citizenship

Peter Thiel, Major U.S. Political Donor, Is Said to Pursue Maltese Citizenship Obtaining citizenship in Malta would provide another passport for Mr. Thiel, who is one of the largest individual donors for the U.S. midterm elections.

vendredi 14 octobre 2022

TechScape: Tumblr and why ‘the porn-friendly era of the internet is over’

The microblogging site was known for its ‘go nuts, show nuts’ policy. Here’s how the App Store ended Tumblr’s glory days

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The quirks and oddities of a social network affect the community that grows up around it. Instagram’s lack of a repost feature pushed users to rely on hashtags to spread their pictures across the network, sowing the seeds of the heavily interest-based communities that still live there today. The anonymity offered by 4chan lead, perversely, to a uniformity of tone, as users conform to the zeitgeist of the site, unable to build a name for themselves as an individual. TikTok – built by people who knew what they were doing – carefully sculpted its quirks to nudge users in its preferred direction, boosting harmless dance trends and discouraging political rants of the sort that litter competitor YouTube.

Over the years, some of the largest social networks have filed those quirks off, pushing for a homogeneity that is more accessible to all, even at the expense of what makes them unique. Twitter’s strict text-only, reverse-chronological, 140-character timeline is now algorithmically curated, offering 280 characters plus a range of multimedia; Instagram posts can be reshared in Snapchat-style stories, which can also contain TikTok-style videos; TikTok pivoted towards political content and now plays a leading role in the culture wars.

“No modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with ‘go nuts, show nuts’ in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible.”

Apple Store workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize

Illustration depicting several Apple logos on a lime green background. — Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Workers at Apple’s Penn Square store in Oklahoma City have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, with 56 yeses, and 32 nos. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, all regular full-time and part-time employees at the store were eligible to vote, 95 in total.

The election was only the second one carried out for a US Apple store. In June, workers in Maryland voted to unionize in association with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Another election was scheduled to happen in Atlanta, but the CWA called it off, claiming that the company had made a fair election “impossible” by intimidating workers.

Apple has faced several complaints about anti-union tactics, including in Oklahoma — earlier this month, the CWA filed charges against the company with the NLRB. According to the union, Apple interrogated and surveilled workers at the Penn Square store, held captive audience meetings (even during the busy iPhone 14 Plus launch day, according to a report from Public Radio Tulsa), and told that they wouldn’t receive the same benefits as non-unionized stores if they voted to organize. The latter point has been backed up by a report from Bloomberg that said Apple told employees at the unionized store in Maryland that they’d have to bargain for benefits being given to workers at its other stores.

The CWA alleged similar behavior at locations in Atlanta and New York. The NLRB investigated the later claims, and recently announced that it had found merit to them, filing its own complaint against Apple. In the run-up to the election in Maryland, Apple hired anti-union lawyers, and had executives attempt to dissuade employees from unionizing.

Apple Store in Oklahoma City Becomes Second to Unionize

Apple Store in Oklahoma City Becomes Second to Unionize Workers said pay was adequate and benefits were good, but complained that managers’ practices often seemed arbitrary.

A tweet about hair relaxer kits connected models from the boxes with women who grew up seeing them

A burst of tweets from women who, as children, modeled for relaxer brands is one of the latest instances of the Black Twitter community finding an unexpected connection and reminiscing over a shared experience.

where are these girls today? show yourselves. https://t.co/WHSaNHL6Me
— ́ (@AshTheDonLeon) October 2, 2022

The discussion kicked off after @prettiestluxury tweeted a collage of models who posed on a box of no-lye relaxer saying, “I remember wanting to be the face of a hair relaxer so bad.” That was followed by a quote tweet asking these women to “show themselves,” which became the centerpiece of a wider trend.

Oh, they’re looking for us, here’s mine : https://t.co/kYqhSezIhB pic.twitter.com/QDSpZ6fqT0
— Nomsa Sasa Madida (@NomsaMadida) October 4, 2022

Jaelyn Evans, who was a model on ORS’ Olive Oil Girls No-Lye Relaxer box, said that she has since gone natural. Nomsa Sasa Madida, a makeup artist, also posted a photo update on Twitter showing prominent braids that she’s now wearing long after posing for a relaxer brand.

One connection people quickly made from the posts is that nearly all of the relaxer models appear to have decided to stop using those products and instead now have natural hairstyles. Going through the tweets, I thought most of all about how much I had wanted to achieve the same styles shown in the pictures.

The conversations caught my eye as so many women reminisced on the days when they used relaxer products. Though it’s been five years since I used a relaxer on my hair, the first thing that came to mind was the memory of going to the beauty supply store and seeing the boxes lined up with the models on the front.

Tarkor Zehn, an audio producer here at Vox Media, recalled what she felt when she came across the tweet thread:

I thought it was adorable! It was the best “where are they now” that I never knew I needed. It was super interesting to see how the vast majority of them had either transitioned to being natural or a few of them had alway been natural in the first place. Truly a direct representation on the evolution of Black hair and the impact of the natural hair movement.

then vs now, yes I went natural https://t.co/qUgD52hfft pic.twitter.com/UWbxus7BzN
— Jaelyn Evans (@j0evans) October 3, 2022

BuzzFeed caught up with some of the models who shared some of their experiences and some details about where they are today. While some women in the threads said they hadn’t used the products they were posing for, all of the models quoted by BuzzFeed said that wasn’t the case for them.

A tweet from @chigirlmakeup read, “I heard y’all were looking for the hair box girls...here I go I was the original ORS perm box girl,” showed the box model posing with her natural hair in a photo collage next to a box of Olive Oil ORS relaxer. She followed up on her tweet saying that she’s been natural for over 10 years and modeled when she was in her early twenties.

The journey from pursuing those looks to presenting the world with braids, curls, and other styles based on how our hair looks naturally was a common thread among the models and the people who were happy to see them come on their timelines.

jeudi 13 octobre 2022

Ransomware hunters: the self-taught tech geniuses fighting cybercrime – podcast

Hackers are increasingly taking users’ data hostage and demanding huge sums for its release. They have targeted individuals, businesses, vital infrastructure and even hospitals. Authorities have been slow to respond – but there is help out there

Twitter and TikTok Lead in Amplifying Misinformation, Report Finds

Twitter and TikTok Lead in Amplifying Misinformation, Report Finds A new analysis found that algorithms and some features of social media sites help false posts go viral.

The best budget laptop of 2022

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Asus Chromebook CX5 — *Here are the best cheap Chromebooks and laptops you can buy.* | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

The best cheap laptops from HP, Lenovo, and more.

The best cheap laptops are getting better and better. The question to ask is: what’s most important, and what are you willing to sacrifice? Even the best cheap laptops aren’t perfect in every area — they have some strengths but cut corners to achieve their price tags. You can almost certainly find a budget laptop with a touchscreen, a premium-looking chassis, an HDMI port, a backlit keyboard, or stylus support, but you may need to consider which of those features you want the most, and which you can go without.

Our pick for the best cheap laptop of 2022 is the HP Envy x360 13, running Windows 10. We feel that the Envy has build quality, performance, and battery life that surpass those of many premium laptops, as well as the best cheap laptops on the market. But we’ve tested dozens the best laptops under $500, and we’ve got a number of additional models on this list from Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, HP, and more.

Other best cheap laptops include the Lenovo Chromebook Duet and the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. Many of these laptops also appear on our best laptop, best Chromebook, and best student laptop lists.

Many of our picks for the best cheap laptops are currently Chromebooks. We believe that Chromebooks are, in many cases, the best-value option for shoppers seeking a laptop under $500 and tend to offer better specs, features, and build quality than most Windows laptops at that price point. We hope to add more Windows laptops under $500 to this page in the future and are keeping a close eye on those releases.

Best Cheap Laptops 2022

1. Asus Chromebook Flip CX5

The best cheap laptop of 2022

The Chromebook Flip CX5 really is that good. It’s sturdy enough to withstand all kinds of jolts and jostles in a backpack or briefcase, and has a unique velvety texture that’s very pleasant to hold. Add a wide port selection, a smooth and comfortable keyboard, and a vivid display, and you’ve got a chassis that can hold its own against plenty of midrange Windows laptops.

Performance is equally impressive. We never once heard its fan in our testing, even when pushing a workload that slowed most devices down. Battery life is quite satisfactory, easily lasting us a day. And the speakers delivered some of the best audio we’ve ever heard from a Chromebook. While the CX5 isn’t a perfect device, it’s one of the best ones we’ve ever tested under $700. Overall, budget shoppers who don’t mind Chrome OS won’t be disappointed in this machine.

2. Acer Chromebook Spin 713

The best cheap Chrome OS laptop

If you’d prefer a more traditional Chromebook with a clamshell form factor, the $395 Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is an affordable option that’s all-around excellent. It has a gorgeous 3:2 display that delivers a sharp picture and bright, vibrant colors with plenty of vertical space. The screen alone would make the Chromebook Spin 713 a standout, but it has a number of other strengths as well, including a great keyboard, all-day battery life, and a comprehensive port selection, including an HDMI, in addition to USB-C, USB-A, and a microSD slot.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Asus Chromebook Detachable CM3 — *The Asus Chromebook Detachable CM3 is the best cheap laptop with a built-in stylus.*

3. Asus Chromebook Detachable CM3

The best cheap laptop with a stylus

If you like the Duet’s size and detachable form factor but are willing to spend on something a bit more upscale, you may find the Asus Chromebook Detachable CM3 to be a better choice. Like the Duet, the CM3 is a 10.5-inch 16:10 Chrome OS tablet with a fabric cover, kickstand, and detachable screen. But the CM3’s kickstand folds multiple ways: you can crease it lengthwise to stand the tablet up like a laptop or fold it the short way and stand the tablet up horizontally. Plus, it comes with a built-in USI stylus and roomy keys with a surprising amount of travel. Battery life was also quite impressive: we averaged close to 13 hours of continuous work.

Where the CM3 lags a bit behind the Duet (and other cheap laptops you may try) is the power. Its MediaTek processor can be a bit sluggish compared to more pricier offerings. But the CM3 still offers a surprising number of perks for its sub-$400 price and makes a great student driver or secondary device.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: HP Pavilion Aero 13 — *The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is a 13-inch powerhouse that weighs almost nothing.*

4. HP Pavilion Aero 13

The best cheap Windows laptop

If you’re looking for a budget Windows laptop that’s thinner and lighter than the Envy x360 while delivering similar category-topping performance, the $669 HP Pavilion Aero 13 is a good choice for you. It has a powerful eight-core Ryzen processor, which is one of the fastest processors for thin and light laptops that you can get. Not only does it perform well, but it’s also unbelievably light at just 2.1 pounds, and it comes with a blindingly bright 16:10 screen. It’s a standout in battery life, too — I averaged almost 11 hours of continuous work.

HP did have to cut a few corners to achieve those benefits at this price point. The audio on our model wasn’t great, and the device shipped with some cheap bloatware installed. But the Pavilion Aero 13 is excellent in almost every other way, and it won’t disappoint if you’re looking for a functional, cheap Windows PC.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 — *The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 is the reddest Chromebook you can buy and one of the best cheap laptops under $800.*

5. Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2

An affordable laptop with a bold look

If you’re looking for an affordable Chromebook that stands out from the crowd, the $549 Galaxy Chromebook 2 should be on your list. It comes in a bold “fiesta red” color (as well as a regular gray, if you prefer to blend in). It’s a touchscreen convertible with stylus support (though the stylus isn’t included).

On top of the design, the Galaxy Chromebook 2 includes an excellent QLED panel, which is one of the best displays we’ve ever seen on a Chromebook. You also get a solid keyboard, decent battery life (we averaged 7 hours and 21 minutes of continuous work), and a port selection that includes two USB-C ports, a microSD slot, and a headphone jack. It’s easily one of the best Chromebooks you can buy and one of the best cheap laptops as well.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 — The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 is the best cheap laptop under $500.

6. Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3

The best cheap laptop under $500

If you’re looking for an absurdly cheap Chromebook that absolutely gets the job done, you should definitely be looking at the Duet 3. This is a great, tiny laptop for budget shoppers with a magnetic detachable keyboard and kickstand. The screen even supports USI styluses, though a stylus is not included in this price. The keyboard is included, however, as are the keyboard and kickstand, which makes for a pretty solid package for a sub-$400 price.

While we don’t recommend the Duet 3 for work use, we found it quite usable for social media use, leisure, and multimedia viewing. It has a sharp, bright, 11-inch screen, and the keyboard and touchpad are surprisingly comfortable. As a bonus, it’s just 2.09 pounds, which makes it great for carrying around in a backpack or a purse.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Lenovo ThinkBOok 13S — *The Lenovo ThinkBook 13S is the best cheap business laptop, and one of the best cheap laptops under $900.*

7. Lenovo ThinkBook 13S

The best cheap laptop for business

The Lenovo ThinkBook 13S looks a lot like Lenovo’s high-end ThinkPad laptops. But it’s much more affordable than those ThinkPads, with models currently starting under $900. We were pleasantly surprised by its sharp 16:10 display and its generous port selection, which includes Thunderbolt 4. The audio is loud and clear. The device lacks some of the artistry of the ThinkPad line, but brings the same functionality and high-quality build. If you’re looking for a sub-$900 Windows laptop for business, the ThinkBook should be on your list.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Acer Swift 3X — *The Acer Swift 3X is one of the best creator laptops you can buy, and one of the best cheap laptops under $700.*

8. Acer Swift 3X

The best cheap creator laptop

Many of the best cheap laptops might be good choices for schoolwork or leisure, but the Acer Swift 3X is intended for creative professionals shopping on a budget. Models are available with Intel’s Iris Xe Max, a discrete graphics card that isn’t meant for intense gaming, but can lend a hand for amateur creators and students who work with photos and video for class. Those who want the cheapest model can go for integrated graphics, which will deliver a great experience (and are currently available for under $700).

In our testing the 3X offered good performance for its price — including surprisingly long battery life for a device with a discrete GPU. There’s a nice matte screen that’s available in a touch model. And at just over three pounds, it’s also much easier to carry around than most creator-oriented laptops out there. It’s not bad looking either — we particularly liked the “steam blue” color that our model came in.

Best Cheap Laptop 2022: Microsoft Surface Go 3 — *The Microsoft Surface Go 3 is one of the best cheap laptops under $500 for 2022.*

9. Microsoft Surface Go 3

The best cheap laptop for Surface fans

The Surface Go 3, currently available for under $500, is a 10.5-inch tablet that’s best for young students or anyone else who needs a small device for on-the-go use. It offers the same excellent build quality and premium design as the rest of Microsoft’s acclaimed Surface line, but carries a much lower price tag.

Windows 11 runs quite well on this device, andwe found Snap Assist helpful for sizing apps and tabs for the smaller screen. We could run all the Windows apps we wanted, and even found the small keyboard surprisingly comfortable. The battery life was a bit short, however, so make sure you won’t need to have this device away from an outlet for too long if you’re considering buying it.

Election Firm Knew Data Had Been Sent to China, Prosecutors Say

Election Firm Knew Data Had Been Sent to China, Prosecutors Say The executive of a small Michigan elections software company was charged with grand theft by embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime.

World’s largest crypto exchange hacked with possible losses of $500m

Binance, the latest crypto company to experience a targeted hack, temporarily suspends transactions and the transfer of funds

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, may have lost half a billion dollars after a hack of its network.

The company temporarily suspended transactions and the transfer of funds after detecting an exploit between two blockchains, a method of digital theft that has been used recently in at least one other major hack.

mercredi 12 octobre 2022

The best Amazon Prime Day deals under $25

A close-up of the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max streaming dongle beside its remote control on a brown couch. — *Amazon’s premium Fire Stick 4K Max and mid-range Fire Stick 4K streaming dongles look identical, though the latter is currently discounted to just $24.99.* | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Day two of Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale is under way, and while all the attention may be on big-ticket items like TVs, laptops, or wearables, we know not everyone can throw money around on that kind of stuff on a whim. There are also deals going on that can appeal to any tech fiend on a tight budget, so we’re pooling together all the best deals under $25 that we can find.

But you’d be remiss to think of these deals as just “cheap stuff.” We carefully comb through the myriad sales to find budget-friendly items that are worth your time and dollars, even at these lower-stakes prices: like a 4K-capable Fire TV Stick or a small and lightweight wireless earbuds. Frankly, sometimes it’s these inexpensive buys that can be some of the handiest accessories and add-ons in our daily lives — so let’s dive in.

The best smart home deals under $25

You can also buy the third-gen Echo Dot with a month of Amazon Music Unlimited for $9.98 ($39 off). While its sound quality isn’t as great as that of the fourth-gen Dot, the puck-like speaker still sounds decent and can be used to perform various Alexa-enabled tasks. Read our review.

~~The~~ ~~third-gen Echo Dot~~ ~~from 2018~~ ~~with two GE Cync color smart LED bulbs is $17.99~~ ~~(about $46 off) is~~ ~~$17.99 ($22 off). This Echo Dot is a bit old now, and~~ ~~soon to be two generations behind, but it’s~~ ~~still fine~~ ~~for issuing voice commands for an Alexa-connected house. The bundle with the GE bulbs is like a smart home starter pack.~~

The no-frills Amazon Smart Plug adds Alexa automation to a dumb appliance, and it’s just $12.99 ($12 off) right now.
The Roku Express 4K Plus streaming box is down to $24.99 ($15 off). The compact streaming box supports HDR10 Plus and dual-band Wi-Fi with the option to attach a Micro-USB-to-Ethernet adapter for a faster, wired connection.

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K streaming dongle is $24.99 ($25 off), matching its lowest price. This 4K streamer supports Dolby Vision and its voice remote can control your TV.

Kasa’s Smart Wi-Fi Outdoor Plug-In Dimmer is an outdoor smart lighting plug that can dim compatible lights as well as set schedules and timers. It’s selling for $17.99 instead of $29.99 and works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
The Wyze Bulb Color LED smart light is $10.99 (about $5 off). It’s a bright 1100-lumen bulb that works with either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
The myQ Chamberlain Smart Garage Control with wireless garage hub and sensor is down to $16.98 ($13 off). This matches the all-time low for this garage opener that ensures you can close your garage door from anywhere.

The best wireless audio deals under $25

The Skullcandy Dime earbuds are just $19.49 ($6 off) in several unique colors. They may not have the greatest battery life or sound quality, but they’re incredibly compact, colorful, and even at this low price support solo use with either earbud.

The JBL Go2 waterproof portable Bluetooth speaker is on sale for $21.95 ($18 off). It’s IPX7-rated waterproof and rated for five hours of battery life.

The best charging accessory deals under $25

The SooPii (don’t laugh) USB-C cable with a built-in power meter can carry up to 100W of output to a phone or laptop and show you a live wattage measurement on its small LED. It’s currently $9.79 for a four-foot cable or $12.79 for a 6.6-foot one, exclusively for Prime members.

Belkin is running a variety of deals on its Amazon storefront, and it includes charging accessories like the Belkin BoostCharge 10W wireless charging stand for $24.99 ($10 off).

The Belkin BoostCharge 10W dual wireless charging pad is $20.99 ($29 off). It comes with its own power adapter and can charge two Qi devices at up to 10 watts. It’s not going to win any charging races, but it’s fine for overnight use.
Belkin’s USB-C 20W right-angle GaN charger is $12.99 ($12 off) and ideal for fast charging when you have an outlet without a whole lot of clearance in front of it.
Amazon-owned Woot is selling a Samsung 25W USB-C fast charger for $12.99 ($7 off) or you can get two of them for $20.99 (about $19 off).
Woot also has a three-pack of Samsung one-meter USB-C cables for $13.99 (about $31 off) in black or white. That’s great value for a quality cable if you’re in need of a few.

~~Satechi’s magnetic wireless charging puck~~ ~~for the iPhone 12, 13, and 14 generations is~~ ~~$14.99~~ ~~($15 off). It won’t charge at full MagSafe speeds, but it can achieve 7.5W wireless charging and the built-in USB-C cable is a fairly lengthy five feet.~~
That Satechi charger has a nice design, but if you want an even longer cable the no-frills Belkin Magnetic Wireless charger is 6-feet long, comes with a power adapter, and is also selling for $14.99 ($15 off). Like the Satechi, it tops out at 7.5W charging for iPhones.
Anker’s PowerWave Sense 2-in-1 wireless charging station is $19.99 ($5 off). It charges a Qi-compatible Android phone at up to 10W or iPhone up to 7.5W, with a second spot for wirelessly charging a pair of earbuds. It includes a USB-C cable but not a power adapter.

The best portable storage deals under $25

A ~~Samsung USB-C 256GB flash drive~~ ~~is down to~~ ~~$23.99~~ ~~($16 off). Since it’s USB-C it can transfer files between computers, Android smartphones, and Thunderbolt-equipped iPads.~~
If you prefer USB-A for more compatibility, this Samsung 256GB flash drive is small enough to fit on your keys and costs just $24.99 ($11 off).
Samsung’s EVO Select 64GB microSD card is just $10.99 ($9 off).
The Samsung Pro Plus 128GB microSD card is $17.09 (about $18 off). These are always handy for use in a Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, or other devices like a drone or GoPro.

The best gaming deals under $25

The compact Razer DeathAdder v2 Mini wired gaming mouse is on sale for $17.89 (about $32 off MSRP). That’s the best price for this small boy, which is actually pretty average-sized since the regular DeathAdders are on the large size.

The SteelSeries pudding-style Prism Keycaps are just $18.99 ($11 off) for a full set in black or white. They may not be hoity-toity artisan or premium keycaps you find around the mechanical keyboard community, but they’re simple and allow bright RGB to really shine.
Supergiant Games’ popular roguelike dungeon-crawler Hades (physical) is on sale for $19.99 ($10 off) for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox versions.

Alan Wake Remastered (physical) is on sale for $19.99 ($10 off) for PS4 and Xbox. The remaster of the 2010 action-adventure mystery thriller from developer Remedy is being sold by a third party but shipped by Amazon.
Olli Olli World is on sale for $19.99 ($10 off) through Amazon as a Steam download code. This pastel-tinted skateboarding game mixes in some rhythm game vibes for a unique experience that feels incredibly charming and fun to play. Read our review.
A wide variety of tabletop puzzle and card games are on sale. This includes popular party-pleasers like Exploding Kittens Party for $16.49 (about $7 off), Throw Throw Burrito for $15.65 (about $9 off), ~~and~~ ~~Sushi Go~~ ~~for $3.99~~ ~~(about $8 off)~~.
PowerA’s Enhanced Wired Controller, our favorite budget gamepad for Xbox consoles and PC, is on sale for $25.99 (regularly $37.99). The off-white “mist” color version had an on-page coupon for an additional $2.60 off, but it’s no longer available at this time.

Miscellaneous deals under $25

Amazon is selling Apple’s AirTag loop, which you can use to attach your AirTags to luggage and other accessories, in blue and yellow for $9 instead of $29. Amazon is also selling Apple’s Leather Key Ring in orange for $19 instead of $35.
TP-Link’s AC1200 Wi-Fi Extender is down to just $24.99 ($25 off) at Amazon, easily besting its previous all-time low of around $34. It’s not guaranteed to fix all of your network woes, but it’s a cheap option to consider if you’re struggling with reliable Wi-Fi in a small space.

The best TV deals from Amazon’s fall Prime Day event

An LG C2 OLED television displays the colorful interior of a building with stained glass. — *LG’s C2 OLED is one of the many TVs available at a discount during Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale.* | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale is providing yet another opportunity to get a fantastic discount on a 4K TV. If you’ve been scouting for deals in the lead-up to Black Friday, this is a week when you’ll want to be paying attention. Right now, we’re seeing some big price cuts on all sorts of smart TV models, ranging in size, streaming platform, and display (QLED, OLED, etc.). This roundup includes deals that are exclusive to Prime members as well as some that are available from Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and wherever else we find good discounts.

The best Prime Day TV deals

LG’s 48-inch A1 OLED is a stellar value if you want an OLED, but don’t need the high-end features that can cause the price to soar. While it costs $946.99 for non-Prime subscribers, it’s just $646.99 for Prime users.

Sony’s 55-inch A80J OLED 4K TV with Google TV software is just $999.99 at Best Buy (originally $1,899.99). This deal isn’t being offered at Amazon.
Amazon’s 75-inch Fire TV Omni 4K TV is available for just $839.99 for Prime members, down from its original $1,049.99 price. Note that this model is from Amazon’s first-gen run of Omni TVs, not the QLED model that it just announced in early October. Read our review.

Insignia (Best Buy’s in-house brand) has a 70-inch F30 4K TV with Amazon’s Fire TV software built in for $449.99 ($200 off). Don’t expect stunning quality compared to pricier TVs, but this could be a great fit for someone’s needs, particularly if you want an all-in-one TV that streams shows and movies via Amazon’s Fire TV OS. Plus, Best Buy includes a second-gen Amazon Echo Show 5 smart display at no additional cost.
Sony’s 65-inch X90K 4K TV with full array local dimming (for better control over brightness and darkness) is on sale for $1,198 at Amazon or $1,199.99 at Best Buy. This model includes the Google TV interface built in, which allows you to easily find TV shows and movies.

The 55-inch LG B2 OLED TV is a great deal at $976.99 at Amazon. It offers an amazing picture, HDMI 2.1, and a 120Hz refresh rate, but it can’t get quite as bright as the C2 lineup. Still, it’s a great value if you’re looking for one of LG’s latest models.
Samsung’s 55-inch S95B (QD-OLED) 4K TV is $600 off at Best Buy. Originally $2,199.99, you can snag one today for $1,599.99. This kind of OLED technology delivers more brightness than LG’s current OLED displays. At Amazon, it’s just a smidge cheaper at $1,597.99. Read about this model right here.
LG’s 42-inch C2 Evo OLED TV is down to $996.99 ($400 off) at Amazon, which is its lowest price ever. This is LG’s latest lineup of OLEDs that feature the brightest displays and the best image processing. It’s an exciting TV that should be small enough to put on a desk.

Here are some accessories to go with your new TV

Govee’s DreamView G1 Pro Gaming Light, an LED kit that’s made for monitors between 24 and 32 inches, is $90 (50 percent off) right now at Amazon when you click the on-page coupon for $89.99 off. These lights can add some gorgeous accents to your walls that match the vibe and action of the game that you’re playing. Read our review.

For 55- to 65-inch TVs, you can equip some immersive backlighting with the Govee TV Backlight T2, which is down to $111.99 at Amazon (20 percent off after you click the coupon). These lights match the on-screen by using a camera mounted on your TV.
The latest Apple TV 4K (32GB) is down to $104.49 (originally $179), the best price we’ve seen to date on the excellent streaming device. If you want more storage, the 64GB configuration is on sale for $123.49 ($70 off). Read our review.

Vizio’s high-end Elevate soundbar — which comes with two satellite speakers, a wireless subwoofer, and two rotating, upward-firing speakers for Dolby Atmos — is on sale right now for $664.05 at Amazon and $699.99 at Best Buy. It originally sold for $999.99. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the $300 price cut, but it’s well worth mentioning here. Read our guide to the best soundbars.

The guy in charge of Dish wants to buy Boost from Dish

Illustration of the Dish word mark on a black and red background. — Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Dish Network is considering selling its Boost Mobile arm to a company called CONX Corporation, according to a filing with the SEC, spotted by Light Reading. The rub is that CONX is a “company” founded by Charlie Ergen — co-founder and current chairman of Dish Network itself.

The filing from CONX (no, I won’t get tired of typing that) says that its far from a done deal, informing investors that “no assurances can be made that the parties [it and Dish] will successfully negotiate and enter into a definitive agreement.” And while that’s true for most merger discussions, the fact that Ergen is a higher-up at both companies could help those negotiations go a bit more smoothly.

I don’t blame you if you’re asking “hey, what the heck is a CONX?” According to Light Reading, it’s a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that Ergen founded in 2020 with the goal of acquiring a company in the “technology, media and telecommunications industry.” SPACs are basically shell companies that are taken public to raise funds from investors, and then merged with another company as sort of a way to skip an IPO (though in this case, Boost Mobile is part of Dish, which is already a publicly traded company). You can read an excellent explainer of SPACs as a concept here.

Dish purchased Boost from T-Mobile in 2020, after the latter carrier was required to sell it off as part of the agreement with the FCC that allowed T-Mobile to purchase Sprint. Up until now, it’s seemed as if Dish had big plans for Boost; Dish is supposed to become the fourth cell carrier (again, because of the T-Mobile Sprint purchase), and the cell network it’s been building to reach that goal currently covers around 25 percent of the US population. Dish has been letting people use that network with a service called Project Genesis, but that’s pitched as an option for early adopters. The plan has been to try and entice the general public to use the network via a service called Boost Infinite, set to launch later this year.

If it sells Boost, I’m not exactly sure where that leaves it as a carrier. Genesis isn’t ready to be a flagship cell service, and it’d be an odd move to turn its other brands, like Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless, into competitors to AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile — they’ve been known as budget-friendly MVNOs for years, it’d sort of be like if Verizon started pitching Tracfone as its hotbed for innovation in 5G. Yes, that’s also sort of true for Boost, but, again, Dish has been turning on the marketing machine to change that perception.

According to Light Reading, which spoke to analysis firm New Street Research, it could just be a money play; Boost would get to use CONX’s money instead of Dish’s (while still using its network), and no longer having to operate Boost could free up some money and fundraising capacity to help build out the network that’s legally required to reach 70 percent of the US population by June 14th, 2023. That might make sense to someone super versed in the world of big finance — but to those of us just trying to figure out what cell plan we should get, this could turn what was already a messy and hard-to-understand launch into something you’d need a few flowcharts and knowledge of the Deep Lore to even begin understanding.

The Apple Watch Series 8 is still available for $50 off for Prime Day

Close-up photo of a silver Apple Watch Series 8, sitting atop a reflective tabletop surface, highlighted by a magenta backlight. The screen of the watch is on the watch OS app grid home screen. — *The Apple Watch Series 8 inherits design elements from last year’s Series 7, including the larger display.* | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s almost time to ring the bell for the cows to come home on Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale, but before that happens we want to note you can still get the Apple Watch Series 8 for $50 off. The best part? This one’s not just exclusive to Amazon or Prime members, as a couple of other major retailers are currently matching Amazon’s price and making it widely available.

As for the configurations and colors available, you can get the 41mm Apple Watch Series 8 with GPS for $349 at Amazon (in midnight or red), at Best Buy (in all four colors), or at Walmart (also in all four colors). If you prefer a larger display, you can get the 45mm version of the Series 8 for $379 at Amazon (in red or midnight), at Walmart (in red, silver, or starlight), or at Best Buy (in midnight). Speaking of midnight, these deals are set to expire around midnight eastern time tonight, or 1AM ET in the case of Best Buy.

It’s pretty uncommon to get a deal this good on an Apple product that came out just under one month ago — though the deal running in tandem on the second-gen AirPods Pro may say otherwise. And while we’re sure to see bigger, steeper discounts on the latest crop of Apple Watches at some point in the future, it may not be until Black Friday and Cyber Monday times that we even match this one. The Series 8 may not be the most worthwhile upgrade for those using last year’s Series 7 or the two-year-old Series 6, but if you’ve got a Series 5 or an older model that’s starting to wane in battery life, this is a good time to make the jump and save some coin.

If you do upgrade, or come to the Series 8 as a first-time Apple Watch owner, you can look forward to a speedy interface with watch OS 9, a handy new temperature sensor that helps with menstrual cycle tracking, and even car crash detection. Just maybe be wary if you go on any roller coasters.