With the highest-end graphics cards now costing over $1,000 and taking up a significant chunk of PC builders' budgets, gamers looking to play games on an affordable machine are left with fewer options, but never none. AMD’s Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs have recieved praise for their relatively affordable price point and their ability to keep up with NVIDIA’s lineup closely. Now, we have a new budget GPU, the Radeon RX 7600 XT—and it might be worth a look if you’re looking for an affordable graphics card that can get the job done....

Apple Podcasts finally has an official web app. You can browse any show available on the Apple Podcasts service, access the podcast charts, play anything from your library, buy subscriptions, and more. Apple doesn’t provide a dedicated podcast client for people who use Windows, even though there areMusic and TV apps—only the deprecated iTunes for Windows app can play podcasts. An Android client for Apple Podcasts is also still missing. But with the real web app now available, people using Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, or other operating systems can at long last listen to their Up Next queue and access the whole Apple Podcasts library in a web browser....

Summary Smartwatches are great tools, capable of serving similar functions to smartphones, like making calls and sending texts. They can do many of the things smartphones can do with data, but does that mean they need a data plan themselves? The short answer is no, but the long answer is more complicated. Smartwatch Data Plans May Offer Some Benefits To start, I can’t honestly say that there are absolutely no benefits to having a data plan for your smartwatch, but those benefits are only worth it in a few specific cases....

Quick Links Summary If you’re looking for an easy way to get around town for work, school, or just for fun, Base Camp’s F11 E-Skateboard is an excellent choice. It’s compact, fairly lightweight, lasts for up to nine miles on a single charge, and can max out at a speed of 10 miles per hour. Electric skateboards are just as convenient and comfortable to commute on as electric bikes, but for some reason, they’re not as widely popular....

Boost Mobile wants you to know that it’s a real carrier now, just like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, and not just a MVNO. The company’s own 5G towers now cover most of the U.S. population. Boost Mobilestarted out as just anothermobile virtual network operator, or MVNO for short, meaning it didn’t actually own any cell towers—it was renting network capacity from one of the major carriers. Over the past few years, the company has been building up its own cell network, which now “covers more than 70% of the U....

Quick Links The default Android settings don’t have a ton of optimization options, but there are hidden settings you can enable to tweak and optimize your Android device. These settings can be super effective—you just have to know where to look. We’ll show you around. How to Enable the Hidden Settings The hidden settings are called “Developer Options.” It’s a hidden screen inside the settings app designed to help app developers find and fix bugs in their apps....

Quick Links There’s nothing worse than enjoying a weekend camping or a day at the beach only to realize your cooler isn’t cold enough. If you want a cooler that actually stays cold, doesn’t need any ice, yet can make ice cubes on command, you’ll love theEcoFlow Glacier electric coolerand portable fridge. The EcoFlow Glacier is a battery-powered electric cooler/fridge/freezer that’s $999 and perfect for an RV, overlanding, campers, or living off-grid....

Epson is preparing to launch the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF22 and EF21, a set of smart laser projectors that promise a compelling home theater experience for as low as $900. TheEpiqVision Mini EF22boasts Epson’s popular 3LCD laser design, which delivers enhanced color accuracy while minimizing “rainbow” artifacts. It supports HDR and offers a maximum image size of 150 inches, though auto-keystone and auto-screen fit functionality only works at sizes of 100 inches or less....

Quick Links To make the most of your PlayStation 5, you need to know how to manage user accounts. This includes creating and deleting them, sharing games between them, linking your PSN account, and adding passcodes. Here’s all there is to know. How to Add a User Account on a PS5 You can add a new user account from the welcome screen. This is where you select an account to log in to when you boot up your console....

Few things can push your data cap to the limit quite like downloading modern video games. But with careful planning and smart choices, you can still enjoy your favorite hobby without breaking your data budget. 7Call of DutyIs Not For You Call of Dutygames are huge, with an average size of around 120-150 GB. These massive file sizes can quickly consume your monthly data allowance in a single download. The updates can also be substantial, ranging from 20 to 30 GB each....

Summary Email encryption is something that should be more widespread but isn’t. With the amount of confidential info moving around via email, it makes sense to prioritize it. Now, Gmail is improving how it encrypts emails, but it’s not coming for you—for now, at least. Google is implementing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Gmail. Currently, Gmail supports S/MIME for encryption, which works well enough for users with Google Workspace accounts but doesn’t really work for anyone outside of an organization within Google, whether that’s someone with a personal Gmail account or someone using another email provider....

Summary Personal opinion: NotebookLM is probably Google’s most useful AI product. You can feed it sources and use it as a useful and capable research/study tool. So it’s a shame, then, to see that it somehow doesn’t have an app—Google pays more attention to Gemini instead. Now, though, this is finally changing. In a recent post via X (formerly Twitter), the team behind the tool announced that “the NotebookLM app is coming soon,” letting us in on the news that Google is, indeed, working on a mobile app for its NotebookLM AI tool....

Emoji are great, but you only really have a few thousand of them until they run out. You do get new emoji every year, but why stick with the defaults? Google thought of a great idea a long time ago — what if you could merge two emoji together and use them as stickers on apps? This is exactly the concept that drives theEmoji Kitchen, a project Google is really, really committed to....