Zuckerberg, inspired by Musk, abandons fact checking for Community Notes

Meta says it’s seen the shift to Community Notes ‘work on X.’ | Image: The Verge

Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are ditching third-party fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes program inspired by X, according to an announcement penned by Meta’s new Trump-friendly policy chief Joe Kaplan. Meta is also moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas.

“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see.” Meta said. “We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.”

The Community Notes feature will first be rolled out in the US “over the next couple of months” according to Meta, and will display an unobtrusive label indicating that there is additional information available on a post in place of full-screen warnings that users have to click through. Like the X feature, Meta says its own Community Notes will “require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings.”

The moderation changes aim to address complaints that Meta censors “too much harmless content” on its platforms, and is slow to respond to users who have their accounts restricted. Meta is also moving its trust and safety teams responsible for its content policies and content reviews content out of California to Texas and other US locations, instead of wholesale moving its California headquarters like Elon Musk did with SpaceX and X.

Meta says it’s also scrapping a number of current restrictions around topics like immigration and gender identity, and will start phasing political content back into users' feeds on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads “with a more personalized approach.”

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A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

Meta will still utilize automated moderation systems, but says these will now largely focus on tackling more severe policy violations like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud, and scams. Less severe policy violations will now need to be detected and reported by community members before Meta takes any action against them. Most of Meta’s systems for automatically predicting which posts may violate Meta’s policies and demoting such content are also being scrapped.

“These changes are an attempt to return to the commitment to free expression that Mark Zuckerberg set out in his Georgetown speech,” Meta said. “That means being vigilant about the impact our policies and systems are having on people’s ability to make their voices heard, and having the humility to change our approach when we know we’re getting things wrong.”

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Google is building its own ‘world modeling’ AI team for games and robot training

Image: The Verge

Google DeepMind is assembling a new team of artificial intelligence researchers to develop “world models” that can simulate physical environments. The initiative will be led by Tim Brooks, a former co-lead for OpenAI’s Sora project who joined DeepMind in October to work on Google’s video generation and world simulators.

World models are a relatively new development within AI that could serve a variety of purposes, such as creating real-time interactive media environments for video games and movies, and realistic training scenarios for robots and other AI systems. It’s also part of Google’s push to achieve an artificial general intelligence system, or AGI, before its competitors.

“DeepMind has ambitious plans to make massive generative models that simulate the world,” Brooks announced in an X post on Monday. Brooks included two open job listings for research engineers and scientists who will help to advance AI “world models” capable of simulating real-world scenarios by solving problems around training “at massive scale,” curating training data, and studying how they can be integrated with multimodal language models.

DeepMind has ambitious plans to make massive generative models that simulate the world. I'm hiring for a new team with this mission. Come build with us!https://t.co/pqvALtAvLs https://t.co/vtwgeXl9Dl

— Tim Brooks (@_tim_brooks) January 6, 2025

“We believe scaling pretraining on video and multimodal data is on the critical path to artificial general intelligence,” DeepMind said in the job descriptions. “World models will power numerous domains, such as visual reasoning and simulation, planning for embodied agents, and real-time interactive entertainment.”

The race to be the first to declare AGI is heating up, so Google’s focus here isn’t surprising. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company has cracked how to achieve the tech industry’s long-sought benchmark, and that autonomous AI agents may start to meaningfully join workforces this year.

There are several competitors who already have a head start over DeepMind’s world modeling project, including Nvidia’s Cosmos platform for advancing physical AI, autonomous vehicle, and robot development; and the World Labs startup created by “the godmother of AI,” Fei-Fei Li.

Introducing Genie 2 - our most capable large-scale foundation world model, which can generate a diverse array of consistent worlds, playable for up to a minute. We believe Genie 2 could unlock the next wave of capabilities for embodied agents . pic.twitter.com/AfL3EbOMeB

— Jack Parker-Holder (@jparkerholder) December 4, 2024

The new DeepMind team will work alongside existing Google AI projects including its flagship Gemini AI models, Veo video generator, and Genie — Google’s prior world model for simulating playable 3D environments in real-time.

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Philips Hue is getting an AI-powered lighting assistant

The Philips Hue app already offers a lot of customizable lighting effects, but soon you’ll be able to created personalized ones with the help of AI. | Image: Signify

Philips Hue users will soon be able to create their own AI-powered lighting scenes, the company announced on Tuesday.

Philips Hue’s new generative AI lighting assistant lets users create personalized lighting scenes based on occasion, mood, or style. They can do so by typing commands like “Give me a scene for a garden party” into the Hue app and also by using their voice. The assistant will then either recommend scenes from the existing Philips Hue gallery or create a new one entirely. In addition to creating scenes, the AI assistant can also be used to adjust the settings of existing lights, including brightness levels and color.

Image: Philips Hue

The assistant will recommend scenes based on prompts.

The news comes after Hueblog reported that Philips Hue was working on a generative AI feature in October. According to Hueblog, the “AI Playground” lets users create lighting scenes based on typed text like “Create a scene for a children’s birthday party,” but there was no mention of voice commands.

Philips Hue isn’t the first to offer an AI-powered lighting assistant. Govee’s AI Lighting Bot generates similar dynamic lighting effects and also responds to voice prompts. Meanwhile, Nanoleaf’s “Magic Scenes” feature creates similar scenes, too, but only responds to typed short phrases like “tropical paradise.”

Philips Hue says the AI assistant will be compatible with all of its lights. The company hasn’t divulged details about its exact availability, but stated it’ll start rolling out in the first quarter of 2025.

The AI-powered lighting assistant isn’t the only piece of news Philips Hue announced on Tuesday. The Philips Hue Sync TV app now supports LG TVs, while the color-changing Philips Hue Datura ceiling light is now available in the US starting at $299.99. The frameless ceiling panel offers a pair of individually controllable lights and customizable color effects.

Philips Hue also announced new smart home security features, including smoke alarm sound detection and the ability to stream live camera feeds to Amazon Alexa and the Google Nest Hub. Users can also now check out live camera views or schedule system settings straight from their devices.

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Nvidia is bringing a native GeForce Now app to Steam Deck

Photo by The Verge

Nvidia plans to release a native GeForce Now app for Steam Deck “later this year,” according to a blog post. It’s already relatively straightforward to get Nvidia’s cloud gaming service set up on Steam Deck thanks to a special script from Nvidia, but a native app should be easier to install and will support up to 4K resolution and 60 fps with HDR when connected to a TV.

Nvidia also plans to bring GeForce Now to some major VR headsets later this month, including the Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and Pico “virtual- and mixed-reality devices.” When GeForce Now version 2.0.70 is available, people using those headsets will be able to access an “extensive library of games” they can stream by visiting play.geforcenow.com in their browser.

The company also says that two major titles from Microsoft will be available on GeForce Now when they come out this year: Avowed, which launches February 18th, and DOOM: The Dark Ages, which is set to be available sometime this year.

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Nvidia’s AI NPCs are no longer chatbots — they’re your new PUBG teammate

Nvidia has spent the last two years showing off its digital “ACE” characters that can have in-game conversations with you using generative AI. But at CES 2025, the company is taking the ACE characters a step further by showing how they can be “autonomous game characters” — including, sometime this year, a teammate to help you get a chicken dinner in PUBG.

Nvidia says that ACE characters can use AI to “perceive, plan, and act like human players,” per a blog post. “Powered by generative AI, ACE will enable living, dynamic game worlds with companions that comprehend and support player goals, and enemies that adapt dynamically to player tactics.” The characters are powered by “small language models (SLMs)” that are “capable of planning at human-like frequencies required for realistic decision making” as well as “multi-modal SLMs for vision and audio that allow AI characters to hear audio cues and perceive their environment.”

As for how that will work in PUBG, you’ll be able to team up with the “PUBG Ally,” which Nvidia and PUBG publisher Krafton are calling the “world’s first Co-Playable Character (CPC).” The Ally will be able to “communicate using game-specific lingo, provide real-time strategic recommendations, find and share loot, drive vehicles, and fight other human players using the game’s extensive arsenal of weapons,” Nvidia says.

Basically, it sounds like an AI teammate you can talk with natural language who’s supposed to be as capable as a human. And a video shows the Ally indeed helping a player find specific loot, bringing over a vehicle, and attempting to flank opposing players. But the video is heavily edited and isn’t live, so I’m skeptical that the Ally will work as well as is being shown here.

AI characters built with ACE are coming to other games, too. Naraka: Bladepoint Mobile PC Version will get a “a local inference AI Teammate feature” in March 2025, while Naraka: Bladepoint on PC will get the feature “later in 2025,” according to Nvidia’s blog post. “AI Teammates powered by NVIDIA ACE can join your party, battling alongside you, finding you specific items that you need, swapping gear, offering suggestions on skills to unlock, and making plays that’ll help you achieve victory.”

Krafton’s upcoming life simulation game called inZOI will also get CPCs called “Smart Zoi.” And Nvidia says that ACE characters can be bosses, too, and they’ll be used for boss encounters in Wemade Next’s MIR5.

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Asus’ latest ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet uses AMD’s new integrated graphics

The 2025 Asus ROG Flow Z13.

Asus has a new version of its Surface Pro-like gaming tablet for CES, and it’s making some sizable changes both inside and out. The Asus ROG Flow Z13 for 2025 is once again a slightly chunky, almost-half-inch-thick, 13-inch tablet with a built-in kickstand, magnetic keyboard cover, a bunch of ports, and a clear window on its rear with RGB lighting to show off its innards.

That fun glass window is now larger, with a direct view of the motherboard, but the biggest change for the ROG Flow Z13 is its switch to integrated graphics. That may seem like a step backward for a gaming-focused tablet since gamers covet dedicated GPUs, but Asus is outfitting it with AMD’s powerful new “Strix Halo” processor. The ROG Flow Z13 can be configured with the Ryzen AI Max 390 for $1,999.99 or the Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 for $2,199.99. The top-end model with the Max Plus 395 has 16 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores, while the base-model Ryzen AI Max Plus 390 (curse these names) has 12 CPU cores and 32 graphics cores. The Z13 utilizes a redesigned stainless steel vapor chamber for cooling these graphics-heavy chips, which are capable of 120W TDP.

All that power in the Z13 is responsible for driving a 13-inch, 2560 x 1600 touchscreen display with a speedy 180Hz refresh rate (up from 165Hz on the last-gen model), which you don’t often find in laptops and tablets of this size. For ports, it’s got two USB 4, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1, a microSD card slot capable of UHS-II speeds, and a 3.5mm combination headphone / mic jack. It’s also got a 5-megapixel front-facing webcam and 13-megapixel rear-facing camera — so you can flash your RGB as you awkwardly take tablet photos in public. It also has Wi-Fi 7.

The Z13 supports USB-C Power Delivery for charging, but that won’t be powerful enough to allow its full performance under load. Instead, it comes with a 200W power adapter that uses Asus’ proprietary and reversible slim power jack — like on its recent laptops.

Other quality-of-life improvements for the Z13 include a new detachable keyboard with larger keycaps and a more generously sized touchpad. And on its right side, beside the power button and volume rocker, is a new “ScreenXpert” button that summons a Command-Center-like widget that includes multiple-display window management controls, quick access to operating modes like Turbo mode or Silent mode, and other settings like muting your mic. It’s primarily there to help control things while in tablet mode since the keyboard contains shortcuts for most of these functions.

I got a quick glimpse of the new ROG Flow Z13 at a preview event, and Asus sent me a preproduction model right before CES to get a little bit of hands-on time. It’s what I’m writing this post on right now, and boy do I appreciate the updates to this keyboard cover. The 1.7mm key travel and bigger touchpad go a long way toward getting work done. While the Ryzen 395 chip has the potential to be power-hungry, the battery life on the Z13 shows some promise. Asus is only claiming 10 hours of battery life, and I did manage to get through a full eight-plus-hour workday of Chrome tabs, streaming music (though the speakers seem kind of bad at first listen), and writing across multiple virtual desktops the day before flying to CES — with pretty much no issues.

I definitely prefer a proper laptop to a tablet with a kickstand and keyboard cover, but being able to remove the keyboard deck for a little more flexibility and comfort when it’s time to fire up a game is pretty slick. I tried out a little Helldivers 2 on the Flow Z13, and it performed quite well, especially for a tablet. Set to the Z13’s native 2.5K resolution, in-game render scale on Ultra Quality, and texture details on medium, I saw 60fps or just slightly under, and it looked really nice. If I bumped it down from Ultra Quality to Quality scaling, it jumped up to an even smoother 80fps. This was, of course, while the tablet was plugged in and its fans were blasting on Turbo mode. Diving in again while unplugged dropped the Ultra Quality render scale performance down to the 45 to 50fps range since playing on battery limits you to Performance mode instead of Turbo.

This is preproduction hardware, but so far, it’s pretty impressive for integrated graphics. AMD’s new chip might have something special here for thin and light devices, but since it lacks Thunderbolt 5, that means the Flow Z13 can’t use the full GPU bandwidth of Asus’ new XG Mobile eGPU. (Previous models could use the older XG Mobile via its proprietary connector.) But of course, that would make this somewhat portable PC gaming solution a little less portable, and the new XG Mobile costs about as much as the Flow Z13 itself.

But does a gaming tablet make much sense in 2025 when portable PC gaming is being so adequately served by the Steam Deck and a bunch of other dedicated handhelds? We’ll have to see how a production model of the ROG Flow Z13 fares when it launches sometime in February.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

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The ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18 come with a lid that lights up and more RGB

Plenty of lights to go around. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Following a teaser last month, Asus’ latest ROG Strix Scar gaming laptops have arrived and they’re leaning all the way into the gamer aesthetic. The 2025 Scar 16 and 18 come with RGB lights all the way around the bottom of the chassis as well as a user-programmable LED dot-matrix display on the lid, as seen on other ROG devices like Asus’ gaming phones.

Beneath the flashy exterior, the Scar 16 and 18 can be maxed out with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. It can also be configured with up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and a 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD. The ROG Nebula HDR display comprises a 16:10 2.5K Mini LED panel with a peak brightness of 1,200 nits and a 240Hz refresh rate. There are two Thunderbolt 5 ports included, and the design allows for easy access to the bottom panel for component upgrades.

The Strix Scar 16 and 18 have all the cooling tech you’d expect from a gaming laptop of this caliber, including an end-to-end vapor chamber and sandwiched heatsink. Combined with the Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal treatment on the GPU and CPU, Asus claims that it can keep fan noise levels to a library-like 45dB, even during extended gaming sessions.

On top of all that, the ROG Strix Scar comes with the aforementioned light show. Asus calls it AniMe Vision, and you can customize it to display personalized animations and sync it with any other AniMe Vision devices you own. Download some prebaked artwork or cook up your own using Asus’ pixel editor — the choice is yours.

The ROG Strix Scar starts at $2,599; Asus says its new gaming laptops will begin shipping in February.

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Asus just announced the world’s first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU

The 2025 Asus XG Mobile, now with standard Thunderbolt 5 instead of a proprietary connector. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

This smoky black translucent box isn’t a gaming PC — instead, it might be the most powerful single-cable portable docking station ever conceived. When you plug your laptop or handheld into the just-announced 2025 Asus XG Mobile, it promises to add the power of Nvidia’s top-flight GeForce RTX 5090 mobile chip, and up to 140 watts of electricity, and two monitors, and a USB and SD-card-reading hub, and 5Gbps ethernet simultaneously.

That’s because it’s the world’s first* Thunderbolt 5 external graphics card and one of the first Thunderbolt 5 docks, using the new 80 gigabit per second bidirectional link to do more things with a single cable than we’ve ever seen before.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

The 2025 XG Mobile’s ports — and a standard AC power connector, because the power supply lives inside.

And if you’re keeping score, I’m pretty sure it’s also the first standards-based portable eGPU with an Nvidia graphics chip. While Asus’ last-gen XG Mobile also boasted up to an Nvidia 4090, you could only tap into that power with a proprietary port found only on a few Asus devices. (Its USB4 and Oculink rivals have mostly featured the AMD Radeon 7600M XT.)

None of that makes it the most powerful eGPU out there, as I currently have no performance figures from Asus, and you can definitely go further with bigger docks that can fit desktop graphics cards rather than mobile GPUs. But Asus rep Anthony Spence tells me that the Thunderbolt 5 link does give you up to 64Gbps of bandwidth for its Nvidia graphics — more than USB4 and tied with Oculink — and I’m wowed that Asus managed to fit all this and a 350W power supply (no external brick!) into a sub-2.2-pound package with a fold-out kickstand.

Asus says it’s even 25 percent lighter and 18 percent smaller than the previous proprietary model. It’s got HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1 for video output and a pair of 10Gbps USB-A ports, in case you’re wondering.

Image: Asus

Note that it comes with a little vertical stand, too.

When it arrives later in Q1, it won’t come cheap. Spence says the top-tier XG Mobile with an RTX 5090 laptop chip will cost $2199.99 — meaning you could almost certainly cobble together a more powerful (but stationary) solution yourself. That said, Asus does plan to sell a lower-end $1,199.99 version with Nvidia’s mobile RTX 5070 Ti. Again, you’re paying for compact power here rather than maximum bang for the buck.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Yes, that Asus ROG logo is light-up, programmable RGB using the company’s Aura Sync. You can also make out the top-mounted SD card receptacle.

While it should work with any Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 laptop or handheld, including Asus’ own ROG Ally X, you’ll likely want the still-rare Thunderbolt 5 to get the full GPU bandwidth here. Finding a Thunderbolt 5 computer that doesn’t already have a powerful discrete GPU might be tough, but perhaps some of 2025’s thin-and-light laptops will seize this opportunity to double as potent travel desktops.

*We are aware of one possible Thunderbolt 5 eGPU enclosure, to house a desktop graphics card, but that WinStar has barely even been detailed yet.

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Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holding the Project Digits computer on stage at Nvidia’s CES 2025 press conference. | Image: Nvidia

If you were looking for your own personal AI supercomputer, Nvidia has you covered.

The chipmaker announced at CES it’s launching a personal AI supercomputer called Project Digits in May. The heart of Project Digits is the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which packs enough processing power to run sophisticated AI models while being compact enough to fit on a desk and run from a standard power outlet (this kind of processing power used to require much larger, more power-hungry systems). This desktop-sized system can handle AI models with up to 200 billion parameters, and has a starting price of $3,000. The product itself looks a lot like a Mac Mini.

“AI will be mainstream in every application for every industry. With Project Digits, the Grace Blackwell Superchip comes to millions of developers,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a press release. “Placing an AI supercomputer on the desks of every data scientist, AI researcher and student empowers them to engage and shape the age of AI.”

Image: Nvidia

Project Digits looks like a mini PC.

Each Project Digits system comes equipped with 128GB of unified, coherent memory (by comparison, a good laptop might...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Acer’s Predator Helios 18 AI gaming laptop leans into 4K Mini LED

Image: Acer

Acer has spec bumps and display upgrades for its top-of-the-line Predator Helios 18 and 16 gaming laptops coming later this year.

Announced at CES, the Predator Helios 18 AI gaming laptop now sports a dual-mode Mini LED display that can switch between 4K with a 120Hz refresh rate or 240Hz when running at 1080p. That maximum refresh rate is actually a smidge slower than its 250Hz WQXGA Mini LED (2560 x 1600) predecessor, but that might be worth it for folks who want to enjoy both 4K resolution gaming and high frame rates on a single device. The Predator Helios 18 AI can reach up to 1,000 nits of brightness and supports Nvidia G-Sync to help prevent screen tearing, display stutter, and input lag.

Image: Acer

The design for the new Predator Helios 18 AI gaming laptop has also been updated to display more configurable RGB lighting.

The internal specs have also been upgraded, with configurations offering up to an Intel 15th Gen Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 mobile graphics, 192GB of DDR5 system memory, and 6TB of PCIe Gen 5 SSD storage. The RTX 5090 GPU, in particular, is at least partially responsible for the “AI” inclusion in the laptop’s updated name, which supports over 150 optimized AI apps for things like LLMs, image generation, and more, according to Acer. The Predator Helios 18 AI will be available in the US in May, with pricing starting at $2,999.99.

Image: Acer

Aside from size, the Predator Helios 16 AI is nearly identical visually to its larger counterpart.

The Predator Helios 16 AI has also received some generational improvements, including a 2560 x 1600 OLED display with a 240Hz refresh rate. It can be configured with the same processor and GPU as its larger counterpart, alongside up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of PCIe Gen 5 SSD storage. It’ll hit shelves in the US in June, with prices starting at $2,299.99.

Both models also feature swappable mechanical keys and proprietary sixth-gen AeroBlade metal fans for thermals, which Acer says can increase airflow by up to 20 percent compared to plastic fans. While both models include support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3, port selection is now limited to two Thunderbolt 5 jacks — which might be restrictive depending on your existing peripherals and gaming accessories.

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Get ready for virtual AI cohosts that chat with Twitch stars and control their streams

Image: Inworld AI, Streamlabs, and Nvidia

Inworld AI, Streamlabs, and Nvidia are partnering on a new AI assistant for streamers that can provide technical support for streams in real time and even act as a quippy cohost.

As a cohost, the “Intelligent Streaming Assistant” can understand what’s happening in games like Fortnite and offer “contextually relevant commentary,” according to a press release. “This awareness enables the assistant to do things like highlight a well-timed build, provide commentary during a dramatic Victory Royale, or shoutout audience members for sending tips.”

Image: Inworld AI, Streamlabs, and Nvidia

As a producer, the assistant will be able to trigger “audio and visual effects to enhance high-impact gameplay” as well as capture clips. The assistant can also help set up Streamlabs Desktop and offer troubleshooting advice. And streamers will be able to pick from “assistant personalities” that can “complement the tone of their stream, whether they’re looking for subtle behind-the-scenes support or a lively co-host.”

The tool seems like it could be a useful and potentially entertaining way to improve your streams. But based solely on how it’s demonstrated in a video, the assistant might also look and sound like an awkward AI avatar, so I’m not sure how widely it might be used in practice.

The Intelligent Streaming Assistant is set to launch in Streamlabs’ app store later this year.

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Alienware’s flagship desktop finally ditches proprietary parts

The new Alienware Area-51 desktop. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Alienware has built some of the easiest-to-open toolless gaming PCs around — but for years, the Dell-owned brand has stifled their upgrade potential by limiting them to Dell’s own proprietary power supplies and motherboards.

But the 2025 Alienware Area-51, an 80-liter tower just introduced at CES in Las Vegas, finally ditches the proprietary parts in favor of standard ATX components.

Even though the tempered glass sided chassis features fancy compartments for liquid cooling and power supplies, it’s no longer a hexagonal monster or even a proprietary tower: it’ll come with a standard power supply, standard based motherboard, and even feature standard fan mounting locations. And even though there’s a dedicated daughterboard to easily control and cable manage its lighting, fans, I/O, and power switch, Dell will offer a conversion kit to make it work with third-party motherboards.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

You can see the daughterboard here.

“With this edition, we are returning to our roots with a machine that caters to the desires of PC gaming enthusiasts and longtime Alienware fans who have a deep appreciation for technology and a can-do attitude for manually customizing their build to their needs,” writes brand manager Matt McGowan, promising “the ability to make serious upgrades for years to come.”

Why now? I asked McGowan, and his primary answer is that he’s listening to his customers. “I’m talking with customers, reading reviews, understanding what the sentiment is in the market and where things are going,” he tells The Verge, and what he’s hearing is demand for “standard mounting locations” — a demand so “loud” that Alienware decided to make a “wholesale shift” toward a fully upgradable computer.

That’s not to say there weren’t reasons to go proprietary, or that Alienware is promising to do this on every PC. In fact, Alienware built its own nonproprietary ATX motherboard for this Alienware Area-51, and the new 2025 version of its smaller Aurora (a spec bump with new Nvidia and Intel chips) will still feature proprietary motherboards and power supplies, at least for now.

McGowan says that’s because of the “leverage” Dell gets with proprietary parts.

“If you go back years and years, there was a decision to take the power supply unit and go and drive commonality between our Dell Precision products and Alienware products,” he explains. Dell got better prices that way — and, he argues, more efficient, higher-quality power supplies, too, by unifying its supply chain and taking advantage of those economies of scale.

And, he says, it allowed Dell to shrink the size of its PC cases at a time its commercial customers, in particular, valued a “form factor aggressive” chassis.

Images: Dell

So, does that mean the Alienware Aurora, the smaller and less expensive desktop that Dell is more likely to sell in volume, will get the ATX treatment, too? “We’re evaluating that for Aurora as well,” McGowan tells me, but he isn’t promising anything today. “We have to hit an inflection point ... where we apply resources to go and redesign the internals of that chassis,” he says.

But Dell would need to see the numbers add up — not just in terms of price, but the ratios of price, performance, size, and quality that would allow a new Aurora to compete.

“There’s a clear customer advantage around how much power we can put into a compact mini tower. The other [consideration] is cost related; when we get economies of scale across other Dell product and it’s something we can adopt with little impact on the gaming side, we’re going to take that and pass that savings on to the user,” he says.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

This is far from Dell’s only shift in strategy this year in an attempt to become more consumer-friendly: it’s also killing off the XPS brand for Apple-like “Pro” and “Pro Max” product lines instead, and those Pro laptops will now all feature consumer-replaceable USB-C ports in addition to user-replaceable batteries.

Alienware hasn’t shared the entry price or configuration of the Area-51 quite yet but says it’ll ship later in Q1 starting at $4,499 with a “high-end, next-gen Nvidia GPU.” The company is also announcing a pair of new Area-51 laptops.

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Alienware’s 27-inch 4K 240Hz OLED monitor is only a couple months away

Image: Dell

Alienware is joining Asus, Samsung, and MSI in making a silly “world’s first” claim — all four of them are now set to launch a genuinely exciting new wave of 27-inch 4K QD-OLED gaming monitors with an excellent 240Hz refresh rate. Remember when I called Alienware’s 32-inch version the best monitor of CES last year because it finally offered the best of all worlds? Now, you’ll be able to buy a smaller 27-inch version, without a curved screen, in a far more subtle design that no longer dominates your desk.

Like competitors that are using the same Samsung panel, the Alienware AW2725Q has a technically 26-inch screen that offers 166 pixels per inch and 250 nits of typical brightness (1,000 nits of HDR at peak), while displaying 99 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut.

Unlike some competitors, though, Alienware’s G-Sync and FreeSync Premium Pro screen only offers DisplayPort 1.4 rather than DisplayPort 2.1, which could theoretically mean dealing with the occasional Display Stream Compression (DSC) hiccup to get your 4K at 240Hz. It also features a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports that offer 4K at 240 with HDR, VRR, ALLM, and eARC for Dolby Atmos passthrough. There’s no USB-C video in, but the 15-pound monitor does offer a very basic USB-A hub and a single USB-C port with 15W charging.

Image: Dell

The ports. Tap here to enhance.

The monitor supports Dolby Vision HDR and offers a three-year burn-in warranty — with a graphite sheet “placed between the panel layers” to help fight burn-in and image retention, plus “AI-based technology” that “actively monitors on-screen images and makes adjustments to help prevent burn-in.”

For now, the best thing it has going for it over the competition is a firm price and release window: March for $900 in the US or $1,230 CAD in Canada. (Alienware’s competitors for the 32-inch version took a good bit longer to hit the market, and I wonder if that’ll be the same this time.) The monitor will actually hit China this month and arrive in EMEA territories in April.

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The Razer Blade 16 is even thinner this year

The 2025 Razer Blade 16.

Razer announced it’s overhauling the Razer Blade 16 inside and out. In addition to a new CPU and GPU, the Blade 16 is now thinner overall than the outgoing 2024 model and comes with a few tweaks to its audio system and keyboard.

The new Blade 16 comes with up to a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU and a “next-gen NvidiaGPU.” The company also bumped its speaker array from four to six speakers, while the display carries over the 240Hz OLED introduced to the line last year. This is the first time Razer has put an AMD processor in the Blade 16.

Razer says it’s packing all of that into a chassis that’s over 30 percent thinner than last year’s model at just 0.59 inches — or 14.9 millimeters — thickin the front and 0.69 inches (17.4mm) in the back, not including the feet. For reference, the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 is 0.61 inches (15.5mm) thick, including feet. The new Razer Blade is also deeper than last year’s model, measuring 250.5mm front to back, versus 244mm for the 2024 Blade 16. Despite all of that, Razer says it increased the travel of its keyboard keys from 1mm to 1.5mm. And there’s now a Copilot key, of course.

That thinness may come at a cost: the new Blade 16 has a 90Wh battery that it says can charge to 80 percent in about 45 minutes. The fast charging may come in handy; the larger 95.2Wh battery in the Blade 16 we reviewed in 2023 already felt like it wasn’t up to the task. That review unit was also a hot laptop. Razer says it’s using a new thermal gel that covers more interior surface area than the 2023 model.

The 2025 model (top) vs. the thicker 2024 model (bottom).

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

2024 (left) vs. 2025 (right).

The AMD chip it’s using might help things, though. When we tested an Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 with that Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU against the same laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, the AMD version ran for three hours longer in non-gaming tasks and put out slightly less heat, though Asus puts a much lower power draw cap on its gaming laptops than Razer does. Naturally, we won’t know how any of that affects the new Blade 16 until we have one in hand to test.

The 2025 Razer Blade 16 is due out in the first quarter of this year. Razer didn’t announce pricing, but you can bet it won’t be cheap.

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Nvidia announces DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide running on a GeForce RTX 5090 at 4K | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia is revealing a big upgrade to its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology today. DLSS 4 will include new neural rendering capabilities that, on systems with the new RTX 50 Series GPUs, can do Multi Frame Generation, generating “up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame, working in unison with the complete suite of DLSS technologies to multiply frame rates by up to 8X over traditional brute-force rendering.”

According to Nvidia, that’s a big enough upgrade to make 4K 240fps, fully ray-traced gaming possible. Also, in an upgrade that will work on all GeForce RTX GPUs, DLSS games with Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution, and DLAA can be updated to new transformer AI models that use the same tech as AI tools like ChatGPT.

Nvidia says its new frame generation model is 40 percent faster and uses 30 percent less VRAM than the old one.

Here’s a slide showing which features are available on which series of RTX GPUs:

Image: Nvidia

DLSS 4 arrives more than two years after Nvidia introduced DLSS 3 with Frame Generation to boost performance in a variety of games. Nvidia then introduced DLSS 3.5 in August 2023 with an AI-powered Ray Reconstruction technique to improve the quality of ray tracing and introduce path tracing (full ray tracing) in select titles. In August last year, Nvidia revealed it now has more than 600 games and applications with RTX support.

At launch, Nvidia says there will be 75 games and apps that support Multi Frame Generation, with A_lan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle_, and Star Wars Outlaws supporting it when RTX 50 Series GPUs launch.

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Nvidia announces next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia is officially announcing its RTX 50-series GPUs today. After months of leaks and rumors, the next-generation RTX Blackwell GPUs are now official, and there are four of them on the way.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed the RTX 50-series GPUs during a CES keynote this evening, announcing a $1,999 RTX 5090, a $999 RTX 5080, a $749 RTX 5070 Ti, and a $549 RTX 5070. Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs will both be available on January 30th, with the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 to follow.

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs.

The RTX 50-series GPUs include a new design for the Founders Edition, with just two double flow-through fans, a 3D vapor chamber, and GDDR7 memory. Surprisingly, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition will be a two-slot GPU and will be capable of fitting inside small form factor PCs.

The RTX 5090 has 32GB of GDDR7, a memory bandwidth of 1,792GB/sec, and a massive 21,760 CUDA cores. This all adds up to a GPU that Nvidia says will be two times faster than the RTX 4090, thanks to DLSS 4 and the Blackwell architecture.

Nvidia demonstrated Cyberpunk 2077 running on an RTX 5090 with DLSS 4 at 238fps compared to 106fps on an RTX 4090 with DLSS 3.5. Both GPUs are running the game with full ray tracing enabled.

The RTX 5080 is designed to be twice as fast as the RTX 4080 and will include 16GB of GDDR7 memory, a memory bandwidth of 960GB/sec, and 10,752 CUDA cores. Nvidia is promising big performance gains with the RTX 5080 over the previous RTX 4080 model as a result.

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s RTX 5080 performance promises.

Nvidia is also launching an RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070. The RTX 5070 Ti includes 16GB of GDDR7 memory, a memory bandwidth of 896GB/s, and 8,960 CUDA cores. The RTX 5070 has 12GB of GDDR7, a memory bandwidth of 672 GB/sec, and 6,144 CUDA cores. Nvidia says the RTX 4070 Ti will be 2x faster than the RTX 4070 Ti, and the RTX 5070 should be twice as fast as the RTX 4070.

Nvidia is also bringing its RTX 50-series to laptops, with the RTX 5090 laptop GPU debuting with 24GB of GDDR7 memory. The RTX 5080 laptop GPU will ship with 16GB of GDDR7 memory, the RTX 5070 Ti with 12GB of GDDR7 memory, and the RTX 5070 with just 8GB of GDDR7 memory. RTX 50-series laptops will be available starting in March from a variety of PC makers.

Image: Nvidia

RTX 50-series laptops are coming in March.

Huang demonstrated Nvidia’s RTX Blackwell GPUs with a real-time rendering demo at the beginning of the company’s CES keynote today. The demo included new RTX Neural Materials, RTX Neural Faces, text to animation, and even DLSS 4. “The new generation of DLSS can generate beyond frames, it can predict the future,” says Huang. “We used GeForce to enable AI, and now AI is revolutionizing GeForce.”

Nvidia’s new RTX Neural Shaders can be used to compress textures in games, while RTX Neural Faces aim to improve face quality using generative AI. The next generation of DLSS includes Multi Frame Generation, which generates up to three additional frames per traditional frame and can multiply frame rates by up to 8x over traditional rendering, according to Nvidia.

DLSS 4 also includes a real-time application of transformers to improve image quality, reduce ghosting, and add higher detail in motion.

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series announcement comes more than two years after the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 were announced, based on Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture. Nvidia’s RTX 40-series of GPUs focused on improving ray tracing with Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) version 3, and the RTX 4090 delivered some truly impressive performance gains over the previous RTX 3090 GPU.

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Eufy’s new robovac transforms into a handheld vacuum

The Eufy E20 might be the first robovac that cleans more than just floors. | Image: Eufy

Eufy is making it easier to splurge on a robot vacuum with a new model that can clean more than just your floors. The Eufy 3-in-1 E20 has a unique design that transforms from an autonomous robovac to a manual stick or handheld vacuum by removing a unit containing the motor, dust bin, and battery and then attaching other cleaning accessories.

The E20 is available for preorder starting today for $499.99 through Eufy’s website with a $50 discount. It will officially be available starting on February 10th through additional retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy, for its full price of $549.99.

Image: Eufy

The vacuum’s motor, dust bin, and battery are contained in a single unit that can be inserted into a robot vacuum, which adds lasers and a brush head.

In robovac mode, the E20 has 8,000Pa of suction power and a runtime of up to 180 minutes from a battery that takes 2.5 hours to fully charge. It lacks floor-mopping capabilities but features a spinning brush with “anti-tangle comb teeth” to help reduce hair getting tangled around it, similar to the Eufy X10 Pro Omni.

Image: Eufy

The E20’s compact dock charges and empties the robovac’s dust bin and has enough capacity for up to 75 days of cleanings.

Instead of cameras, the E20 uses a set of three lasers (located on the top, front, and side of the robot) that Eufy says can detect and avoid “obstacles as small as 15mm,” even in the dark. When it needs a charge, the E20 will return to its included base station, where its 350mL dustbin is automatically emptied into a filtered bag that has enough capacity for an estimated 75 days of cleanings.

Image: Eufy

In stick vacuum mode, the E20 has almost four times the suction power as it does in robot mode.

In handheld mode, the E20’s suction power jumps to 30,000Pa for getting off-the-floor areas a robovac can’t access like furniture. It can also be used as a manual floor vacuum for tackling messes that may need a few back-and-forth passes to get clean or for tidying other floors in a home where the robot doesn’t roam.

The robot includes built-in storage for a small crevice tool, but the rest of the E20’s accessories, including a powered brush head, can be stored on an optional wall-mounted hanger that doesn’t necessarily need to be installed near the base station — you can hide it away in a closet. That approach helps keep the E20’s charging dock compact and discreet.

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Anker’s solar umbrella uses next-gen perovskite cells to keep a longer charge

Not sure what’s less realistic: this usage scenario or the shadows in this image. | Image: Anker

You’ve seen EcoFlow’s hat with integrated solar panels — now meet Anker’s more practical Solix Solar Beach Umbrella, fitted with a new generation of perovskite solar cells. It can produce up to 100W of total output from XT-60 and USB-C connections, which could keep Anker’s new battery-powered Solix EverFrost 2 Electric Cooler running indefinitely in sunny environments.

Perovskite is a new type of solar cell that can outperform the silicon-based cells found in most of today’s solar panels in almost every way. Anker claims its perovskite cells offer “30 percent better performance than crystalline silicon solar cells in bright light, and double the efficiency in low light.”

The silicon-based solar cells shipping today in consumer panels currently max out at around 24 percent efficiency, with a theoretical efficiency near 30 percent. Solar panels that layer a perovskite film on top of a silicon base can absorb even more light — perovskite cells can be optimized at the blue end of the light spectrum while silicon cells harvest energy on the red end — to reach solar conversion efficiencies of up to 43 percent. That’s a step change in how we harvest energy from the sun. Notably, perovskite can be made from low-cost materials that are widely available.

Image: Anker

The solar umbrella keeping a phone charged over USB-C.

A UK-based company called Oxford PV announced in September that it had already started the “world’s first” commercial sales of solar panels using perovskite-on-silicon cells, boasting a 24.5 percent efficiency, with improvements on the horizon.

Unfortunately, Anker isn’t offering any details on the origins of its “perovskite solar cells,” despite us reaching out with questions. That leaves a lot of unknowns around things like conversion efficiencies and life expectancy — the latter being a historical problem for perovskite. We also don’t know the weight of the umbrella. We do know that the folding Solix Solar Beach Umbrella stands just over seven feet (215cm) tall with a six-foot, two-inch (190cm) diameter. It also has an IP67 rating, so it should hold up to blowing sand and rain.

There’s still time for Anker to answer our questions, since the solar umbrella won’t ship before summer 2025 for an undetermined price.

Image: Anker

Image: Anker

Image: Anker

Image: Anker

Two removable batteries with ports that can also charge your USB-A and USB-C gadgets.

We know a lot more about Anker’s new Solix EverFrost 2 Electric Cooler, available in 23L, 40L, and 58L models. The rugged (IPX3) unit features six-inch wheels — large enough to roll over semi-rough terrain (small stones and rough gravel) — and a fold-down tray that can also be used as a handle. However, only the 58L model includes two independent compartments to create a dual-zone fridge and freezer.

Anker claims it’s the first from this class of portable fridges to use air-cooled refrigeration instead of direct cooling. That will likely make it noisier and less power-efficient than competing models from EcoFlow and Bluetti, while having the advantage of improved temperature uniformity, faster cooldown, and no need to manually defrost the thing.

The Solix EverFrost 2 can provide up to 104 hours of cooling from a pair of detachable 288Wh LFP batteries — and half that with a single battery. The batteries can also be removed to function as power banks, with 60W USB-C and 12W USB-A jacks to charge your gadgets. The batteries can be charged off 100W of solar input, a 12V car socket, an AC wall jack, or USB-C connection.

Prices are set at $699 (23L), $749 (40L), and $999 (58L), with preorders for the 40L and 58L models starting on February 21st before shipping a few weeks later. The tiny 23L model is slated to launch in Q2.

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Eureka’s new robot vac can tackle wet messes

The J15 Max Ultra uses infrared technology to identify wet messes and clean them without damaging the robot. | Image: Eureka

Most robot vacuum mops can tackle mopping your floors and maybe scrub up a dried-on stain, but let them trundle through a puddle of spilled milk or juice, and they’re likely to smear the liquid around. If they do suck any up, it could seriously damage the robot’s internals — robot vacuums are not wet / dry vacs.

Robot vacuum manufacturer Eureka claims to have solved this problem with its new J15 Max Ultra ($1,299). According to the company, this robot vacuum and mop, debuting at CES 2025, can accurately spot liquids and automatically rotate its body to tackle wet spills with its mopping pads.

“The J15 Max Ultra adds an infrared vision system to the robot vac, so it can detect the 3D structure of anything in front of it no matter what the lighting is,” Yuan Ruan, PR manager of Midea Group, which owns Eureka, told The Verge in an interview. This allows it to spot and react to liquid spills, both clear and colored. In addition to mopping first, it also raises its roller brush to avoid sucking any liquid into the bin.

A video from Eureka demonstrating how the robot vacuum tackles wet spills.

While most people aren’t likely to leave wet puddles on their floors — grabbing some paper towel to soak it up only takes a few seconds — it’s feasible that a pet might leave a wet mess while you’re not home. This type of advancement in the capabilities of a robot vacuum to react to what it’s cleaning and adjust appropriately is encouraging.

Over the past few years, high-end robot vacuums have gotten smarter about identifying and reacting to specific objects — such as cables, solid pet waste, and socks — using cameras and computer vision.

Models from companies like iRobot and Roborock can determine what to do based on the type of object they spot. So, rather than simply avoid an object, they will adapt how they clean if they spot certain items. For example, if it’s a pet bowl or kitty litter tray, get close and increase the suction; if it’s a Christmas tree or potted plant, approach with care.

Image: Eureka

The Eureka J15 Max Ultra is the company’s newest flagship robot vacuum and mop.

Eureka’s new liquid spotting ability builds on this type of intelligence. Eventually, we’ll get to the point where robot vacuums can accurately identify most items in our homes and clean them similar to how we would.

Eureka’s smarts are powered by its new IntelliView AI 2.0 technology, which adds IR vision to the robot’s lidar navigation system and uses computer vision to help it decide how to clean what it sees or if it should avoid it.

Image: Eureka

The J15 can lift its chassis up to 1.57 inches (40mm) to get over transitions and high-pile rugs.

The Eureka J15 Max Ultra is an upgrade to the J15 Pro Ultra ($999.99), which can identify colored liquids but not clear or white ones. The Max also features a new extendable side brush that can reach out into corners (a feature first seen in the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra). It also adds increased suction power — up to 22,000Pa from 16,500Pa — increased battery capacity, and a threshold crossing height of up to 40mm.

Both models feature Eureka’s FlexiRazor tech that uses razors inside the robot’s brush system to cut out tangles and dual spinning mop pads that can extend into corners and edges and light up when they detect carpet. The J15 line also has auto-empty base stations that can refill the mopping tank and wash and dry the robot’s mop pads with hot water and air.

The company also introduced the more affordable J15 Ultra to its lineup at CES. The $799 model has most of the same features as the $1,000 J15 Pro Ultra, including the ability to detect colored liquids, but with an increased 19,000Pa of suction power. It will be available in March 2025. The J15 Max Ultra will be available in June 2025.

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Anker’s new wall charger has ports on the bottom to help it stay plugged in

Anker’s new wall charger relocates the charging ports and introduces a display showing the power output for each one. | Image: Anker

Anker has announced a new 140W wall charger at CES 2025 with a design that positions four USB ports on the underside to improve its center of gravity and help it stay plugged in with cables attached. It’s also Anker’s first wall charger with a built-in screen displaying each port’s power output.

The Anker Charger (140W) with display will be available starting on January 7th, 2025, for $89.99. The wall charger debuts alongside the new Anker 25K Power Bank, a 25,000mAh power bank with a retractable 27.2-inch USB-C cable and a screen offering similar charging info, priced at $99.99.

Anker’s previous solution to its heavier GaN chargers (that did have a tendency to fall out of outlets) was to introduce a smaller design with thicker, textured prongs offering more grip. With four USB ports — three USB-C and one USB-A — the new design could work even better while also charging four devices simultaneously. The only downside is that the repositioned ports could make it more difficult to plug in devices in the dark of night.

Two of the charger’s USB-C ports can deliver up to 140W of power, while the third maxes out at 40W and the USB-A is limited to 33W. Those speeds will be reduced with all four USB ports in use. The integrated display, located where the USB ports have traditionally been found on Anker’s chargers, will show how much power each USB port is drawing as well as the remaining power available if all four aren’t in use.

Image: Anker

Anker’s new 25,000mAh power bank has two integrated USB-C cables, including one that’s over two feet long and fully retracts.

Anker says its new 25,000mAh power bank is about the size of a soda can and can deliver a total of up to 165W of power across three USB-C ports and a single USB-A port, or up to 100W to a single USB-C port for fast-charging laptops. The power bank’s display shows how much power is being drawn by the devices connected to each port.

Two of the power bank’s USB-C ports have integrated charging cables: an external 8.6-inch cord that transforms into a carrying strap and a 27.2-inch cord that fully retracts, so you’ll never find yourself without one.

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Sony is working on Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2 movies

Image: Chris Welch / The Verge

During its CES 2025 keynote, PlayStation Productions head Asad Qizilbash and Screen Gems president Ashley Brucks explained how Sony plans to keep expanding its IP after adaptations of The Last of Us, Gran Turismo, Twisted Metal, and Uncharted.

They announced that Sony Pictures is working on a film adaptation of last year’s hit Helldivers 2, while Columbia Pictures and PlayStation Productions are in “early stages” of developing a Horizon Zero Dawn movie. After an attempt at turning it into a Netflix series fell apart, the HZD movie will, like the game, tell the main character Aloy’s origin story in a fallen futuristic world, but that is all of the information we have about them for now.

Earlier in the presentation, execs also announced that Crunchyroll and Aniplex are teaming up to create an anime series based on Ghost of Tsushima.

Finally, Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann took the stage and presented a clip from The Last of Us season 2, which will arrive on Max in April.

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The Last of Us season 2 will premiere in April

The Last of Us will return to HBO and Max this April. Series creative director, Neil Druckmann, announced the premiere of the show’s second season onstage at CES this evening alongside a short teaser for the new season. A specific premiere date wasn’t given.

The show’s first season wrapped up in March 2023, so it’ll be more than two years between seasons by the time the new one debuts. The Last of Us’ first season was very well-received — particularly for a video game adaptation — so expectations are high for the show’s return.

This season is supposed to cover a portion of the second game, with the full story being split across two or more seasons, according to an interview last year with the show’s creators. “We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons [2 and 3] because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in Season 1 too,” showrunner Craig Mazin told Deadline.

Alongside the return of The Last of Us, Sony also announced plans to bring several other PlayStation titles to the screen. Ghost of Tsushima is being adapted into an anime series, and both Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2 are being made into films.

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There’s a new contender for budget smartwatch king

The Amazfit Active 2 may only be $100–$130, but it’s a good-lookin’ budget watch.

Amazfit may not be a household name, but it’s been crushing it in the budget smartwatch space for a long time. And at CES 2025, the company is trying to outdo itself with the $99 Amazfit Active 2.

I was a big fan of the company’s GTR 4 watch — it wasn’t a looker, but it packed in an incredible amount of value for $200. I liked it so much that it’s sat comfortably as the top overall pick in our fitness tracker buying guide for two years. Compared to that watch, the Active 2 has even more functionality for half that price.

It’s got a bright 2,000 nit OLED display, upgraded health sensors, revamped heart rate and sleep algorithms, and the Zepp Flow AI assistant. There’s also a smarter strength training mode that can auto-detect sets, reps, and rest, offline maps with turn-by-turn directions, and personalized training plans via the Zepp Coach integration. For people with periods, there’s also a mini app in collaboration with Wild.AI, which delivers diet and exercise recommendations based on hormonal and menstrual cycles throughout a person’s life (i.e., reproductive years, perimenopause, and menopause). The watch also works in tandem with the company’s recently launched Helio smart ring, similar to how the Samsung Galaxy Ring optimizes sensor accuracy with its Galaxy Watches. European users will also get contactless payments via Zepp Pay, a feature that was notably missing from the GTR 4.

The display gets up to 2,000 nits of brightness.

You almost never find this kind of feature set for under $250. It’s bonkers that you can get it for $100.

Amazfit’s Active line, which launched last year, effectively replaces its popular GTR lineup (though you can still easily find GTR 4 models online). Style-wise, you can see that in how the Active 2 switches from the original Active’s square, Apple Watch-esque design to a more classic 44mm round watchface. The standard model comes with a tempered glass screen, stainless steel case, and a 20mm silicone sport band. The premium model costs $129 and upgrades the screen to a more durable sapphire glass and includes an additional leather strap. Compared to the Active, the Active 2 also adds more advanced hardware like a barometer, a gyroscope, and an ambient light sensor. Battery life isn’t quite as good, dropping to 10 days with normal use compared to 14 days. (That said, 10 days is still impressive compared to the competition.)

I wish the touchscreen were a little more responsive, but that’s been my only real complaint so far.

On paper, the Active 2 feels like it ought to have some kind of catch. However, I’ve been wearing the premium Active 2 for the last few days, and it’s quite nice. So far, performance has been zippy, it’s lightweight on the wrist, and I’ve already gotten several compliments from coworkers. Sometimes budget devices can look chintzy, and while no one would mistake the Active 2 for a luxury watch, it doesn’t look or feel as cheap as a $100–$150 smartwatch could. I’m still testing out the health and fitness features, but so far, it’s held up well on a handful of treadmill runs, and in the last three days, I’ve only used about 25 percent battery. I wish the touchscreen were a bit more responsive, but it’s nothing too egregious thus far. It’s too early for me to make a definitive call on the Active 2, but so far, it’s looking like it could be a compelling option for folks who want a simpler smartwatch without breaking the bank.

The Active 2 is available for preorder in the US now and will launch globally in February.

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Sony’s Xyn is a prototype VR headset for making 3D games and movies

Image: Sony

Sony is launching the Xyn (pronounced zin), an “extended reality” headset for creating 3D objects for films, animation, and games. The device, which Sony first teased at CES last year, will come with 4K OLED displays, video passthrough, and support for third-party design, modeling, and production software.

Based on the video shared by Sony, it looks like wearers will be able to flip up the headset when they’re not using it. It doesn’t appear to come with the ring and pointer that Sony showed off last year, though.

Alongside the headset, Sony revealed Xyn Motion Studio, an accompanying Windows app that supports up to 12 Mocopi sensors, its wireless motion-tracking system that V-Tubers and other creators often use to control virtual avatars. The software comes with motion-editing features, allowing creators to trim and merge motions, as well as adjust time and position.

There’s also a prototype of a “spatial capture solution,” which is supposed to transform images of real objects and spaces into “photorealistic” 3D computer-generated assets using Sony’s algorithm. One year out from Sony’s initial teaser, and details are still pretty slim on what exactly this headset will be capable of, aside from viewing and interacting with 3D objects.

Sony is planning to release its Xyn Motion Studio software in late March 2025, but there still isn’t any word on the availability or pricing of its headset.

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This toaster-looking gadget boosts your phone’s battery in seconds

Not an actual toaster.

I didn’t have “phone toaster” on my CES bingo card, but here we are. Swippitt is a unique solution to the problem of keeping your phone battery charged up, and it promises a life where you basically never have to plug your phone into a charger again. But it’ll cost you.

To be clear, there isn’t an actual toaster involved. Swippitt — which rhymes with “whip it,” and I’m sorry you have that song stuck in your head now — includes a system of interchangeable batteries that fit into specially designed phone cases. You use your phone like normal, and the extra battery charges your phone through a power connector integrated into the case — much like plenty of other battery cases on the market.

Swippitt’s Link phone case holds a battery in place while it’s in use and allows it to be swapped when placed in the hub.

But instead of having to recharge the external battery, you swap it out. To change the battery out for a new one, you insert your phone, case and all, into the Swippitt Hub, which is the toaster-looking bit. Inside the hub, a fully charged battery is swapped into your case, the old one is retained to recharge, and your phone is ready to go with a fresh external battery. The whole thing happens within seconds. The demo unit I saw was pretty noisy about it all, but I’m told final production models will have much better sound dampening.

Each external battery provides an extra 3,500mAh, which is roughly 50 to 90 percent extra charge, depending on the size of your phone’s battery. That power is available immediately to begin charging your phone, or if you’re topping off a battery that’s not super low, it can sit in reserve until needed. An accompanying app lets you set lots of different parameters — things like limiting the charging of your phone’s battery to 80 percent to extend its lifespan, dictating certain times of day to charge your phone, that kind of thing.

Because it uses a mechanical process to swap external batteries, Swippitt works with any phone as long as there’s a case designed for it. That way, a single hub can serve a whole household of people with different phone models. At launch, it will offer cases for the iPhone 14, 15, and 16 series, and the company plans to expand with Samsung Galaxy S series cases by the end of 2025. The company’s CEO and founder Padraic Connolly tells me that they’ve designed it with some wiggle room to keep the hub and batteries all compatible even if phones (groan) continue getting bigger in the coming years.

This all clicked for me when I realized that Swippitt isn’t just selling a silly charging gadget — it’s selling a life where you never have to plug your phone into a charger again. Who wouldn’t want that? But this vision of an untethered future comes at a price: $450 for the hub, which contains five batteries, and a phone case with a battery included is $120. The company is running some introductory promos, including 30 percent off your entire purchase if you order in January, as well as another $100 off as a kind of CES special. Swippitt expects the system to start shipping in June 2025.

Still, you could buy a whole bunch of nice MagSafe chargers for that kind of money. But what Swippitt offers is a tidier solution, one you don’t really have to think about. For some people, that kind of convenience might be worth the price. The rest of us will probably have to keep our phone chargers for now.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

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Sony and Honda’s Afeela electric car will start at $89,900

Image: Chris Welch / The Verge

Afeela is starting to become a little bit more than just a feeling. The electric vehicle that’s a joint venture between Sony and Honda is finally available for preorder. And it only took five years to get here.

At its press conference at CES today, Sony Honda Mobility announced pricing and preorder details for Afeela 1. The vehicle will come in two trims: the $89,900 Afeela 1 Origin and the $102,900 Afeela 1 Signature. Both prices include a complimentary three-year subscription to a variety of in-car features, including the company’s Level 2+ driver assist and an AI-powered personal assistant.

Preorders start today, and interested buyers who live in California — and apparently only California — can plunk down a refundable $200 deposit to get in line to buy one. It’s unclear if and when Afeela will be available to the other 49 states.

We’re also getting some new specs, including up to 300 miles of EPA-estimated range, and built in support for Tesla’s Supercharger network. The only paint option appears to be “Core Black.” The pricier Signature trim will start deliveries in 2026, while customers will have to wait until 2027 for the less expensive Origin.

The latest version of the prototype, which Sony Honda Mobility CEO Yasuhide Mizuno described as “near final,” still looks like a mashup of a Tesla with the Lucid Air, with short overhangs and a long wheelbase.

It boasts screens across the width of the dashboard, 40 sensors and cameras for semi-autonomous driving assistance, all-wheel drive, and hints at augmented reality integration and “virtual worlds” embedded into the driving experience. As a result, Sony’s first foray into the automotive sector is designed to compete with some of the top players in the luxury EV space.

Mizuno demonstrated one of the more advanced features when he summoned the vehicle on stage by speaking the voice command “Come on out, Afeela” into his phone. (He also said it was a “tech demo for this showcase,” so it’s a little unclear whether voice commands will become a production feature.)

A lot has changed since Sony first rolled out its Vision concept in 2020: demand for EVs in the US spiked, then flatlined, and now has basically stabilized; the Biden administration rolled out generous incentives for EV buyers, but they’ll likely get eliminated by the incoming Trump administration; and China has emerged as the world’s dominant EV producer. That last fact has recently spurred Honda to initiate a merger with Nissan in the hopes of better competing with Chinese companies on EVs.

And now the Afeela, with its sleek sedan looks and plethora of interior touchscreens, is moving steadily closer to becoming a real car that you can really buy.

The preorder details aren’t all we’re getting from Sony Honda Mobility this week. Tomorrow, the company will hold another press conference to outline the customer experience of shopping for and owning an Afeela.

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The best stuff we’ve seen at CES so far

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge

The show floor of the biggest tech event of the year hasn’t even opened yet, but CES 2025 has already delivered a long list of new gadgets, tech, concepts, and AI-powered devices tempting you to upgrade.

It’s a lot to keep up with, so we’ll help you catch up. Below are some of the standout gadgets of the show so far. Of course, there’s still a lot more out there and a lot more to go. You can catch up on all of The Verge’s coverage of the show here.

Roborock Saros Z70

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge

The ability for most robovacs to thoroughly clean a floor can be stymied by random objects left lying on the ground. Roborock’s new Saros Z70’s solution to that problem is an articulated five-axis robot arm called the OmniGrip that can pick up after its owners and move obstacles out of its way. It’s limited to smaller items like socks, tissues, or anything weighing less than 300 grams, but the company plans to eventually expand what it can grasp. Pricing isn’t known, but Roborock says the Saros Z70 will be available by June 2025.

Samsung The Frame Pro TV

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Samsung’s The Frame TV appealed to many consumers with an aesthetically pleasing design and the ability to camouflage itself as a piece of art in a home’s decor. The Frame Pro further expands the TV’s appeal to more discerning TV viewers with a variation on Mini LED display technology, the matte finish introduced in 2022, and a wireless connection to its breakout box so all you need to hide is a power cord.

Halliday smart glasses

Image: Halliday

With the success of the Meta Ray-Bans, it’s no surprise that several companies are debuting smart glasses at CES 2025. Halliday’s new enhanced specs, which are expected to ship “by the end of Q1 2025” and cost between $399 and $499, are differentiated with the addition of a small screen on the frame. The “DigiWindow” appears as a 3.5-inch private display in the upper-right corner of your vision and is controlled using voice commands, an interface on the frame, or a smart ring with an integrated trackpad.

Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED monitor

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Dell’s new 32-inch 4K OLED display uses an infrared sensor and five speakers located below the screen to track your head and beam sound directly to your ears. The feature eliminates the need to keep your head positioned in a sweet spot for optimal sound, and it could be ideal for gamers who are constantly moving around in the heat of battle. The monitor also features a 120Hz refresh rate, a 0.03ms response time, and will launch in the US on May 22nd, 2025, for $799.99.

Wonder plant and insect camera

Bird Buddy is moving on to smaller flying creatures of the outdoors. The company behind the stylish smart bird feeders is introducing a playfully designed camera for tracking your plants and the insect visitors that stop by them. You’ll be able to view a livestream from your phone, while an optional solar panel can keep the 4K camera running. It’s supposed to launch on Kickstarter this spring.

Mirumi

Image: Yukai Engineering

Mirumi is a robot that you might actually want to own. It’s a furry, bashful companion bot that clings to a bag and looks adorable. It doesn’t have AI tricks and doesn’t even make noise. Like my colleague Owen Grove said in a video: “It’s just a cute fuzzy thing. What more do you want?” It will be available through a crowdfunding campaign that’s set to launch in mid-2025.

Acer Nitro Blaze 11

Image: Acer

How big is too big for a handheld gaming machine? The answer might be Acer’s new Nitro Blaze 11 featuring a beefy 10.95-inch 144 Hz WQXGA touch display that makes it look like you’re holding a small monitor instead of a portable console. It’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 8040HS processor, 16GB of RAM, and has detachable controllers with Hall effect joysticks. It’s also got a built-in kickstand so you don’t have to strain your arms by always playing it handheld. It will be available starting in Q2 2025 and start at $1,099.99.

Belkin Stage PowerGrip

Image: Belkin

Your smartphone may take great pictures, but it lacks the refined ergonomics of a traditional camera. Belkin’s new Stage PowerGrip addresses that issue and battery anxiety. It’s a MagSafe power bank with a 10,000mAh battery, a retractable USB-C cable, and a design that adds a camera-like grip to the iPhone. It’s even got a physical shutter button that works with the iOS camera app over Bluetooth and a small LCD screen on the front showing the battery’s remaining charge. Pricing and availability haven’t been announced, but the PowerGrip will come in several color options.

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Apple says it will ‘clarify’ AI summaries after botching BBC headlines

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The BBC reports Apple will change how iPhones and other devices display Apple Intelligence-summarized notifications to make it clearer to users when its AI tech has adjusted the words. Not long after the still-in-beta feature launched in the UK in December, the news organization complained about how it rewrote a headline about the UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect, incorrectly suggesting that the BBC reported Luigi Mangione shot himself.

Since then, according to the BBC, Apple’s summaries had incorrectly rewritten notifications from its app to name a PDC World Darts Championship winner before the event even started and falsely claiming that Rafael Nadal revealed himself as gay. “These AI summarisations by Apple do not reflect – and in some cases completely contradict – the original BBC content,” writes the outlet.

The BBC reports that Apple said in a statement, “A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence.”

Apple Intelligence has had its funny moments, but there have also been some shocking failures, like summarizing a text message saying “that hike almost killed me” as “attempted suicide.”

Apple told the BBC that receiving summaries is optional. If you want to exercise that option, you can disable the feature or alter what apps use it by going to Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications.

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The best robot vacuums

Image: The Verge

Floor-sweeping robots are only getting better, with new mopping skills, better navigation chops, and more automation, meaning less work for you. We picked the best bots you can buy right now.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Samsung’s next Unpacked event sets a date to reveal the Galaxy S25

Image: Samsung

Samsung has announced that it will hold its next Galaxy Unpacked event at 10AM PT / 1PM ET on January 22nd in San Jose, California. Samsung will stream the event on YouTube, its website, and its newsroom page. According to its invitation, the company is preparing to introduce its next Galaxy S devices, along with new Galaxy AI features.

Rumors have suggested Samsung’s next phones will include a redesigned Galaxy S25 Ultra with more rounded corners, bringing it visually more in line with its lower-tier phones while still keeping marquee features like the Galaxy S Pen. There are also rumors that a Galaxy “Slim” phone is in the works, though that’s not expected until later in the year.

Finally, the rumor mill suggests that Samsung is adding Qi2 wireless charging to the Galaxy S25 line but wouldn’t put magnets in the phones, relying on magnetic cases instead. Earlier Monday, the Wireless Power Consortium quoted Samsung saying it’s supporting Qi 2 with new Galaxy devices this year while introducing “Qi2 Ready,” a special certification for phones needing a magnetic case to fully support the standard.

If you know you’re going to upgrade to some flavor of Galaxy S25 phone, the company is offering $50 credits if you reserve a spot in line to preorder it.

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