Reviews

HP Spectre x360 Review: My New Favorite Backflipping Windows Laptop

“Oooh, what’s that?” It’s the reaction I get every time I pull out the new HP Spectre x360 in a coffee shop. It hasn’t failed yet. Java fiends always want to know where I got such a good-looking laptop—and they’re always surprised when I tell them the answer. But the truly surprising thing about HP’s…

Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: Not The Next Big Thing, Just a Fantastic Phone

Remember the good old Samsung Galaxy S III? It was a fantastic little trooper, but we’ve come a long way since plastic phones were king. Today, the Galaxy S6 goes on sale—and it’s finally, finally catching up with the iPhone, Nexii, and other glass-and-metal devices that have been catching your eye for years. It’s stylish,…

Today isn’t just the day you can pre-order an Apple Watch or MacBook — it’s also the day three new flagship Android smartphones are going on sale. Read our reviews of the Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and HTC One M9. Then weep for your wallet.

HTC One M9 Review: A Great Phone That Can’t Keep Up

Everyone loves an underdog. They’re new, exciting, and upset expectations. In 2013, the HTC One M7 brought that incredible disruptive energy to smartphones, and the following year’s M8 ran neck and neck with the best you could buy. Today, the HTC M9 goes on sale, and it’s no longer an underdog—but it’s not exactly leading…

Amazon Is Starting to Sue Sellers of Fake Five-Star Reviews

Amazon is looking to end the practice of shady sellers paying money to receive positive four or five star reviews beneath their product listings, with the commerce giant aiming to smash some prolific review-sellers out of business using its immense legal cannons. A court filing has revealed that Amazon’s going after four separate review sale…

New MacBook Meta-Review: The Laptop of the Future, Just a Tad Too Early

Apple’s newest MacBook is undeniably slick. But with its single port and a processor that’s far from super-charged, it’s also got a few potential pain points. The first reviews are just coming in, and it seems like a shoo-in for Laptop of the Future. Just maybe not quite yet. Here’s a quick tour of the…

Yelp Vigilantes Are Organizing Against Businesses in the Name of Justice

After the owner of a pizzeria said last week that he wouldn’t cater a gay wedding, a group of Yelpers took action, using their reviews to bring down the business. Not customers unhappy with the service, but social justice protesters reviewing the business based on ideology. And it’s not just an isolated case. With the…

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: A Quirk That Doesn’t Really Work

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is a fantastic smartphone. But maybe you find it boring. Maybe it’s disappointing that the new Android standard-bearer looks so much like an Apple product. If that’s the case, perhaps the Galaxy S6 Edge is more your speed. The S6 Edge is the “whoa, that’s weird looking” variant to the more straight-laced…

Reviews of an Etsy Seller Who Poses Dead Mice As Pop Culture Icons

Beneath Etsy’s glitter-soaked, hand-stitched paisley exterior lies some of the weirdest, darkest wares the internet can offer. And in one of thee seedy offshoots, you will find some of the world’s biggest pop culture icons in the form of amateur, taxidermied mice. And people fucking love ‘em. All the mice you’ll see below were born…

Spire Fitness Tracker Review: Keep Calm And Keep On Walking

The Spire is a fitness tracker that also measures your breathing, so you can keep tabs on your lungs as well as your steps. Why would you want to do that? Creators Jonathan Palley and Neema Moraveji, of the Stanford’s Calming Technology Lab, claim it can help make you a calmer person. As soon as…

CSI:Cyber and the Sexy, Spooky Killer Hacker Printer Fire 

One good thing about CSI:Cyber is that you never have to wonder what an episode will be about because someone will very plainly state exactly what the episode is about within the first 10 minutes. In this case, our Obvious Episode Topic Explainer award goes to Special Agent Avery Ryan (played, as always, by Oscar…

PlayStation Vue Review: Online TV Is Great, But It’s Still Pretty Dumb

Television is experiencing a digital renaissance. Cutting the cord no longer means severing you from live TV. We’re witnessing the birth of true internet television, and Sony’s PlayStation Vue is the service with the most to offer as of today. I’ll be honest: I’ve missed cable. For me, live TV was like a security blanket,…

Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi Review: Won’t Win Hearts, Will Turn Heads

So you want a laptop that turns into a tablet. No kidding! Plenty of people are jazzed by the idea of having a slate for sharing, plus a solid keyboard for typing. And the new Asus T300 Chi sure looks like a great pick: for just $700 you get a great looking PC that—both halves…

Olympus E-M5 Mark II Review: The Original Retro Camera, Refined to a Tee

Beautiful retro design. Pro-level controls. So small. The Olympus OM-D E-M5 was the mirrorless camera for discerning photographers. Three years later, it’s finally getting a update in the form of the new E-M5 Mark II. It provides some welcome improvements in feel and operation, plus a flashy trick or two. Is that enough? Depends on…

HP Stream Mini Review: A Deceptively Capable Tiny Desktop for Just $180

Back in the ’90s, you could buy a bargain-brand Gateway or eMachines PC for about $400. They were everywhere. Everybody’s grandma got in on the action. They were also, objectively, pretty crappy computers. That’s more true now than ever. Why? Because now we have the $180 HP Stream Mini. That’s why. What Is It? Remember…

This Documentary Defends the Silk Road 

It took less than four hours for jurors to agree that Ross Ulbricht was the man behind the persona of Silk Road kingpin Dread Pirate Roberts, responsible for running an infamous online drug empire. It takes Deep Web, a new documentary about the Silk Road trial, less than two hours to poke apart the narrative…

Google’s New Chromebook Pixel: Dangerously Close to Buyable

Google’s original Chromebook Pixel was a beautiful, wonderful laptop. It was also absurdly expensive—so pricey that it became a tech nerd joke. Now Google’s following it up with the Pixel 2, and surprise: it’s better, cheaper, and dangerously close to buyable. What Is It? The Pixel is a Chromebook in its most perfect form. It’s…

Xiaomi Mi Note: This Chinese Phone Is Great. Too Bad You Can’t Use It.

You’ve probably never heard of the Xiaomi Mi Note. You can’t buy one in the US. You should read this story anyhow. It’s about a smartphone—a really good smartphone—but it’s also about the future of personal electronics. You care about the future, no? Because years from now, we may look back at this phone as…

Hydrophobic T-Shirts Are Miraculous—Until You Wash Them

A few weeks ago, an Australian startup offered to send me a T-shirt. I’m not normally on the T-shirt beat, but this one was special. The 100-percent cotton garment featured “patented hydrophobic nanotechnology” to make it super stain-resistant. “I’ll be the judge of that,” I thought, and a few days later the Threadsmiths T-shirt arrived…

Review: This Laptop With a Mechanical Keyboard Is Delightfully Crazy

I’m typing this on a laptop with a real keyboard. Real, as in without the compromise in size, tactility or function that you’ve come to expect in laptops. I don’t really know how to express how strange that is. Imagine your laptop was outfitted with the same high-quality typewriter you use at your desktop—an 87-key…