Technology - Google News

Jabra's noise-canceling Elite 85t earbuds are on sale for their best price yet - The Verge

Posted: 12 Mar 2022 11:00 AM PST

If you're on the market for a great pair of noise-canceling earbuds, it's hard to go wrong with Jabra's comfortable Elite 85t, which are on sale at Amazon right now with a pair of Qi-certified wireless charging pads for just $149.99 ($80 off). Although the Elite 85t are not Jabra's newest model, they still offer good noise cancellation, solid on-earbud controls, and the ability to pair with two devices simultaneously, a feature many true wireless earbuds still lack. They also come with a case that charges wirelessly or via USB-C, and they carry an IPX4 rating for water and sweat resistance. Read our review.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a capable device, but it can't do it all. Luckily, there are accessories like Apple's well-made Magic Keyboard, which allows you to transform your 12.9-inch iPad Pro into something more akin to a traditional laptop. The latest model can accommodate the thicker, 2021 iPad Pro — as well as the third, fourth, and fifth-gen models — but, otherwise, the sturdy keyboard case shares the same design as the previous model, providing both an excellent trackpad and a backlit keyboard that's comfortable to type on.

Normally $349, Apple's Magic Keyboard for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is on now sale in white at Amazon for $293, its best price to date. The retailer is also discounting the keyboard case in other configurations, including one that's compatible with the 11-inch iPad Pro, the 2020 iPad Air, and the forthcoming iPad Air with Apple's M1 chip. That model, while a far cry from its all-time low of $249, is on sale right now at Amazon for $288 instead of $299.99. Read our 2020 Magic Keyboard review

If you've been on the market for an app-connected smart lock, Amazon and Best Buy are both selling August's latest Wi-Fi Smart Lock for $198.59 instead of $229.99. While we've seen the fourth-gen model go for as low as $169.99 in the past, this is the lowest price either retailer has sold it for this year. The small, Alexa-enabled lock is compatible with most US deadbolt locks and is easier to set up and install than its predecessor. Plus, unlike the bigger last-gen model, it doesn't require an external bridge for connectivity — you just need to add the lock to your existing Wi-Fi network through the August smartphone app. Read our review.

If you don't need a lot of horsepower or storage when it comes to computing, Asus's Chromebook Detachable CM3 — our pick for the best detachable Chromebook — is on sale today for its best price to date. Right now, the convertible Chromebook is available at Best Buy with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM for $329.99, $40 off its typical list price. The CM3 is a 10.5-inch tablet that comes with a detachable keyboard, a garaged stylus, and a dual-folding kickstand, which allows you to fold the tablet so you can use it as a laptop or stand it up horizontally. The convertible Chromebook also boasts nearly 13 hours of battery life, though, note it only comes with a USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio jack, as far as ports go. Read our review.

Here are some other great deals happening this weekend

Newegg is currently selling a 32-inch, curved gaming monitor for $359.99 when you use the promo code GMDBQ8395 at checkout. That's a $60 discount on Gigabyte's QHD panel, which comes with a fast 165Hz refresh rate, a 1ms response time, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and support for AMD FreeSync.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, an excellent remaster of the last-gen Wii U title and one of the best games you can buy for the Nintendo Switch, is still on sale at Amazon and Best Buy in celebration of Mario Day. You can pick up the popular racing title for $39.99, its best price to date, through tomorrow, March 13th.
HyperX's ultra-comfortable Cloud II Wireless is discounted to just $129.99 ($20 off) at Amazon for a limited time. The USB-C gaming headset — which works with the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC — may be missing an audio mix dial, but it still offers great voice quality and well-balanced sound. Read our review.

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The iPad Air with M1 silicon proves Samsung has a mid-range tablet problem - Android Central

Posted: 11 Mar 2022 02:17 PM PST

Anyone who read my Galaxy Tab S8+ review, or any Tab S8 reviews, will probably object to my headline. Samsung's new tablet series is excellent, coupling fast performance with a beautiful thin-bezel display and 120Hz refresh rate. Samsung upgraded its flagship tablets exactly as it should have, including making One UI less of a downgrade compared to iPadOS; and the Tab S8 only costs $100 more than the iPad Air.

So what's the problem? It's that any Samsung offerings under $700 drop off a cliff in terms of performance. The actual price rival to the 10.9-inch, $600 iPad Air with M1 is the 12.4-inch, $600 Galaxy Tab S7 FE with the Snapdragon 750G and 6GB of RAM.

Comparing a laptop-rated chip against a budget mobile chip from 2020 is about as fair as racing a Bugatti against a VW Beetle in Forza Horizon 5.

Dropping even further, you have the $500 iPad Mini, the speedy 8.3-inch tablet with the same Bionic SoC as the iPhone 13. Unless you count the underpowered Galaxy Tab A7 Lite or the expensive Z Fold 3 that's about 8 inches unfolded — and I certainly don't — Samsung has no proper Mini alternatives.

The Galaxy Tab S8 holds its own against the iPad Pro, for now. But I don't see how its Tab A or Tab FE lineups can survive this new Air with M1 development, given Samsung's willful disregard for the mid-range market.

It's all about the silicon

iPad Air 2020 — The iPad Air (2020) (Image credit: Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central)

Our long-time Android phones reviewer Harish Jonnalagadda regularly stacks Apple products against the competition. And he lavished praise on the previous iPad Air (2020) for the A14 Bionic's blazing speeds, among many other positives. Now, Apple claims the new iPad Air 5 with the 8-core M1 chip will have a 60% increase in CPU performance and 100% GPU improvement.

Android fans don't like talking about this, but iPhones with Bionic chips already run laps around the competition unless you're using a RAM-heavy phone like the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

With the M1-backed iPad Air, you're getting a throttled version of the power you'd see in a MacBook — or even the iPad Pro, which likely has more RAM — but even a throttled Air will likely wallop a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 tablet in performance and obliterate anything below that.

Apple's choice to cast Intel aside and develop its own silicon has paid huge dividends, as it brought MacOS and iPadOS products closer together. Now, any future advancements made to the MacBook Pro lineup, like the rumored M2 chip, will eventually benefit most iPads beyond the entry-level models.

Imagine an iPad Mini with an M1 chip, or a future iPad Air with the M1 Pro. How can we expect Samsung Tabs running outdated, mid-range Qualcomm hardware to compete with that down the line?

It could even be easier to develop creative iPadOS software because it'll run on the same hardware found on productivity-focused MacBooks. Meanwhile, most app developers still neglect Android tablets.

Unless something changes, Samsung will continue to rely on Qualcomm instead of going all-in on Exynos, which some of my colleagues have suggested.

In a perfect world without a neverending chip shortage, maybe Samsung could develop enough Exynos SoCs to take complete charge of stocking its own tablets, and take the Apple route of optimizing One UI to its silicon. But given Samsung has to sell tens of millions of Galaxy S phones every year as well as tablets, it'll never happen.

The other solution would be to start relying on actual laptop-quality hardware. Intel would happily take the business and power Samsung tablets in addition to its Galaxy Chromebooks. But because of the disconnect between Android and Chrome OS, Samsung would have a major headache on its hands converting its software to new hardware.

Until Google closes that gap, Samsung has no hardware path to compete with Apple on its own terms.

Samsung's small and mid-range Tabs need to get better

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ sitting on a table — The massive Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ and keyboard cover (Image credit: Source: Michael Hicks / Android Central)

I'm not going to pine for Samsung to match Apple for performance when it isn't a fair ask, given all the above evidence. But I am going to criticize Samsung for focusing on either expensive or bargain-bin tablets.

Samsung's one mid-range tablet, the Tab S7 "Fan Edition," measures in at 12.4-inches with a 2560x1600 resolution and 10,090mAh battery, nearly matching the S8+ in many areas. The South Korean company decided that its fans would rather compromise on performance than on the size of the display to get a lower price.

Below that, you'll have to choose an old, underpowered Galaxy Tab S6 Lite or the new 10.5-inch Tab A8 with the unproven Unisoc T618 chip and just 3-4GB of RAM. They compete against cheap Amazon Fire tablets, not Apple's.

If Samsung would release an 8- or 10-inch tablet with Tab S8-quality speeds for a lower price, that would attract a much larger audience in my mind. Even if it can't match the iPad Air 5 in speed, Samsung can bust out its multitasking software made popular on its foldables and push its Tab Minis as more versatile than Apple's.

Right now, thrifty students or people who want a streaming-and-browsing-in-bed device with M1 speeds won't look twice at Samsung's offerings. No matter how great the Tab S8s are, they're primarily desk tablets that you won't want to hold for too long.

Samsung offers the best Android tablets of any brand by far. But unless Samsung wants to cede the mid-range market to Apple entirely and keep its tablets limited to die-hard Android users, it will give us a Tab S8 Mini or competitively downgraded Tab S8 FE by next year.

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