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Here’s a juicy early Amazon Prime Day deal for you. Ahead of the blockbuster event, the base 13-inch M2 MacBook Air has dropped to its lowest price to date at Amazon. You can snap up this Apple laptop for $799, which is 200 bucks off the regular price. The discount applies to all colorways, so you can score one in that beautiful Midnight finish.

This model isn’t exactly top of the MacBook Air line anymore. It’s been supplanted by the M3-powered MBA, which is now our pick for the best MacBook overall. But if you’d like to save some cash and still have a very capable Apple laptop to carry around, the M2 variant is our choice for the best budget MacBook — this latest discount just makes it even easier to recommend.

Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar called the M2 Air a “near-perfect Mac” in his 2022 review and gave it a score of 96. One of the first things you’ll notice is the 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, which can reach a commendable 500 nits of brightness and has a 60Hz refresh rate. The inclusion of a 1080p webcam is welcome, while the triple-mic array does a solid job of capturing your voice for your calls. The speakers are impressive too, especially for a laptop that’s just 11.3 millimeters thin and weighs only 2.7 pounds.

Despite that slender form factor, Apple has still kept fans of physical headphone jacks happy by retaining the 3.5mm port. There are two USB-C Thunderbolt ports and a MagSafe charging connector as well. You shouldn’t have to worry too much if you leave your charger at home when you head to the office — the M2 MacBook Air’s battery should easily last for an entire workday unless you’re carrying out very power-hungry work like video editing.

The M2 MBA should handle everyday tasks with relative ease, and you’ll be able to play a bunch of App Store and Steam games on it too (good luck doing anything else ever again if you install Balatro). One of our main reservations with the base M2 Air is that there’s only 8GB of memory. That doesn’t seem quite enough these days and unfortunately, Apple charges a premium for RAM upgrades. Still, if you just want a MacBook Air that checks pretty much all the boxes most people will need for a few years, this is a great option.

It’s also worth noting that there are some cool features on the way when macOS Sequoia arrives later this year, including the ability to mirror your iPhone on your Mac and a new Passwords app. Apple Intelligence features are also coming to M1 and later Macs.

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-m2-macbook-air-drops-to-a-new-low-of-799-ahead-of-prime-day-140716407.html?src=rss 

It’s the end of the line for Redbox and its DVD rental kiosks. The movie rental service’s parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late June. But it apparently shifted its filing from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, which means it intends to liquidate its business altogether instead of putting the company through a reorganization. According to Deadline, the company was initially looking to raise funds by selling some assets and keeping around 100 employees. However, in the end, it decided that the best course of action was to let all 1,000 Redbox employees go and to shut down all 24,000 Redbox kiosks. 

“There is no means to continue to pay employees, pay any bills, otherwise finance this case,” US bankruptcy judge Thomas Horan said, according to Lowpass. Horan also said that there’s “at least the possibility of misappropriation of funds that were held in trust for employees.” Redbox couldn’t pay its people for nearly a month, and its parent company had to secure a loan of $8 million for their salaries and to be able to restore their medical benefits that haven’t been active since mid-May. 

Redbox kiosks, which are typically located in groceries and convenience stores, used to rent out movie DVDs and Blu-ray discs, as well as video games. In 2019, however, it stopped renting out video games to focus on movie rentals and its on-demand streaming service. The company is long past its prime, and its rental service is nowhere near as appealing these days with all the streaming services out there. In fact, the bankruptcy proceedings have revealed that Redbox’s payroll obligations were higher than it earnings. Still, the kiosks continued to serve people with no access to a strong and steady internet connection, who’ll now have to say goodbye to being able to rent a DVD or two whenever they step out to run errands. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/say-goodbye-to-redbox-130044411.html?src=rss 

The US Energy Department has revealed that it’s awarding car and auto parts factories in eight states a total of $1.7 billion in funding, so that they can be retooled to build electric vehicles and their components. According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the money will come from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies to EV and battery plants, as well as the $7,500 tax credits consumers can get if they buy an electric vehicle.

One of the 11 recipients is a Jeep factory in Belvidere, Illinois that closed last year. The $334.8 million it will get from the initiative will allow it to reopen to produce electric vehicles and restore 1,450 jobs. GM, which will be awarded $500 million, will convert a plant in Lansing, Michigan to produce EVs instead of gasoline cars. The US subsidiary of Korean auto parts maker Hyundai Mobis will also get $32.6 million to refit a plant in Toledo, Ohio for the production of plug-in vehicle components. 

Government officials said they chose communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution or lack of investment. In addition, employees in all of the selected companies are represented by unions. The grants aren’t set in stone — the companies still have to negotiate terms with the Department of Energy. They have to commit to retaining their current workers despite the shift to EVs, and they have to meet employment targets. The companies also have to promise to provide their workers with certain benefits, such as child care, pensions and training to further their careers. 

As The Times notes, several factories selected for the initiative are located in “battleground states” for the upcoming presidential elections. “This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more — from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia — by helping auto companies retool, reboot and rehire in the same factories and communities,” Biden said in a statement. “This delivers on my commitment to never give up on the manufacturing communities and workers that were left behind by my predecessor.”

Jennifer Granholm, the US Energy secretary, believes the fund will retain 15,000 jobs and create 3,000 new ones. Granholm also said that it will help the US “compete with other countries who were subsidizing their auto industries.” While the secretary didn’t mention China specifically, the country is known for subsidizing its EV manufacturers. Earlier this year, the US government quadrupled import tariff for Chinese EVs, while the European Union announced that it was going to impose additional tariffs of up to 38 percent on Chinese-made electric vehicles to protect local manufacturers. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/biden-administration-awards-car-factories-17-billion-so-they-can-build-evs-133008903.html?src=rss 

Taking care of business doesn’t always happen within range of an outlet. Traveling, working off-site and decamping to a coffee shop are all situations where a laptop power bank could come in handy. These high-capacity batteries can recharge your devices — from tiny earbuds to power-hungry laptops — and can even top off more than one at a time. There aren’t quite as many laptop power banks on the market as there are standard portable chargers, but you’ll still find a fair number to consider. I tested out a handful and can recommend three that cover different needs when you’re far from an outlet but still need extra power.

What to look for in a laptop power bank

Capacity

If you just need to keep a smartphone from dying before you can make it home, just about any power bank will do. But if you need to revive multiple devices or the substantial battery of a laptop, you’ll want something with a high milliamp-hour​​ (mAh) capacity. A power bank capable of delivering a meaningful charge to a laptop will have a capacity between 20,000 and 27,000 mAh.

Go higher than 27K mAh and you won’t be able to take it on an airplane, which is why most portable chargers top out around that number. Since the voltage for most portable power banks is around 3.7 volts, a 27,000mAh battery translates to 99.9 watt hours — which is the maximum capacity the TSA will allow for carry-on luggage. (And note that these batteries can’t be checked, regardless of size).

If you want something even bigger than a laptop power bank, and don’t need to fly with it, you’ll likely want to look into portable power stations. These can be the size of a car battery or larger and can potentially fuel an entire weekend away.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the capacity listed on a power bank is not what will be delivered to your devices. As I mentioned, the voltage of most of these batteries is 3.7 volts. Most devices prefer their juice in a 5-volt flavor, so internal mechanisms convert the charge. That conversion lowers the deliverable capacity (it also dissipates some energy, as all conversions do). You can think about it like water in a bucket: water will stream out of a small (3.7 volt) hose for an hour, but that same amount of water will only pour out of a larger (5 volt) hose for 45 minutes. Just looking at conversion rates, a 20,000mAh battery should deliver around 14,000mAh to your various devices, but other factors like energy dissipation bring it down further. In my tests, I’ve averaged about a 60-percent efficiency rate between listed mAh capacity and actual charge delivered.

Ports

Every large power bank I’ve tested has at least three USB ports, with a mix of USB-C and USB-A, which should cover nearly any portable device you need to recharge — earbuds, phones, tablets, laptops, you name it. In addition to the different plug formats, some ports supply power at different wattages. For example, one USB-C port might be rated for 60 watts, while the one next to it is rated for 100 watts. So if you’ve got a device that’s capable of 70W fast charging, such as the new MacBook Air, you’d want to opt for the 100W port to get the best charging speeds possible. Note that devices with a smaller wattage draw won’t be negatively affected by connecting to ports with high ratings. For example, a Galaxy S24 Ultra, capable of 45W super fast charging, can happily plug into the 100W port. A device will only draw what it can take, regardless of what a port can supply. Just remember that the port, device and cable need to be at or above the desired wattage rating to achieve maximum charging rates.

Some of these larger batteries also have AC ports. It might seem like a natural fit to plug in your laptop’s power adapter for a recharge. But really, the AC port should only be for devices that can’t use USB — such as a lamp or a printer. Plugging a power adapter into the AC port only wastes energy through conversion. First, the battery converts its DC power to supply the port with AC power, then the power adapter converts that AC power back to DC so your laptop can take it in. And as you’ll remember from physics class, each time energy is converted, some is lost to heat and other dissipations. Better to cut out the middleman and just send that DC power straight from the battery to the device.

Also, you can use more than one port at a time with these devices; just remember that the speed of whatever you’re charging will likely go down, and of course, the battery is going to drain proportionally to what you’re refilling.

Wireless charging

Just in the last year and a half that I’ve been testing portable power banks, wireless charging capabilities have noticeably improved. The first few I tried were painfully slow and not worth recommending. Now the wireless pads built into power banks are impressively fast — particularly, in my experience, when charging Samsung Galaxy phones (though the lack of a stabilizing magnetic connection like Apple’s MagSafe means they only work when rested flat on a pad). Most wireless charging connections can be used while other ports are also being employed, making them convenient for some mobile battlestation setups.

Of course, wireless charging is always less efficient than wired, and recharging from a portable battery is less efficient in general. If you want to waste as little energy as possible, you’re better off sticking to wired connections.

Design

All power banks are designed to be portable, but there’s a big difference between a pocket-friendly 5,000mAh battery and one of these laptop-compatible bruisers. Most of the latter weigh between a pound and a half to two pounds, which is a considerable addition to a backpack. Many of the options listed here have a display to tell you how much charge remains in the battery, which is helpful when you’re trying to judiciously meet out charges to your devices. If a bank has a wireless connection, the pad is usually on the flat top and any available AC connection is usually at one end. Both may require you to engage those charging methods. Don’t be like me and grumble loudly that you got a bum unit without pressing (and sometimes double pressing) all the buttons first.

How we test portable laptop chargers

For the past year and a half, I’ve been testing and using dozens of portable batteries for our other battery guide. Some of those batteries include the higher-capacity laptop power banks you see here. I also got a hold of a few extra banks just for this guide to make sure we covered what’s available. I went for brands I’m already familiar with, as well as battery packs from well-received manufacturers I hadn’t tried before (like UGREEN and Lion Energy). I only considered banks with at least a 20,000mAh capacity and mostly stuck with those that rated 25,000mAh and higher.

Here’s everything we tested:

Zendure Supertank Pro

Mophie Powerstation Pro XL

Mophie Powerstation Pro AC

Lion Energy Eclipse Mag

Lion Energy Trek

Baseus Blade Laptop

Anker Prime 27,650mAh

Goal Zero Sherpa 100 AC

Due to shipping and travel issues, I wasn’t able to test two of the batteries I had slated: the HyperJuice 245W and the UGREEN Power Bank 25,000mAh. Once I’ve had a chance to see how these two perform — as well as any new worthy contenders that hit the market — I’ll update this guide accordingly.

I tested each power bank with an iPhone 15, a Galaxy S23 Ultra, an iPad Air (M1) and a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip. Even though these banks can charge multiple devices at once, I refilled one at a time, to make side-by-side comparisons more straightforward. I drained the batteries of the phones and tablets to between zero and five percent and then didn’t use any device as it refilled.

For the MacBook, I let it run down to 10 percent (which is when it gives you the “connect to power” warning) before plugging in the power bank. I then used it as one might in a mobile office, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, while connected to Wi-Fi and a VPN.

For each test, I noted how long a completely charged battery took to get a device back to full and how much of the battery’s capacity was used up in one charge. I also noted things like portability, apparent durability, helpful features and overall design.

For reference, here are the battery capacities of the devices I used:

iPhone 15: 3,349mAh

Galaxy S23 Ultra: 4,855mAh

iPad Air (5th gen): 7,729mAh

16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro: 27,027mAh

Best laptop power banks for 2024

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-laptop-power-bank-120040388.html?src=rss 

After four years of back and forth, the European Union and Apple have finally come to an agreement on the latter’s tap-and-go technology. The European Commission announced Apple made “legally binding” commitments to provide developers with their Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology, which is used for tap-and-go technology, and access iOS features like Face ID authentication and double-click to launch. The agreement saves Apple from facing an antitrust fine equal to up to 10 percent of its worldwide annual turnover — about $40 billion. 

Apple has also agreed to stipulations such as allowing users to make third-party wallets their default app. “It opens up competition in this crucial sector, by preventing Apple from excluding other mobile wallets from the iPhone’s ecosystem,” Margrethe Vestage, the EU’s executive vice president in charge of competition policy, stated in the release. “From now on, competitors will be able to effectively compete with Apple Pay for mobile payments with the iPhone in shops. So consumers will have a wider range of safe and innovative mobile wallets to choose from.” The commitments are binding for ten years, with an independent monitor ensuring Apple follows them across the European Economic Area (EEA). 

The European Commission opened its investigation into Apple in 2020, alleging that Apple was restricting rival mobile wallet developers from accessing necessary technology. Two years later, the regulatory body issued a preliminary view that Apple “abused its dominant position.” 

Then, in early 2024, Apple finally offered to open up its NFC technology and report to an independent reviewer. The European Commission shared the terms publicly, encouraging Apple’s rivals and other interested parties to give their opinion. The final agreement between the European Commission and Apple results from those consultations.  

The tech giant could still be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in a different case after the European Commission issued its preliminary view that Apple violated the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The new law went into effect in March, and the European Commission soon opened an investigation into whether Apple prevented developers from telling users that they could pay less for services elsewhere. Apple currently takes a 30 percent commission on any purchases made through the App Store. The European Commission has until March 2025 to make a final ruling in the case. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-will-allow-developers-access-to-its-nfc-technology-avoiding-an-eu-fine-123026127.html?src=rss