Kalakshar US

JBL has new speakers at CES 2023, including environmentally friendly versions of its Go 3 and Clip 4 portable models. The company is also updating its Pulse speaker line (known for its groovy light and color show) with better audio than its predecessor.

As their names suggest, the JBL Go 3 Eco and JBL Clip 4 Eco are environmentally conscious variants of the Go 3 and Clip 4. Launching on Earth Day (April 22nd), the Eco speakers use 90 percent PCR (Post-Consumer Recycled) plastic for mechanical construction and 100 percent recycled fabric for their speaker grilles. They also ship in environmentally safe packaging, using FSC-certified paper and soy ink.

Apart from their environmental focus, they’re identical to their non-eco namesakes from late 2020. The Go 3 line has a rounded rectangle design, offering five hours of playback. Meanwhile, the Clip 4 has an integrated carabiner for easy hanging and 10 hours of playing time. Both models include IP67 water and dust resistance, which is handy for trips to the beach or pool. The environmentally friendly speakers will cost the same as their non-eco counterparts: $50 for the Go 3 Eco and $80 for the Clip 4 Eco.

JBL’s Pulse lineup has a built-in LED that acts like a digital lava lamp synced to your music. The new Pulse 5 (initially announced for a 2022 release but delayed to this year) should have richer audio than its predecessor, thanks to a bigger passive radiator for deeper bass and a refined woofer for richer mid-low frequencies. JBL says the 360-degree speaker is IP67-rated and can last 12 hours before plugging in its USB-C cable. The Pulse 5 launches this spring for $250.

 

Citizen has announced its latest CZ Smart smartwatches that feature a built-in AI “self-care advisor,” the company said. The new proprietary YouQ app was built with IBM Watson Studio and uses NASA technology to show the wearer when they’re at their most alert or fatigued in order to “maximize [their] daily potential,” the company said. 

The intriguing idea is that the CZ Smart’s YouQ app uses IBM Watson’s neural networks to learn a user’s “chronotype” (preferred timing of sleep and wake) over a seven to ten day period, by processing sleep data and “alert scores.” The latter are generated from a custom-designed alert monitor test, a consumer version of NASA’s PVT+ test created at the Ames Research Center Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory. The tests are “brief, gamified, and can be taken daily to measure the wearer’s alertness,” according to Citizen. 

Using that data, the YouQ app can learn your unique rhythms and habits. From there, it creates a dynamic recognition model to recommend “Power Fixes,” or actions and activities to help the wearer reduce the effects of fatigue, improve alertness and promote better habits. Over time, it can increase personalization and presumably the effectiveness of the Power Fixes for each person. 

The new technology is only available on the new second-generation CZ Smart watches (the first generation launched in 2020, and the company also has a CZ Smart Hybrid lineup). Those come in 44mm sport and 41mm casual models, with mesh bracelets, links and silicone straps. Technology-wise, they offer 1.3-inch AMOLED displays, Snapdragon Wear 4100+ processors with 8GB of storage, and feature 24+ hours of battery life with “faster charging.” 

Sensor-wise, you get a gyroscope, altimeter, barometer, accelerometer, heart rate sensor and SP02 ambient light sensor. It comes pre-loaded with the YouQ wellness app, Strava, Spoitfy, YouTube Music and Amazon Alexa. It presumably has its own OS, and works with iPhone or Android devices. 

The previous model used Wear OS and was built in partnership with Fossil, but Citizen didn’t specify the OS for the current model. They’ll go on sale in March 2023 in the US, with pricing to arrive at a later date. The current CZ Smart cost $395 at launch. 

 

Microsoft’s Bing search engine might soon become more attuned to users’ needs and return results in a more human-like fashion. According to The Information, the tech giant is planning to incorporate the OpenAI software powering ChatGPT into Bing in hopes that it can help the company catch up to (or maybe even outshine) Google. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI back in 2019, and more recent reports said it’s in talks with the Elon Musk-founded startup for a follow-up investment. Now, The Information is reporting that Microsoft’s initial investment included an agreement to incorporate some aspects of GPT into Bing.

OpenAI developed GPT as a language model that uses deep learning to generate human-like text responses. Late last year, it launched a program called ChatGPT that quickly skyrocketed in popularity due to its ability to return responses that seem like they were written by actual people. Educators raised concerns that it could easily be used for cheating, since those who tried the tool said they would’ve given its responses a good grade if a student claimed to have written them. ChatGPT is free for now, but OpenAI intends to charge for its use in the future. 

What GPT integration would mean for Bing isn’t clear at this point. It doesn’t have the capability to scrape the internet for results, so Microsoft will still use its own search engine technology. However, The Information said it could help Bing present results to users in a friendlier way. A source “familiar with Bing’s systems” told the publication that Microsoft could use the technology to present search results as full sentence answers with the source for the information. If Bing suggests related queries to the original one, GPT could explain their relevance in a meaningful manner. The technology could help Bing suggest better keywords or key phrases to users, as well.

Microsoft could launch GPT integration as soon as this March, The Information says, so we might hear a confirmation of this report — along with more details, if it is indeed true — in the near future. 

 

NVIDIA’s new RTX 40-series GPUs are insanely powerful, but also wildly expensive. That’s my big takeaway after reviewing the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 — sure, they’re fast, but who can justify spending over $1,000 on a video card? With the RTX 4070 Ti, which debuted at CES 2023, NVIDIA is offering a slightly more reasonable alternative. Starting at $799, it’s still fairly pricey, but at least it’s under $1,000. And best of all, it’s in many ways better than last year’s 3090 Ti, which initially cost a whopping $2,000.

After announcing two RTX 4080 cards a few months ago, NVIDIA surprised us all when it “unlaunched” the $899 12GB model. Given its much lower specs, there were plenty of complaints that it seemed a bit too expensive to be called a 4080. So now we’ve got the 4070 Ti at $100 less, with the same 7,680 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR6X memory that the 4080 was supposed to get. Sometimes, yelling at companies online gets results.

If you’ve got a small case, the 4070 Ti may also be the first RTX 40-series GPU you can actually use. Both the 4080 and 4090 Ti were triple-slot behemoths — they took up a significant chunk of my fairly roomy mid-tower case – whereas the 4070 Ti just needs two. It also requires far less energy than either of those cards, since it can run with a 700-watt PSU and has a maximum power draw of 285W. (The 4080 requires a 750W PSU, while the demands an 850W unit.) NVIDIA says the 4070 Ti uses around 49 percent less power on average than the 3090 Ti.

Given where it sits alongside the RTX 4080, the 4070 Ti performed exactly as I expected. It clocked in around 20 percent slower in 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme Benchmark, as well as the Geekbench 4 Compute test. It was also a full 30 fps slower while playing Halo Infinite in 4K with maxed out graphics settings. Now those numbers may sound disappointing, but I was ecstatic to see them. Sure, it’s slower, but the 4070 Ti is actually keeping up fairly well with a card that’s $400 more expensive (and in many cases, far more). That’s something to celebrate!

None

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Port Royal (Ray Tracing)

Cyberpunk

Blender

NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti

10,624

14,163/66fps

4K RT DLSS : 78fps

7,247

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

12,969

14,696/68fps

4K FSR RT: 57fps

2,899

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

11,688

13,247/61fps

4K FSRT RT: 50fps

3,516

NVIDIA RTX 4080

12,879

17,780/82fps

4K DLSS RT: 84fps

9,310

NVIDIA RTX 4090

16,464

25,405/117.62 fps

4K DLSS RT: 135fps

12,335

NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 upscaling technology also proved to be incredibly useful once again. I reached a smooth 78fps in Cyberpunk2077 while playing in 4K with graphics ray tracing settings set to high. And if you need even more frames, you can always bump down to 1440p with DLSS 3, where I managed to reach 90 fps. The 4070 Ti also blew away the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX in Blender’s benchmark, though that may have been due to unoptimized drivers on AMD’s part. 

If you’ve got a 1,440p monitor running at 120Hz or more, the 4070 Ti is clearly the more sensible purchase in NVIDIA’s new family. Halo Infinite hit 165 fps while maxed out in that resolution, and I saw 130 fps in Control was graphics and ray tracing settings cranked up. And, it’s worth noting, I didn’t encounter any of the odd driver instability that crashed my system multiple times with the Radeon RX 7900 cards. The 4070 Ti was also twice as fast as both of those AMD GPUs in Control while using DLSS 3 and ray tracing in 1440p and 4K.

The ASUS TUF 4070 Ti I reviewed retails for $849, but I ran it at the same stock speeds as other $799 cards. The GPU reached 76C after hours of benchmarking and gaming — that’s not as low as the 70C and below temperatures I was seeing on the 4080 and 4090, but those cards also had far more elaborate cooling.

As impressed as I am by the 4070 Ti, every prospective GPU buyer should know that NVIDIA’s 30-series GPUs are still great! And while they don’t have DLSS 3, they still have excellent DLSS 2 upscaling. Best of all, they’re falling in price now that another generation of cards have arrived. You can snag 3060s easily for less than $400, while I’ve seen 3070s falling below $600 regularly. I’m sure we’ll see a 4060 card later this year, but if you’re in a rush, don’t look down on older hardware.

If anything, the RTX 4070 Ti is awful news for AMD. The Radeon RX 4700 XT and XTX are both faster GPUs in many benchmarks, but once you start enabling ray tracing, they practically crumble. And worst of all, they’re $100 and $200 more, respectively. Personally, I’d rather the power of DLSS and the stability of NVIDIA’s hardware and software, over the raw speed of those AMD cards.

While I miss the days of “reasonable” video card prices under $500, the 4070 Ti still feels like a dose of sanity. Unless you’re a high-level streamer or pro gamer, there’s little reason to spend four figures on a video card. $799, though? That’s doable. And if anything, it pushes the prices of other hardware down considerably. Even if you don’t buy the 4070 Ti, we should all be thankful it exists.

 

Roku TVs will finally live up to their name this year. At CES, the streaming device company announced that it’ll be building its own smart TVs for the first time. When the Roku TV program debuted in 2014, it was a way for the company to bring its streaming software into TVs built by partners like TCL and Hisense. But now Roku is debuting it’s own family of HD and 4K sets ranging from 24 to 75-inches, which are set to arrive in spring.

Value appears to be the key, as the company says the TVs will range from $119 to $999. That should help Roku’s partners to rest easy — we’ve seen some sets like the TCL Series 8 scale into premium $2,000 territory. The company isn’t divulging many technical details around these TVs yet, but don’t expect them to have some of the nicer features TCL and others are including, like super bright MiniLED panels. Still, Roku’s sets may eat into the lower-end offerings from its partners.

Chris Larson, Roku’s VP of retail strategy, tells Engadget that the company isn’t trying to directly compete with existing partners, instead it wants to have a bit more control over how some Roku TVs are produced. For example, Roku is bundling its voice remotes with all of its new sets, even the cheap HD models (Select Series TV’s come with the Roku Voice Remote, while Premium Series sets include the rechargeable Voice Remote Pro) . That’s something the company couldn’t push partners to do, especially when it came to budget TVs.

Down the line, Larson says the new TVs will also bring Roku closer to component suppliers, like the companies behind screen panels and the chips that power smart devices. That could help the company “drive innovation in the TV process.” These new Roku TVs will work alongside Roku’s existing home wireless speakers and other home theater equipment, just like partner offerings. But the company could potentially cook up some new features that are exclusive to its TVs — or at least, capabilities partners may not want to implement.

 

You can buy Roku TVs with HD, 4K and 8K screens, using either LEDs or bright MiniLED technology. Starting in 2023, OLED may finally join the mix. Today at CES, Roku unveiled an OLED TV reference design, which will help its partners to build Roku TVs with OLED screens. The company isn’t saying if any companies have jumped on the design yet, but it’s not hard to see TCL adopting it, especially after making the first MiniLED Roku TV set.

OLED Roku TVs will feature everything we love about that screen tech: Namely, inky dark black levels, extreme contrast and excellent viewing angles. As is usual for Roku, though, the company isn’t saying much about the specs behind its reference design.

According to Chris Larson, Roku’s VP of retail strategy, it takes a minimum of four months for partners to built TVs based on their reference designs. While it would be nice to see some surprise announcements in the middle of 2023, realistically we’ll probably hear more about these OLED Roku TVs come the holiday season. The company will also be building its own Roku TVs for the first time this year, but those are mostly targeted at value-conscious users. There’s still plenty of room in the affordable OLED category though, so it’ll interesting to see if partners can make Roku sets that compete with Vizio’s affordable OLEDs.

 

The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) has unveiled Qi2, the wireless charging successor to Qi that borrows some tricks from Apple’s MagSafe charging. The idea is to create a unified system that (should) work with both Android and Apple devices, the WPC wrote in a press release

Qi2 will replace the current Qi standard that has been around for over 13 years. It’ll be built off of Apple’s MagSafe technology that came along with the iPhone 12, using a similar system of magnets and a wireless charging coil. However, it will introduce something called the Magnetic Power Profile that ensures phones and other devices are perfectly aligned to maximum charging speed and efficiency. It also assures compatibility among brands. 

“Qi2’s perfect alignment improves energy efficiency by reducing the energy loss that can happen when the phone or the charger is not aligned,” said WPC’s executive director Paul Struhsaker in a statement. “Just as important, Qi2 will greatly reduce the landfill waste associated with wired charger replacement due to plugs breaking and the stress placed on cords from daily connecting and disconnecting.”

The first Qi2.0 version will launch this year, with support for 15 watt charging, foreign object detection and more. It’ll also provide faster charging for some devices, improve safety and prevent device damage or battery life shortening. 

The Magnetic Power Profile standard also makes improvements easier down the road. Future iterations will “significantly” raise charging levels past 15 watts, WPC told The Verge. It could also allow wireless charging for unusually-shaped accessories that aren’t compatible with the current crop of flat charging pads.

There are still some question marks, like whether Qi2 will be backwards-compatible with the current Qi standard or Apple’s MagSafe. It will reportedly also require authentication, which may allow manufacturers to refuse charging from non-certified devices.  

Hopefully, device and charger manufacturers will strive to main compatibility. The Qi2 spec should be ready by this summer, and products are set to arrive by the holidays in 2023. 

 

The halls of CES are full of smart home products, but some of them grab our attention more than others. Enter Bird Buddy, a company that makes camera-equipped bird feeders for keeping tabs on the winged friends around your yard, patio or balcony. The current model accommodates whatever seed you prefer and motion sensor alerts you via the company’s app when you have a visitor. That same software catalogs images and video clips as well. It’s like a security cam, but way more fun. 

At CES 2023, Bird Buddy is adding an AI-powered smart feeder for hummingbirds to its lineup. The aptly named Smart Hummingbird Feeder can identify 350 species of the animals and the motion sensor lets you know when one is ready for a snack. This model can be disassembled in two parts, which Bird Buddy says helps with regular cleanings, and the company explains that the design will prevent leaks. Just like the original, the camera is removable when it needs a charge and there’s an optional solar roof should you choose to splurge. 

The Bird Buddy Smart Hummingbird Feeder is expected to go on sale in late 2023.

 

Samsung’s apparently tired of mobile displays that only fold in on themselves. At CES 2023 this week, the company revealed the Flex Hybrid OLED mobile screen. It folds from one side and slides out the other. This combination not only increases the size but alters the aspect ratio, too.

Starting off at a relatively compact 4.2-inch device, it folds out to a 10.5-inch 4:3 display. Then, because it’s not done, the right side slides and expands out to create a 12.4-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which seems like it’d be ideal for watching TV and movies. Samsung’s folding phones won me over in 2022, even if they could do with longer battery life. With a screen this big, that has to be a major consideration for any real-world devices.

We’ve seen roll-out displays on concept phones before. TCL teased such a device in 2021, but it never showed off a working prototype. If Samsung has one at CES, we’ll check it out when the show floor opens. Already, we’ve been barraged by PC and TV announcements. Keep track of all the news from CES 2023 right here. What are you hoping to see this year?

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

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Nintendo Switch Online deal brings a one-year family plan and a 256GB microSD card down to $50

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GE made a $1,000 stand mixer

Alienware reveals its first 500Hz gaming monitor

Intel’s 13th-gen laptop CPUs offer up to 24 cores

Alienware’s new gaming laptops include an 18-inch beast

Samsung’s 2023 QD-OLED TVs will reach up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness

Dell’s Concept Nyx gamepad sure is… something

NVIDIA unveils the pricey mid-range RTX 4070 Ti GPU

Even at $799, it’s better value than the 4080.

NVIDIA finally unveiled its latest midrange GPU, the RTX 4070 Ti. Starting at $799, it’s a slightly more reasonable alternative to NVIDIA’s $1,199 RTX 4090 and $1,599 4090. But yes, it’s still pretty costly. Is this the new GPU midrange? NVIDIA is positioning the RTX 4070 Ti as the pinnacle of 1,440p gaming beyond 120 fps. DLSS 3 is a big reason for that – just like with the other 4000-series cards, it uses machine learning to generate entire frames, rather than the pixels DLSS 2 created. That means it should be able to deliver better overall frame rates. The RTX 4070 Ti will be available on January 5th.

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Apple is raising the price of battery replacements for older iPhones

It already costs more to give newer iPhones a fresh battery.

Apple is adding $20 to the price of battery replacements for pre-iPhone 14 models on March 1st. For notched iPhones (iPhone X through iPhone 13), this will bump the price from $69 to $89. If you have an iPhone SE or iPhone 8, the price will climb from $49 to $69. It’s not clear if self-repair prices will increase at the same time. However, part prices roughly equal the cost of asking Apple to perform a battery swap. The company didn’t elaborate on the reasoning, but last year said inflation had affected business, and it raised iPhone prices in several international markets.

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Hugging this pulsating cushion could help with anxiety

The Fufuly’s movements can guide your breathing pattern.

Yukai Engineering, the team behind the strangely adorable cat tail pillow, is back. The Fufuly is yet another anxiety-reducing cushion from the Japanese company, with a gentle rhythmical pulsation as the main therapeutic tool. The idea is hugging a Fufuly stimulates your belly to induce slower and deeper breathing, thanks to the cushion’s lifelike behavior. The Fufuly will launch in Japan this year, through crowdfunding.

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Dell’s revamped G-series: Surprisingly compelling budget gaming laptops

With retro sci-fi designs and fun colors.

Dell’s latest G-series gaming notebooks seem to draw inspiration from gadgets in ‘80s sci-fi movies. You get simple lines with hard edges and bold two-tone paint jobs with neon/pastel accents. Color options may eventually change when these laptops go on sale, but Dell is even painting small details like the radiator fins inside each laptop’s vents. In short, they’re not as… extra as the Alienware laptop family.

The G15 will start at $849 for a 13th-gen Intel Core i5, with a 1,920 x 1,080 screen and a choice of RTX 40-series GPUs from NVIDIA. The larger G16 will start at $1,499 with the same Core i5 chip but a higher-res 165Hz 2,560 x 1,600 screen. Both should go on sale early this year.

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Test your pee where you pee with this oversized toilet clip-on

Not a fitness tracker.

Vivoo has unveiled a smart toilet device that can test your urine and send the results to your phone. The tech is in a device that clips to existing toilets. Vivoo, which has offered at-home urine tests for the last few years, designed the system with the elderly, residential care and healthcare service providers in mind. The device will automatically align a testing strip with a person’s urine stream, which should reduce the risk of, well, mess. It analyzes the urine sample for four wellness parameters. The company suggests the results can offer “indications of certain deficiencies or abnormalities” and help with early detection of some conditions.

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Google has been working on giving its Pixel phone users access to spatial audio since at least September last year. Now, the tech giant is finally rolling out the feature with the rest of the January 2023 security updates for its flagship devices. In the list of changes arriving with the package, Google included spatial audio support for all Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro devices running Android 13. 

Spatial audio simulates an environment that makes users feel as if sounds are coming at them from different directions, sort of like the surround sound effect in movie theaters. As Android Police notes, it mostly became popular in mobile after Apple brought the feature to the AirPods Pro. Google started introducing code for it with the Android 13 beta released in September 2022 but disabled it upon that beta’s stable release. Now, the feature has officially been enabled. 

According to 9to5Google, the company previously said that users can take advantage of spatial audio on the “Pixel phone with movies from Netflix, YouTube, Google TV, and HBOMax that have 5.1 or higher audio tracks.” Users, however, “must wear headphones or earbuds” to be able to enjoy the immersive experience. 

In addition to activating the feature on Pixel devices, Google is also working on bringing head tracked spatial audio to the Pixel Buds Pro that will provide users with another layer of immersion, so long as the earbuds are connected to any of the aforementioned Pixel phones. The company says it will release another update for the earbuds that will enable head tracking in the coming weeks.