Go Here to Read this Fast! Protect your network with an AI-secure browser and SASE framework
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Protect your network with an AI-secure browser and SASE framework
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The Philips Hue app is getting a big upgrade this year, with a new generative AI assistant
Those of us who work at a desk for long periods know it is not the best thing for our bodies — and research supports that notion. Standing up and taking breaks is the best way to combat the ill effects of desk life, but if you’re looking for ways to make technology conform to you instead of the other way around, an ergonomic mouse can help. Instead of contorting your wrist and hand to fit a standard mouse, ergo mice have a vertical or semi-vertical orientation that feels more natural. Trackball mice minimize travel and could reduce strain on your upper arms. I’ve been searching for a mouse that would help with my shoulder tension so I tried about 20 highly rated options to find the best ergonomic mouse — these are the best of what I tested.
Like everything related to ergonomics, the mouse design that works best for you will depend on your body and what you need to do on a typical day. So the shapes, added features and how the mouse communicates with your computer will determine which you should get.
When we’re talking about ergonomic mice for productivity purposes, it usually refers to mice that look distinctly different from the standard, typically with shapes that tilt your hand towards a more “handshake” position instead of facing your palm downward. A vertical ergonomic mouse has the most severe up-and-down angle, semi-vertical mice split the difference and trackball models stay put on your desk while your thumb controls the movement of the cursor. Gaming mice have an ergonomic category as well, but that simply refers to a mouse with curves designed to fit either the right or left hand. It differentiates those mice from ambidextrous models, which don’t conform to a particular hand.
Each of three ergonomic mice shapes can help address different concerns. If you’re trying to avoid twisting your forearm, a vertical mouse could be what you need. Clicking a vertical mouse feels more like pinching your finger and thumb together, which could relieve certain other wrist issues as well.
A semi-vertical mouse feels the most like a traditional mouse, with an angle closer to 50 or 60 degrees from your desk. Semi-vertical mouse clicks can feel easier too, since you’re pushing down instead of pinching. Some vertical and semi-vertical mice have an optional flange that supports the heel of your palm. Instead of pivoting on those bones to make the mouse move, your palm and wrist stay aligned and the entire arm controls the motion.
A trackball mouse can also keep your wrist from bending, as it keeps your forearm planted. My personal struggle is with neck and shoulder tension, so trackballs and very lightweight vertical mice work best for me as their configuration lets me keep my forearm from moving.
As this guide focuses on productivity mice, gaming-specific stats like polling rates and IPS values don’t really come into play. (My colleague Jeff Dunn does a good job of explaining those metrics in his gaming mouse review guide.) What matters here are numbers like DPI, or dots per inch, which indicates how sensitive a mouse is. The higher the setting, the faster your cursor will move across the screen. Low DPI settings let you do precision work like pixel-by-pixel editing in Photoshop. All the mice here have at least two and as many as five settings, ranging from 400 to 3,200 DPI. Mice that make it easy to switch from high to low DPI might make sense if you do a lot of detailed work.
Weight makes a difference in vertical and semi-vertical mice (but not trackballs, since they stay put). A lighter mouse will be easier to move around, which could put less strain on your wrist and arm. That said, a little weight can make the movements of your mouse feel more precise. For reference, a featherweight gaming mouse might weigh 45 grams and a large vertical mouse with a flange attached might weigh 140 grams. The latter may feel a little heavy, but a mouse with smooth feet and used with a decent mouse pad will feel lighter.
It’s always nice to have easily clickable buttons, but that matters even more when body health is a concern. Pressing hard on a button tenses up my arm and shoulder like nobody’s business. Since it’s an action desk workers perform hundreds or thousands of times a day, it’s essential that it be effortless — nothing ruled out a mouse quicker in my tests than tough buttons.
All mice have the basics: a right and left button and a scroll wheel. All mice in this guide also have a DPI selector button. Some have other functions such as a scroll wheel that can click with a press or handle horizontal scrolling by tilting the wheel to the right or left. Many also have back and forward buttons for browser windows, and sometimes those two are programmable to perform different functions in other apps.
More complex mice have additional buttons to customize, typically using a mouse’s proprietary software. Depending on that software, you can set buttons to mute calls, copy and paste, undo and redo, switch tabs and more. Performing multiple functions without extraneous movement is a big plus in ergonomic design. Of course, there are a number of keyboards that let you program multiple functions into specific keys, which cuts down on superfluous movement even more, which you can read about in our ergonomic keyboard guide.
All the mice here will work with Mac’s operating system as well as Microsoft Windows, and some work with Chrome, Linnux and even iPadOS (though I didn’t test those) as well. They connect in three ways: Wired, via Bluetooth or with a 2.4Ghz wireless dongle. More devices have incorporated USB-C interfaces, but most mice still use USB-A. So if you have a laptop that only sports USB-C ports (looking at you, MacBook), you’ll need an adapter to use a wired or dongle-enabled mouse. You can use a hub or docking station for this purpose, but in testing this guide, I ran into connectivity issues using a wireless USB receiver in a docking station, particularly when there wasn’t a direct and completely clear path between the mouse and receiver. Everything worked far more reliably with just a direct USB-C to A adapter.
The difference between wireless and Bluetooth is twofold: a wireless dongle connection tends to be quicker to set up. You just plug in the accessory, turn on the mouse (potentially granting permission for the device) and you’re set. For Bluetooth, you need to open the settings menu, activate pairing mode on the mouse, search for the mouse and then click connect. There’s also a bit more latency when using Bluetooth versus a wireless mouse. It’s not something most people will notice doing workaday stuff, but if you plan on playing some Overwatch after hours and want to use the same mouse, you might want to go with the faster, 2.4Ghz route.
After many hours of research and reading reviews, I gathered just over 20 mice with good claims to ergonomic design to test in my work setup. I mostly tried out mice geared towards a work-from-home or office setting, as opposed to gaming (we have a whole guide dedicated to that topic). I used each mouse for a few hours or a few days, noting how well they felt as well as how they performed. I mostly used a MacBook Pro M1 but verified Windows compatibility with an Asus ROG Strix laptop. For reference, my right hand measures 7.25 inches from the wrist crease to the tip of my middle finger, which is just under average for a man and large for a woman.
In our guide to the best productivity mice, we name the Logitech MX Master 3S the best you can get. As I considered its merits as a mouse, it was indeed an impressive option — it connected flawlessly, has a useful sideways wheel as well as the traditional scroll feature and the thumb rest is a nice touch. But the ergonomics didn’t quite do it for me as it holds your hand in the standard, palm-down, claw-grip position.
Logitech’s Lift Vertical is likely one of the more popular ergonomic mice out there. It’s fairly lightweight, has an attractive design with a nice feel to the exterior. The buttons are easy to click and nearly silent. It also connects quickly using either Bluetooth or a dongle. Unfortunately, it doesn’t glide across the mouse pad all that smoothly, and the pinch grip the design requires actually aggregated my wrist. The cursor movements are fairly precise, though I occasionally had trouble getting the cursor to land just where I wanted it. Also, it’s small; my hands are too large for the Lift. Logitech’s Logitech MX Vert is essentially a larger version, but again, the skinnier shape was uncomfortable in my hands and it was tough to get the cursor to go where I wanted it to.
The HP 920 ergonomic vertical also has a flange for resting your palm, but it makes the mouse overly heavy to move around. Without it, however, it’s an extremely comfortable mouse with a premium feel, rechargeable battery, and two programmable thumb buttons. Unfortunately, the cursor movement was frustratingly imprecise and didn’t go exactly where I pointed, forcing a number of corrections — and extraneous movement is what we’re trying to avoid in ergonomic setups.
Apart from the rather loud clicks, I was impressed with the build and performance of the Turtle Beach Pure Air. It’s lightweight, moves smoothly, and has impressively accurate cursor movements. But despite being labeled an ergonomic mouse, it’s particularly light on the ergonomics. There’s a divot for your right thumb, so it can’t be called ambidextrous, but beyond that it’s a pretty standard (albeit quite nice) gaming mouse.
The PERIMICE-719 from Perixx is a solid mouse with an exterior that feels nice to the touch. It has a comfortable, semi-vertical design, accurate cursor moves and a satisfyingly ratcheted scroll wheel. Plus, it offers reliable connectivity with a wireless dongle and only costs $22. Unfortunately, it was too small for my hand. Only folks with smaller glove sizes (or don’t mind adopting more of a fingertip grip) will be able to get the most out of this one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-ergonomic-mouse-120004931.html?src=rss
Go Here to Read this Fast! The best ergonomic mouse for 2025
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The best ergonomic mouse for 2025
One of the things I love the most about CES is finding all the silly one-offs and concept products that might never see full production. At CES 2025, MSI made something truly joyful when it created a custom CPU cooler that features a built-in turntable.
The water block’s official name is the Mag Coreliquid A13 concept, though a name doesn’t really matter because MSI says it doesn’t have plans to turn it into an actual retail device. That’s kind of a bummer since not only does it mean you won’t be able to put a fun little spinning table inside your desktop, it also sucks because the cooler that the A13 is based on — the Mag Coreliquid A15 360 — is a real product that has some neat specs. It features an offset CPU mount that can improve the performance of recent Intel chips (like the Core Ultra 200S) that have hotspots in unusual positions.
MSI made a concept CPU water block for CES 2025 that has a built-in turntable and it’s kind of awesome.
Sadly, there are no plans to put it into actual production.
Also, the Lucky the dragon figure does not come included.@engadget pic.twitter.com/X70XJeAq8I
— Sam Rutherford (@samrutherford) January 7, 2025
Now I fully admit that the fun of having a spinning table inside your PC might be lost on a lot of people. But then again, just look at Lucky (that’s the name of MSI’s dragon mascot) twirling in place while the desktop churns along. And what’s better is that you can raise the clear lid on the water block and put anything you want inside. Think about a fancy watch or maybe a disco ball. Wouldn’t that be a hoot, especially with all those RGB lights nearby? Honestly, the whole setup is kind of mesmerizing.
But alas, the Mag Coreliquid A13 will never be yours. That is unless people make enough noise and keep bugging MSI until they make it for real. The power is in your hands.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/msi-made-a-cpu-cooler-with-a-tiny-built-in-turntable-and-its-pure-fun-063636564.html?src=rss
Go Here to Read this Fast! MSI made a CPU cooler with a tiny built-in turntable and it’s pure fun
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MSI made a CPU cooler with a tiny built-in turntable and it’s pure fun
In this bonus episode, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss the latest innovations in robot vacuums, new AI PC hardware from AMD and Intel, and Dell’s decision to nuke its PC brands in favor of Apple-esque “Dell Pro” and “Dell Pro Max” branding. (Note: We recorded this episode before NVIDIA announced its new RTX 5000 GPUs, but we’ll have more to say on that soon!)
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Music: Dale North
Devindra: [00:00:00] What’s up everyone, this is Devindra Hardwar, Senior Editor at Engadget.
Cherlynn: I’m Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.
Devindra: We are here what is this, the beginning of night one of CES officially?
Cherlynn: I guess, yeah. I
Devindra: guess we have already suffered through basically day minus one. Minus
Cherlynn: one and today’s zero.
Devindra: One thing I want our listeners to understand is that we have already seen a lot of things we kind of know where the CES is headed. And, I think this is a cursed show Cherlynn. How do you feel about that? For all of us. For our
Cherlynn: team. Yeah, I think I mean, Devindra, I’ll let you speak to your situation, but we’ve had team members who have fallen deathly ill.
We have also, like, people who have completely had to miss their flights, international flights. It’s been quite Engadget team, but we have a really, really good team of people. Everyone’s got great attitudes and, like, our spirits are high. Okay. You want to just get the stuff going. So, yeah, no, and Devindra, you have been struggling a little [00:01:00] bit.
Devindra: So, yeah, update here is I basically threw my back out the the day before I had to fly. So, I kind of was mentally just preparing how to fly without caring much and just being really easy on my back. But, you know, I survived. And
Cherlynn: sitting in a plane for as long as you did couldn’t help either, right?
Probably didn’t help.
Devindra: Thankfully I did a smart thing and I bought a Comfort Plus upgrade with my points ahead of time. And I was like, I was going to be chill on the flight and it turned out that was just necessary. Yeah, so CS is officially beginning. We have seen we’ve just went through CS Unveiled yesterday.
A lot of embargoes and news came out today too. You know, some of the biggest news we’ve seen. Dell’s rebrand away from its own PC names. To Dell, Dell Pro, Dell Pro Max. There’s some new hardware from Intel and AMD. Yay! that they showed off and, you know, just kind of a typical CS stuff. What were the weird things you saw, Cherlynn, at at Unveiled?
Because you were there amidst all the weird gadgets.
Cherlynn: Yeah, and to be clear, given Devindra’s [00:02:00] injury, we are, we are having Devindra stay in place where he is, you know, able to recover a little bit. So, Devindra wasn’t at Unveiled with me, so I’m going to tell you about all these funny things we saw at Unveiled.
Somehow the most intriguing thing so far is the trend of Putting things in your mouth at CES Unveiled.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Cherlynn: So, we have like, at least two things that are saliva detecting devices. Uh huh, huh. Or like, you put a drop of saliva or you put your like, a stick in your mouth or something. We
Devindra: are not going to call this the Hawktwa CES, let’s not do that.
Dan
Cherlynn: Cooper definitely not coming up with a story based around that. But the idea is that using your saliva. Companies can tell how much cortisol or other types like progesterone types of things, hormones are inside your Or in you, right? And so it’s a bit to help with burnout a bit to help with like stress and health and then there is It’s the salt spoon that everyone was licking at CES on day one.
That
Devindra: doesn’t seem like a good [00:03:00] idea at a, at a conference. It
Cherlynn: was so, yeah, everyone’s felt like it was, initially it seemed a little icky, but the booth was so crowded I went over and it turns out they actually had like individual disposable versions of this spoon, the salt spoon per its name. It’s a gadget that will mimic or simulate the, the flavor of umami or salt made by a company called Kirin.
Devindra: Okay.
Cherlynn: Which I believe makes some kind of condiment. That’s the,
Devindra: they’re a soy sauce company. Exactly.
Cherlynn: And so, it’s the idea that like, people want to live healthier, eat better, and not have such a high sodium diet. So, but they still crave this taste. We love it. We
Devindra: love umami. Exactly. Why don’t
Cherlynn: we, why don’t we use electric on your tongue?
Devindra: That is some dystopian, I hope the story about this is how it’s made. That is very dystopian. That’s very like, you know, Soylent Green or something where we’re not really eating food, but we’re feeling these sort of like electrical impulses of food.
Cherlynn: Triggering your tongue to feel like it’s tasting something.
Just to feel alive. That’s horrible. I know. I, it’s, it’s, you asked me weird. And I was like, yeah, that [00:04:00] is pretty horrifying. But I’m very intrigued. I almost, so I was kind of waiting in line, but it was so crowded always. And I had so much other stuff to check out that, I didn’t really get around to it.
There were other things, I think, that turned up that, as unveiled, that were very interesting. Our team saw a stringless guitar. There were, like, about a zillion robots that all kind of look very weird. And then, lots of mirrors that you can, like, stand in front of and scan yourself. And, finally, I think, the Stern Pinball Machine of the Year is themed Dungeons Dragons.
Okay.
Devindra: Really, just really hitting the nerd market perfectly. We did see Roborock’s flagship new robot vacuum and that thing looks cool because they just added an arm to it. Like it has an extendable arm that can pick up socks and small things from the floor. And I am really interested in seeing the race between Roomba all these other companies.
I think was one of the first to do like, okay, self cleaning. We’re going to dump your vacuum into this bigger container than the vacuum [00:05:00] can keep going. Now everybody’s doing that. Then Roomba and others people started doing like combo mops. And now it’s just like, we’re getting appendages. We’re getting, I think one can climb stairs.
I saw news about that.
Cherlynn: So Carissa is on the robot vacuum for us, I guess. And she got a chance to check out the, yeah, the Roborock I can’t remember the actual. name, how it’s pronounced, Safi or Safu Z70 and it we have a video on the article on our website as well as on our Twitter. It’s
Devindra: the Saros Z70, yeah.
Cherlynn: So close, that was so close. And yeah, that video shows the robot’s arm kind of coming out of its round disc like body and then picking up a sock that was in front of it. And not only that, I thought it would just pick it up and then like, wipe and then move away and put it back down. No, it took it to a basket nearby, like a laundry basket almost, And placed it in there.
So basically
Devindra: we’re almost there. We’re almost there to real robot helpers.
Cherlynn: So close. This thing is very close. Who knew Roborock of all companies would do it. I was like,
Devindra: it’s a, it’s really interesting to watch because Roborock, I think, yeah, it’s a [00:06:00] Chinese company and these folks, like, especially when they’re doing robotic stuff, like they’re just barreling forward because they can invest more in R& D and stuff.
I want, I’ve said this before. I want something that can like unload my dishwasher,
Cherlynn: which is the
Devindra: process that I think like
Cherlynn: my dishwashing unloading therapy.
Devindra: You know load it up clean the kitchen just like a real rosy robot situation. That’s what I need
Cherlynn: I mean the other robot vacuum that you’re talking about that can climb upstairs.
I believe is the dreamy And yeah, it’s interesting to see or I was like why why would we need a robot vacuum that can climb upstairs? But I guess there are actual functional uses for the x50 robot I don’t know, man. 1, 700 just for it to, like, climb.
Devindra: I think this is a bad idea. This is a bad idea, because Generally, you want your robot to be on one floor.
Yeah! Once you have stairs in the equation, then, like, it could fall. There could be all sorts of issues. To me, that’s not super useful. I’ve been room building for a while, and only recently with two floors. You pick it up, and you move it to another floor when you need to. If you’re super [00:07:00] bougie, you have more than one Roomba.
You have a Roomba port per floor. Or you have
Cherlynn: the cheap one on the floor that doesn’t matter as much as the expensive one in the place that matters. And they’re
Devindra: cheap Roombas. You could get a refurb Roomba for like 200, 300 bucks.
Cherlynn: Yeah.
Devindra: Relatively, that’s relatively cheap compared to how much they used to cost.
Cherlynn: Well, this one, I mean, I guess the, the shtick with this dreamy robot is that it climbs up like a human. So it’s not like sort of propelling itself up in some strange way, going up on an incline, getting his rollers. It’s like, God, some kind of like climbing mechanic. That’s like. Bipedal? Is it bipedal? Is it like
Devindra: I have to take a closer look.
The
Cherlynn: video looks like wild and I’m in such a CES fever dream that like, I have forgotten what it looks like. So much
Devindra: stuff. Another thing I want to talk about, the TVs seem like, it seems like wireless TVs are morbid thing right now. Like LG and Samsung are fully doing it. All their flagships have wireless boxes.
They say the lag is pretty good for gaming. I would have to, I would have to see that to see how much it works. But I do think that’s a good pain point for a lot of [00:08:00] people. People hate Wires. Moving behind their TVs. They hate, like, if you’re mounting a TV, you have to, like, figure out where all the wires are going to go.
So there’s that that company Displace, which last year had the suction TV with the battery, which I think I called it vaporware last year. I don’t think they actually shipped any. This year they’re back. They have a soundbar. They say they’re going to actually ship stuff. I don’t believe it. But, they’re back.
They’re here.
Cherlynn: Is one year enough time to see if the TV that will stick itself to your wall has fallen off yet? You know what I mean? Like, is it time to call it safe if it hasn’t fallen off in a year? Or should we give it another year? I don’t know.
Devindra: It’s my whole thing about trusting gadgets and trusting devices, I will not trust it.
Multi thousand dollar device that is just hanging by my wall by suction cup.
Cherlynn: It’s like one thing if it falls off and hurts itself, it’s another if it like takes down my wall with it, right? Like, and my bed and my glass table or something. So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff to be concerned about, I think.
Devindra: Boy AIPC is still a running theme this year.
AMD was really big on a whole bunch of [00:09:00] new chips. They announced the Ryzen AI Max chip, which they say is going to be in Halo products, Halo Copilot Plus PCs. It’s supposed to be really powerful. It has more graphics than their other ones. They also say it does better rendering, like 3D rendering, better than Intel’s chips.
Because AMD’s graphics tend to be better. They have like built in Radeon cores. So, you know, they’re kind of killing it. Intel was just like, hey We have AI chips too. They’re coming to gaming desktops. They’re coming to other things.
Speaker 3: Yeah,
Devindra: they have core PC, core AI laptop chips that will be coming to gaming laptops as well.
So, that’s a thing. You know, the good thing about CES is that you can see people and talk to people. So, I had a good chat with Pavan Davaluri, who is like the head of Windows and Surface devices from Microsoft. That was an off the record chat, but I can say it was good to have. That conversation to see what they’re thinking about AI PCs.
Hopefully we’ll have him on for another section of the gadget podcast, [00:10:00] but I guess like CS is happening. Like when news is happening, these companies are taking it seriously. We’re talking to high level people. So it feels like a CS of your, I’d say, despite being so cursed early on,
Speaker 3: I guess,
Devindra: yeah, like stuff, it feels legitimate and real in a way that hasn’t for the past couple of years.
But I mean, for
Cherlynn: you, maybe two part of it is the return to the physical. Yes. Right, because it’s been a while. And I think that my general sense is that interest in CES might have waned. I think this year too you know, we’ve, we’ve had different observations about shows from the recent years and this year feels even more like it is something you could, it’s like commoditizing things for the sake of commoditizing things a little bit and more than ever actually.
And it’s very much like the Radio Shack show a little bit. But you know, I would say, I don’t want to give away what we’re working on. So I would say like, we’re, Come to Engadget. com come to our social media channels where we’ve got a lot of videos going up We’ve actually are bringing back our youtube channel for a little bit And the live blog we I am in [00:11:00] live blog hell every day for a little bit but it is a fun time because live blogs allow me to be a bit more I think personal with our audience Which is fun like this podcast But I do want to shout out like to your point like amd and intel Both have made their announcements as of the time.
We’re recording this but We still don’t know technically what NVIDIA is going to announce. And Nvidia has one of the, I wanna say the most hyped keynotes or speeches, this CES mm-hmm . What are you thinking that they’ll do for CES?
Devindra: I mean, for the keynote, they typically hype up their AI projects or robotics projects.
And honestly, things that we don’t typically report news on because it’s kind of pie in the sky stuff that will only exist for a car manufacturers or something. They don’t really touch consumers. We will eventually hear, most likely, about the new GeForce RTX GPUs. Maybe not tonight, but I have a good sense like sometime this week, NVIDIA will make that announcement.
And that is the thing people are really waiting to see. And I think AMD sensed that a bit too. They briefly teased some information about the RDNA 4 [00:12:00] GPUs. Yeah, AMD also teased their RX 9070 GPUs. And that’s interesting too, just the name is interesting. Because you know, AMD’s used to follow a fully different Radeon naming scheme.
Now they’re kind of aligning with what NVIDIA’s doing. So, this Radeon RX 9070 will be comparable to whatever NVIDIA announces as a 5070 video card. Okay. So, it should make shopping a little easier. So there’s that. The RDNA 4 technology is going to have AI upscaling, which is a thing we’ve knocked AMD against before.
Because their fidelity affects a super resolution for stuff. But just couldn’t compete with NVIDIA NVIDIA’s DLSS, so they’re gonna have an answer to that. But again, just like, brief teases the news post I wrote is like the bare minimum we can even write because they didn’t have much information.
They’re just like, yeah, we will have new video cards, we will have new
Cherlynn: graphics. Is it claiming a spot,
Devindra: right? Like, kinda? Yeah. Basically. Whereas I think NVIDIA’s gonna come here and show off new hardware, new actual things, so. We shall see.
Cherlynn: Yeah.
Devindra: And I want to do maybe one or two [00:13:00] more of these episodes, just like recapping where we are Oh, throughout the show?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we are using the DJI mic 2, or mic mini, so we can like sit down and record anywhere. Yep. We’re at our breakfast nook right now. In
Cherlynn: the hotel.
Devindra: Yeah. And maybe you’ll hear more ambient noise than normal, but it, this is a really good way to have conversations. Yeah, it’s fast. We hope to have some interviews from folks up soon too.
With other
Cherlynn: members of the team. You’ll hear more than just the two of us. I think, I promise you they all sound amazing and lovely. I’m trying to think of like, whether there’s anything else that’s of note in the news that we’ve seen so far, because to your point, right, CES is in full swing, really. And we’ve been
Devindra: like, headstabbed.
Just like, so much stuff. Sherilyn’s been managing so much of the like, practical stuff and the scheduling stuff. Yeah, I’ve had like a pile of embargoes. All of us, like, all the team
Cherlynn: has had piles of embargoes, which is like, it is, like, to your point, kind of a return to form in that sense, but also feels like we’ve been covering this endlessly every CES.
We saw a few I don’t know. Lots of AI that [00:14:00] doesn’t really need to be AI. We saw a lot of pet tech. We saw a lot of smart home. Man, send us your thoughts, really, so far as we are chugging along the show. Podcast at Engadget. com would be a great place to drop them. Oh my gosh LG’s got all these weird products that I think we talked about even ahead of coming to CES.
Where like, yes it’s slapdick 2070 inch screen on a microwave, but then recently we found out what, it was a projector that looks like a stand fan or something? That’s actually
Devindra: kind of cool. Yeah, we gotta get some video of that stuff.
Cherlynn: Yeah, so plenty, plenty to look out
Devindra: for. Of the stories we’ve produced, I do want to shout out the stuff Sam and I did around Dell’s rebranding.
I wrote about Dell rebranding all of its PCs to sound more like Apple, so check out that post. But Sam had a really good rant called Dell killing the XPS name is an unforced error. And that whole story is wild because Dell’s basically obliterating all of its brand names. They’re just going to be Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max.
And to both of us, that sounds very Apple y. Wait, can I insert
Cherlynn: myself a little bit here? Because it’s not just Dell, Dell Pro, Dell Pro Max. [00:15:00] After I read both of your posts, it is the sub tiers that makes no sense. Like if they simplified it truly, it would just be Dell, Dell Pro, Dell Pro Max. Fine. But no, it would be Dell, Dell Pro, and then under each, there might be the premium label and the plus label.
So it could be the Dell Pro Plus. Yep. But versus the Dell non pro premium. So the Dell premium is still worse than the Dell Pro Plus?
Devindra: Yes.
Cherlynn: My goodness. What? And then you throw in the numbers. There’s numbers. They’re coming back. Some of the numbers
Devindra: are coming back. The desktops are kind of ridiculous because at the event Sam and I were at, they showed off The Dell Pro Max Micro and the Dell Pro Max Mini, which you have the same name within your name.
You are conflicting what this device actually is, and I find that to be completely ridiculous. So, check out Sam and my rant about that thing. I also did a video up on YouTube, and for once, the YouTube commentators seem to be on our side. Yes, they’re right.
Cherlynn: They are right. We are right, and Dell [00:16:00] is not right.
And so I am glad you pointed it out. It seemed like a lot of people resonated with that story on our side as well. It’s a whole
Devindra: thing. And I will say I don’t miss like the, I don’t miss a lot of the brands like Inspiron and whatever, but it’s more like XPS. Getting rid of XPS seems like a mistake. Falling in the footsteps of Apple seems like a really weak move.
Cherlynn: Of all the things to do because look, I covered HP’s pivot to one brand as well when that happened last year. And HP had a good sense to just, when they say simplify, they mean. Simplify to their own brand. So they did Omnibook, right? Which is not Pro Max. Fine. It’s their own name. For Dell to tell you that they’re not copying Apple, and I’m not saying they did say that to you, but like, they more or less suggested that these are industry terms.
They did say that
Speaker 3: to me. But
Cherlynn: like, if HP can do so without invoking the terms Pro and Max, why can’t you, Dell?
Devindra: That’s basically what I asked Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell, at this event where Dell. com. He was there to announce this whole thing and they were asking [00:17:00] questions from the audience. So yeah, I shot my hand up and I was like, my direct question to him was, what does Dell have to gain by copying Apple?
And Michael Dell did not look too pleased.
Cherlynn: Of course he did. He
Devindra: I mean for him too, it’s like, oh, now my names are all Dell, Dell, Dell. So it’s like better for him and his ego. Yeah, yeah, his
Cherlynn: name, yeah, yeah. And I
Devindra: feel like that may be part of it, but I’ve talked to a lot of people at Dell, like Other people, people working within the PC design stuff and nobody was excited about this change.
Of course
Speaker 3: not, why? Because
Devindra: their babies are all gone. Like the people who work on Inspiron and Precision and everything, the brands they devote their lives to are gone. And now they have to live with these new brands and I don’t know if people are going to be as excited. So anyway, that’s going to be a long ongoing story.
Check out our coverage in all of its many forms. I think that’s going to be one of the big takeaways from the CS. Del sort of, just shooting itself in the foot here. And nobody seems to like it except Del, except Michael Del.
Cherlynn: Yeah. I want to quickly shout out that the Samsung press conference just wrapped and we learned two things of note.
One, that the [00:18:00] Bali rolling robot is going to actually retail this year, they say. But they did say that last year too. And then we don’t know a price yet. We just know it’s going to be the first half of the year is what they said on stage. And then the second thing is they announced the dates of Galaxy Unpacked.
It will happen? January 22nd. So thanks a lot, Samsung, because right after CES, some of us will be heading straight into preparation for Samsung Galaxy S8. Let
Devindra: Cherlynn take a break. That’s the message of this year. Never,
Cherlynn: never happening. Alright, we
Devindra: will, we’ll be back with more updates about CES. Drop us an email, folks, podcastinggadget.
com. No live stream this week, because we are here, but you’ll get a bunch of episodes from us. And check out our social channels, too. A lot of fun videos are going up. Send us
Cherlynn: music recommendations! Oh
Devindra: yeah, maybe we should just open up a playlist and have people add songs to it. Anyway, we’re out folks, thank you.
Cherlynn: Bye!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/engadget-podcast-weve-survived-two-days-of-ces-2025-052543789.html?src=rss
Go Here to Read this Fast! Tiny, speedy AI models shake up business as we know it
Originally appeared here:
Tiny, speedy AI models shake up business as we know it
Originally appeared here:
The new Garmin Instinct 3 had me climbing a wall – in the best way possible
Go Here to Read this Fast! AI jobs are among the fastest-growing in the UK
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AI jobs are among the fastest-growing in the UK
Even as Apple adds more ports to its laptops and desktops, it is never quite enough. Thankfully, companies like Plugable offer ways to push past external display limits or pack way more charging ports into a tiny space.
Plugable revealed three new products during CES 2025 — the 5 Display Dock, 10-port USB-C Charger, and DisplayLink Pro Quad Display Adapter. Each of these products will help users cut cable clutter and improve their workspace.
Originally appeared here:
Plugable debuts 5 Display Dock, 10-port USB-C Charger, and DisplayLink Pro Quad Display Adapter at CES 2025