If I covered everything announced at Amazon’s fall hardware event, it would take a while, and I would be repeating the hard work of my colleague Kris Holt. Check out his report for all the new Echo speakers, new Alexa tricks, more Nest Cameras and, yes, more Kindles — AKA the only Amazon hardware I’m usually interested in.
It’s been a rough time for Peloton. Last year was marred by deep staff cuts, a change of CEO and a reckoning of where the home fitness company belonged, post-Pandemic boom. The answer is, unfortunately, AI-tinged, but that shouldn’t distract from some major hardware upgrades across its Bike, Tread and Row family of machines. It’s an almost-entire overhaul, with new software, programmable workouts and an array of collaborations.
The fall tech events just won’t stop. Today, Amazon has its fall hardware event, which is likely to reveal improvements to voice assistant Alexa and some new Echo homes for it to live inside. It’s been a couple years since the Echo Show got an update, and it’s been even longer for the standard Echo.
Google is back with another entry-level smartphone, the Pixel 9a. With more AI smarts, a new hardware design, and the biggest battery on any Pixel yet, on paper, it sounds good. Especially the sub-$500 price tag.
Welcome to 2025. Wave farewell to yesteryear with the biggest losers in tech. Picking our favorite villains in 2024 was challenging when it simply wasn’t a great time for tech. With the depressing spiral that is social media, the will-they-or-won’t-they dance of banning TikTok in the US and the neverending edited and deepfaked content, it’s just so noisy. Is it the internet of slop? Is it exhaustion? Is it AIs talking to AIs about AIs?
We’re wrapping up 2024, so why not do it with some frivolous CES announcements? Like this premium (it has to be premium!) microwave from LG, with a touchscreen bigger than your iPad. I’m not sure what you’ll watch in the three-and-a-half minutes it takes to heat that butter chicken curry, but you can do it in glorious full HD resolution.
As 2025 approaches, we’re reviewing all our… reviews. Yes, everything we poked, prodded, and critiqued this year. Alongside inevitable smartphone and laptop upgrades (it was a particularly strong year for Pixel phones, while Apple continues to offer a premium phone experience on its pro iPhones), it was also a year of impressive drones and cameras, keeping Steve Dent very busy.