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Long-term reviews of consumer technology — phones, software, smart home, and the apps people actually keep on their devices.
The smart-home interoperability standard shipped in late 2022 with a promise to end the ecosystem wars. After running a 34-device household on it for the better part of a year, the picture is clear: lights, plugs, and sensors are solved. Cameras, vacuums, and anything with a screen are not.
Local models have got genuinely good and the hardware has caught up unevenly. We ran the current crop on three machines to find where the line sits between useful and technically impressive.
Three years into the rollout of AI-assisted programming, a working developer's assessment of what these tools have actually changed in the practice of software engineering.
A long-term review of Apple's flagship phone after six months of daily use, with attention to the parts of the experience launch reviews are not built to surface.
Five laptops under $900 tested as a primary work machine, ranked by build quality, sustained performance, screen, keyboard, and how they hold up in week six.
Five e-readers tested over a six-week reading window, ranked by reading experience, library compatibility, and how they hold up to actual sustained reading rather than spec-sheet comparison.
Four prominent Wi-Fi 7 routers benchmarked across a six-week home-network test, with the unfashionable answer that most households can comfortably wait.
A look at the data practices of the most widely sold consumer security cameras in 2026, with attention to what is encrypted, what is retained, and what gets shared with law enforcement.
Anker now sells more than forty different chargers, banks, and cables under at least three sub-brand names. A working tester's guide to the ones that earn their place in a backpack and the ones that don't.
A surprisingly contentious category. The USB-C marking on a cable does not actually tell you what the cable will do, and a meaningful fraction of cables on the market are not what they appear to be.