Google’s Pixel Buds Pro hit a new all-time low of $160

Prime Day might offer just what you need if you’re looking for a pair of Android-friendly wireless earbuds. Amazon is selling Google’s Pixel Buds Pro at a new all-time low of $160, well below the usual $200 asking price. That’s better than the previous best of $175, and conveniently comes as Amazon is offering a free gift card with Pixel 7 orders.

Buy Pixel Buds Pro at Amazon – $160

The Pixel Buds Pro are, simply speaking, Google’s best earbuds to date. The active noise cancellation is the highlight, with good performance that helps you focus on tunes rather than construction or loud conversations. However, there’s also much-improved bass — these may be a good fit if you regularly listen to dance music and rap. Add the seven-hour battery life and they should work well for workday listening, not to mention longer flights.

They aren’t flawless. Call quality is merely acceptable, and the transparency mode doesn’t offer the natural sound or volume sensitivity of the second-gen AirPods Pro. Features like volume EQ require Android, too, so this isn’t necessarily the best pick if you’re an iPhone user. At this price, though, the Pixel Buds Pro are a relative bargain if you want better-than-average sound but still have a tight budget.

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Amazon Prime Early Access sale cuts Western Digital and SanDisk storage by up to 65 percent

Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale is here, which for many of us, means getting more storage on the cheap. Western Digital and SanDisk are happy to oblige, with savings of up to 65 percent on microSD cards, portable SSDs, high-speed NVMe M.2 SSDs and more. Standout deals include SanDisk’s Ultra 512GB microSD card ($43 or 56 percent off), the SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD ($160 or 65 percent off) and the WD 16TB Elements desktop external HDD ($240 or 47 percent off). 

Buy Western Digital and SanDisk storage at Amazon

If you need storage on the go for video editing and other data-hungry applications, SanDisk’s rugged 2TB Extreme Portable SSDs are ideal. The 2TB 1,050MB/s model is currently on sale for $160, saving you a full 65 percent on the regular $460 price. If you need even more, the 4TB model is also discounted to just $300, for a savings of 57 percent ($400 off). And finally, if more speed is in order, SanDisk’s 2,000MB/s Extreme Pro Portable SSDs also have heavy discounts, with the 2TB model at $220 (57 percent off) and the 4TB model a real steal at $360 (60 percent off). 

SanDisk has you covered on the memory card side as well. For smartphone, drone, or GoPro storage, the 512TB Ultra microSDXS UHS-I cards are on just $44, or 56 percent off the regular price. And for more speed, grab the SanDisk Extreme 1TB card for $128, which is 49 percent off the normal $250 price. And SanDisk has big discounts on CFexpress Type B cards for the latest Fujifilm, Canon and Panasonic mirrorless cameras, with the 128GB model available for just $110, for a savings of 56 percent. 

Finally, Western Digital has some solid options for PC and PS5 storage updates. You can grab the 1TB WD_BLACK SN770 model (read and write speeds 5,150MB/s and 4,900MB/s) for $80 and save 38 percent. And if you more speed and space, the WD_Black SN850 2TB model (read speed 7,000 MB/s and write speed 5,300 MB/s) is just $208, saving you 31 percent.

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Apple’s 10.2-inch iPad drops to an all-time low of $269

You’ll want to act quickly if you’ve been looking for a frill-free tablet. Amazon is selling Apple’s latest 10.2-inch iPad (that is, the 2021 model) at an all-time low price of $269 as part of the company’s October Prime Day sale. This is an exceptional deal that beats some of the bargains we’ve seen for past models.

Buy Apple iPad at Amazon – $269

The 10.2-inch iPad remains alluring thanks to its sheer value for money. It’s fast for the price, offers a solid screen and lasts a long time on battery. On this newest model, the wide-angle camera with Center Stage is particularly useful — it’s easier to fit more of your household into the frame during a video call, even if they’re in the background. Toss in the upgraded base storage, a robust app ecosystem and iPadOS 15’s better multitasking and you might not need more than this.

The same issues still apply, of course. This iPad design now feels old compared to newer models like the iPad Air and iPad mini. You won’t get those tablets’ thinner bezels, faster processors and improved cameras. There’s no support for the Magic Keyboard or second-generation Pencil, for that matter. However, there’s a real chance you don’t need those extras — the 10.2-inch iPad is still a very capable device for gaming, reading, video viewing and many other everyday tasks.

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Sony’s excellent WH-1000XM5 headphones are down to $348 for Prime Day

For our money, Sony’s WH-1000XM5 is the best set of wireless headphones on the market right now. They’re absolutely worth considering if you’re in need of a new set of cans or simply want an upgrade from what you’re already rocking. Now might be the right time to take the leap, as the WH-1000XM5 is on sale for Prime Day. The headphones are currently $348, which is $50 off the regular price.

Buy Sony’s WH-1000XM5 at Amazon – $348

The WH-1000XM5 offers almost across-the-board improvements over the WH-1000XM4, our previous favorite headphones. An overdue redesign makes this model more comfortable than its predecessors, thanks to improved weight distribution and synthetic leather ear cups.

These headphones have new 30mm carbon fiber drivers, which we felt deliver punchier bass than the M4. In fact, the all-round sound quality is more refined, save for occasional skips while connected to a MacBook Pro — which may be a Bluetooth issue. Bolstered by eight active noise cancellation microphones, double the number found in the M4, the M5’s ANC is better at minimizing background noise too. Speaking of mics, we found that the M5 offers the best call quality yet from the 1000X series.

Sony claims you’ll get up to 30 hours of listening time from a single charge, and that’s with ANC enabled. Our only major gripe with the M5 headphones is that they’re typically $50 more expensive than the M4’s regular price of $348. At least during the Prime Day sale, that’s no longer an issue.

If you prefer wireless earbuds to over-ear cans, a larger Sony sale has discounted a few buds that we like. Both the Sony LinkBuds and LinkBuds S are on sale for $128, while the budget-friendly WF-C500 earbuds have dropped to only $58.

Shop Sony Prime Day deals

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Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro drop to their lowest price ever for Prime Day

Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro haven’t even been available for a month and you can still already find a deal on them. The price has dropped a bit as part of Amazon’s major Prime Day sale. You’ll be able to pick up a pair of the new AirPods Pro for $235, which is $14 off the regular price. Sure, that’s not the steepest discount ever, but it’s the lowest price we’ve seen for the earbuds to date.

Buy Apple AirPods (2nd-gen) at Amazon – $235

We gave the latest AirPods Pro a score of 88 in our review, an improvement over the 87 we gave to the first-gen set. While the design is ostensibly the same, Apple made some upgrades to the internals (including the introduction of an H2 chip), as well as one on the outside. Its latest higher-end earbuds have swipe controls. However, we found them somewhat finicky and had to steady the stem with a thumb in order to control the volume by swiping. The second-gen AirPods Pro also offer so-so battery life (six hours with active noise cancellation enabled and seven hours with it off) and we had mixed results with the Personalized Spatial Audio feature, with a sound profile that was too treble-focused.

Overall, though, we felt that the second-gen AirPods Pro are a solid upgrade over the first-edition earbuds. Apple has improved the sound quality (including for SharePlay audio) and it offers the best transparency mode in any earbuds. The new AirPods Pro deliver solid ANC performance as well. On top of that, the ability to seamlessly switch from one Apple device to another is handy for those who are entrenched in the company’s ecosystem.

As for the charging case, that now has a speaker, which should make it easier for people to pinpoint its location if they’ve misplaced it (having a U1 chip to locate it with Find My helps too). The case is IPX4 rated, like the earbuds, and it has a lanyard loop — though you’ll need to buy a lanyard separately.

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Waymo’s cafeteria workers are forming a union

The cafeteria workers at Waymo’s offices are forming a union, according to NBC News. As the news organization notes, that makes them the latest group of people to organize at one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies. Waymo’s food service personnel are also following in the footsteps of the 4,000 Google cafeteria workers who quietly unionized during the COVID-19 pandemic. The autonomous driving tech company used to be an experimental unit under Google before it became an Alphabet subsidiary. 

Like Google’s other food service workers, Waymo’s are employed by contracting firm Sodexo. Workers cited the high cost of living in the Bay Area where Alphabet’s offices are located as the reason why they want to unionize. They said their $24-per-hour pay isn’t enough to live adequately in the city, where rents are astronomical, and that their health plan is prohibitively expensive. The workers are also asking for better treatment and benefits, since they don’t enjoy the same perks as full-time Alphabet employees. 

Organizers for the unionization efforts at Waymo told NBC News that they’ve already gathered signatures from majority of the workers. Sodexo said that it “respects the rights of [its] employees to unionize or not to unionize” but didn’t say whether it will voluntarily recognize the union. If it does, the workers will have to file for an NLRB election to be able to join the other Alphabet cafeteria workers at Unite Here.

Hackers forced more than a dozen US public airport websites offline

Hackers believed to be based in Russia temporarily forced around 14 public-facing websites for US airports offline on Monday. The LaGuardia, O’Hare and LAX websites were among those targeted, and most are back online. A senior US government official said that air traffic control, internal airport communications and other critical operations were not affected, but travelers looking for security wait times or other information may have been inconvenienced, according to ABC News. An LAX spokesperson affirmed that “no internal airport systems were compromised and there were no operational disruptions.”

“On Monday October 10th, 2022 at approx. 0300 hours there was a denial of service incident lasting 15 minutes that resulted in intermittent delays accessing the LaGuardia airport website,” a Port Authority spokesperson told ABC News. “The Port Authority’s cybersecurity defense system did its job by detecting the incident quickly, addressing the problem in 15 minutes, and enabling us to alert others by notifying federal authorities immediately. There was no operational impact to any Port Authority facilities.”

The incident, said to be the result of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, have been pinned on pro-Russia hacker group Killnet. The hackers are not believed to be government actors, however. There’s no evidence that the Russian government was involved in this incident, a cybersecurity analyst said.

Both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Transportation Security Administration are monitoring the situation, CNN reports. CISA noted it didn’t have any worries about airport operational disruptions.

1010music’s Razzmatazz is a delightfully pink and pocketable drum machine

The Lemondrop and Fireball Nanobox grooveboxes pack a lot of punch for their size, and 1010music is expanding the lineup with the Razzmatazz drum machine. The pocket-sized device packs in a 64-step sequencer and eight drum voices. Each of the voices has two FM oscillators and a WAV sample layer, which should enable you to blend organic, acoustic and digital elements to create unique drum sounds.

Filters, resonators, bit-crushers, delay, reverb and four types of distortion can help you produce distinct sounds too. But if you’d rather not go through all that trouble, you can opt to use the Razzmatazz’s 120 preset kits and sequences instead.

You’ll be able to put together tracks with the help of eight drum and percussion pads, which you can control via the two-inch touchscreen or a MIDI device. Using the Super Stepper visual sequencer, 1010music says beatmakers can tap or swipe to create rhythms and simultaneously see all eight pads across 16 steps. You’ll be able to create lengthy drum sequences of up to 64 steps, each of which can last as long as eight bars. Along with the touchscreen, the groovebox has two knobs and four buttons.

The Razzmatazz is a proper sampler, since there’s a line-in jack through which you can record audio. Alternatively, you can load WAV files onto the device using a microSD card. There’s also a mode that enables you to play back loops or sample slices. However, there’s unfortunately no option to slice up samples on the device, which is powered through a USB-C connector.

Best of all, the Razzmatazz fits in with the candy-colored Nanobox aesthetic. It comes in an eye-catching hot pink. You can pick up the groovebox from the 1010music website and other retailers for $399.

1010music Razzmatazz Nanobox drum machine
1010music

The best accessories for your new iPhone

New Apple iPhone 14 owners should think about the accessories they want for their new handset not long after unboxing it. Like with last year’s iPhone 13s, this year’s models don’t come with a charging adapter, so that’s one thing you’ll probably need …