This is the second month in a row that Samsung has headlined our monthly best gadgets list. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6 are impressive and share the spotlight. Looking for a ridiculously big TV? The 86-inch Vizio TV offers a lot of size without a hefty price tag. The Beats Pill is back, reclaiming its spot as one of the best portable speakers you can buy right now. Finally, have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a modern bard? Teenage Engineering’s EP-1320 Medieval Sampler should help realize this very specific fantasy.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is better than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 in many ways. This is a phone that feels better and looks better. The crease of the screen inside the new flip is much better than that of the Z Flip 5. It doesn’t let in nearly as much light, and it feels slicker when you run your finger over it. This is the first clamshell foldable device to feature a vapor chamber that cools the device under pressure.
The Z Flip 6 is also more powerful than its predecessor, but feels nothing like it in use. Fortunately, its battery life is still a little longer than the previous Flip. The new clamshell battery has a capacity of 4,000 mAh, compared to last year’s 3,7,000 mAh battery. I wanted it to be both a beautiful piece of technology and functionally fit into a broader field.
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Galaxy Z Fold 6 looks back at all the steps the company has taken so far to achieve relative success in this niche product category. It’s powerful, well-built, and capable of handling all the software tricks Samsung has rolled out with Galaxy AI. If you’re three years overdue for a new foldable phone, the Z Fold 6 is a worthy update. If you can hold out, there’s no harm in waiting a year to see how Samsung improves its camera hardware.
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is like a portable TV screen that you can lean against the mirror while you get dressed up for the day. It has a laptop-like desktop mode that you can use by plugging it into a monitor. It can stream games from the cloud and turn it into a handheld gaming console with accessories like the Razer Kishi Ultra.
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I can’t find any flaws in this phone other than the lack of dust protection. Its creases and hinges are excellent, and the battery lasts all day, allowing for beautiful evening and stunning action photos. What’s more, it offers the largest, most versatile external screen, with incredibly simple navigation and enough features that won’t make you want to open your phone to perform quick tasks.
Motorola made two big claims on this phone: an external display that “does everything you can do without opening the phone” and “excellent low-light performance,” and it succeeded on both. Last year’s Razr lacked both, so if you’re considering upgrading from that version, there’s no reason not to do so.
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I believe the Pill is an affordable speaker that offers far more than you might expect. It also doesn’t appear to impose any premium for being made in Apple, often referred to as the Apple tax, which is surprising. Priced at just $150, it has an impressive mix of high-end and mid-range features, a slew of portability-focused features, and a few bells and whistles like amplified and stereo modes or lossless audio via USB-C.
There are more powerful low-end alternatives for the same price, so I wouldn’t just recommend the subwoofer Pill. 24-hour battery life is more than double that of similar speakers in the range (10-15 hours), and new Android compatibility features expand the target audience to those who want to take a small speaker with them that can produce some big audio .
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Vizio’s 86-inch 4K TV is an interesting choice, with a massive size and a suggested retail price of $1,000. My office watched the 2024 Paris Olympics for a week and a half on this 86-inch monitor. The screen was too big to fit on the desk we brought to the new office space, so it sat on the floor, but it was a source of fun for the entire Giz staff. It’s a DLED TV, so you can’t expect the same picture quality as a 4K QLED TV like the Sony Bravia 7, but you won’t pay more than $2,000 MSRP for the 65-inch or larger version.
You may need a little help getting your feet on this big boy, but once they were on, I found the 86-inch screen to be very, very stable. I could hold it with most of my strength and not even hear the plastic strain. Vizio’s redesigned UI is now easier than ever to navigate. Once the home page loads, you can easily find your most used apps and services in the folders next to Apps and Inputs. Vizio’s updated UI makes it easy to access apps without any cluttered menus or unnecessary clicks – and that’s the most important thing. The TV and settings menus are also simple and they avoid all the unnecessary clicking that I get on LG TVs. It’s best to go into this TV without any strong illusions about big-screen bliss, especially if you’re primarily looking to save a few hundred bucks on a monitor.
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If you crave modern medieval music, the EP-1320 is one of the most interesting devices you can use. The EP-1320 has 128 MB of storage space, 64 MB more memory than the EP-133, which is a redesign of the EP-133. Medieval is actually EP-133, which adds 220 preset medieval instruments and sound effects. You can still load your own sounds and samples onto the EP-1320.
It’s very portable, the controls are relatively simple, and I could go from knowing nothing about Teenage Engineering’s sampler to creating a simple track from scratch in less than an hour. The sample songs included with Medieval are great for quick inspiration; I love all the different samples on this device. If you’re particularly passionate about this subject, it will become your favorite little device for playing music.
The Asus TUF Gaming A14 is a sophisticated yet powerful gaming laptop that won’t break the bank at $1,500. It has a slim profile and simple design, but is actually a powerful device. The new AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 chips easily beat Intel’s Meteor Lake series earlier this year. It suffers from a lack of upgradeability and limited spec options, but it makes up for it with smooth operation. It feels more like an ultrabook than a gaming laptop. It weighs just over 3 pounds, and while the keyboard backlight is bright, it’s not noticeable. It runs quietly even under stress and can still play graphics-intensive games at a fair frame rate.
As long as you don’t mind a bit of bloat, no other business laptop in HP’s lineup does it better than the HP Elite x360 1040 G11 2-in-1. The Elite x360 is priced at $2,300 and features a Core 7 Ultra processor and integrated Intel graphics for high performance. The Elite also features a bright, responsive touch display, four powerful speakers, nearly 12 hours of battery life, and a comfortable keyboard. You can use 360-degree hinges and tie-down pens to add even more versatility. For security-conscious IT departments and consumers, Elite x360 has many features to protect your data. This is a lean, well-built machine suitable for business use.
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