Best Buy is piloting a new paid membership service that would provide exclusive perks, including concierge-style tech support and exclusive pricing. The subscription service, which will cost $200 a year or $180 if you have a Best Buy credit card, bears similarities with Amazon’s Prime subscription as Best Buy looks to expand its services outside the sale of consumer tech products.
The new membership, called Best Buy Beta, grants members access to a slew of benefits, including free standard shipping, unlimited Geek Squad technical support, exclusive member pricing, and a 60-day extended return window. Best Buy confirmed that Beta members will also have 24/7 access to a concierge team, which they can contact by phone, email, chat, or through the Best Buy mobile app.
Here are a few perks included with the Best Buy membership program. Image: Best Buy
Best Buy already has a $200 membership program called Total Tech Support that provides similar services, but it will be unavailable in the pilot markets. In fact, based on how similar both services are, there’s a possibility that Best Buy will discontinue Total Tech Support.
Best Buy is not the first retail giant to roll out a service to compete with Amazon Prime. Last September, Walmart released its own subscription service for $98 a year, offering minimal benefits such as free delivery on orders over $35 and fuel discounts at select gas stations.
Best Buy is piloting the new Beta membership in three states: Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma, but the retailer says it plans to expand the annual subscription to select stores in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Tennessee sometime this month.
It’s taken Atari less time to introduce its own Ethereum-based token, a crypto casino, and an NFT licensing business than it has to finally release the Atari VCS not-quite console it revealed in 2017 under the Ataribox moniker. Now the company’s going even harder on crypto and NFT: It announced yesterday that it’d created two new divisions, Atari Gaming and Atari Blockchain, as well as a reshuffle of its leadership team.
The company said in its announcement that its now-previous chief executive, Frédéric Chesnais, would “focus on Licensing and Atari Blockchain.” He was replaced by board of directors chairman Wade Rosen, who said that Chesnais “inherited a situation burdened with debt” and “eliminated debt and enacted a meaningful turnaround” during his tenure by pushing Atari beyond the gaming market.
That push is where Atari started to get weird. (Even weirder than the Speakerhats it announced in 2017, which is saying something.)
Let’s start with the Atari Token. The company said its “primary objective is to be a means of payment for the interactive entertainment industry, but we believe the token will be beneficial for other industries as well” and that “eventually, we envision the Atari Token being available worldwide as a means of payment.”
Then it announced a partnership with Decentral Games to create an Atari-branded casino in the “Vegas City” gaming district on the Decentraland metaverse, which is also based on Ethereum, with a two-year lease. Think that’s confusing to read on an enthusiast-focused website in 2021? Imagine saying that sentence to someone playing Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 in the ’80s. Yet here we find ourselves.
But then Atari managed to cross all those decades by embracing the NFT, or non-fungible token, market that went from a meme to a mega-hit seemingly overnight. The company said yesterday that it “has seen a tremendous amount of success in licensing the Atari related brands for the use in NFTs” and that it “anticipate[s] this playing an even larger part of our licensing strategy in the coming years.”
That’s all happened very quickly. Meanwhile, it seems the Atari VCS is perpetually close to—but not quite ready for—release. The console was revealed in 2017, rebranded to the Atari VCS in 2018, and expanded to a “Raspberry Pi for the living room” in 2019. Atari said it would start shipping the device in July 2019, the end of 2019, March 2020, and spring 2020; it finally started to reach buyers in December 2020.
However, there didn’t appear to be much stock because the Atari VCS is currently limited to pre-orders that Atari claims will ship in spring 2021. We’ll believe it when we see it, especially given the global chip shortage. The device’s former architect also filed a lawsuit in 2020 claiming the company owed him six months of back pay, which doesn’t exactly support the idea that Atari VCS is a priority for Atari… Gaming.
The company’s announcement also suggests that it’s no longer focused on hardware. Here’s the section of the release devoted to the Atari VCS:
“Atari will continue to support the Atari VCS through meaningful third-party content and exclusive first-party content. The VCS community has shown an ingenuity and creativity in adapting the system, and Atari will work to support this by releasing tools that will allow creators the ability to design their own classic Atari games (beginning with the Atari 2600). With an eventual goal of making it easier to create, share and play retro gaming content in the modern era.”
It’s not clear how those efforts would differ from introducing official emulators for the Atari consoles of yore—many of which can already be emulated by other means—or why developers would make retro games for a device that very few people own. But at least there’s some hope for the Atari VCS; the Speakerhat’s all but disappeared from Amazon. So much for the future of listening to music.
Facebook says Oculus Rift S headsets “generally” won’t be replenished as they disappear from store shelves, marking the end of the virtual reality system’s life span. As UploadVR reported yesterday, Facebook has confirmed that “generally speaking, as channels sell out of stock, they won’t be replenished moving forward.” The PC-tethered headset is unavailable through Oculus’ store, and it’s out of stock on retail platforms like Amazon and Walmart in the US, except from third-party sellers.
Facebook announced last year that it would discontinue the Oculus Rift S in 2021. While the headset was a successor to the landmark Oculus Rift, it compromised on features like screen resolution and refresh rate, particularly compared to high-end PC-based competitors like the Valve Index. Meanwhile, Facebook shifted its focus to the self-contained Oculus Quest, a mobile headset that can also be plugged into a desktop PC — making it functionally a replacement for the Rift S.
According to some reports, that strategy was a marked departure from Oculus’ earlier plans. Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe left the company in 2018, reportedly after Facebook canceled a higher-end “Rift 2” headset. Also-departed Oculus founder Palmer Luckey alluded to that rumor on Twitter today, saying he was “imagining a world where Rift 2 was not cancelled shortly before going into production and then cancelled again in favor of a much lower spec Lenovo rebadge.” (The Oculus Rift S was produced in partnership with Lenovo.)
Moving to standalone designs, though, has apparently worked well for Facebook so far. Facebook says last year’s Oculus Quest 2 has outsold all previous Oculus headsets combined. The device has established Facebook as the dominant VR headset company at the price of ceding high-end PC-based VR to competitors including Valve, HTC, and HP. And Facebook has indicated that it’s continuing the Quest line for the near future — with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying he’s already imagining “Quest 3 and 4” headsets.
Tech companies don’t just want to identify you using facial recognition — they also want to read your emotions with the help of AI. For many scientists, though, claims about computers’ ability to understand emotion are fundamentally flawed, and a little in-browser web game built by researchers from the University of Cambridge aims to show why.
Head over to emojify.info, and you can see how your emotions are “read” by your computer via your webcam. The game will challenge you to produce six different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, and anger), which the AI will attempt to identify. However, you’ll probably find that the software’s readings are far from accurate, often interpreting even exaggerated expressions as “neutral.” And even when you do produce a smile that convinces your computer that you’re happy, you’ll know you were faking it.
This is the point of the site, says creator Alexa Hagerty, a researcher at the University of Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk: to demonstrate that the basic premise underlying much emotion recognition tech, that facial movements are intrinsically linked to changes in feeling, is flawed.
“The premise of these technologies is that our faces and inner feelings are correlated in a very predictable way,” Hagerty tells The Verge. “If I smile, I’m happy. If I frown, I’m angry. But the APA did this big review of the evidence in 2019, and they found that people’s emotional space cannot be readily inferred from their facial movements.” In the game, says Hagerty, “you have a chance to move your face rapidly to impersonate six different emotions, but the point is you didn’t inwardly feel six different things, one after the other in a row.”
A second mini-game on the site drives home this point by asking users to identify the difference between a wink and a blink — something machines cannot do. “You can close your eyes, and it can be an involuntary action or it’s a meaningful gesture,” says Hagerty.
Despite these problems, emotion recognition technology is rapidly gaining traction, with companies promising that such systems can be used to vet job candidates (giving them an “employability score”), spot would-be terrorists, or assess whether commercial drivers are sleepy or drowsy. (Amazon is even deploying similar technology in its own vans.)
Of course, human beings also make mistakes when we read emotions on people’s faces, but handing over this job to machines comes with specific disadvantages. For one, machines can’t read other social clues like humans can (as with the wink / blink dichotomy). Machines also often make automated decisions that humans can’t question and can conduct surveillance at a mass scale without our awareness. Plus, as with facial recognition systems, emotion detection AI is often racially biased, more frequently assessing the faces of Black people as showing negative emotions, for example. All these factors make AI emotion detection much more troubling than humans’ ability to read others’ feelings.
“The dangers are multiple,” says Hagerty. “With human miscommunication, we have many options for correcting that. But once you’re automating something or the reading is done without your knowledge or extent, those options are gone.”
(Pocket-lint) – Sonos Roam is the second portable Bluetooth speaker in the company’s portfolio, but really it’s the first when talking portability – because the Sonos Move isn’t all that portable by comparison.
A Bluetooth speaker by day, Sonos speaker by night, or vice versa, the Sonos Roam is very portable, very smart and has some excellent features on board. It’s more expensive than your average Bluetooth speaker, but then it isn’t your average Bluetooth speaker.
So should you buy the Sonos Roam? Yes. Why? Let us explain.
Design
Dimensions: 168 x 62 x 60mm / Weight: 430g
Finish options: Shadow Black, Lunar White
IP67 water- and dust- resistant
Triangular prism design
The Sonos Roam is a triangular prism shape, which is surprisingly great for carrying around. Its curved edges are smooth and comfortable to hold, while the soft-touch finish, super-light weight and rubbered ends make it feel durable and more than capable of withstanding a knock and tumble.
It can also handle a dunk. Falling into the Ultimate Ears Boom 3 and Megaboom 3 category – both of which are waterproof – the Roam is IP67 rated for dust and water. That means you can submerge Roam in up to 3ft of water for 30 minutes. Like Sonos Move, sand and dust are no match for Roam either, and though we didn’t dare try – Roam should also be able to withstand drops too.
The Roam is pretty much the same size as a 500ml water bottle – and significantly more portable and lighter than Move. It’s also smaller than competitors like the UE Boom 3.
As Sonos users would expect, Roam follows similar design traits to the rest of the Sonos portfolio. That means controls up top, very small holes making up the plastic speaker grille for a clean look, and black or white colour options. We had the Lunar White model in for review and while we’d love to see some special edition colours at some point – like Sonos offered with its limited edition Sonos One Hay collection – the off-white option is still lovely looking.
It’s worth mentioning that the Roam does deter slightly from Sonos’ more recent speakers in that it offers raised tactile controls rather than capacitive ones. There’s a play/pause button, volume increase and decrease buttons, and a microphone on/off button as usual – but the symbols are embossed on the rubber finish. It’s also worth noting that this finish – while really lovely to the touch – does seem to dent, so press the buttons with fingers not nails.
Pocket-lint
The Sonos Roam can be positioned horizontally or vertically – just like the Sonos Five. There’s one power/Bluetooth button on one edge next to the USB-C port and there are also four small circular, rubber feet to help the Roam sit properly when positioned horizontally.
Sonos Roam vs Sonos Move: What’s the difference?
Features
Google Assistant/Amazon Alexa
Automatic Trueplay
Sound Swap
The Sonos Roam will function as any other Bluetooth speaker when in Bluetooth mode – with a few extras. When connected via Wi-Fi though – which it will switch to automatically – it has all the features that come with other speakers in the Sonos system, which is the main thing that sets it apart from other Bluetooth-only speakers.
Sonos system features include support for over 100 music services, easy grouping, stereo pairing and control through voice assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, among plenty of other features like equaliser (EQ) adjustment. Like the Sonos Move, however, the Roam cannot be used as surrounds with the Sonos Arc or Sonos Beam, and it can’t be bonded with the Sonos Sub either.
Pocket-lint
The Roam does have an additional feature over other Sonos speakers: Sound Swap. This allows users to bring a Sonos speaker into an existing group by pressing-and-holding the play/pause button on top of the speaker you want to add to the group.
Bring it into a group with other Sonos speakers already playing, or by continuing to hold the button (for around five seconds in total) it will transfer the music on the Roam to your nearest Sonos speaker. This is done using an ultrasonic frequency, with the strongest signal determining the closest speaker. You can read more about Sound Swap in our separate feature.
It’s an excellent addition – one that’s really useful when you’re bringing Roam in from the garden and want to continue what you’re listening to in your living room, for example.
Other features on Sonos Roam include both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support – although you’ll have to choose between them rather than use both at the same time, which is the case for other smart Sonos speakers. We use Google Assistant in our home and Roam delivered as we’d expect, turning our lights off when requested and answering questions and responding efficiently.
Pocket-lint
An LED light on top of the Roam above the microphone icon lets you know when Roam is listening. There’s another LED above the Sonos logo to indicate power, as well as Bluetooth pairing mode. At the bottom of the speaker – when it’s vertically positioned – an orange LED light appears when the battery is low.
Roam also offers Auto Trueplay tuning – just like the Move – to automatically tune its sound to its surroundings. It uses spatial awareness to adjust the sound for the speaker’s orientation, location, and content. Auto Trueplay tuning has been improved to work over both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You can read more about Auto Trueplay in our separate feature.
Hardware and specs
Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi (802.11ac), AirPlay 2
10-hour battery claimed
The Sonos Roam can automatically switch between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections – there’s a button to switch between the two modes so the Roam delivers a seamless experience when moving in and out of your home. There’s also AirPlay 2 support.
There’s a rechargeable battery under the Roam’s hood, which is recharged using the USB Type-C port, or via a Qi compatible wireless charging dock. Sonos has its own official wireless charging dock available to purchase separately, which the Roam will magnetically snap onto. Otherwise, a USB-C cable is included in the box – but not the power adapter itself.
Best Alexa speakers 2021: Top Amazon Echo alternatives
By Britta O’Boyle
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Pocket-lint
The battery is said to last 10 hours – one hour less than the Move – or 10 days when in sleep mode. This is a slight over estimation in our experience though. We got around eight-and-a-half hours from the battery when the volume was set to 50 per cent, though this is still pretty good going considering the Roam’s size.
When the music stops playing the Roam goes into sleep mode automatically – but it only takes around a second to wake it back up using the multi-functional power button positioned on the back of the device. We have a separate feature on how to put Roam into Bluetooth pairing mode.
Sound quality and performance
Two class-H amplifiers
Custom racetrack mid-woofer
Single tweeter
Under the hood of the Sonos Roam are two amplifiers tuned to the speaker’s acoustic architecture, along with a single tweeter for the high-end, a mid-woofer for everything else, along with a high-efficiency motor to increase power and range.
There’s also a far-field microphone array that uses beamforming and multi-channel echo cancellation in order to best hear your voice-based commands.
Pocket-lint
What all this means is the Sonos Roam sounds incredible for its size. As is typically the case with Sonos speakers, it’s on the bassy side, but we love that about it and if you don’t then you can always adjust the EQ in the Sonos app to suit your preference.
Roam has some serious punch for how small it is too – more than filling a decent sized room or smaller garden with sound, even at 50 per cent volume. Of course it doesn’t match the Sonos Move for output clout, but if you’re choosing between the Sonos One and Sonos Roam, the latter gives the former a good run for its money in terms of sound, while also offering smarter features.
We listened to a range of tracks in testing, from The Eagle’s Hotel California and Massive Attack’s Teardrop, to Pink Floyd’s Time and Laura Marling’s Soothing – just some examples – and we were continually impressed with the Roam’s capabilities during testing.
Vocals and acoustics sound great; the speaker delivers rich bass, while also handling treble well. As far as small Bluetooth speakers go the Roam more than delivers on the sound quality front.
Verdict
The Sonos Roam is a little pricey when compared to other Bluetooth speakers, but in the same breath it does a lot more than most Bluetooth speakers.
Its portable and lightweight design is met with excellent sound performance, plus all the features that come with the Sonos system, a choice of smart assistants, along with extra – and great – features like Sound Swap to seamlessly switch between other Sonos speakers and groups.
For those already invested in Sonos, the Roam is a no-brainer as an addition. It allows you to bring your Sonos system with you wherever you go, without you having to think.
For those considering a Bluetooth speaker and wondering if the Roam is worth the investment over others – it delivers everything a Bluetooth speaker should, plus so much more.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Ultimate Ears Boom 3
SQUIRREL_WIDGET_148748
This cylindrical speaker is IP67-rated for water- and dust-resistance just like the Roam, plus it delivers great sound for its size – and through 360 degrees. It’s cheaper than Roam, but it doesn’t offer as many connected features.
Read our review
Pocket-lint
JBL Xtreme 2
SQUIRREL_WIDGET_145677
If you want loud and crisp sound, plus impressive bass, the JBL could be for you. Again, however, it doesn’t have as many features as the Roam, but it’s a great party speaker that comes with a practical carry handle too.
Read our review
Pocket-lint
Sonos Move
SQUIRREL_WIDGET_167282
The larger Sonos has many of the same features as the Roam but delivers much bigger sound in a not-as-portable design.
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The Sonos Roam is the most focused, calculated product from Sonos yet. It’s a small $169 speaker that’s meant to compete with portable Bluetooth speakers that people so often carry everywhere without a second thought. But it’s also designed to slot into Sonos’ multiroom audio platform and showcase the versatility that comes with it. In fact, excluding the co-branded speakers that Sonos makes with Ikea, the Roam is now the cheapest way into the company’s ecosystem.
The Roam supports hands-free voice commands, has Apple AirPlay 2, includes wireless charging, and features a rugged design that lets you use it practically anywhere. There’s a lot riding on this speaker; Sonos only releases a couple new products per year, so they all have to deliver. So let’s examine how the Roam stacks up against similarly sized speakers and whether it should replace whatever you’ve got now.
At 6.61 inches tall, the Roam actually stands shorter than popular Bluetooth speakers like the UE Boom 3 and JBL Flip 5. And at under a pound, it’s lightweight enough to toss into your backpack or tote. The Boom is bigger all around: you could pretty much fit the Roam right inside it. UE’s Megaboom 3 and the new JBL Charge 5 both increase the size advantage further, and they’re still close to the Roam in price. Going up from there, you get to the real giants like the UE Megablast. For this review, I’ll keep it simple and focus on speakers that resemble the Roam in size.
The Roam retains what’s become the standard Sonos aesthetic, with hundreds of precision-drilled holes in the speaker enclosure. But this is not a cylinder-style speaker that shoots audio in all directions. The Roam has a curved triangle shape that naturally projects sound both forward and up when it’s laid horizontally. It comes in either black or white, and I’ve noticed that when the black one is in bright lighting, you can actually see a hexagon pattern behind the holes. That plate is there for structural reasons, but it’s not really visible on the white speaker.
Battery life tops out at 10 hours.
This is the first Sonos speaker to earn an IP67 dust and water resistance rating. By certification standards, that means it should survive up to 30 minutes in three feet of water. In practical terms, it means you can use the Roam in the bathroom while you shower and near pools without fretting about damage. It’s probably a good idea to keep it on a floaty if you insist on bringing it into a deep pool, though. This speaker doesn’t float. Yes, I checked.
The Roam has the best water resistance of any Sonos speaker.
I’ve also managed to drop my two review units a few times, and they’ve come away with only light blemishes and a couple nicks you really have to hunt for to notice. I chalk that up to clumsiness; there’s no built-in handle like the Move, but in general the curved triangle shape is easy to grip. Both sides of the Roam have silicone end caps to help with ruggedness. From what I’ve seen, it should be able to withstand a tumble off a bicycle and the wear and tear that comes with being a truly portable speaker.
It’s rated IP67 and has silicone at both ends to withstand bumps.
On the top (when vertical) or left (horizontal) is where you find the controls, which are actual clicky buttons beneath the silicone instead of the usual capacitive sensors that Sonos tends to use. Going with real, tactile buttons for this product was absolutely the right decision. They’re easy to feel for and hard to press accidentally. There are four buttons: play / pause, two for track controls, and a microphone button for enabling or muting the built-in microphones that are used for voice assistant commands with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
On the back of the Roam is a USB-C port and power button. Aside from wired charging, you can also juice up the speaker using any Qi-compatible pad that it’ll fit on. My Anker dual-charging station handled the task well. Sonos also sells a wireless charger that attaches to the Roam magnetically, but I didn’t get a chance to test that. The included USB-C-to-USB-A cable is nicely angled on the Roam’s side so that it doesn’t get in the way no matter how it’s oriented. Neither the cable nor the Sonos wireless charger are water resistant, so you’ve got to keep those dry. If you’re in a hurry, definitely go wired; Sonos says it takes “about two hours” for the Roam to go from 0 to 50 percent when charging wirelessly compared to “about an hour” when plugged in. Higher-power chargers can cut down on both of those times.
You can use either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant with the built-in mics.
Now onto the main agenda: sound quality. Sonos has built a favorable reputation with its past speakers, but the question is whether the company can make good on its name with a speaker this small and portable. What I’ll say is that the Roam is one of the clearest, most pleasant portable speakers I’ve used. Others like the UE Boom 3 can come off muddy and lack depth. There’s little about their sound and articulation that stands out.
The Roam seems to make a priority of ensuring that the texture and vibrancy of music comes through with maximum clarity. Vocals sound crisp, and strings in classical music come through lush without getting pitchy. Like other Sonos speakers, the Roam features automatic room optimization called Trueplay, and Sonos says it’s constantly adjusting to optimize sound for whatever environment it’s in. This does actually make a difference in an echoey bathroom, but it’s not some magic cure-all for an acoustically challenged room. (Auto Trueplay works with music both streamed over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.)
Let’s face it: while Sonos claims that the Roam “defies expectations,” it can’t defy physics. This is a relatively small speaker, and perhaps the best-sounding one in its size class, but it has weaknesses. At the top of that list is bass, which can’t quite match that of the Sonos One and is roundly defeated by the much larger, heavier Move. Even the barely larger JBL Flip 5 has more assertive bass that gets noticeably boomier than the Roam. It can go louder, too. Larger Bluetooth speakers like the UE Megaboom and JBL Charge 5 will almost certainly trounce the Roam at bass response, but I don’t consider that surprising.
Sonos’ speaker has some low-end resonance — you’ll feel the vibrations if it’s on a table — but it’s clear that the company has opted for balance over boom factor. The Roam can also only do so much when you’re using it in a wide open space outdoors with no walls for the sound to bounce off of. It’ll crank loud without much distortion but can’t reach the same fullness as the Move. It’s when you really turn up the volume that you’ll be left wanting some added oomph. A party speaker this is not.
Two Roams paired together can produce an excellent stereo soundstage — but only on Wi-Fi.
Using two Roams at the same time as a stereo pair brings out even more detail, and the bass also benefits from two of them playing together. There’s no beating proper stereo separation, and two Roams do a better job blanketing a bedroom or living room in music than one alone. Unfortunately, the process of creating a stereo pair can get tedious. You have to manually do it from the Sonos app every time. This makes sense since you have to select which speaker is on what side. But I’d love it if there were a button shortcut to more quickly form a stereo pair — or at least a prompt when you power on a second Roam that asks if you want to pair them instead of leaving both to their lonesome by default.
To the frustration of some Sonos customers, the Roam doesn’t allow you to use the stereo pair feature when listening over Bluetooth. This is also the case with the Move, but considering how much Sonos is hyping the portability of its new speaker, it feels like a fumble on the company’s part. Maybe this poses engineering challenges, but other Bluetooth speakers like the UE Wonderboom 2 can already link together as a stereo pair without needing an app to get there. Bluetooth stereo might be a compelling reason for some people to own two Roams, but right now the feature isn’t there.
The $169 Sonos Roam beside the much bigger, heavier $399 Sonos Move.
Sonos has at least introduced some new tricks with the Roam when using it around the house. The first is called sound swap, which lets you quickly pass off audio from the Roam to whichever of your other Sonos speakers is closest. You just hold the play button for a few seconds, and the currently playing music hops over. Repeat the process, and audio moves back to the Roam. This has worked well in my experience so far, and Sonos goes about locating the nearest speaker in a clever way. When you activate sound swap, all of your speakers briefly emit a high-frequency tone that your ears can’t hear — but the Roam can. When you venture outside, the Roam does a solid job automatically pairing to your phone once you’re outside Wi-Fi coverage.
The other new feature that debuts with the Roam is the option to play Bluetooth audio over your entire Sonos system. In the Sonos app, you can add your other speakers as a group with the Roam that’s playing the Bluetooth audio source. My turntable doesn’t do Bluetooth, but if yours does, this will be an easy way to play your records in multiple rooms — at the cost of fidelity, of course. There are other ways of integrating vinyl into a Sonos system if you care more about audio quality. I did test this feature using content from a friend’s phone over Bluetooth, and it played just fine across my other Sonos speakers. The Move can’t be updated with this feature because the Roam has a new antenna that can connect to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi simultaneously. The Move only supports one or the other at a time.
But even with these new capabilities, there are still those occasional times where a Sonos system falls out of step. Maybe music playback inexplicably starts seizing up, or maybe the volume controls in the app you’re casting from — like Spotify — stop working. Even after shifting to its new S2 platform, Sonos hasn’t completely ironed out the blips when its mobile app goes on the fritz or seems to momentarily lose control over everything. The bugs are rare, but they happen.
A useful, delicious size reference.
What’s worse in the case of the Roam is how poorly Sonos handles moving between Wi-Fi networks. Everything works just great at home, but if you want to use the Wi-Fi features of Roam at someone else’s place or when traveling, it’s a real headache. The process of adding another “trusted network” in the Sonos app didn’t always work in my experience. I hope this is something Sonos will focus on more now that it’s selling a speaker that’s portable in a way that the Move never was. Music on the Roam sounds best over Wi-Fi, and it’s also needed for features like AirPlay 2. Bluetooth is right there as a fallback, but the Roam really has to get friendlier with guest networks.
The estimated battery life of 10 hours is also on the low side: the UE Boom 3 gets 15 hours and JBL’s Flip 5 hits 12. Wireless charging helps make up for this to an extent. It’s pretty rare among Bluetooth speakers, and you can play music as the Roam sits on the charger replenishing its battery. But I still wish Sonos could’ve eked out some extra playing time. The company says you can reach up to 10 days of standby time, but that strikes me as optimistic. My review units have held their charge for quite a few days, though.
There’s also a battery drain bug if you set up Google Assistant on the Roam that Sonos warned reviewers about, and it’s bad enough that the company is encouraging customers to power the speaker down when it’s not being used to conserve juice. Sonos says it’s working with Google on a fix and that customers using Alexa won’t encounter the same issue. The beamforming microphones generally picked up my voice commands without obvious mistakes the vast majority of the time, and aside from the Google battery bug, both voice assistants worked as expected.
The Roam’s many features make it among the best portable speakers at its size.
It’s best to think of the Sonos Roam as a personal speaker. It’ll do fine on your desk pumping out the soundtrack to your day. It can handle picnic duty for a small group at the park or come for a ride-along on your bike. And yes, it shines in the shower. But if you’re leading a dance class or trying to entertain guests at a barbecue, these are the types of situations where the larger Move easily wins out and proves its worth. Think of it this way: the more people that will be listening, the sooner you’ll turn to a speaker that isn’t the Roam.
But even with that understood, the Roam has a lot going for it. When in the comfort of your home, features like AirPlay and voice assistants do make it feel more capable than other speakers that are equally small and easy to carry. That and convenient wireless charging are where the $170 price gets easier to accept.
The Roam can fill in any nook of your living space — the bathroom, the garage, wherever — that doesn’t have another full-time Sonos speaker in it. On the go with Bluetooth, it’s easy to use and kicks out clear, satisfying sound for its size. Sonos needs to work on keeping the Roam’s smarts together when you’re on different Wi-Fi, and stereo pairing over Bluetooth should’ve been a feature on day one. But neither is enough to sink the overall value of Sonos’ latest speaker. As long as you don’t expect miracles from its compact size, I think you’ll end up happy.
Amazon’s bringing Zoom compatibility to more devices. The company announced today that it’s making the Echo Show 10 devices in the US compatible with the popular video calling software. Users who have their calendars linked up to the Alexa will have their meetings started automatically while people who haven’t done that can say, “Alexa, join my meeting” or “Alexa, join my Zoom meeting” to join one. This is the second Echo Show to gain Zoom access; the Echo Show 8 started supporting the videoconferencing platform in the US in December.
The Echo Show 10’s camera tracks users as they move throughout a room, meaning callers can see the screen no matter where they sit or stand. Presumably, this functionality will work with Zoom, putting it on par with other competitor devices like the Facebook Portal and Google Nest. Google pulls Zoom meetings from users’ calendars while Facebook allows its Portal camera to track users around the room so that they’re always in frame, just like it does with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp calls.
Although people might start commuting into the office more frequently, Zoom and other videoconferencing software will likely remain a standard for many workplace meetings, especially as workers shift to working from home more frequently.
Having announced its new flagship OLED, the JZ2000, at CES back in January, Panasonic has now released the details of the rest of its 2021 TV line-up. It comprises four OLED models and three LCD TVs and includes the brand’s first-ever 48-inch OLEDs – in fact, there are three of them!
The JZ OLED series replaces the mixed success of 2020’s HZ models. We were impressed by the general picture quality and motion handling of the HZ1000, awarding it five stars, but while the HZ2000 proved even more accomplished in the picture department, its expensive speaker system proved a disappointment. Wisely, this year’s JZ2000 has a revamped sound system. What’s more, unlike in 2021, this year you can get Panasonic’s enhanced Professional Edition panel without going right up to the flagship 2000-series TV.
Panasonic has also sought to address the lack of next-gen HDMI features right across the range, which should prick up the ears of gamers who’s been put off Panasonic TVs in the past.
For the LCDs, the JX models replace the successful HX range. At the top is a flagship model that gets the same processing treatment as its OLED sibling, while at the bottom is an entry-level model that utilises the Android TV operating system.
Want to know everything there is to know about Panasonic’s 2021 TV range? Allow us to run down all of the tech highlights before breaking down the individual models in full.
More affordable ‘Professional Edition’ OLED TVs
(Image credit: Panasonic)
In previous years Panasonic’s custom Professional Edition OLED panels have been the preserve of flagship 2000-series models (the HZ2000 in 2020 and GZ2000 in 2019). However, Panasonic is now bringing its best picture quality to the more affordable 1500-series, which is this year called the JZ1500. That’s excellent news for people who already have a sound system and don’t want to fork out for the JZ2000s price-increasing, bulk-adding in-built Atmos speakers.
Only the 65-inch and 55-inch JZ1500 get the upgrade, though; the new 48-inch model (more on which below) has a standard, non-Professional Edition panel.
Compared to standard OLED screens, Panasonic’s Professional Edition OLED panels are brighter, punchier and more vibrant, offering even better HDR performance. Panasonic will also be the only manufacturer in 2021 to use this top tier panel in more than one range, meaning that, depending on price, the JZ1500 could potentially undercut other brands top of the line models.
Additionally, all the 2021 OLEDs benefit from an enhanced colour profile courtesy of Panasonic’s ‘Hollywood’ tuning overseen by Stefan Sonnenfeld, post-production colourist on films including Wonder Woman 1984 and Beauty and the Beast.
Panasonic’s first 48-inch OLEDs
(Image credit: Panasonic)
LG (which manufactures all of the OLED panels currently used by all TV brands) begun manufacturing 48-inch panels in 2020 and shortly thereafter launched its own 48-inch OLED TV, the excellent OLED48CX. Sony and Philips quickly followed with their own 48-inch OLED TVs, but Panasonic has held off until now.
Perhaps keen to make up for lost time, Panasonic is offering not one but three 48-inch OLED models – a JZ1500, JZ1000 and JZ980. While the larger versions of each range will have Pro, Master and standard OLED panels respectively, all three 48-inch TVs will have standard OLED screens.
The other main difference the 48-inch models have compared to their bigger siblings is mounting. Although the bigger versions of the JZ1500 and JZ1000 will have Panasonics popular adjustable swivel stand, the 48-inch JZ1500 has a central, fixed pedestal, while the 48-inch JZ1000 and JZ980 will have a pair of adjustable feet to allow for the addition of a soundbar.
New HCX Pro AI processor
(Image credit: Panasonic)
All of Panasonic’s OLED TVs and the top LCD model have received an upgrade in processing power with the new HCX Pro AI processor. It supports an Auto AI mode that can analyse the type of content being played and adjust the picture accordingly. You’ll still be able to make manual adjustments, but if you leave the TV in its Auto AI mode, it will work to automatically get the best out of everything you watch, from movies to sports and games. The top of the line JZ2000 is the only model that also benefits from Auto AI sound quality adjustments.
The JX850 LCD, meanwhile, has a new HCX AI Processor – note the absence of the word ‘Pro’ – whilst the JX800 gets last year’s standard HCX processor.
Enhanced gaming performance and features
(Image credit: Pansonic)
Gaming has typically been a lower priority for Panasonic than for some other manufacturers, but the company is looking to redress that in 2021. All models with the HCX Pro AI processor support a new low latency input setting called Game Mode Extreme. Panasonic claims input lag will be amongst the “very lowest in the industry”, with their own live demo producing an impressively short lag time of 14.4ms.
The entire range, except the JX850 and JX800, sport four HDMI ports, two of which are HDMI 2.1 (though one of these is also eARC), adding specs such as HFR (aka 4K@120Hz), VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and AMD FreeSync Premium on top of the ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) that Panasonic’s sets already have.
Panasonic has openly stated that at launch, the TVs will only display half the vertical resolution for 4K HFR and 4K@120Hz VRR with a firmware update to arrive later in the year to restore 4K HFR fully. An announcement on an update for 4K@120Hz VRR will be made “in due time”.
Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive
(Image credit: Pansonic)
Panasonic has long supported both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, and it’s adding HDR10+ Adaptive to the 2021 range.
Like Dolby Vision IQ, this new format adjusts HDR10+ picture characteristics in accordance with both the source material metadata and the ambient lighting conditions of the room. All 2021 models will have Dolby Vision and HDR10+ Adaptive, and Dolby IQ will be supported on models down to the JX940. Panasonic is the first manufacturer to produce TVs with both Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive on board.
Panasonic’s unique application of Filmmaker Mode returns to all models in the lineup. Filmmaker Mode overrides the TV’s processing (such as motion smoothing and detail enhancement) to allow content to be displayed at the aspect ratio, colour and frame rate intended by the content’s creator. Panasonic adds an ‘Intelligent Sensing’ component to the feature ’, which dynamically adjusts HDR10+, HDR10, HLG or SDR pictures based on the lighting in your room.
We’ve so far been very unimpressed with the soft and dull performance of Filmmaker Mode on various TVs, so it’ll be interesting to see if Panasonic’s 2021 models can bring us around to the format.
My Home Screen 6.0
(Image credit: pansonic)
All models down to the JZ850 will feature a new version of Panasonic’s own operating system, which promises to be “much more intuitive and much more usable” than before and includes a ‘my Scenery’ feature that lets you display a selection of restful images and videos, or set your own, to match your mood.
Last year Panasonic TVs were missing several key streaming apps at launch, and despite updates, Disney+ still won’t be included in 2021, although Panasonic says it is “in discussions” with Disney to rectify this.
All models down to and including the JX850 support both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa built-in, while the JX800 only has Google Assistant.
The JX800 is also Panasonic’s first TV with Android TV OS, which it apparently combines with some of the aspects of Panasonic’s own ‘My Home Screen’ operating system. It’s good to see the company adding Android TV to its lineup. Could this be just a toe in the water ahead of a broader rollout next year?
Panasonic 2021 TV range breakdown
So that’s the overview of the technology and features behind Panasonic’s 2021 TV range, but what about specific models? While pricing is yet to be unannounced, you’ll find all other details below.
Panasonic JZ2000 4K OLED TV
(Image credit: Panasonic)
Panasonic’s flagship OLED for 2021 is the JZ2000, which has the same bright, punchy Master HDR OLED Professional panel as last year’s HZ2000, which we described as having “excellent all-round picture quality”.
New for this year is an upgraded HCX Pro AI processor, which can analyse what type of content is being played and adjust picture settings automatically. While all the OLEDs in the lineup benefit from this AI mode, the JZ2000 is the only model that will also offer AI sound quality adjustments.
As with previous generations of the 2000-series, one of the main features of the JZ2000 is its integrated speaker system with front- and upward-firing drivers as well as a rear-mounted subwoofer. Panasonic has added a pair of side-firing speakers to make the sound even wider and more room-filling.
This setup, which Panasonic calls ‘360° Soundscape Pro’, has once again been developed with Technics and utilises Dolby Atmos. The speaker system is actually less powerful than last year, at 125W compared to 140W, but power isn’t everything and we’ll be curious to see what progress has been made given that we found the sonic performance of the HZ2000 lacked clarity and excitement. The JZ2000 will be available from June 2021.
Panasonic JZ2000 specs:
Display type: Master HDR OLED Professional Edition
The JZ1500 is an exciting proposition. It features the same Professional Edition panel as the JZ2000 but does without the fancy speaker system, potentially making it the perfect high-end TV for someone who already has (or is intending to buy) a proper home cinema system or quality soundbar.
Not only will the JZ1500 come in cheaper than the JZ2000, it’s thinner, too, to the tune of over 5cm.
It’s worth pointing out that the 48-inch version doesn’t get the Professional Edition OLED panel or swivel stand of its bigger brothers, but it does have a central pedestal, unlike Panasonic’s other 2021 48-inch models. The JZ1500 will be available from June 2021.
Panasonic JZ1500 specs:
Display type: Master HDR OLED Professional Edition (65-inch and 55-inch models) Master HDR OLED (48-inch model)
All sizes of the JZ1000 have the same Master HDR OLED Panel as the 48-inch JZ1500 but otherwise, there’s very little to differentiate between the JZ1000 and JZ1500; it has the same HCX Pro AI Processor, Auto AI, Game Mode Pro and raft of format support.
The in-built speaker system is a step down in power, 30W compared to the JZ1500’s 50W, and the JZ1000 series’s 48-inch model will come with adjustable feet to accommodate a soundbar.
The JZ980-series is the entry-level OLED for Panasonic in 2021, but it maintains the same HCX Pro AI processor as the rest of the range, and its 30W in-built speakers pack the same punch as the JZ1000 models.
The panel is a lower grade than the JZ1000, described only as ‘OLED’. It still promises natural colour and high contrast though we expect it to lack some of its more expensive siblings’ visual punch.
The 65-inch and 55-inch models don’t have a swivel stand to let viewers angle the screen freely, featuring a fixed pedestal instead, and the 48-inch has the same adjustable feet as the JZ1000 version. The JZ980 will be available from June 2021.
The JX940 is Panasonic’s premium LCD TV for 2021. Available in 75-inch, 65-inch, 55-inch, 49-inch sizes, it has the same HCX Pro AI Processor as the new OLED models and includes the full complement of HDR adaptive technologies, as well as Auto AI, Game Mode Extreme and VRR support.
The 120Hz HDR Cinema Display Pro panel apparently boasts excellent colour reproduction and contrast as well as wide viewing angles and ‘Intelligent Clear Motion’ to smooth out dynamic action for flicker-free viewing. Of course, whether it delivers on those promises will only become clear once we’ve had the JX940 in for review.
All features are consistent throughout the range except the mountings, the 75-inch has a flexible pedestal, and the smaller models have adjustable feet to allow a soundbar to neatly slot underneath. The JX940 will be available from May 2021.
The processing chip in the JX850 doesn’t have the Pro features of the OLEDs and the JX940, so there’s no Dolby Vision IQ, though HDR10+ Adaptive remains, as well as standard Dolby Vision, HLG, and HDR10.
Game Mode Extreme is replaced by a standard Game Mode, and gamers won’t have the advantages of 4K High Frame Rate (aka 4K@120Hz) or Variable Refresh Rate as there are no HDMI 2.1 sockets. The JX850 will be available from May 2021.
There will also be an alternate model, the JX870B, exclusive to John Lewis & Partners.
Panasonic JX870 prices (exclusive to John Lewis & Partners):
Panasonic TX-40JX870B – £TBC
Panasonic TX-50JX870B – £TBC
Panasonic TX-58JX870B – £TBC
Panasonic TX-65JX850B – £TBC
Panasonic JX800 4K LCD TV
(Image credit: Panasonic)
The JX800 is the most budget-friendly TV in Panasonic’s 2021 line-up and will use, for the first time, the Android TV operating system, which Panasonic says will include ‘a very wide range’ of streaming services. Dolby Atmos and Alexa are dropped for this model, but Google Assistant and Chromecast are on board.
Panasonic has bequeathed its previous generation HCX chip to the JX800. It won’t offer the AI technologies of the other 2021 models, but it still supports the same array of HDR formats and as the JX850, as well as sharing the equivalent HDR Bright Panel Plus.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has determined that Amazon retaliated against two activist employees when it fired them in April of last year, as first reported by The New York Times.
The determination is part of the board’s ongoing response to a labor complaint against Amazon, although it’s not a legal ruling in itself. Still, the determination indicates the NLRB is prepared to accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices in connection with the case, and that puts the company under significant pressure to settle the case with the fired employees.
The two employees at the heart of the case, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, organized the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group in 2020 to protest the company’s partnerships with the oil and gas industry. The group went public with an open letter that January, undersigned by more than 350 employees.
Amazon fired Cunningham and Costa three months later, after they used the same Medium account to raise concerns about coronavirus protections at Amazon warehouses. At the time, Amazon said the women had been fired for “violating internal policies.”
It is unclear how the Seattle case will be resolved, but both women are being encouraged to settle with the company by the NLRB.
“It’s a moral victory,” Cunningham told the Times, “and really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law.”
The new determination is part of a growing pattern of labor violations at Amazon, which has been accused of violating workers’ rights to protest labor conditions in a growing number of cases. In March, the NLRB made a similar determination about retaliation against organizers at a warehouse in Queens, as well as a separate retaliation case connected to a warehouse in Chicago. Six Pennsylvania warehouse workers are also pursuing a retaliation case against the company in federal court. An NBC News analysis counted 37 separate labor rights cases against Amazon filed with the NLRB since February 2020.
Amazon has exacerbated the issue by publicly feuding with a number of prominent progressive lawmakers, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). On Friday, the company publicly apologized for a series of tweets denying that Amazon drivers are sometimes forced to pee in bottles, a phenomenon subsequently confirmed by multiple Motherboard reports.
“This was an own-goal,” Amazon said in its apology. “We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes.”
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I’ve read plenty about what it’s like to use, hold, and type on an LG Gram before, but that didn’t take away from the impressive first impression it made when I used the new Gram 17 for the first time — especially this larger model. The Gram 17 has a grandiose 17-inch display, yet it’s only three pounds, which is light enough for me to carry around one-handed. Its keyboard is a joy to type on with a surprising amount of tactility and travel in the keys, and the battery life outlasts a whole day of work, even much of a second one, too. It’s a quiet laptop, and even under pressure, its fans weren’t loud enough for me to hear once.
The Gram communicates its biggest selling points — lightness and longevity — so effectively that it outshines some persisting minor problems. Those include a keyboard layout that can be difficult to adjust to. For instance, the num lock is too easy to press accidentally, being right next to backspace, and the only function key is located too far away from the most essential function row buttons, making it a stretch to adjust the volume one-handed. Lastly, the large trackpad isn’t always good at palm rejection. These are important things for any laptop to get right, let alone one that has a bunch of extra real estate that should be used to avoid flaws like these.
This new model for 2021 is mostly a spec update, not a design overhaul compared to the 2020 version. But it’s a good update, at that. Inside of LG’s sole $1,799 Gram 17 configuration (it’s been available for $1,699 since late March), there’s now an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 quad-core processor that promises — and actually delivers — better performance and longer battery life than the 2020 model my colleague Monica Chin reviewed. Additionally, this model’s faster 4,266MHz LPDDR4X RAM, of which it has 16GB, likely plays a role in that speed boost. It’s not a drastically different computer to use than before, but it can hold its own more reliably this time around.
While running my usual collection of around 10 tabs in Microsoft Edge for work, with Slack and Spotify running in tandem, performance didn’t stutter at all. This is the bare minimum of competency tests for laptops, so for something more demanding, I exported a five-minute, 33-second test file from our Verge video team through Adobe Premiere Pro. Last year’s model took 30 minutes to do this, but this one gets it done in around 11 minutes. That doesn’t hold a candle to laptops that put more of an emphasis on power usually at the expense of heft, but it’s enough of an improvement to make the Gram 17’s price a little easier to justify. Razer’s Book 13 with the same processor fared just about a minute faster with this test, but the Gram is on par with the latest Dell XPS 13 and Asus ZenBook 14.
The battery is also mystifyingly good — and better than before. With that same batch of apps I mentioned earlier, the Gram 17 lasted an entire workday and well into the next, around 12 or so hours later. If you’re looking for a laptop that can go a full day of work without its charger, whether you have video calls or not, this is one for your shortlist. It features the same 80Wh battery as last year’s model, which is still impressive considering the Gram 17’s lightweight profile.
Also similar to the 2020 version is its USB-C charging. LG now includes a 65W USB-C power adapter instead of the 48W charger that shipped with the previous model. It can more quickly recharge with the included brick (which is no bigger than a compact power bank), but it still takes a few hours to refill it completely.
That sums up the biggest changes to this year’s Gram 17. There are a few smaller tweaks I liked, too. The arrangement of ports has been shifted around in a more logical layout. On the left side, there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port (it can be used for charging, data, or connecting to a display), one USB-C 4.0 Gen 3 port, a headphone combo jack, and an HDMI port. Over on the right is where you’ll find two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports next to a microSD card slot and a Kensington lock.
If you’re shopping around for 17-inch laptops, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything lighter than the Gram. It’s 2.98 pounds, which is just a little heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Air. The Dell XPS 17 is one of LG’s main competitors in this space, yet its baseline model weighs over a pound and a half more. If you get an XPS 17 model like the one we reviewed in July 2020, it’ll weigh almost as much as two Gram 17s at 5.53 pounds. That added weight does bring more power and a dedicated GPU in the Dell, but if you just want a big, portable screen for productivity, the Gram is more than capable.
As my colleague Monica Chin mentioned in her review of the 2020 LG Gram 17, this laptop isn’t a looker. It still doesn’t stack up next to the high-end design of the XPS 17, which features an aluminum chassis. The Gram has a tough magnesium alloy-clad body, but it looks and feels plasticky. That said, there’s technically nothing flawed about its design, and it seems better than most black aluminum laptops I’ve tried at resisting fingerprints. Some people might actually prefer that its design doesn’t stick out much, even when its backlit keyboard is on.
Something minor that I wish LG offered with this model is the option for a matte display. It’s rare for ultrabooks to have them, but I find it hard to stay focused on what’s happening on the screen when I can see a reflection of all my apartment’s happenings staring back at me. Wherever you use this laptop, glare could be a big problem, like it can be with a TV. This doesn’t take away from the Gram 17’s display being sharp and vivid. It’s a WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS non-touch panel from the company’s own display division, and it makes everything look excellent with 99 percent DCI-P3 color gamut coverage. If a touchscreen is important to you, LG’s Gram 2-in-1 laptops feature them. LG was one of the first Windows laptop makers to move to a 16:10 aspect ratio, and the Gram 17 has one, too. It gives you a little more vertical real estate to work with on the screen compared to 16:9 displays. It’s most beneficial for productivity (you see more info at once, so less scrolling is necessary), but you’ll have black letterboxing for most full-screen videos you watch.
The Gram is short on bloatware, which I love to see. It ships with Amazon’s Alexa built-in, though it requires activation before you can use the service. A few other preinstalled apps include McAfee LiveScan and a suite of creator tools from CyberLink. Compared to some other laptops I’ve used recently, like Acer’s Predator Triton 300 SE, the Gram doesn’t shove pop-up notifications in your face seemingly every time you use it.
There are few 17-inch laptops to choose from and even fewer models that are as lightweight as this one. This year’s LG Gram 17 is unique in the sense that it’s more powerful than ever, but it doesn’t give up its portability. Oddly enough, the only competition it faces at the moment comes from within LG. The 16-inch Gram is lighter and less expensive, yet it features the same design, screen size, port selection, battery capacity, and specs (aside from having significantly less storage) for $1,399. You can find one that has the same 1TB storage as the Gram 17 for $1,599. If the Gram 17’s $1,799 price is too expensive, at least you have an alternative that’ll likely deliver the same great results.
But if the price isn’t an issue and you want a surprisingly portable and powerful laptop with an oversized screen, the Gram 17 is in a class of its own.
Amazon has issued a rare public apology — but not to its workers, and with no real admission of guilt.
Over a week ago, the company was caught publicly lying to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) that its workers never feel the need to pee in water bottles (which is, in fact, a well-documented issue at Amazon because of how it robotically tracks and fires its laborers).
Now, late on the Friday evening before Easter weekend, when few (hat tip to GeekWire) are paying attention, the company is apologizing to Pocan — and no one else. Amazon only apologizes for not being “accurate” enough, too — not for actually creating and contributing to situations where workers pee in bottles.
In fact, Amazon goes so far as to suggest the whole pee bottle thing is simply a regrettable status quo, pointing out a handful of times when other companies’ delivery drivers were also caught peeing in bottles, as well as embedding a handful of random comments on Twitter that happen to support Amazon’s views. You can almost hear Jeff Bezos saying “Why aren’t these people blaming UPS and FedEx? Let’s get more people thinking about them instead.”
The blog post also strongly suggests that this is only an issue for delivery drivers, not Amazon’s warehouse workers — even though a 2018 expose from an undercover reporter found Amazon warehouse workers were also forced to skip bathroom breaks, and a worker who spoke to journalists just last week suggested bathroom breaks were still an issue in 2021. “You’re sitting there and you have to go take a piss, but you don’t want to rack up ‘time off task,’” she told Motherboard.
Amazon is currently facing a lawsuit over missed lunch breaks as well. And most importantly, all of this is happening in the shadow of an Amazon union vote in Bessemer, Alabama that could help shape the future of labor in the United States, let alone at Amazon.
Amazon’s apology to Pocan is the kind of memo that deserves to be annotated, line-by-line, partially because one of its lines is actually fairly good — “Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it. We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions” — but because it’s past 1AM here and it turns out The Verge’s blockquote tool doesn’t let me embed tweets, I’ll just give you the primary guts for now:
On Wednesday last week, the @amazonnews Twitter account tweeted the following back to Representative Mark Pocan:
This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan.
First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers. A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time. If any employee in a fulfillment center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.
Second, our process was flawed. The tweet did not receive proper scrutiny. We need to hold ourselves to an extremely high accuracy bar at all times, and that is especially so when we are criticizing the comments of others.
Third, we know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.
This is a long-standing, industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon. We’ve included just a few links below that discuss the issue.
Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it. We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.
We will continue to speak out when misrepresented, but we will also work hard to always be accurate.
We apologize to Representative Pocan.
You can read the full version here. When you’re finished, perhaps check out Motherboard’s interview with six female Amazon delivery drivers, for whom the pee situation is obviously much worse.
Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.
This week, Nilay and Dieter talk with Verge deputy editor Dan Seifert about this week’s rumors about the next big Apple product announcements after invites were sent out for the company’s annual WWDC event, which will again be virtual-only. After more AR headset leaks, the crew also discusses whether Apple has the bandwidth to support all of its product categories, especially with the Apple TV left alone for some time.
Later in the show, senior reporter Ashley Carman joins to discuss her coverage of social audio platform Clubhouse. Recently, we’ve seen a rise in potential competition in the social audio space from already-established platforms like LinkedIn, Slack, and Spotify. Ashley analyzes whether there is a winner-takes-all scenario or a more segmented space dedicated to genres of content.
There’s a whole lot more in the show — like Dieter’s explanation of the “cookiepocalypse” brought by Google Chrome’s changes to ad tracking on the browser — so listen to the full discussion here or on your preferred podcast player to hear it all.
Further reading:
Real-world evidence shows that the COVID-19 vaccines work
Biden administration looks to organize ‘vaccine passport’ development
Apple Maps will show COVID-19 travel guidances so you know what to expect at the airport
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine highly effective in adolescents
Amazon gets FDA authorization for an at-home COVID-19 test kit
Errors ruin 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine
Apple WWDC 2021 announced as online-only event
Apple Aiming to Announce Mixed-Reality Headset With In-Person Event in ‘Next Several Months’
Ming-Chi Kuo Says Apple’s AR/VR Headset Will Weigh Less Than 150 Grams
Apple reportedly plans revamped AirPods for as early as next year
New iPad Pros reportedly launching as soon as April, and the 12.9-inch model may have a Mini LED screen
Apple reportedly mulls rugged smartwatch coming as soon as this year
Casio announces first Wear OS smartwatch in iconic G-Shock lineup
Google Chrome FLoC: how it replaces cookies and what it means for privacy
T-Mobile is betting big on Google’s Android services: RCS, YouTube TV, Pixel, and more
T-Mobile is already shutting down its live TV service, partners with YouTube TV and Philo
How badly do people want a standalone graphics card even though modern integrated GPUs offer decent performance and media playback capabilities? Apparently a lot, as discrete GPU vendors are resurrecting their ancient entry-level products and returning them to store shelves.
CFD (via Hermitage Akihabara), a store in Japan, has restarted selling Gigabyte’s Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 (GV-N1030D4-2GL) graphics cards, which were originally launched in 2017 and disappeared from stores in 2019 ~ 2020. A Japanese retailer restarting sales of an outdated product isn’t normally too interesting, but along with CFD, some of Amazon’s partners also restarted selling the GeForce GT 1030 products recently.
The GV-N1030D4-2GL AIB is a low-profile, single-slot adapter carrying Nvidia’s GP108 GPU (the Pascal architecture, 384 CUDA cores, 14LPP) and 2GB of DDR4 memory with a 64-bit interface. It also has an HDMI 2.0b output for modern 4Kp60 displays and a DVI-D connector for legacy monitors.
The GT 1030 Low Profile D4 2G card is without any doubt an entry-level product, but it features Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable-badged components that are supposed to be long-lasting, something that is required for small form factor systems that can be used for years for various commercial or office purposes.
Interestingly, Gigabyte’s Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 even supports an OC mode that increases its base clock from 1151 MHz to 1177 MHz and its boost clock from 1379 MHz to 1417 MHz.
From a performance point of view, Gigabyte’s GT 1030 Low Profile D4 2G should be significantly behind modern integrated GPUs from AMD and Intel. But it can certainly do the job if someone needs to repair or upgrade a legacy PC or just add another 4Kp60 display output to a modern system.
Nvidia and its distributors probably have quite a few GP107 and GP10 graphics processors left since the GPU developer never made small entry-level chips based on its Turing architecture. The smallest GPU in the Turing family — the TU117 — has a die size of 200 mm2, which is quite large for low-end AIBs that are supposed to be cheap. By contrast, the GP108 is 70 mm2 or 74 mm2, whereas the GP107 is 132 mm2. That said, expect more entry-level Pascal products to emerge in the coming months.
CFD sells Gigabyte’s Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 (GV-N1030D4-2GL) graphics card for ¥12,100 including tax ($100 without tax). Some of Amazon’s partners offer this card in the U.S. for around $200. When launched in 2017, a GeForce GT 1030 board cost around $80.
OnePlus’ new line of smartphones — the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro — are now available for purchase at several retailers. A successor to the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, the 9 and 9 Pro start at $729.
If you want to hear our thoughts before you buy, check out our review video for the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro above. Additionally, you can check out our written reviews linked below.
WHERE TO BUY THE ONEPLUS 9
You can order an unlocked OnePlus 9 directly through the OnePlus website, which costs $729 before tax. It’s available in both colors (black and winter mist) and only comes in one configuration, which includes 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. If you have a phone to trade in, you can receive up to $370 in credit, which you can use to purchase your new OnePlus 9.
Amazon has the unlocked OnePlus 9 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage in the winter mist color available for $730.
Best Buy has the unlocked OnePlus 9 in either black or winter mist for $729.99, or you can pay $30.42 per month for 24 months if you prefer a payment plan instead.
B&H Photo has a few storage configurations available for the OnePlus 9. You can get a model with 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM in black or winter mist for $729.99. Or you can buy the 256GB model, which includes 12GB of RAM, for $829.99, but it only comes in black. The retail price nets you an unlocked OnePlus 9 smartphone regardless of color and storage configuration.
T-Mobile has the OnePlus 9 for $729.99 in both black and winter mist. It’s available in only one configuration, which is 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. You can either pay in full or select the option that allows you to pay $30.42 a month for 24 months.
WHERE TO BUY THE ONEPLUS 9 PRO
You can buy an unlocked OnePlus 9 Pro from the OnePlus website, which costs $1,069 and is available in two colors — green and morning mist. It includes 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. If you have a phone to trade in, you can receive up to $370 in credit, which you can use to purchase your new OnePlus 9 Pro.
Amazon has an unlocked OnePlus 9 Pro with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage in morning mist available for $1,069.
Best Buy has an unlocked OnePlus 9 with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM available for $1,069.99. The phone is available in green or morning mist.
B&H Photo has an unlocked OnePlus 9 Pro available starting at $969.99, which nets you 128GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM, but it is only available in the green color variant. Alternatively, you can buy the OnePlus 9 Pro, with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM in either green or morning mist for only $1,069.99.
T-Mobile has the OnePlus 9 Pro available in only one color (morning mist), and one storage configuration (256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM), which you can pay in full for $1,068 or you can select a monthly plan, which as you paying $44.50 a month for 24 months.
Amazon has launched battery bases for the latest generation of Echo and Echo Dot devices, designed to let you use your smart speaker wirelessly.
Made by Mission Accessories, whose slogan is ‘we want to make your favourite devices better’, the battery base has a lithium-ion battery which Amazon claims will provide up to five hours of continuous playback for a fourth-generation Echo speaker. So as long as you have access to wi-fi or a mobile hotspot, you can take Alexa with you anywhere.
Connecting the base is done using a thumbscrew, and the alignment is designed to cradle your Echo in such a way that allows for optimal audio quality.
The outside of the base features an LED battery gauge to indicate power level, and the battery will automatically charge when the echo is connected to mains, with a full charge taking three hours.
The Echo (4th Gen) battery base will cost £39.99, and the battery bases for Echo Dot (4th Gen) and Echo Dot with Clock (4th Gen) will cost £29.99. All are available from today.
MORE
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Sonos Roam – the cheapest, smartest Sonos speaker yet
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