🏆 Rating: 4/5

✅ Pros

• 🚀 Fantastic performance thanks to the Snapdragon X2 Elite

• 🔋 Battery life that lasts all day (and then some)

• 📐 Sleek design that’s lightweight and thin

• ⌨️ Very comfortable keyboard

• 📺 OLED display is perfect for watching videos

❌ Cons

• 💰 You have to pay a premium to get a 2.8K 120Hz display

• 📷 1080p webcam isn’t as sharp or clear as others

• 🕹️ Gaming isn’t one of its strong suits

• 👆 Diving-board trackpad feels dated

The Shortcut review

Lenovo is no stranger to making some of the best Windows laptops on the market, and the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 (2026) fits perfectly in that category. It’s an upgraded version of the 2024 model that helped put the ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite chip on the map, which proved to be an incredible performer in the laptop. The new version of the laptop includes the Snapdragon X2 Elite, an even more capable chip, and it doesn’t disappoint.

After three weeks of testing this $1,379.99 laptop, it’s proven to be not just a great Windows laptop, but also a great MacBook Air alternative. Between its design, performance, battery life, and size, it’s a fantastic option if you want the perks of a MacBook Air, minus macOS.

With very few compromises and a reasonable price, the Yoga Slim 7x is a great choice for anyone who just needs a good laptop. Unless you plan to play heavy games or edit complex videos, it’s ideal for nearly every workflow.

Best Buy: Yoga Slim 7x (2026)

Review notes

📐 Same thin-and-light design. When I unboxed the Slim 7x, I did a double-take to make sure it wasn’t the old version. The new model has the same exact design as the original, which isn’t a bad thing. The laptop weighs just over 2.5 pounds and measures 13.9mm thick (just over half an inch), making it ideal for portability. The 14-inch screen also keeps its footprint compact, so it won’t take up much room in your bag. As a productivity machine for on the go, this laptop aces it.

🔵 Hope you like blue. Similarly, much like the last generation, Lenovo is only selling this laptop in a dark blue finish. While it does look nice straight out of the box, it collects fingerprints like a magnet. It’s pretty easy to clean, but you’ll be doing it often if you want it to look its best all the time. I just decided to ignore it and hope that Lenovo eventually ships a version in dark gray or silver.

📺 A lovely OLED screen… The 14-inch display on the Yoga Slim 7x uses an OLED panel, which helps make colors vibrant and punchy. Black levels remain deep and rich, and there’s support for HDR content with Dolby Vision. It’s also a touchscreen, which is always a nice touch. It really is a lovely screen, but there’s a catch: there are two tiers.

💰 … but for a price. I was sent a Yoga Slim 7x with a Full HD 60Hz display. While that isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, the old model came standard with a 2.8K 90Hz display, which looks sharper and smoother in comparison. That option is still available in Lenovo’s lineup (with an upgraded 120Hz refresh rate, too), but you have to pay an extra $200-$300 depending on which model you’re eyeing up. Again, it’s not a dealbreaker, but it’d be nice if the better screen came standard as it did on the old Slim 7x.

⌨️ Comfortable keyboard with a dated trackpad. I love the keyboard on this laptop. Lenovo never fails to impress with its ability to make a comfortable keyboard, and the Slim 7x delivers. Key travel is satisfying with good clicking sounds across the board, and it’s great for long typing sessions. The trackpad is another story; while it’s certainly functional and capable enough for multi-touch gestures, the diving board mechanism feels dated in 2026. With so many premium laptops switching to haptic touchpads, it’d be nice to see Lenovo bring one to one of its premier Snapdragon-powered laptops.

🍎 MacBook Air-like performance. The Snapdragon X2 Elite inside the Yoga Slim 7x is a game-changer for anyone coming from older, inefficient Intel chips. It uses a similar ARM architecture as Apple’s M series, and it delivers even better performance than the first X Elite chip. With up to 31% faster CPU performance, better graphics, and better AI processing, the Slim 7x is a speedster. This is where the most parallels between it and the MacBook Air come into play; it’s way faster than you think, it sips power, and it’s somehow crammed into a laptop this thin and light. All that for under $1,500 is pretty great.

✅ Great for productivity, general use, and more. This is a very powerful laptop for the price and its size, which makes it ideal for anyone who needs something dependable to get work done on the go. The boosted CPU performance makes the experience feel smooth and snappy, and with up to 32GB of RAM, you can keep a bunch of stuff running at the same time with no issue. Even the 16GB model I’ve been testing has handled all the apps I need every day like Google Chrome (with a bunch of tabs open), Spotify, Lightroom, Slack, and Todoist.

🔥 It runs warm, but only under serious stress. You have to have a ton of things going on this laptop for it to get warm. Unlike a MacBook Air that will stay cool during almost any workload, the Yoga Slim 7x will eventually reach a point where it gets quite hot in the middle of the base toward the hinge. I noticed this a couple of times when sitting outside working; between the heat of the New York City sun and Lightroom running on all cylinders, it didn’t stand a chance staying cool. Most of the time, it’ll be fine, but it’s definitely susceptible to heating up.

🕹️ Gamers: skip this one. If there’s one thing the Yoga Slim 7x isn’t designed for, it’s gaming. Trying to get your favorite titles to run on all cylinders with an ARM-based Windows laptop is tough to begin with, and between the lackluster graphics and middling heat management, it’s not a great idea to buy this laptop in hopes of playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on the go.

🔋 Battery life that lasts all day. The efficiency of the Snapdragon X2 Elite coupled with the 70WHr battery give the Yoga Slim 7x impressive endurance. It can last a full 8-hour day with no issue with my heavier-than-average usage. Those who stick to typical office work and productivity apps can probably extend it to 12-14 hours of usage, which falls way behind Lenovo’s claim of 20-24 hours of usage but is still enough to be considered great battery life. Plus, the supplied 65W charger is fast enough to juice up the laptop in well under two hours from 0%.

🔌 Limited IO. The Yoga Slim 7x has three USB 4 ports on its sides and… that’s it. There’s no SD card reader, HDMI port, or even a headphone jack. You’re stuck with just three USB-C ports. Granted, they’re very versatile ports that all support 40Gbps speeds, but if you want to connect anything beyond a USB-C cable, you’ll have to use an adapter.

🔊 Middling speakers and webcam. The speakers on this laptop have a decent amount of bass, but don’t provide much clarity or richness for listening to music. They’re passable for video calls and listening to podcasts, but for anything more, you’ll want a Bluetooth speaker or a pair of headphones. Meanwhile, the 1080p webcam is sharp (and can be electronically disabled with a physical switch on the side of the Slim 7x), but makes you look washed out and grainy in most lighting conditions. Again, fine for video calls, but not the best on the market.

Should you buy the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11?

Yes, if…

• ✅ You want great performance and battery life

• ✅ You need a thin and light laptop

• ✅ You want a Windows-powered alternative to the MacBook Air

No, if…

• ❌ You need more ports beyond USB-C (get the ThinkPad X1 Carbon)

• ❌ You’re a gamer (get the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10)

• ❌ You want a nicer screen for less money (get the Acer Swift 16)

Best Buy: Yoga Slim 7x (2026)

Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.

🏆 Review score: 4/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 🤏 Compact foldable design that’s super portable

• 🖱️ Ergonomic arch fits right in your hand

• ➘ Fast and accurate pointer tracking over Bluetooth or Logitech’s Bolt receiver

• ↕️ Touch panel delivers the same scrolling performance as a real scroll wheel

• 🫆 2x customizable touchpanel buttons

• 🔋 22-hour battery that’s fully user replaceable

❌ Cons

• 🤙 Thumb and pinky fingers are left hanging on this small mouse

• 🧱 Harsh left-and-right click buttons with almost no travel

Logitech Mobi Fold - $79

Logitech Mobi Fold for Business - $89

The Shortcut Review

The Logitech Mobi Fold might be the best way to spend $79 if you’re constantly in need of a foldable wireless mouse on the go. It’s Logitech’s latest travel mouse that folds like a makeup compact, giving you a far more comfortable way to mouse around on your laptop and tablet.

There have been other transforming mice like the Microsoft Arc and Lenovo Yoga mouse, but the Logitech Mobi Fold is truly the smallest, for better or worse. The best thing this mouse has going for it is that it’s so small, you can fit it anywhere, including folding it over your pocket like a foldable phone. Users with larger hands might find it awkward to drag their thumbs and pinkies as they hang off the small face of this mouse. But aside from the harsh left- and right-click buttons on this mouse, it offers a quick, accurate, and seamless pointer for a variety of devices.

The Logitech Mobi Fold won’t be replacing my Logitech MX Master 4 as my everyday mouse anytime soon, but this is a great travel mouse for whenever I’m away from the office or home.

Full Review

🧳 Travel ready. The Logitech Mobi Fold is truly the smallest mouse I’ve ever used. When folded, it’s about the size of two portable SSDs stacked together. Unfolding the mouse puts it into its arched shape for use, and its surprisingly ergonomic design. The arched back fits perfectly into the palm of your hand, while it’s just wide enough for three fingers to rest on it. That does leave your thumb and pinky hanging, which isn’t my preference, but it’s something you can get used to after a few days to a full week of usage.

🛜 Bluetooth connection. Unlike most Logitech mice, the Mobi Fold doesn’t come with a Bolt USB dongle unless you buy the $ 10-more-expensive “for Business” model. The good news is that even basic Bluetooth lets you connect to up to three devices across Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, Android, iPadOS, and Linux. Connecting this mouse to Android devices and Chromebooks is especially quick because it’s Fast Pair-enabled, so you can simply turn the Mobi Fold on, and there’ll be a prompt to pair the mouse right on your device.

🎯 Laser tracking. Even with basic Bluetooth connectivity, the Logitech Mobi Fold delivers fast and accurate tracking. Dragging my cursor over specific cells in Excel or placing the typing indicator right between letters is simple with the Logitech Mobi Fold. Having this mouse connected to Logitech’s Bolt receiver makes the cursor move even smoother, but the accuracy isn’t improved over Bluetooth.

🖱️ Harsh buttons. Unfortunately, the biggest letdown on the Logitech Mobi Fold is its only physical buttons, the left and right clicks. There’s hardly any travel, and clicking either button feels especially stiff whenever you press them from the middle. For the best clicking feel, you practically have to have your fingers draped over the front edge of the left-and right-click buttons. While it’s admirable, Logitech still included physical buttons on a mouse this thin; even the Apple Magic Mouse has a better clicking feel than the Mobi Fold.

↕️ Scroll panel. In keeping with the Mobi Fold flat profile, this mouse has a touch panel in place of a traditional scroll wheel. This feels nowhere near as tactile as a scroll wheel, but the scroll panel performs exactly the same. I performed a side-by-side test with the Logitech Mobi Fold and Logitech MX Master 4 to confirm this. The Mobi Fold also offers adaptive touch scrolling, so you can flick the scroll panel to quickly jump up and down a webpage or document.

🫆 Touch panel taps. The Logitech Mobi Fold’s touch panel works for more than just scrolling; it’s also a two-virtual-button middle click that offers multiple functions. Double-tapping the middle touch panel lets you zoom in on almost any application. Alternatively, for web browsers, you can tap the top of the panel to jump forward or the bottom to go back to a previous webpage. There are more functions you can assign through the Logi Options+ software.

📋 Software. Logi Options+ gives you plenty of options to customize the Mobi Fold to your liking, including pointer speed and button reassignments. The biggest customization applies to the two touchpanel buttons, which you can reassign as a shortcut to Logitech’s new Action Ring or even to open ChatGPT.

🔋 Battery life. Logitech promises that the Mobi Fold offers 22 hours of nonstop use, enough to last a full 30 days, and that tracks with my usage. After almost a full month of sporadic usage at cafes, the Taipei airport, and anywhere outside of The Shortcut’s NYC office, I’m still at over 35% battery. What’s even better is that the battery is fully replaceable, and it’s easily accessed by prying off the back panel of the mouse’s main body. These batteries likely need to be bought directly from Logitech, but it’s great that you can extend this mouse’s longevity.

Logitech Mobi Fold - $79

Logitech Mobi Fold for Business - $89

• Up next: Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20: a golden make over for a legendary gaming mouse

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

• 💻 Surface Laptop Ultra is the most excitingly powerful Windows 11 laptop in years

• 🪙 Wrapped in a premium aluminum chassis that feels like one solid block of metal

• 📺 2000-nit 15-inch mini LED display is searingly bright with fantastic contrast

• 🫨 Haptic touchpad simulates clicks and adds a tactile confirmation while hovering over Windows 11 elements

• 💪 Ready for heavy creative applications like Adobe Premiere Pro and Unreal Engine 5

• 🎮 Runs Alan Wake 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Fortnite, Pragmata, and more ray traced games at a smooth 60+ frames per second at full resolution

The Surface Laptop Ultra has gotten me the most excited I’ve been for a Surface product in years. Microsoft’s newest flagship laptop combines a premium all-aluminum design, a luxurious HDR mini-LED display, a haptic touchpad, and Nvidia’s promising new RTX Spark ARM processors, which should make it the strongest high-performance, AI-focused challenger to the MacBook Pro.

At Computex 2026, we’ve had hands-on time with this laptop, tackling intense creative workflows in Adobe Premiere and rendering an explorable virtual environment in Unreal Engine 5. The Surface Laptop Ultra has also proven itself to be a very capable gaming laptop, handily playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Alan Wake 2. Even through emulation, Pragmata and Fornite were perfectly playable on this laptop.

There’s still a huge mystery as too how much the Surface Laptop Ultra will cost when it arrives this fall, but the Surface Laptop Ultra seems like the most serious MacBook Pro competitor Microsoft or any Windows 11 laptop produce has ever produced.

Full Review

😍 A real beauty. The Surface Laptop Ultra is a beautiful piece of machined aluminum. There aren’t any gaps and hardly any screws to reveal that this thing is anything less than a solid block of milled aluminum. The chassis is also impressively thin at 18mm, but it appears to be even thinner thanks to its raised pedestal design. Despite all the power and Microsoft’s most powerful cooling system yet (more on that later), it weighs under 4.5 pounds, just like the MacBook Pro.

📺 2000-nit HDR display. Opening the lid, with a single finger, mind you, reveals an equally beautiful 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen with a resolution of 2880 × 1920 and 120Hz refresh rate. The display also delivers 4K TV-level HDR brightness at a maximum of 2,000 nits. It makes games look especially fantastic. I was blown away by how good the sun-drenched rainforest scenes from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looked on the Surface Laptop Ultra. Even this Windows 11 desktop that Microsoft chose shows how much contrast the Surface Laptop Ultra can display.

🫨 Haptic touchpad. The trackpad on the Surface Laptop Ultra is the largest Microsoft has put in any Surface device, and it now also vibrates with haptic feedback. What’s interesting is Microsoft doesn’t just use haptics to simulate a mouse click, but the trackpad also vibrates while you hover over the X-button to close applications. Alternatively, the haptics will shake when you bring a window to the top of the screen and drag it along different split desktop presets. Even though it’s entirely virtual, the haptics add a nice tactile confirmation while you’re interacting with elements in Windows. I hope Microsoft adds more in the near future.

🥊 A huge contender. The Nvidia RTX Spark is bolting out of the gate with some of the biggest specs we’ve seen for a laptop processor. It features a custom 20-core Grate Note CPU that promises up to 1 petaflop worth of AI performance. Nvidia says this is the first time a device has been powerful enough to run 120-billion-parameter AI models on-device rather than servers or systems with multiple GPUs.

The onboard graphics offer an equally impressive 6,144 Blackwell CUDA cores, which should closely match the graphics performance of an RTX 5070 laptop GPU, though with a maximum power draw of 80W. Configuration can also feature up to 128GB of shared memory; however, I also saw plenty of machines with just 64GB of RAM, and Nvidia has told journalists that there will be configs with as little as 16GB of RAM.

🎨 Creative workflows. Windows on ARM will be a hurdle for Microsoft and Nvidia to clear with the Surface Laptop Ultra and other RTX Spark laptops, but both companies are already working hard to ensure everything works when they launch this fall. On the smaller scale, Adobe is already optimizing Premiere Pro. Nvidia presented a shootout between Premiere Pro and Premiere Pro enhanced for RTX Spark, and the latter rendered a scene 2x faster. The RTX Spark will also have accelerated 4.2.2. video support, so you’ll be able to take footage straight from your Canon, Nikon, Sony, or DJI Pocket 4 and edit in full resolution without any stuttering, whereas current devices require down-rezed proxies to smoothly play back media.

I was also able to seamlessly fly around a five-kilometer square virtual environment in Unreal Engine 5, all running on a Surface Laptop Ultra. What was even more impressive was that the entire application was emulated using Nvidia’s Prisim software, which Nvidia claims adds only 5%-10% CPU overhead.

🎮 All the gaming-ready RTX features. The Surface Laptop Ultra comes with a Blackwell GPU that supports all of Nvidia’s major gaming features to date. That includes all of the DLSS 4.5 features, like the 2nd-gen transformer model, Multi-Frame Generation, Nvidia Reflex, and even the upcoming path tracing arriving on all Nvidia 50-series GPUs this August.

The sheer GPU power of the RTX Spark already allows the Surface Laptop Ultra to run Alan Wake 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at full resolution with well over 60 fps. All the games were running with Ray Tracing, or RTX turned on, DLSS set to Balanced, and 2x MFG, and hardly any latency. Native game support on ARM is still spotty, but that didn’t seem to be an issue as Pragmata and Fornite played without issue despite being emulated on the Surface Laptop Ultra.

💨 Proper cooling. A Surface Laptop Ultra running at full tilt sounds about as loud as a portable fan on full power. Microsoft told me the fans in this laptop are the biggest fans it’s ever put in a Surface device, giving it 2.5x that of Surface Laptop 8th Gen. Aside from bigger fans, Microsoft has carefully engineered its thermal solutions with a new copper cold plate and vents so the airflow can hit every component before the heat gets pushed out.

• Up next: Nvidia RTX Spark laptops: pictures of every model from Computex 2026

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Review score: 4/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• ✨ Stunning mix of gold, transparent plastic, and RGB that melds together

• 🎯 65K sensor captures micromovements for competitive FPS shooters

• 🖱️ 100m click lifespan and Corning Gorilla Glass mouse feet will stand the test of time

• ⚙️ Gear Link configuration website saves you from having to download software

❌ Cons

• 🤑 $259 is a lot for a gaming mouse

• 💦 Potentially too slick to hold for gamers with sweaty hands

• ⚖️ 8K polling rate reduces max DPI to 50K and battery life to 37 hours

• 🪶 82g is a little heavy for the ultra-lightweight mouse category

ROG Harpe II Extreme Editon 20 - $259

The Shortcut Review

The Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 is a remix of the brand’s celebrated ultra-lightweight gaming mouse. It’s been given a transparent shell, 24K gold plating, and a ridiculously sensitive 65K sensor for competitive play, but all of this comes at the high price of $259. I’ll be honest, the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 won me on aesthetics alone. The mix of the smoky transparent shell, shiny gold within, RGB, and futuristic decals just hits the cyberpunk aesthetic I love. The fact that it has a fantastic hand shape, long-lasting microswitch mouse buttons, Corning Gorilla Glass mouse feet, and uses the Gear Link website to configure settings instead of downloading software is just icing on this great gaming mouse.

The Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 falters in a few ways. The slick design can be a detriment, as its transparent surface is entirely smooth and can slip out of a sweaty hand, especially for gamers with a claw or fingertip grip. You also can’t use this mouse at its maximum 8K polling rate without two trade-offs: a lower maximum DPI of 50K and reduced battery life to 37 hours. This 82-gram mouse also isn’t the lightest of ultra-lightweight clickers if that’s your main priority.

The real reason to buy the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 is its aesthetics and longevity. Its mouse switches and Corning glass skates won’t quit on you for years, and you’ll have the bragging rights of owning a gold-plated gaming mouse for all that time too.

Full Review

✨ 24K gold-plated. The Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 leaves a hell of an impression, combining a smoky transparent shell, a 24K gold-plated inner frame, more gold on the scroll wheel and side buttons, and RGB lighting. This gaming mouse is also decked out with decals celebrating ROG’s 20th anniversary, giving it an even more cyber-edged feel. That might all sound like too many clashing aesthetics at once, but it coalesces into a “Cyberpunk 2077 but cleaner” sort of style. It’s gorgeous.

⚠️ Slippery when wet. This is one slick-looking mouse, but it can also get a little too slick if you have sweaty palms. The entire transparent shell is smooth, and while this wasn’t an issue for my palm grip, those with a claw or fingertip grip might have trouble keeping a hold of the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20. Asus includes a few strips of grip tape, but this ends up covering the whole point of a transparent mouse. I wish Asus had micro-etched the surface for added grip, since it has the technology to emboss ROG and Xbox logos all over the equally transparent Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20.

🖱️ 100,000,000 clicks ready. The Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 wasn’t just built pretty; it was designed to last. The ROG Optical Micro switches under each mouse button are rated for a 100 million click lifespan that’s sure to last for years, even if your StarCraft 2 APM rate is in the 400+ range. The mouse’s feet/skates are also made of Corning Gorilla Glass, which will basically never need to be replaced, unlike the silicone pads used by most other mice.

☄️ 65,000 DPI sensor. This mouse features a 65,000 DPI sensor that’s quite a bit faster than the already-sensitive 42,000 DPI sensor on the previous Asus ROG Harpe II Ace. At a maximum of 65K DPI, the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 can track even the slightest mouse movements, which is essential in shooters like Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant.

This mouse is designed to read the smallest movements. For example, the lift-off distance can be adjusted to be as small as 0.7-1.7mm. If you’re mouse aiming with your whole arm (as you should be), the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 also supports a maximum acceleration of 70g and a maximum speed of 800 inches per second (IPS).

ROG Harpe II Extreme Editon 20 - $259

⚡ 8,000Hz polling at a cost. If you want the best lag-free connection for competitive gaming, you’ll want to plug in the SpeedNova 8K dongle. It unlocks the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 8K polling rate; however, it comes at a fairly high cost: reducing the max DPI to 50,000 and shortening battery life to just 37 hours. That might still sound like a lot of time to game, but this mouse’s regular battery life reaches 195 hours at a 1K polling rate.

🖥️ No install needed. Unlike so many peripherals, there’s no software installation required with the Asus ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20. You can simply load the Gear Link website, connect your mouse, and then you’re free to tweak all the settings without downloading a thing.

You can go in deep to tweak the ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition 20 to your exact liking with angle tuning and snapping, DPI adjustments, including separate X and Y axes, and debounce delay. You can also calibrate the mouse’s sensor to your desk surface or pick one of the presets if you own an Asus ROG mousepad. Lastly, there’s a Zone Mode toggle that locks the mouse to its highest settings, saving you the hassle of jumping into the app to turn everything up manually.

ROG Harpe II Extreme Editon 20 - $259

• Up next: Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 review: the most expensive gaming keyboard I’ve ever loved

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Review score: 4.5/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 🪎 Premium build quality with solid metal, carbon fiber, and gold-plated accents

• ⌨️ Adjustable typing feel with just a lever for a hard or soft key touch

• 🤫 Fully silent typing thanks to three layers of dampening

• ⚡ Boosted 8,000Hz polling rate works over wireless and wired

• 🌐 Web-based Gear Link app almost fully removes the need for software installation

• 🔋 92-hour battery life with RGB and screen, 1600 hours without

❌ Cons

• 🤑 $600!!!

• 🧲 No hall-effect or optical keyswitch options with tunable actuation distance

• ⬇️ Companion app installation required to work with Gear Link

• 💰 It costs $600

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 - $699

The Shortcut Review

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 is the ultimate 75% mechanical keyboard for enthusiasts and competitive gamers. Its build quality is impeccable, with a mix of solid metal, carbon fiber, three layers of damping, prelubed key switches, and stabilizers. The 20th-anniversary ROG edition further elevates the ROG Azoth Extreme by adding gold-plated parts and a slick black color scheme. This is a peripheral built for keyboard enthusiasts without having to actually build it.

For competitive gamers, it offers a blazing-fast 8,000Hz polling rate that works over wireless or wired connections. The adjustable key feel lets you take the edge off the hard, crisp key travel for a softer keypress during everyday typing. And you’ll never be left with a dead wireless keyboard thanks to its extended 1,600-hour battery life, just in case its regular 92 hours of battery life just isn’t enough.

The only thing missing here is a hall-effect or magnetic key option, if you want to dial in your key travel exactly. The price is also pretty astronomical at $599, $100 more than the original Asus ROG Azoth Extreme. That’s so expensive for a mainstream keyboard, but it really caters to the hardest of hardcore keyboard enthusiasts. Another thing going for it is that this is a one-off special-edition 20th Anniversary ROG Edition keyboard that will never be reproduced.

Full Review

🛡️ Full Metal Jacket. The Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 is a rugged gaming keyboard made with a full aluminum alloy chassis. However, unlike other keyboards that use a thin sheet of pressed metal, this keyboard has a metal slab on its underside and an even thicker aluminum collar wrapped around the rear. This keyboard’s full metal jacket makes it incredibly heavy. This is the keyboard you never want to fall on a tiled floor or your foot. The keyboard also ships in a premium cardboard box that weighs three pounds on its own, giving you a strong sense of its heft as soon as you pick it up.

🪎 I love gold. The other most striking thing about the Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 is all the plated gold you’ll find on it, including the entire palm rest’s underside, the diamond-cut edges, screws, magnetic feet, and the flip-out card on the keyboard’s underside. The keyboard’s default amber-colored backlight shines through the clear keycaps, blending with the gold and making it look like the whole thing is glowing with treasure inside. I love this golden aesthetic, and it helps elevate the panache of this keyboard even if it comes at the expense of an extra $100

🎚️ Adjustable typing feel. Aesthetics aside, the Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 has a fantastically smooth, uniform, and quiet typing feel. You can also set the resistance with a lever underneath the keyboard that manipulates the adjustable gasket mount to give the keys an either a soft or hard feel. The soft feel offers a little more bounce and flex, making it easier on your fingers while typing a long document. The hard feel is definitely all about crisp feedback to really let you know you’re hitting the keys, and this is, of course, best for gaming. This is a great feature, as it gives me two distinct keyswitch experiences without having to physically swap them out, though you could do that if you wanted to.

⌨️ Just my type. The ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 comes with two options for key switches: a clicky NX Storm or a linear NX Snow. My review sample came with NX Snow, which is great, but not my favorite, so I can always buy the NX Storm set and hotswap them onto the whole keyboard or just my main set of gaming keys like WASD, shift, left control, etc.

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 - $699

🤫 Silent mode. No matter which keyswitch you go with, this is a very quiet keyboard, and it’s all thanks to the keyboard’s three layers of dampening. There’s a Poron dampening foam that silences keystrokes, while a deeper layer of Poron on the switch pad cushions switches from hitting the PCB directly, and lastly, a silicon pad minimizes sounds from resonating in the keyboard. All the larger keys also have foam stabilizers that prevent them from clattering.

🛜 Tri-Mode connection. The Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 gives you three ways to connect: wireless, wired, and Bluetooth. With Bluetooth alone, you can connect to up to three devices simultaneously. The Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 also comes with an 8000Hz ROG Polling Rate Booster that works with both wireless and wired play, giving you the most responsive keyboard for competitive play.

⚙️ Gear Link with a companion app. One of my favorite features of Asus’ ROG peripherals is that they use a web client to manage everything, so no software installation is needed. Unfortunately, that’s not 100% true of the Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20, as it still requires one companion app to fully work with the software. Otherwise, you can tweak the lighting, set up macros, and do everything from the Gear Link website. to install any needless software to get the most out of Asus’s new keyboard.

🔋 1,600+ hour battery life. The Asus ROG Azoth offers a long battery life of 92 hours, even with both the OLED screen and the keyboard’s RGB backlighting enabled. However, if you don’t want to charge this keyboard for the rest of the year, the battery life extends to 1,600 hours if you turn off all the lights and screens. That’s also a great fallback if you’re ever dipping into the red while in a multiplayer match or a multi-hour raid.

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 - $699

• Up next: Asus ROG Falchion Ace 75 HE review: this eSports-grade gaming keyboard erases input lag

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Review Score: 4/5 – ‘Great!’

✅ Pros:

• 📺 Outputs N64 games at 720p, 1080p, or 4K

• 😍 Plays games exactly how you remember with no input lag or visual quirks

• 👍 Different display modes and scaling options are available

• 🎮 Compatible with wired and Bluetooth N64 controllers

• 💡 Nice touches like the cartridge light elevate the already unique design

• 🤫 Silent in operation

• 💰 Cheaper than the Analogue 3D

• 🙏 Plays all your original N64 games, and new titles are on the way

• 🛜 Can be updated over-the-air thanks to Wi-Fi

❌ Cons:

• 🤷‍♂️ Won’t magically make your N64 games look like remasters

• 👀 Alternatives like Switch Online are available

• 🆚 The Analogue 3D system software is more mature and boasts more features

• 😞 ModRetro’s M64 Pro controller is sold separately

ModRetro: M64

The Shortcut Review

*This review is based on a pre-production M64 unit provided by ModRetro. Hardware and software are not final.*

The N64 remains my favorite console of all time. I played it religiously with my older brother growing up, sinking countless hours into the plethora of multiplayer and single-player games available.

However, thanks to the cruel passage of time, the N64 has become harder to enjoy. Try hooking one up to a modern display, if you can even find the right cables, and you’ll be met with a frankly off-putting image that quickly dampens even the most stalwart of fans’ enthusiasm.

That’s why the prospect of the ModRetro M64, a modernized Nintendo 64 that can easily connect to a 4K TV while retaining the accuracy and classic look of the original system, was such a tantalizing one.

ModRetro M64 specs 🛠️

• Price: $199 early bird pricing, $229 after June 1, 2026

• Resolution: 720p, 1080p, 4K

• Colors: Green, Purple, Red, Clear

• Release date: July 28, 2026

And while the M64 is very much in its early stages (there are several big updates planned at launch and in the months ahead), it’s been a blast revisiting the games that shaped my childhood without having to contend with the usual barriers to entry.

🚀 Ready to rumble. The M64 makes a strong first impression, even in its pre-production form. Not only does the hardware feel premium, with a bold identity and a translucent two-tone shell that lets you see the circuitry inside, but it boots up blazingly fast, often loading a game in under five seconds.

😎 No ordinary N64. The M64 also has other unique features, like the useful and powerful cartridge eject mechanism that shoots your game up into the air, which makes it easier to remove. Little thoughtful touches help to elevate the overall experience, like the LED light which shows off a game’s artwork and when an update is installing, the chunky dedicated wheel to navigate the UI, and the silent performance under load all combine to make one pleasing package.

Hold up, wait a minute

However, it’s important to set your expectations about what the M64 can actually do.

👉 It won’t remaster your N64 games. It’s easy to think that because the M64 can output at 4K resolution, it will magically upscale and make every game you play look razor sharp, and provide crystal-clear textures and detail. And that simply isn’t the case.

Yes, N64 games will look significantly better than when running off the original N64’s video output, and there are some neat display options to choose from to tailor things to your liking. You can stretch the image, choose from different scaling options like Integer, Integer+, Bilinear or Lanczos scaling, and even select a Clean, CRT or Scanlines display profile, along with customizing your own. There is a bevy of settings to tweak and play with.

But this is ‌still the same 240p to 480p, often blurry resolution and jaggy graphics that the Nintendo 64 provides. Unless you crank up the sharpening and experiment with some of the more advanced settings, don’t expect any dramatic difference in this respect, and that goes for the sometimes questionable performance in certain games.

You know that section in GoldenEye 007 that tanks the framerate on the Dam level? Yeah, it’ll do that on the M64, too. This will undoubtedly disappoint some people, though the console’s promised overclocking feature could rectify these issues, but sadly it wasn’t available to test.

Do you need the M64?

🤔 Isn’t Switch Online better? If you have a Nintendo Switch or Switch 2, you can play many N64 games at a higher resolution, and often with improved framerates. Grab the N64 wireless controller that Nintendo released, and you’ll have the benefits of native controls, save states, rewind, a pleasing CRT filter, and the option to play local multiplayer games online. Which is probably enough for most nostalgic gamers.

🎮 Play any game you want. The big caveat, however, is that not every N64 game is available on Switch Online – and some never will be. There’s still no Super Smash Bros. or Conker’s Bad Fur Day. You’ll never be able to play the best wrestling games of all time like WWF No Mercy. And Donkey Kong 64 only just made an appearance. Want to play licensed games like South Park again? Forget about it.

It’s worth noting that at the time of review, only one game in my collection failed to boot: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. However, this may be fixed by the time the console ships. You can see a list of games that are currently experiencing major or minor issues when running on the M64 here.

All that glitters is not gold

😖 Emulation woes. But as nice as emulation can be, there are several downsides. There’s noticeable input lag to deal with, and often bugs, glitches, or visual oddities that were never present in the original version. Many games launched with issues on Switch Online, and some still aren’t quite right. Oh, and if you stop subscribing to Switch Online, you’ll also lose access to all the games. No more N64 for you.

That isn’t the case with the ModRetro M64, which plays all your physical N64 games (from any region) just as you remembered them, and everything feels just as responsive as it should. Your existing accessories will also work, including controllers, Rumble Paks, Controller Paks, and more.

👍 It just feels right. Honestly, it’s easy to downplay what a difference input lag can make, but whenever I play Mario Golf 64 on Switch Online, I find it hard to get the shot timings down. On the M64, I could produce a “Nice Shot!” time and time again. Switching between GoldenEye 007 on the M64 and Switch 2 produced a similar result. Moving Bond around felt heavy and slow via emulation, yet light and responsive on the ModRetro M64. To N64 purists like me, that makes a massive difference.

It’s also worth praising the M64’s excellent sound reproduction, which is far superior to that of Nintendo Switch Online. At the same volume level on my LG OLED CX, the M64 produced a far more detailed and fuller soundscape, while Switch Online sounded flat and rather lifeless in comparison, requiring the volume to be increased significantly.

Just the beginning

The ModRetro M64 is off to a solid start, then, and there’s huge potential for it to become even better.

📅 Day one update. By the time the first units ship to customers, an over-the-air firmware update will add EverDrive-64 X5 and X7, and Summercart 64 compatibility. Overclocking will also be available to boost the performance of some games, along with a built-in Controller Pak, and a translucent video settings menu.

👏 Post-launch support. After shipping, support is planned for video passthrough for the ModRetro Chromatic, and a Chromatic Transfer Pak (Pokémon Stadium, anyone?). In-game notifications, console LED color customization, and more video processing, effects, and filters are also on the way, along with the ability to hot-swap carts.

🆕 New N64 games! Perhaps the coolest thing about the M64, though, is that, like with the ModRetro Chromatic, new and classic games will be released for the system. On June 1, 2026, ModRetro will release Xeno Crisis, Xibalba 64, Extreme-G Turbo Fusion, and the iconic Buck Bumble. New N64 games in 2026? What a time to be alive!

💰 The price of nostalgia. At $229 ($199 if you got the early bird discount), the M64 compares favorably to the other N64 remake on the market, the Analogue 3D, which currently costs $269.99. Neither includes a controller as standard, but both work with existing N64 gamepads.

You’ll have to stump up an additional $89 for the ModRetro M64 Pro controller, which works wired or wireless and has a TMR analog stick, Bluetooth, built-in rumble, a rechargeable battery pack (or the option for AA batteries) and matches the ergonomics of the original N64 controller. It feels super premium thanks to its ceramic-coated aluminum back and weighs about as much as an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller. It can also turn on the system, and accessing the quick menu to turn it off is as simple as pressing Start + Z. For comparison, the 8BitDo 64 pad for the Analogue 3D is $40.

🆚 How does it compare to the Analogue 3D? Unfortunately, I don’t have an Analogue 3D to compare the two consoles directly, but it will be interesting to see how the M64 fares in future head-to-heads. For what it’s worth, ModRetro’s Palmer Luckey has stated that the M64 is cheaper, built with superior hardware, is fully open-source, and has lower latency. Plus, there’s native support for CRTs. However, the Analogue 3D system software is more mature and recently added save states.

The ultimate N64?

Unlike the ModRetro Chromatic, which has obvious benefits over playing games on the original Game Boy or Game Boy Color – specifically the screen – the ModRetro M64 is a more understated upgrade.

It achieves the goal of making the N64 more accessible again and greatly improves the look of titles you know and love when played on a modern display. With Wi-Fi and several updates planned, the M64 will also become even more capable in the future, which is an exciting proposition.

The M64 might not be the ultimate Nintendo 64 revival just yet, but it’s a fantastic glow-up of Nintendo’s beloved console that will only get better. If you have some N64 cartridges you want to revisit, this is the best way to do it.

Should you buy the ModRetro M64? 🤔

ModRetro: M64

Yes, if…

• ✅ You love the N64 and want an easier way to play your favorite games.

• ✅ You don’t own a CRT or display that does the N64’s video output justice.

• ✅ You’d like some more modern features like wireless controller support.

No, if…

• ❌ You’re quite content playing N64 games on Nintendo Switch Online.

• ❌ You don’t have an existing library of Nintendo 64 games.

• ❌ You never really liked the N64 to begin with.

Subscribe now

Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. He also runs a retro gaming YouTube channel called Game on, boy! Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.

• 🎮 Asus has perfected the ROG Xbox Ally X with a bigger 7.4-inch OLED screen

• 📺 The new ROG Nebula HDR display adds 1,400-nit HDR brightness and 600-nit SDR brightness with Dolby Vision support

• 🪟 Also added: tougher Gorilla Glass Victus and Corning DXC Anti-Reflection coating

• 🕹️ Directional inputs upgraded with Gulikit TMR thumbsticks and a transforming D-pad

• 🔴 Rounder buttons, more tactile bumpers, and longer impulse trigger pulls

• 📸 Action button replaces Library shortcut for quick screenshots and gameplay recording

• 👓 Bundled with Asus ROG XReal R1 mixed-reality glasses for a 171” virtual screen

• 🤑 Price TBA, but it’ll be expensive, as it combines the $999 Asus ROG Xbox Ally X and the $849 ROG XReal R1 glasses into an upgraded, limited-edition package

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X was practically the perfect gaming handheld except for its aging screen. Well, Asus has a new limited-edition ROG Xbox Ally X20 that fixes all those issues with an OLED screen and other welcome upgrades.

The new OLED screen is INCREDIBLE. 1,400-nit HDR brightness, 600-nit SDR brightness, pitch-black blacks, Dolby Vision support, and a slightly larger 7.4-inch display, too – all of which make the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 practically the Steam Deck OLED 2.0.

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 also has a fancy transparent shell. Other touches that help elevate this special 20th-anniversary Xbox Ally X are the light-up classic Xbox logo and gold accents. The controls have also been improved with Gulikit TMR thumbsticks and a D-Pad that rotates to switch between four-way and eight-way inputs.

Now the catch is that not only is the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 a limited-edition model, but it’s also only being sold as a bundle with the Asus ROG Xreal R1 glasses. You can plug the glasses directly into this handheld to enjoy a virtual 171-inch screen. While it’s a nice add-on device, it will only make the bundle more expensive. Asus hasn’t confirmed the price yet, but it’ll probably be in the $2,000-$2,500 range as it combines an upgraded $999 Asus ROG Xbox Ally X with the $859 Asus ROG Xreal R1 Glasses.

🫥 Transparent casing. Electronics with transparent housing are always cooler, and that’s especially true of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20. It looks immaculate, and you can appreciate the circuitry within, vibration motors whirr to life, and how hard the fan is spinning to keep the system cool. I also love the gold accents and the classic Xbox logo that now lights up. The controller handles also have a rubber texture, as Asus has taken inspiration from the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller for the ROG Xbox Ally X20, which plays into the improved controls too.

🕹️ TMR sticks and a new D-Pad. The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 has a new pair of Gulikit TMR thumbsticks that’ll be driftproof forever. TMR sticks are an upgrade over even the Hall Effect sticks on the new MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, as they have a bit more resistance to emulate traditional thumbsticks. If you’re more of a D-Pad person, that’s also been upgraded with a transforming gimmick. Twisting the D-Pad switches it between four-way and eight-way input, a useful feature for playing 2D platformers or fighting games. Asus has also made subtle improvements to every control with rounder buttons, firmer shoulder bumpers, and a longer travel on the impulse triggers.

📺 OLED at last. I’ve been screaming for more gaming handhelds to adopt OLED screens or at least HDR displays, and it’s finally here on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20. The new ROG Nebula HDR display is beautiful to look at, with HDR peak brightness increased to 1,400 nits to support both HDR and Dolby Vision. SDR brightness is a tick brighter at 600 nit, so even if you’re playing an old-school game, you’ll be able to see this screen better anywhere. The pitch-black contrast that only OLED can achieve will also make me want to play all my games on this gaming handheld.

↔️ Bigger screen. Asus’ new OLED screen is also a tiny bit bigger at 7.4 inches. 0.4 inches isn’t a size bump, but it helps spread out the pixels a tiny bit, so I don’t have to squint as hard to see things on the ROG Xbox Ally X20. I wished the extra screen space would have added another row of vertical pixels, but the screen resolution here is still 1,920 x 1,080.

The display is now also made with tougher Gorilla Glass Victus, so it won’t scratch as easily. There’s also a Corning DXC Anti-Reflection coating that helps block out glare without making the screen matte. The display also supports FreeSync Premium Pro on top of VRR, which includes native HDR support and Low Framerate Compensation when fps dips below the 48-120Hz range that VRR is designed to smooth out.

🌬️ Improved cooling. Asus hasn’t changed anything about the internal components of its limited-edition handheld, but it has improved the cooling. The most notable change is the longer ventilation strip along the top of the ROG Xbox Ally X20, but Asus told me they also rearranged the internals so there’s more airflow going out.

👓 Bundled VR headset. The last new addition to the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 is that it comes bundled with Asus’ new ROG XReal R1 glasses. These 240Hz micro-OLED FHD gaming glasses plug into the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 to give you a virtual 171-inch 3D screen. There’s no way to buy the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 on its own, so while this will likely increase the price by at least $849, it’s worth it if you’ve ever wished you could play with a huge gaming screen anywhere.

• Up next: Acer Predator Atlas 8 hands-on review: Intel’s best shot at gaming handheld supremacy

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

• 🏋️‍♂️ MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is the most powerful gaming handheld at Computex and possibly the entire world

• ⚙️ Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme delivers 60fps gaming at full 1200p resolution and high settings in F1 2025 and Hogwarts Legacy

• 🎮 Xbox-inspired redesign improves ergonomics and laser-etched texture

• 🕹️ Greatly improved inputs with Hall-Effect thumbsticks, rounder buttons, and a new metal-gated D-Pad

• 🫨 HD haptics converts simple rumble into nuanced vibrations

• 📅 MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ will be available June 23 and MSI is targeting pricing around $1,500

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is the most powerful gaming handheld at Computex and possibly the entire world, and it’s all thanks to Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme processor. I got to test MSI’s new handheld in Taipei, and it’s a beast that can run Hogwarts Legacy at a steady 60 fps with 1200p medium settings and XeSS supersampling set to balanced. It can also handle 60fps Battlefield 6 at 1200p high with XeSS performance mode.

With up to 45W of graphics power, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ and its Intel Arc G3 Extreme processor aren’t just outperforming AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered gaming handhelds; they’re aiming for AMD’s flagship Strix Halo that powers gaming laptops and small desktops.

All of that power is wrapped around a greatly improved chassis that shows MSI has learned a lot from building handhelds for the last two and a half years. It’s lighter, more ergonomic, and MSI has improved all the inputs with Hall Effect thumbsticks, rounder ABXY face buttons, and a metal dome around the D-Pad. MSI is even evolving the rumble in the Claw 8 EX AI+ into what it calls HD haptics, which can precisely deliver vibrations to simulate their real-world feel. This handheld really now feels like a great controller that just happens to have a screen, while most gaming handhelds focus on being PC gaming devices with controller buttons added on

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is the culmination of years of gaming handheld development. Combining the power with all the thoughtful controller and ergonomic improvements, there isn’t a better-performing or better-handling gaming handheld than the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ right now. It’ll be released on June 23, and MSI has only loosely quoted that pricing will start around $1,500.

🏋️‍♂️ Power stance. The Intel Arc G3 Extreme has already proven itself more powerful than the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme by delivering 10+ fps in Forza Horizon 6 on the Acer Predator Atlas 8. Now, after an hour with the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, I’ve come away even more impressed as it can run 60fps Hogwarts Legacy at a full 1200p resolution with medium settings and XeSS super sampling set to balanced. Battlefield 6 can run at 60 fps with even higher-quality settings and XeSS enabled. I was also able to play F1 25 on a 4K TV with this handheld docked like a Nintendo Switch 2, except that MSI can deliver a much higher TDP of 45W to run the game at 60fps with high settings.

⚙️ Intel inside. All of this gaming prowess comes from the Arc G3 Extreme that Intel derived from its Panther Lake series of processors. It’s the first chip Intel has truly developed for gaming, first by cutting down the CPU core count while maintaining 12 Xe3 cores. This chip has also been practically co-engineered by MSI, as Intel pulled from all of MSI’s learnings from its last two and a half years of building handhelds, starting with the original MSI Claw and, subsequently, the much-improved MSI Claw 8 AI+.

🪭 Cooling. MSI hasn’t forgotten to upgrade the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+’s cooling to match the more powerful processor. This handheld features MSI’s new Cooler Boost HyperFlow tech, which adds a second fan and two heat pipes, providing an additional five watts of cooling. Both fans also push 25% higher pressure airflow, which should keep temps low and steady. This all kept the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ just warm to the touch while testing, even as I asked the system to run games at high-quality settings and full resolution.

🎮 Gaming comfortably. The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ doesn’t just run like a dream, it feels like one. Thanks to a new pair of flared-out grips and a 20g lighter weight, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is much easier to hold. Like the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, MSI took inspiration from the Xbox controller to give its handheld a new shape while also adding a laser-etched micro-dot texture for just a little more grip. Unlike the smooth-skinned MSI Claw 8 AI+, this texture doesn’t require you to white-knuckle-grip onto it, further reducing hand strain.

🕹️ More like a great controller with a screen. MSI has also improved every input on the Claw 8 EX AI+, starting with a new pair of Hall-Effect thumbsticks that should never degrade and are immune to stick drift. The ABXY face buttons have also been resurfaced with rounded edges that make them more comfortable to press. Even the D-Pad has been upgraded with an additional metal gate, making it snappier for fighting games.

🫨 HD Haptics. The last thing I expected MSI to improve upon was rumble, but MSI has really developed a new system here. First, MSI replaced the bog-standard rumble motor with a 6-axis IMU vibration motor that can convey subtler haptic feedback. At the same time, MSI developed a new algorithm that translates native rumble into HD Haptics to simulate more immersive feedback, such as the reverberation from stepping onto a metal floor. I personally felt the most difference in vibration while playing F1 25, with a distinct difference in feel between the engine rumble, spinning my tires, and a full-on crash.

📼 Rerun specs. While there’s a lot new outside and inside the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, there’s a fair bit that’s the same as MSI’s last Intel-powered and even the AMD-powered MSI Claw A8. Namely, this Claw still features an eight-inch IPS display that tops out at 500 nits, making it yet another PC gaming handheld that can’t display HDR when the Switch 2’s screen is just as bright. MSI has also stuck to 1TB of storage and 24GB of shared memory. Battery capacity is also the same as the previous 80whr, but MSI has promised you can expect the same, if not better, which all sounds good to me as the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is still the longest-lasting gaming handheld with up to 10 hours of battery life.

• Up next: Acer Predator Atlas 8 hands-on review: Intel’s best shot at gaming handheld supremacy

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

• Intel Arc G3 Extreme plays Forza Horizon 6 at 10+ fps (on more challenging settings) than the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme

• The Acer Predator Atlas 8 is comfortable as the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, without looking fugly

• The Acer Predator Atlas 8 isn’t actually that thick

• As early hardware, the Acer Predator Atlas 8 is a mess with narrow viewing angles on its display

• 🕹️The lack of hall-effect sticks really stands out when the rest of the inputs are stock standard

• 📅 The Acer Predator Atlas 8 will be available this October in NA, EMEA, and Australia

• 💰 Pricing has yet to be confirmed

The Acer Predator Atlas 8 marks a new beginning for third-generation Intel-powered gaming handhelds. While previous gaming handhelds have squeezed Meteor Lake and Lundar Lake CPUs, the Arc G3 Extreme is Intel’s first chip specifically designed for this type of gaming device. This new Intel gaming handheld is already proving to be promising, as the Acer Predator Atlas 8 can play Forza Horizon 6 at full resolution with high settings and XeSS set to Ultra Quality Plus, all at 55-59fps. That tops the Asus Xbox Ally X and every other AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered handheld I’ve tested by 10+ fps.

On the strictly hardware side, the Acer Predator Atlas 8 feels good, but it still needs work. For starters, the display looks fantastic on paper, having a larger 8-inch screen and taller 1,200 resolution with all the usual 500-nits, 48-120Hz VRR – but it has painfully narrow up and down viewing angles. The lack of hall-effect sticks seems like a miss as well, especially when almost all the other inputs just reach the bar standard to ship.

Now, this could all be fixed by production, as pricing hasn’t been finalized and the Acer Predator Atlas 8 won’t be available until later this October. But I’m already excited about the prospect of a far more powerful Intel gaming handheld that will give anything powered by an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme a run for its money.

📈 Rising to the task. Acer only had the Predator Atlas 8 set up with Forza Horizon 6, but I still came away impressed by the Intel Arc G3 Extreme’s performance. Intel’s new chip was able to play FH6 at the system’s full 1,920 x 1,200 resolution with the high settings preset and crucially XeSS set to Ultra Quality Plus. That actually beats the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X and its AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor, as it can only push up to 50fps with the same settings and FSR 3.1.5 set to Quality. That’s a direct shot across AMD’s bow for gaming handheld supremacy.

🗜️ Thicc, but not that much thicker. The early renderings had me worried that the Acer Predator Atlas 8 would be too thick. However, holding it next to its closest competitors, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, the Acer Predator Atlas 8 is thicker, but not by much. The Atlas 8 measures 28.5-58.37mm thick, while the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is 24mm, and the Xbox Ally X is 27.5-50.7mm.

🪮 Business in front, party in the back. The front of the Acer Predator Atlas 8 is completely clean. Aside from the face buttons and joysticks, the entire front surface is a single smooth piece of plastic with no lines or dimpled texture. Turning this system around reveals a plethora of ventilation holes along with two big heatsink exhausts set at a 45-degree angle. The rear logo will supposedly light up with a single LED, but the showfloor pre-production model simply had reflective, metallic branding.

☁️ Comfort without compromise. The first thing I noticed about holding the Acer Predator Atlas 8 is that it felt as comfortable in my hands as the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X. Acer has added a pair of contoured grips that bowl out to the sides of the gaming handheld, but they don’t completely flare out as a pair of gaming controller handles on the Xbox Ally X. The overall shape of the handheld is very reminiscent of the Lenovo Legion Go S.

📺 Great display, except… The Acer Predator Atlas 8’s display looks fantastic on paper: it’s slightly larger at 8 inches across, offers higher vertical resolution at 1,920 x 1,200, 48-120Hz VRR, and is 500-nit bright. The display is even covered with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, which should make it more resistant to scratches while also reducing reflectivity – though it didn’t really seem to fix or reduce reflections from the spotlights in Acer’s showroom. The big but is that the Acer Predator Atlas 8 has terrible viewing angles. Even just tilting the gaming handheld by 20 degrees causes a quarter of the color to wash out.

🔫 Hall-effect triggers. Unfortunately, the Acer Predator Atlas 8 doesn’t really distinguish itself much with its inputs. It has an asymmetrical Xbox layout and all traditional controls, with the only hall-effect parts being the triggers, so they’ll outlast any punishing shooters and soulslikes. Those triggers are also tunable, and with a flick of a switch on the back, you can shorten the trigger pull to just a button press.

• Up next: Steam Deck has sold out again, despite its astronomical new price tag

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Review score: 4.5/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 💐 True RGB deepens color depth with more accuracy

• 🎥 Breathes new life into movies, shows, and games

• 🎨 Shows you color within colors you’ve never witnessed before

• 🎮 Fully gaming-ready with HDMI 2.1, 120Hz, ALLM, VRR, and PS5-specific features

• 🎬 Avoid the hassle of calibration with Professional, Netflix, Prime Video, and IMAX picture modes

• 🫥 Clever lenticular stand hides wires

❌ Cons

• 🔌 2x HDMI 2.1 ports in 2026 still

• 📈 $800 price jump over the last generation

• 💰 More expensive than its competitors

Sony Bravia 7 II - $2,699

The Shortcut Review

RGB LEDs are the biggest trend in TVs for 2026, but the Sony Bravia 7 II is the first RGB TV to really blow me away. This is the first real evolution for LCD TVs since quantum dots, as the color backlight adds so much more vibrancy to all the colors on screen. Color accuracy and depth are also greatly improved, so you can see more varying shades of color on a single object and distinct hues positioned next to each other. The added color breathes new life into everything I’ve been rewatching and playing on the Sony Bravia 7 II.

Now, all of that improvement does come at a steep price. The 65” Sony Bravia 7 II I’ve been testing costs $2,599, a $800 increase over the previous $1,799 Sony Bravia 7 I reviewed two years ago. That’s also a higher price than other competing RGB TVs, such as the $2,099 Samsung R85H and the $2,199 Hisense UR9. From my experience of seeing all these TVs in action, the Sony Bravia 7 II is worth the extra expense. It reaches higher brightness while retaining color depth better than its competitors. Sony’s image processing and motion interpolation can’t be beat either.

The Sony Bravia 7 II is a huge generational leap, improving and fixing almost everything about the previous Sony Bravia 7 with wider viewing angles and a far less reflective screen. Sony still needs to get four HDMI 2.1 ports on all its 2026 TVs, but aside from that, the Sony Bravia 7 II is a spectacular 4K TV for streaming and gaming. It’s a statement that shows RGB LED technology has truly arrived.

Full Review

🌈 True RGB. True RGB isn’t just marketing speech; each LED in its backlight includes three separate red, green, and blue LEDs. This allows the backlight to perfectly match the color of the LCD panel, enhancing overall color depth and reducing blue-light blooming. Greens look more verdant, reds are more fiery, and blues are more cerulean thanks to Sony’s True RGB technology. I’ve gone back and rewatched movies like The Wizard of Oz and Coco on the Sony Bravia 7 II just to appreciate how much more colorful they look, as this TV just breathes new life into everything you watch and play.

💐Colors in colors. The Sony Bravia 7 II doesn’t just render deeper colors, it makes them more accurate. The TV basically adds color contrast, revealing more colors within colors like reds right next to blues, yellows, and greens in the follower field. I saw this most prominently in “Frozen II,” where I could finally see that every ice crystal actually had another color embedded in its center. This greater color depth also adds more depth to objects such as fire, where you can see all the different shades of red, orange, and yellow flames dance around. That fire on the screen is still a 2D image, but it looks more three-dimensional thanks to the deeper color.

🔌 2x HDMI 2.1. It’s 2026, and the Sony Bravia 7 II still has only two HDMI 2.1 ports, while even an entry-level Sony Bravia 3 II has four. Sony told me it’s largely because these TVs have been in development for so long that they feature an older chipset. If you have a soundbar (without an HDMI pass-through), that leaves you with only one fully gaming-capable HDMI 2.1 port, as one of these precious ports is also used for eARC.

🎮 Built for gaming. While the Sony Bravia 7 II comes short on HDMI 2.1 ports, it’s not lacking in gaming features. Any system you plug into this TV will benefit from its 120Hz refresh rate, variable refresh rate (VRR), and auto low-latency mode (ALLM). PS5 systems, meanwhile, get even more benefit with Auto HDR Tone Mapping, which automatically sets the TV’s maximum and minimum brightness to their proper levels. Meanwhile, Auto Genre Picture Mode optimizes your TV picture for whatever types of games you play without having to dig through menus when you switch.

👾 Truly colorful gaming. All the benefits of True RGB help make gaming look even better on the Sony Bravia 7 II. I started replaying Spider-Man 2 missions just to see how much more vibrant everything was, from the warm sunsets to Spider-Man’s bright red and blue suit. This incredible shot of the sunset over a flower-filled field in Ghost of Tsushima looks so lifelike thanks to the enhanced colors from the True RGB screen.

🎛️ Auto-tuned apps. The Sony Bravia 7 II comes with a Professional mode so you can watch movies without having to calibrate the best settings. Beyond that, it also has calibrated modes for streaming from Netflix and Prime Video, which choose between eight presets for the optimal screen brightness, color temperature, and gamma. My personal favorite preset mode is IMAX Enhanced, which restores more screen space than a 21:9 movie would and enhances the sound to put you back in the movie theater from the comfort of your home.

🛠️ Generational fixes. The original Sony Bravia 7’s biggest flaws were its narrow viewing angles and super reflective screen, and the Mark II has all but fixed these issues. This new TV isn’t completely glare-free like the Sony Bravia 9 II, but it takes a strong, direct light to really see my reflection on the Sony Bravia 7 II. Sony has made an even bigger improvement to the Bravia 7 II’s viewing angles, so I can still clearly see what’s on screen without any color shift, even from an extreme 30-degree angle.

Should you buy the Sony Bravia 7 II?

Sony Bravia 7 II - $2,699

✅ Yes, if…

• 🎨 You want to see more color in everything you watch and play

• 📺 RGB TVs have piqued your interest

• ➕ You want a serious upgrade to your Sony Bravia 7

• 😱 The idea of calibrating your screen frightens you

❌ No, if…

• 🎮 You have more than two gaming devices (get the $2,099 Samsung R85H instead)

• Money is short, but you still want an RGB TV (get the $2,199 Hisense UR9 instead)

• You’re unconvinced of RGB LED technology (get the $1,799 TCL QM8L instead)

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Rating: 4/5

✅ Pros

• 📐 Slim design that fades into the background

• ⌚️ Comfortable and stylish band options

• 🏃 Robust health tracking with auto-workout detection

• 🧑‍⚕️ Google Health Coach can be helpful for optimizing your workout plan

• 🔋 7-day battery life

• 💰 Price is more affordable than Whoop

❌ Cons

• 💪 No other band options beyond wrist bands

• ❤️ Health data isn’t as granular as Whoop

• ⚡️ Charger interrupts health tracking

The Shortcut review

I test a lot of health tracking devices, and the Fitbit Air might be the most interesting I’ve tried in a while. Google’s first screen-less fitness tracker is perceived as the biggest threat to Whoop yet, if only because of the design and the fact it’s from a company as big as Google. It also has a better price: pay $99 for the hardware, then $9.99 per month for access to all of Google Health, including the new AI Coach.

That’s a bit more affordable than the $239/year Whoop 5.0, even more so if you already have a Google AI Pro subscription, in which case you get Google Health’s complete feature set for free. But is it worth it?

I’ve been testing the Fitbit Air and the new Google Health experience for the past couple of weeks, and I like it more than I expected. It feels like a simplified version of the Whoop, not a dumbed-down one. The Google Health interface is more accessible than the old Fitbit experience, and the AI Coach can be helpful, so long as you take the time to log all of your fitness data.

That’s perhaps the biggest thing you need to keep in mind. Wearing the Fitbit Air is very convenient, but getting it to track all your data isn’t. You have to pull out your phone to track more than you’d think, especially if you want the AI Coach to be helpful at all. But if you’re willing to do that and don’t want a traditional smartwatch, this is a solid choice.

Amazon: Fitbit Air

Best Buy: Fitbit Air

Review notes

📐 A slim design that gets out of the way. The Fitbit Air’s biggest claim to fame is its design. The tracker itself is super small and sits right on the top of your wrist. It fits neatly into a variety of band options, doesn’t have a screen, and can’t vibrate to alert you of notifications. It’s one of the least intrusive fitness trackers I’ve ever worn, even less so than my beloved Whoop. It’s ideal for those who don’t want a full-fledged watch on their wrist, or for those who might already wear a watch and still want to track their health metrics.

⌚️ Nice band options. Google is offering a variety of band options for the Fitbit Air, with some made from unique fabrics and patterns that all mesh wtih Google’s design philosophy. My favorite band is the Performance Loop Band, which uses comfortable woven materials and a micro-adjustable buckle for the perfect fit. The silicone Active Band is great for intense workouts, and the Elevated Modern Band is ideal if you want to dress up your Fitbit Air. There’s also a special Stephen Curry edition band that’s more breathable and has a unique water-resistant coating, although it costs considerably more than the other bands ($129.99 versus $34.99-$49.99).

🔋 Seven-day battery life. This fitness tracker had no issue living up to the battery life claims of its maker. Google promised up to seven days between charges on the Fitbit Air, and in my testing, that’s exactly what I got. With a mix of three strength training workouts a week, a ton of walking around New York City, and tracking my sleep every night, the Air alerted me to juice up on day 6, with the battery being next to dead on day 7. At that point, I plugged it in, and it managed to recharge pretty quickly.

⚡️ Charging interrupts your tracking. The only disadvantage to the Fitbit Air’s charger is the requirement to take it off your wrist before you can juice it up. With a Whoop band, you can slide the charger right on top and keep wearing it, which means your health data will keep getting tracked simultaneously. While you don’t need to wear the Air 24/7 to track your health, if you take it off right after a workout or before you go to bed, you could miss crucial recovery data that Google’s algorithms need to feed your scores. I’d prefer something similar to Whoop’s charger for the Air, especially since Google’s solution is a proprietary cable with pogo pins.

❤️ Google Health is a big upgrade. Tracking your health with the Fitbit Air requires the new Google Health app, which replaces Fitbit entirely. It has a new user interface that’s similar to Google Fit, except richer with better data aggregation across third-party services (including apps like MyFitnessPal and even Apple Health). You can upload your medical records, extract data for health professionals, understand your sleep patterns over time, track your menstrual cycle - all of the features you’d expect. Google is playing catch-up with Apple Health to simplify its health tracking platform, and it’s done a great job to make things easier.

🏋️‍♀️ More proactive than ever before. Sift through your health data and you’ll see proactive suggestions and actions you can take to improve things, stay on the right track, and more. Google’s algorithms look at your data and, instead of laying it all out in nothing but fancy charts, can help guide you in your health journey with prompts that detail the affects of certain workouts, how your sleep schedule has been, and more. It can then recommend steps to help keep you going. This is a stark contrast to something like the Apple Watch, which only supplies you with data in the Apple Health app, nothing proactive. It’s one of the reasons Whoop is so popular, so it’s cool to see Google follow suit here.

🏃 Auto-workout and sleep detection is convenient... Google includes auto-workout detection for cardio-centered workouts like running and cycling on the Fitbit Air, which makes it easy to start an activity and know it’ll be tracked without having to manually log it. I especially like it for sleeping; pass out, and the Air will know when you fell asleep and for how long. Afterward, the tracked data is stored in the Google Health app. where you can view your stats and compare them to previous workouts.

📲 ...but not much else is. Since this is a screen-free wearable, it’s a bit cumbersome using it as your primary fitness tracker. For any workout outside of something cardio-focused, you have to manually log it in the app, which requires you to always have your phone nearby. That also means you can’t check your progress quickly on your wrist, nor can you control music playback to get your energy up. If you’re coming from a traditional smartwatch, these differences might be enough to turn you off from the tracker.

⌚️ Should you use it with a traditional smartwatch? That’s a question I’ve been asked by a few folks I showed the Fitbit Air to, and my honest answer is no. Yes, Google says you can use a smartwatch like the Pixel Watch 4 and the Fitbit Air together, but you won’t get health data from both. The notifications are nice to have from a regular smartwatch, and I like being able to control things like music playback and smart home devices from my wrist. But if your approach to tracking your health requires nothing more than the sensors sitting on your wrist all day and not necessarily a miniature smartphone on your wrist, the Fitbit Air is perfectly capable and sufficient.

🧑‍⚕️ Google Health Coach uses AI to inform your health decisions. Google is also leaning heavily on AI to give its new health platform an edge. The Google Health Coach relies on Gemini to understand your health data and let you ask questions about it. It’s also a tool for proactively setting your workout goals for the day, week, and month ahead. If you plan a vacation, for instance, the Health Coach will know you’ll be relaxing and not recommend an intense workout to catch up.

⏳ It takes time to learn about you. The thing about the Health Coach is how much you need to invest in it. I’ve only had the Fitbit Air for a day under two weeks, and there’s only been so much data I can pour into it. Over time, the coach gains a better understanding of your patterns and goals to recommend workouts, dietary actions, sleep schedules, and more. In my limited usage, it seems to be pretty helpful, especially when anazlying my data (like how much of a toll traveling via NJ Transit for two hours takes on my body).

🤖 Is the AI inaccurate? So far, Health Coach hasn’t given me an answer or a prompt that I find inaccurate or misleading. While Google fully discloses that the Health Coach isn’t a doctor and might be wrong on occasion, there hasn’t been anything I’d flag as wrong after using it. Over time, I’ll pay attention to it and see if anything wonky comes up, but initially, the Health Coach seems like a handy tool for understanding your health data better.

❌ You can ignore it if you want. The most interesting part of the Health Coach is the fact that you don’t even have to use it. While it does help make the Fitbit Air feel more useful and proactive, you can ignore all of the AI stuff and just look at your data like you would with any other wearable. Of course, given that it’s overtaken the Google Health experience (including for Pixel Watch users), it might be harder than you think to ignore 100% of it, but one easy way to do it is to skip out on the Google Health Pro plan, which costs $9.99 per month. That way, you won’t even have access to it. For those that do have access (such as AI Pro and Ultra subscribers), just try to pretend it isn’t there.

🆚 How it compares to Whoop. There are a number of distinctions between the Fitbit Air and the Whoop 5.0. Here are the four most important things you need to keep in mind.

• The Fitbit Air can only be worn on the wrist, whereas the Whoop 5.0 can be worn on your wrist, bicep, in your sports bra, or in a pair of boxers along your waist.

• Whoop requires you to pay for its subscription plan (starting at $239/year) just to get the hardware. Meanwhile, Google charges a flat $99 fee for the Air and will charge you an optional $9.99/month if you want access to all the features, like Health Coach.

• The Whoop 5.0 can last up to two weeks on a charge, whereas the Fitbit Air only lasts a week.

• Fitbit Air’s health data is pretty granular, but since the Whoop samples data up to 26 times per second, you’ll wind up with far denser, richer information on your recovery, sleep patterns, strain, and more. It’s ideal for serious athletes and gym rats, whereas the Fitbit Air is more centered around everyday people.

• The Fitbit Air is safer in the water, with up to 50 meters of water resistance versus the Whoop’s 10 meters of water resistance.

Should you get the Fitbit Air?

Yes, if...

• ✅ You want a fitness tracker without a screen

• ✅ You want a cheaper alternative to Whoop

• ✅ You want a fitness tracker that’ll last longer than most smartwatches

• ✅ You need more robust water resistance

No, if...

• ❌ You want to see the time, control your music, or get notifications on your wrist (get the Pixel Watch 4 or Galaxy Watch 8)

• ❌ You want more advanced health metric tracking (get the Whoop 5.0)

• ❌ You’d prefer to wear your fitness tracker on your arm or waist (get the Whoop 5.0)

Amazon: Fitbit Air

Best Buy: Fitbit Air

Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.

🏆 Review score: 4/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 🎥 8K pocket cinema camera with a much larger 1-inch 50MP sensor

• 🎞️ Flexible open-gate 8K30 and 4K120 video

• 🐌 32x ultra-slow-motion mode records frame-by-frame action

• ⚙️ GP3 processor enhances video with 10-bit HDR color and lighting

• 💾 Higher quality 240 Mbps, GP-Log2 recording format

• 🧠 🎙️ Four onboard microphones work together to cancel out noise

❌ Cons

• 📷 ​Lackluster still photo quality

• 👾 Slow-motion movies cause image quality to take a hit

Best Buy: GoPro Mission 1 Pro - $699

The Shortcut Review

The GoPro Mission 1 Pro is a fantastic pocket cinema camera, but it isn’t the everything camera I was hoping for. Its strengths lie completely in video, not a shocker, but I was hoping this camera would be decent for stills, especially given how much GoPro has been marketing it as a point-and-shoot with its optional Grip mount. Your iPhone or Android phone takes better photos than the GoPro Mission 1 Pro, you’ll see much better dynamic range and detail from whatever is in your pocket now.

Now, for shooting video, the GoPro Mission 1 Pro is impeccable. It can record open-gate video in all sorts of resolutions and frame rates from 1440p at 480fps to 8K at 30fps. The new 1-inch sensor and GP3 processor afford this camera a much higher detail and HDR-capable 10-bit format with a higher 240Mbps bitrate for video recording. At the same time, GoPro has greatly improved on its stabilization, producing almost gimbal-steady footage, and the four on-board microphones do a fantastic job of cutting out noise.

The GoPro Mission 1 Pro is a huge step over the GoPro Hero 13 Black, making its $699 price ($599 for Quik subscribers) well worth the $200 upgrade over a regular action camera. This is a great option if you want to try amateur filmmaking while still having a camera rugged enough for adventuring.

Full Review

📱Not a smartphone camera replacement. I had high hopes that the GoPro Mission 1 Pro would be a spectacular stills camera, but it doesn’t best the smartphone in your pocket right now. Both 50MP photos and even GoPro 12MP SuperPhotos look drab, lacking the dynamic range and detail that smartphones capture better, despite using far smaller sensors than the GoPro’s 1-inch imaging chip.

Night photos exacerbate the Mission 1 Pro’s poor photo quality, as it tries its hardest to squash noise at the cost of artifacts and detail loss. You should also avoid using the camera’s digital zoom beyond 2x, as the GoPro doesn’t seem to use pixel binning; instead, it crops the sensor for more reach.

📽️ Cinema resolution. The GoPro Mission 1 Pro is a far better pocket cinema camera for video recording. Not only can it record up to 8K30 and 4K120 open gate, but it also does so at a high 240Mbps bitrate, 10-bit color, and a hybrid HLG format, so you can watch it in HDR on a compatible screen or SDR on older displays. There’s a whole litany of other resolutions (1080p & 1440p) and frame rates (24fps - 960fps) the Mission 1 Pro can record in, plus different aspect ratios, but it’s simpler to just record in open gate – which I’ll get more into soon.

Even videos shot at night look significantly better, especially if you utilize GoPro’s “Low Light Mode.” I shot two 4K30 videos with standard settings and the “Low Light Mode,” and the latter captured significantly more detail in both the leaves and wood panels on the street.

🖼️ Best Open Gate in the biz. GoPro continues to be the best at Open Gate video, allowing you to utilize the entire sensor to record a 4:3 aspect ratio. This square-shaped shooting window makes it far easier to shoot content once and then crop it into either a vertical or horizontal movie. While other camera companies like Panasonic, Fujifilm, and Canon have now caught up with open-gate video recording, their implementations require shooting at maximum resolution and needlessly waste memory space. The GoPro Mission 1 Pro lets you record open-gate footage at 8K, 4K, and 1440p without any cropping.

Features

🏄‍♂️ Almost gimbal-quality stabilization. GoPro cameras have always had spectacular stabilization, and the Mission 1 Pro approaches gimbal-levels of steadiness. HyperSmooth not only removes camera shake but can make your pans look smoother. The only thing it can’t fully correct is footsteps, which still appear as slight bobs and can make your video look a little floaty. If you want a fully smooth-moving video, you’ll either have to get the physical GoPro Fluid Pro AI gimbal or start ninja-walking from heel to toe with every step.

🎥 Bullet time. The GoPro Mission 1 Pro is a fantastic slow-motion camera, and it brings me so much joy to see my cat bug out, chasing a laser frame by frame. Admittedly, image quality takes a hit, and max resolution drops to 1080p if you shoot at 480fps, but it’s worth it for 16x slow motion. You can also ramp up slow motion to 32x or 960p, but this “burst slo-mo mode” only records 10 seconds of 16:9 footage at a time, which translates to five minutes of frame-by-frame action. You can also record at higher resolutions but slower frame rates, including 8K60 and 4K240, or open gate 4K120 and 1440p240.

Hardware

🎙️ Studio mics built-in. The GoPro Mission 1 Pro features an impressive set of built-in microphones, including a stereo pair on the front of the camera, another on the back facing the shooter, and a side-mounted drain microphone. That all combines into a powerful noise-canceling microphone that filters out street noise and captures only the musicians on stage during a busy Memorial Day festival. I was also impressed by how well the GoPro Mission 1 Pro captured the trumpet without any high-pitched distortion, largely thanks to the new 32-Bit Float audio recording, which helps prevent clipping.

🔋Fuller battery life. GoPro promises that the Mission 1 Pro offers the longest runtime thanks to its more efficient GP3 processor and a reformulated Enduro 2 battery. I got through a full day of shooting a mix of 480fps slow-motion movies, 4K and 8K open-gate footage, photos, and timelapse, and ended the day with over 35% battery life remaining. For straight video recording, the Mission 1 Pro offers more than five hours of 1080p30 and more than three hours of 4K30 video on a single charge.

🤿 More durable than ever. Although GoPro is pitching the Mission 1 Pro as a cinema camera, it’s even more rugged than the GoPro Hero 13 Black. Even without any underwater housing, the Mission 1 Pro is waterproof up to 66ft (20m). The body of the camera also feels as sturdy as any GoPro Hero camera, which should help it withstand accidental drops. One new protection element is an added lens hood that wraps around the front of the camera lens.

Should you buy the GoPro Mission 1 Pro?

Best Buy: GoPro Mission 1 Pro - $699

✅ Yes, if…

• You want a compact camera for 8K video

• Juggling vertical and horizontal video is a constant headache

• Smooth, gimbal-like video is a must

• You’re constantly removing audio noise from your videos

❌ No, if…

• You want a great stills camera (get the Sony ZV-E10 II instead)

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Rating: 4/5

✅ Pros

• 🔋 The best battery life in a flip phone

• 📸 Upgraded main camera with better low-light performance

• 😍 Beautiful design that stands out in a crowd

• ⚙️ Very fast performance and charging

• 📱 All the same great flip-phone perks

❌ Cons

• 💰 $200 price hike isn’t justified well

• 📹 Video quality is still subpar

• 🧲 No Qi2 MagSafe support

• 🤖 The AI key is redundant

The Shortcut review

The second I picked up the Razr Ultra for 2026 at an event in Los Angeles, I knew what I was in for: a phone similar to the one Motorola made last year, but a little faster. The flip phone, which has stood out as one of the best on the market for the last 12 months, got a small refresh for this year with new colors, a new chip, and longer battery life. It also got a new price - $200 more than the previous version.

The Motorola Razr Ultra is still the best flip phone you can buy, even beating Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 7. But the price is hard to swallow; at $1,499.99, you’re paying for what’s essentially the same phone as last year, save for a couple of upgrades here and there. After spending time with the phone and getting to know it, those upgrades haven’t proven to be extraordinary or life-changing, just nice to have.

The Razr Ultra for 2026 is definitely better than the 2025 version, if only for the faster speeds and good looks. So long as you can get it at a discounted price, it’ll deliver the best flip phone experience you can get.

Motorola: Razr Ultra (2026)

Amazon: Razr Ultra (2026)

• Related: Motorola Razr Fold review: an impressive phone that does what the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can’t

✍️ Review notes

😍 All about the glamour. Motorola continues to flex its design muscles with this year’s Razr family, and the Razr Ultra is a stunner in-person. My review unit is the Pantone Cocoa finish, which has a darker wooden design on the back than last year’s model and a richer, brown accent around the edges. Meanwhile, the flagship Pantone Orient Blue model is the real stunner, complete with a velvet royal blue hue that stands out like no other smartphone today. If you want a fashion-forward, statement-making smartphone, it’s hard to beat the Razr.

💪 Durable enough for everyday life. It’s also durable enough to withstand anything life throws at you. Between the added drop resistance, enhanced screen durability, and IP48 water and dust resistance rating, the Razr Ultra can handle more than you’d think. It’s also the first foldable to feature Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, which protects the cover screen from cracks and scratches. Sure, it’s technically more delicate than a normal phone because of the hinge, but companies have gotten good at ensuring durability doesn’t come at the expense of flexibility. Motorola’s at the top of its game in this regard.

📺 Big and spacious screens. The displays on the Razr Ultra remain top-notch, just like they were last year. The folding 7-inch AMOLED display remains as roomy as ever, and its slender aspect ratio means you can type with one hand, no problem. It has a 165Hz refresh rate and can reach a peak brightness of 5,000 nits, making it perfect for reading or watching videos in the bright sun. Motorola also kept the ever-so-spacious 4-inch AMOLED cover screen intact, complete with a 165Hz refresh rate and (almost) no bezels. You can swipe through widgets on it, open any app you want, use it as a viewfinder for the camera (more on that later), and it’s fully customizable. Samsung has been catching up with the Galaxy Z Flip’s cover screen, but there’s still no topping what Moto has pulled off.

📂 Still a crease, still limited flexibility. Motorola took steps last year to reduce the size of the crease in the middle of the screen. This year, the Razr Ultra maintains the same crease. That’s to say it’s noticeable, but likely won’t get in your way. What I’d like to see Moto do is switch to a different hinge mechanism for better flexibility; Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 7 can open at any angle you wish, whereas the Razr Ultra can only go so far before springing completely open or closed. It isn’t a huge deal, but for the amount of money you pay, I’d like some greater versatility in how wide I can open my phone.

📸 How are the cameras? Pretty good! Motorola upgraded the main camera with a new 50MP sensor that’s a solid step-up from last year, but the improvements tend to end there.

• Main camera: The new 50MP main camera delivers beautiful pictures in bright daylight, with good color reproduction and sharpness. I like how Motorola is handling highlights and shadows as well, keeping them looking more natural than in years past. Nighttime photos have gotten the most noticeable boost, with better light capture and detail. Each picture comes out looking less processed than the ones I took with last year’s Razr Ultra, and compared to phones like the iPhone 17 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL, it managed to hold its own. This camera is surprisingly good for a foldable.

• Ultra-wide: The ultra-wide camera remains unchanged from last year. It’s still a 50MP sensor with a 122-degree lens that can capture a lot of a scene in a single picture, but fails to look as good as it would if it were taken on the main camera. Lighting and contrast are two big issues for the sensor; unless it’s the perfect day outside, you’ll notice that details get lost in the shadows and highlights can get overblown. Colors also don’t look quite as natural, especially skin tones. It’s good enough for quick snaps, but nothing beyond that. Oh, and you can use it for macro photos if you want to get super close to stuff. Fun.

• Selfies: I’m not a fan of how crunchy and overprocessed I look with the 50MP selfie camera on the Razr Ultra, but that’s ok. This is a foldable, so if you want to take great-looking selfies, you can do so with the rear camera. Fire up the camera by double-twisting your wrist while it’s closed, and you can snap pictures of you and your friends with either the main or ultra-wide cameras. The pictures will come out way better if you do this, trust me.

  

• Video quality: As is the case with many a Motorola phone, video quality is the weakest point of the Razr Ultra’s camera system. You can shoot in up to 8K 30fps and 4k 60fps, sure, and there are a ton of tools to help with keeping focus on subjects and stabilizing the frame. But the results are a different story. Each clip I record tends to look too processed to look natural, with less accurate colors and detail than what I can get with my iPhone or Pixel. And while the new sensor does help with picking up a bit more light at nighttime, it’s still not enough to make the Razr Ultra a good phone to buy if you prioritize video quality.

• Neat tricks: Despite its downsides, the Razr Ultra’s camera system is one of the most fun thanks to its form factor. You can prop it up for hands-free group pictures, use the cover screen for selfies, and hold it open like a camcorder and record video. In fact, that last feature has been improved so that you can tilt the phone left or right to zoom in and out when shooting video, which is handy when you need to quickly zoom into something. You also get the Razr Fold’s Frame Match, which makes it easier for someone to take a picture of you and align the frame exactly to your liking. This experience is only possible with a flip phone like the Razr Ultra, which gives Moto a leg-up on the competition.

⚙️ Reliably fast performance. The Snapdragon 8 Elite inside the Moto Razr Ultra is super fast and efficient, as it was in last year’s Razr Ultra. Sure, it might seem lame to keep the same chip around for two generations of phones, but the 8 Elite has proven to be just that - elite. It’s paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, so there’s plenty of room for your data and multitasking.

🤖 AI redunancy. Are people actually going to use the AI button on the side of the Razr Ultra? This is a question I asked myself when I reviewed the Razr Fold, which also has it. I never seem to reach for it, even though it sounds useful on paper. Press and hold to record a note or to remember what’s on your screen, double-press it to trigger Moto AI and ask for a summary of your notifications and anything you missed. It’s nice in theory, but I always forget it’s there, mostly because Moto AI never seems all that useful. I have Gemini access through a long-press of the power button… how much more AI do I need than that?

🔋 Best battery life in a flip phone. Motorola increased the battery size in the Razr Ultra from 4,700mAh to 5,000mAh, which is pretty surprising given the size of this phone. It was able to pull it off by using silicone-carbon batteries, the same found in the OnePlus 15 that allows for higher capacities without increasing the physical size of the battery itself. This helps give the Razr Ultra the best battery life you’ll find in a flip phone today. From browsing socials to editing Reels and taking lots of photos, the phone could last a full day for me before dipping to 40% by the end of it. That’s with heavier-than-normal usage, too. If you’re a lighter user, you could get nearly two days of battery life out of this guy, which is impressive. It’s much better battery life than we experienced on the Galaxy Z Flip 7, too, so those who need dependable endurance will want the Razr Ultra.

⚡️ Charging speeds are lightning fast. Just like last year, the Razr Ultra can recharge at up to 68W over USB-C, which juices the battery from zero to 50% in less than a half hour. Plus, you get 30W wireless charging and 5W reverse wireless charging, which is even more useful thanks to the phone's larger battery. I wish more companies would follow suit and upgrade their phones’ charging speeds to match the Razr Ultra’s. It’s 2026 - all phones should charge this fast.

🧲 No Qi2 MagSafe support. Unfortunately, the Razr Ultra still lags behind the competition in terms of convenient wireless charging. The performance is there, but where are the magnets? For yet another year, Motorola and many others have skipped out on proper Qi2 magnetic wireless charging, something only the Pixel 10 series offers in the United States (besides, y’know, the iPhone). It isn’t the biggest deal in the world to not have magnetic charging on a flip phone, but it’d be nice considering how much money you have to spend on it.

📱 Flip phone features are fun. The novelty of a foldable phone seems to barely fade the more you use it. The Razr Ultra gets all the perks of Razrs past like a tent mode for a standing clock, a tripod mode for hands-free photos, and the convenience of its small stature when it’s folded down. There’s something whimsical about being able to bend and flip the Razr Ultra that makes the experience more enjoyable than a traditional flagship, something that might appeal to you if you’re bored with your current phone.

📲 Android 16 with a little too much cruft. I generally like Motorola’s approach to Android since it rarely coats it in a thick and heavy skin, but the experience it’s been shipping lately has swayed in that direction a bit too far. The Razr Ultra is powered by Android 16 with a relatively lightweight skin across the system, but questionable choices like a newsfeed in the app drawer and stuttery animations make it feel a bit janky for $1,500. It’s still one of the better Android experiences on the market (backed up by seven years of updates, too), but there’s room for improvement.

Should you buy the Motorola Razr Ultra (2026)?

Yes, if…

• ✅ You want a flip phone with excellent battery life

• ✅ You want to open any app you want on the cover screen

• ✅ You want a phone that stands out like no other

• ✅ You plan to keep your next phone for 5-7 years

No, if…

• ❌ You want to save money (get the Galaxy Z Flip 7)

• ❌ Video quality is important to you (get the iPhone 17 Pro or Galaxy S26 Ultra)

• ❌ You need magnetic wireless charging (get the Pixel 10 Pro)

• ❌ You want a less expressive smartphone (get the Galaxy Z Flip 7)

Motorola: Razr Ultra (2026)

Amazon: Razr Ultra (2026)

Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.

🏆 Review Score: 4.5/5 – ‘Awesome!’

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros:

• 👏 TMR analog sticks and Hall effect triggers

• 💨 8K polling rate for low latency

• 🎮 Swappable D-pad and analog sticks

• ✅ Clicky microswitch buttons

• 🔫 Hair trigger stops

• 🫨 Gyro support

• 🎧 3.5mm headphone jack

• ⚡️ Charging dock included

• 🖐 Additional back and shoulder buttons

• 💰 Super competitive price point

❌ Cons:

• 🤔 Gyro isn’t as accurate as other controllers

• 🤷‍♂️ Functions as a DualShock 4 in Bluetooth

• 👉 Doesn’t work on Xbox or PS5

• 🔋 Battery life isn’t the best

Walmart: GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC

Best Buy: GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC

Amazon: GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC

The Shortcut Review

I’ve been using the GameSir G7 Pro 8K controller for the last few weeks (the gorgeous Aimslab Edition, to be precise), and I’m convinced that it’s the gamepad people should buy if they haven’t already purchased Valve’s new Steam Controller.

Unless you plan on playing a lot of PC titles that aren’t optimized for a controller on your couch, the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC trumps Valve’s in-demand gamepad in several meaningful ways.

Not only is it a more pro player focused controller, with extremely low latency 8K polling rate in either wired or wireless mode, but it has adjustable trigger stops, two back buttons, two additional shoulder buttons, swappable D-pads and analog sticks, and an included charging dock. It also features microswitch buttons for lightning-fast response, Hall effect analog triggers, and TMR sticks to eliminate stick drift.

On top of that, you can make a litany of tweaks and changes using the GameSir Connect app, enjoy gyro controls, and even plug in a wired headset thanks to its 3.5mm jack. Add in Bluetooth support, and you’d think the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller would cost as much as the Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller or Sony’s PS5 DualSense Edge, right? Wrong.

GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC specs 🛠️

• Price: $89.99

• Connection: USB-C, 2.4GHz, Bluetooth

• Weight: Approx. 392 grams

For the price of $89.99 – that’s $10 cheaper than the Steam Controller and close to $100 cheaper than Sony and Microsoft’s controllers – the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC is one of the best controllers you can buy. Oh, and unlike the Steam Controller, the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC will work with the Xbox launcher, Epic Games launcher, and more, and you’re still getting the full experience.

With a stacked feature set, pro-focused upgrades, and a generous amount of customization options, the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC is a more sensible and superior pick than the Steam Controller for most people, and a fantastic controller all around. Read my full GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC review below.

A review unit was provided by GameSir.

What I loved about the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC ❤️

👏 TMR analog sticks and Hall effect triggers. Third-party controllers have set the standard when it comes to delivering reliable and drift-free analog sticks. Whether it’s Hall effect sensors or the more efficient TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance), the technology is far superior and more durable to the classic potentiometer sensors that Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo controllers still use. The GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC uses TMR sensors, which means you can play with complete peace of mind and more precision than before.

💨 8K polling rate for low-latency gaming. Latency can be the difference between winning a firefight and losing one. The GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller can be set to an 8K polling rate that provides the lowest latency possible, similar to high-end gaming mice and keyboards like the Razer Viper V4 Pro and Logitech G G512 X.

🎮 Swappable D-pad, analog sticks, and faceplates. You can choose between different analog stick heights and D-pad styles. Whether you’d prefer a cross-shaped D-pad, circular D-pad, or want a convex or concave analog stick, the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC comes with a generous amount of options to choose from. You can even remove the faceplate and grips to transform the look of the controller.

✅ Clicky microswitch buttons. I’ve grown to love microswitch buttons for the responsiveness they provide and how effortless they are to click. Some may still prefer the traditional membrane feel found elsewhere, but having a mouse-click for face buttons, shoulder buttons and the D-pad has become my personal preference.

🔫 Hair trigger stops let you fire faster. You can equip the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller for a competitive edge in FPS games using the hair trigger stops that let you fire faster. Flick a switch, and you’ve got analog triggers again that are perfect for racing games.

🎧 3.5mm headphone jack is always welcome. The presence of a 3.5mm headphone jack is a nice, unexpected addition, and means you can use your favorite wired headset. There’s also a mic mute button directly on the controller, which glows red when pressed so you know it’s active.

🖐 Additional back and shoulder buttons are useful. Having a pair of back buttons is a must for modern-day controllers, as it allows you to keep your thumbs on the sticks when you’re reloading or changing weapons. Instead of having four back buttons, the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller features two well-placed additional shoulder buttons, which a good deal may prefer. You can also lock the two back buttons to avoid any accidental presses.

💰 Super competitive price point compared to other pro controllers. Perhaps the best thing about the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller is the price. For $89.99, it’s significantly cheaper than Sony and Microsoft’s pro controllers, and even undercuts the Steam Controller without compromising on features. It’s unbelievable value, and the Aimslab Edition even includes one free month of Aimslab+ premium.

What I disliked about the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC 💔

🤔 Gyro isn’t as accurate as other controllers. The GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller features a six-axis gyro for motion control aiming, but it has a tendency to lose its accuracy rather quickly. It’s fine for making micro adjustments when you aim, but compared to the gyro in the DualSense, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, it isn’t as reliable. You’ll also need to tweak the default setting in the GameSir Connect app to get the most out of it instead of Steam Input.

🤷‍♂️ Functions as a DualShock 4 in Bluetooth. When connecting over Bluetooth to the Steam Deck, for example, the controller will be recognized as a DualShock 4 and not an Xbox gamepad. That probably won’t be an issue for most people, but it’s worth noting as some games won’t display the correct inputs in-game.

👉 Doesn’t work on Xbox or PS5. This may seem obvious, but the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller doesn’t work on Sony’s PS5 or Microsoft’s Xbox. That’s a shame, considering the DualSense Edge, Xbox Elite, and even the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller work across console and PC.

🔋 Battery life isn’t the best. The battery life of the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC controller is fairly decent, and the fact that it comes with a charging dock probably means you’ll never run out mid-game. However, if you’re someone who games for long periods, you’re looking at around eight to 12 hours of battery, depending on your settings.

Should you buy the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC? 🤔

Walmart: GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC

Best Buy: GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC

Amazon: GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC

Yes, if…

• ✅ You play a lot of competitive multiplayer games.

• ✅ You want a controller that works across every PC launcher.

• ✅ You’d prefer to customize the controller to your liking.

No, if…

• ❌ You prefer a symmetrical analog stick layout.

• ❌ You need a PC controller that also works on consoles.

• ❌ You need trackpads for games that aren’t optimized for a controller.

Subscribe now

Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.

🏆 Review score: 5/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 🎮 Hi-Res wireless audio adds some extra detail for PC gaming, PS5, and Switch 2

• 🎼 Lossless music over LC3+ Bluetooth rings with more nuance

• 🔱 Three USB-C connections at last

• 🖐 Up to five connected devices with Aux in and Bluetooth

• 🔀 OmniPlay lets you mix audio from four different sources

• 🔋 Infinite battery life with faster charging batteries

• 🎙️Microphone offers improved voice pickup and noise isolation

❌ Cons

• 📟 Not suited for gaming handhelds at all

• 🥁 Weak to non-existent sub-bass performance

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Largely unchanged design

Walmart: Arctis Nova Pro Omni - $399

Best Buy: Arctis Nova Pro Omni - $399

Amazon: Arctis Nova Pro Omni

The Shortcut Review

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni is a wireless gaming headset that checks off all the boxes. It has three wired USB-C connections, letting you plug in all your consoles, an Aux in for your gaming PC, and a simultaneous Bluetooth connection. It goes above and beyond even consumer headphones by supporting 24-bit/96 kHz Hi-Res wireless audio, not just over wired USB-C, and it features strong ANC to keep you focused in the game.

SteelSeries has also designed the Arctis Nova Pro Omni to do more than your average gaming headset by letting you mix up to four audio sources at the same time. You can literally play two different games at the same time with this headset, mixing audio from two USB-C sources while also connecting a Bluetooth device and another Aux device. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni is also possibly the most tunable headset, featuring both a fully customizable parabolic EQ and 336 game-tailored sound profiles.

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni review really is the wireless gaming headset without compromise. Aside from some weak-to-non-existent sub-bass performance (i.e., explosive low-end), there’s little this gets wrong or can’t do. It commands a high $400 price, but that’s just $50 more than the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless, which can only support two connections. If you’re even curious about hi-res wireless gaming audio, the only other headsets to support it are the $200 more expensive SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite and the new $349 Turtle Beach Stealth II.

Full Review

📀 Hi-res wireless audio. While most consumer headphones are just now introducing lossless audio support over a wired connection, the Arctis Nova Pro Omni is SteelSeries’ second gaming headset that supports Hi-Res 24-bit/96 kHz sound wirelessly. While the Arctis Nova Pro Omni’s Hi-Res wireless audio offers a lot more bandwidth than your standard 16-bit/48kHz connection, only PC truly supports this format, and you’ll only hear a tiny bit more nuance from game audio. PS5 and Switch 2 consoles can output slightly higher quality 24-bit/48kHz sound, but the Xbox Series X/S USB ports only output CD-quality 16-bit/48kHz sound.

🎵 Lossless music. You’ll need lossless music from Spotify or Tidal to really enjoy this headset’s Hi-Res Audio to its fullest potential. Lossless audio is also supported over Bluetooth using the LC3+ codec, so you can listen to Hi-Res audio streaming from any mobile device connected to this headset.

🎮 Connect 3 (or 5) devices. SteelSeries has added a third USB-C port to the back of the Arctis Nova Pro Omni’s base station. This lets you connect up to three consoles, PCs, and other devices. There’s also no more confusion about which version of this headset supports Xbox, as they all come with a dedicated USB port for Microsoft’s consoles. On top of the three USB-C ports, you can also connect another source, like your streaming PC, to the 3.5mm aux connection and have a phone Bluetooth-paired to the headset. The only thing the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni isn’t really suited for is gaming handhelds due to the nature of its large, stationary base station.

🔀 Mix Master. Not only can you have five different devices connected to this headset at the same time, but you can also splice in the sound from four different sources simultaneously. First, OmniPlay lets you mix in audio from another USB-C source on top of the audio from whichever device you have plugged into USB-1. From there, you can also have a simultaneous Bluetooth connection playing music or other audio, all while mixing in audio from your aux source. It sounds ludicrous, but this could come in handy for a streamer who needs to hear their game audio, livestream playback, Discord teammates, and play a second game, all at the same time.

🚫 ANC glow up. While this headset has only traditional 40mm neodymium drivers, compared to the Arctis Nova Elite’s cutting-edge carbon-fiber, brass-reinforced drivers, its noise-canceling performance is almost on par. The ANC is particularly better at blocking out low- and mid-range frequencies. Sounds that used to bother me, like my clacky keyboard or the constant drone of PC fans, are practically non-existent while I wear this headset. High frequencies still pass through the headset’s leatherette earcups, but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you have background music playing or someone else in your home who just won’t get off the phone.

📣 Neutral sound. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni delivers detailed, balanced sound with a pleasantly neutral tone right out of the box. Unfortunately, there isn’t much sub-bass, so you don’t get a thunderous or booming effect with low-frequency sounds. The Omni is far more focused on accuracy and being flexible for EQ customizations and SteelSeries’ game-tailored sound profiles.

🎛️ Super tunable. What really makes this gaming headset come to life is when you start tweaking the equalizer settings. While you can manually control every aspect of the parametric equalizer down to specific frequencies and Q depths, SteelSeries’ software is also incredibly beginner-friendly with 336 profiles for specific games like Crimson Desert and Marvel Rivals.

These presets make a real difference: I could hear more pronounced footsteps in Battlefield 6, louder engine roars in Forza Horizon 6, and more atmospheric music that blended with the sounds of nature in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. For console gamers, you can pick game profiles in the Arctis Companion app for iOS and Android. It’s more streamlined than the desktop software; however, EQ customization is limited to just 10-bands instead of parabolic.

🔋 Infinite battery life. Two batteries come with this headset, and each lasts a fairly long 30 hours over wireless or 40 hours with Bluetooth. Running simultaneous wireless and Bluetooth connections cuts battery life to below 20 hours, but it’s still more than enough for a nonstop session of Forza Horizon 6 while listening to podcasts from my phone. Short of forgetting to slide in your second battery into the base station, you can never run out of battery with this headset. Just a 15-minute quick charge gives you back four hours of playtime.

📐 Minute changes. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni features a mostly unchanged design. The only real tweaks here are slightly thicker ear cushions and a new textured volume wheel on the headset (and base station) that also steps with distinct clicks rather than spinning freely. Otherwise, the Omni retains SteelSeries’ sleek, sophisticated design without even a hint of RGB. Personally, I would prefer a new, even cleaner design, like Fractal Design’s recent Scape gaming headset.

🎙️ Microphone. SteelSeries headsets have classically integrated unidirectional microphones, but the Omni (fittingly) has an omnidirectional boom mic instead. This microphone has a wider pickup area, but SteelSeries has also improved its noise isolation to keep out unwanted PC fan noise, AC units, and other general distractions. There are no secondary microphones built into the Omni like on Arctis Nova Elite, but SteelSeries has made one tweak so that the mic now automatically mutes when it’s retracted into the headset. Also, the AI noise canceling comes built into the headset rather than only SteelSeries’ PC, so it works on all platforms now.

Should you buy the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni?

Walmart: Arctis Nova Pro Omni - $399

Best Buy: Arctis Nova Pro Omni - $399

Amazon: Arctis Nova Pro Omni

✅ Yes, if…

• 🎮 You want one headset for all your gaming consoles, PCs, and more

• 🕹️ You’re consistently playing two games at the same time

• 🎧 You always listen to music/podcast while gaming

• 🔌 You absolutely abhor plugging in your gaming headset to charge

❌ No, if…

• 👾 Consoles are the only gaming systems you have (get the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless instead)

• 💵 You want something more affordable (get the Turtle Beach Stealth II instead)

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

• 📷 Sony’s new flagship a7R VI full-frame mirrorless camera features a 66.8MP full frame sensor

• 🖼️ Fully-stacked sensor combined with the new Bionz XR 2 processor increases shooting speeds by 5.6x

• 🎞️ Captures 14-bit RAW images in 30fps bursts at full resolution

• 🎥 Records uncropped 4K120p and 4K60p video, 8K30p footage with a 1.2x crop

• 🎯 Bionxz XR processor stacks AI subject recognition on top of the camera’s 759-point AF system

• 🔋 Larger 2,670mAh promises 600 shots with the LCD and 710 shots with the EVF per charge

• 📅 Available in the first week of June for $4,499

The Sony a7R series cameras have always sacrificed speed for resolution, but after six generations, the Sony a7R VI is out to prove you can have both and everything you need in one camera. Rocking a slightly higher-resolution 66.8MP fully-stacked Full-Frame sensor that, more importantly, can achieve 30fps shooting. That burst rate isn’t with cropped JPEGs either; these are full-sized 14-bit RAW images at full resolution.

The faster sensor should help squash any rolling shutter in both stills and movies. Meanwhile, the autofocus system has been improved with a dedicated AI processor that can pinpoint the smallest subjects and predict their movements. Movie shooting has also been upgraded with uncropped 4K60p and 4K120p modes, as well as a 1.2x-cropped 8K30p mode, and Dual Gain to squeeze even more dynamic range from movies shot in Log.

All of those camera improvements are wrapped around a slightly improved exterior that adds a front tally lamp, backlit buttons, and a slightly larger grip. That last upgrade also helps the a7R VI house Sony’s 17% higher capacity batteries, which promise up to 600-710 shots per charge. The Sony a7R VI will be available in the first week of June 2026 for $4,449.

🎞️ Max res, full speed. The Sony a7R VI’s new fully stacked sensor and Bionz XR2 processor boost the camera’s readout speed by 5.6x, reducing the a7R V’s long 100ms lag to just 18ms. This allows the camera to shoot 30fps bursts of 14-bit RAW images at full 66.8MP resolution, which translates to roughly 3GB of data per second. That burst rate is three times faster than the 10fps Sony a7R V while matching the 30fps Sony a1 II. While the Sony a7r VI doesn’t match the 120fps Sony a9 III, that’s partly because it has a far higher 66.8MP resolution than the 24.6MP Sony a9 III.

The faster readout speed should also help reduce the rolling shutter effect that can occur while shooting fast-moving subjects or moving during an exposure. We didn’t get to test this much during our hands-on event, but we’ll be thoroughly testing this in our full review. You can also switch to the mechanical shutter to avoid any rolling shutter, but doing so reduces the maximum burst rate to 10fps.

🎯 AI autofocus. The a7R VI sports a 759-point phase-detect autofocus system powered by Sony’s new Bionxz XR 2 processor with a dedicated AI processor. There’s also a new Real-time Recognition AF+ feature that combines artificial intelligence, spatial measurements, and color data to identify even the smallest subjects against complex backgrounds. The Sony a7R can also estimate movement to keep focus locked on their eyes, face, or whichever spot you’ve selected to track.

🎥 Better video. The Sony a7R VI lets you shoot up to 8K30p movies with a 1.2x crop, or 4K120p and 60p movies without a crop. The faster sensor has reduced the full-width readout time to just 8ms, making rolling shutter an almost non-issue when shooting video. There’s also a new “Dual Gain” option that gives you more dynamic range when shooting in Log, but it limits the frame rate to 30p.

➕ Quality of life upgrades. There isn’t much new to the Sony a7R VI’s design, but there are plenty of quality-of-life upgrades throughout the camera. The front of the camera features a handy new tally light that makes it easier to tell when the camera is recording. All the buttons on the camera also light up with a press of the backlight button, making it easier to adjust settings in the dark.

Sony has also added a star symbol to the mode dial, granting users access to 30 menu-based shooting modes. The EVF has also been upgraded to a new 9.44 million-dot OLED EVF that promises to be 3x brighter than the one on the a7R V to display a live view in 10-bit HDR at 120fps. Lastly, the grip is also larger, but mostly to make room for Sony’s new, longer-lasting batteries.

🔋 Bigger batteries: The a7R VI also marks Sony’s shift from its long-standing Z-batteries to its new, denser NP-SA100. These batteries feature a new shape and an increased capacity from 2,280mAh to 2,670mAh (a 17% increase), promising up to 600 shots with the LCD and 710 shots with the EVF per charge. The NP-SA100 batteries are also smarter and can now show their health, and should charge more quickly.

• Up next: GoPro Mission 1 Pro hands-on review: the 8K pocket cinema camera you can take anywhere

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Rating: 4.5/5

✅ Pros

• 📸 Photo quality is great - and more reliable than Samsung’s Fold 7

• ✍️ It works with a stylus

• 😍 Beautiful design and displays

• ⚙️ Reliable performance

• 🔋 All-day battery life (and then some)

• 🔊 Surprisingly good speakers

• 7️⃣ Seven years of Android updates

❌ Cons

• 📹 Video quality is lackluster

• 📲 Software isn’t as consistent or useful as competitors

• 🧲 No Qi2 MagSafe support

• 💰 The pen is $99, and you have to carry it around separately

The Shortcut review

Motorola has expanded the Razr smartphone lineup beyond just flip phones. The new Razr Fold is the company’s first swing at a book-style foldable, a direct competitor to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Pixel 10 Pro Fold. At $1,899.99 with a premium design and high-end specs, this phone is designed to compete directly with the big dogs - and Moto’s efforts pay off (well, for the most part).

The Razr Fold feels like the type of phone that Motorola hopes will stand out by filling in the gaps left by others on the market. The camera quality and support for a stylus are two big factors. Between the great pictures I’ve taken and the fact that you can take notes by writing them down, there’s reason enough to get this phone over Samsung or Google’s. It’s also plenty fast, looks beautiful, and lasts all day on a full charge.

Motorola’s software chops aren’t quite up to par with what Samsung’s been able to do with One UI, which does affect the multitasking experience of this foldable. I’m also not a fan of the lack of Qi2 MagSafe support, and it’d be nice not to have to pay an extra $100 for the pen. But as a whole, the Razr Fold stands on its own as a well-rounded smartphone that folds in half. If you’re just entering the world of foldables or need one you can write on, Moto’s device is for you.

Review notes

📸 Camera quality is great for photos. The big question pegging the Razr Fold is the camera, which Motorola says is the best on any foldable and the second best on any smartphone (according to DXO Mark, who’s been ranking smartphone cameras for years). After test-driving the camera around Manhattan, it’s proven to be a fantastic shooter. It’s a lot more consistent than what the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can produce, while the HDR processing looks a bit more life-like than what you get from the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

• Main camera: A lot of the best pictures you’ll take will be with the 50MP main camera. Moto includes a Sony LYTIA 828 sensor, which is widely regarded as one of the most capable cameras on the market. As a result, photo quality is fantastic. You get a ton of detail and clarity in any lighting, while its depth of field can deliver portrait photos without even having to enter portrait mode. I like how it’s able to balance highlights and shadows, too; nothing’s too overblown and, compared to my iPhone 17 Pro Max, photos generally look closer to the way the scene looked in-person. It’s even able to hold its own at night, keeping dark dinner and drinks photos in focus with good detail.

• Telephoto: The 50MP Sony LYTIA 600 periscope camera on the Razr Fold is also a capable shooter. With 3x optical zoom and up to 100x hybrid zoom, you can score some nice-looking zoom shots. Unlike a lot of telephoto cameras I’ve tested, there isn’t a huge difference between it and the main camera, so photos will look very consistent across each. Of course, once you go beyond 10x, photos tend to look very soft and washed-out (there’s also some AI processing to extract more sharpness and clarity which… yuck), but if you stick to zoom between 3x and 10x, you’ll be fine.

• Ultra-wide: The 50MP ultra-wide camera is the weakest among the three sensors, but it’s still capable of capturing good pictures, albeit with less detail and exaggerated saturation. The 122-degree field of view gets a lot of a scene in a single frame which is nice, but each photo isn’t as pleasant to look at as they are coming from the main and telephoto cameras. In addition, nighttime ultra-wide phones tend to look over-processed and, at times, a little too dark.

• Selfies: There are two selfie cameras on the Razr Fold: a 32MP camera on the folding screen and a 20MP camera on the cover screen. Both can deliver some decent selfies in good lighting, but if you want to take the best ones, you can open the device and use the cover screen to take a selfie with the main camera, which I highly recommend. It’s not that the selfie cameras are bad themselves, but when you can use one of the best smartphone camera sensors on the market for your selfies, why not go with it?

• Camera app: Motorola packs a good amount of features into the camera app on the Razr Fold, including Action Mode for fast-moving subjects, hand gestures for triggering the shutter button, and more. There’s also a new feature called Frame Match which lets you line up exactly how you want the frame of a photo to be, before handing your phone to a friend to take a picture of you. It uses an overlay of a photo so that the other person can align the camera perfectly to how you want it. The feature’s also rolling out to the rest of the Razr family, and given how obviously useful it can be, it’s only a matter of time before it’s replicated by other manufacturers.

📹 Videos are a toss-up. On the one hand, the Razr Fold has the specs to shoot some great videos. With up to 8K 30 fps support and Dolby Vision, the main camera can take sharp-looking videos with good color and brightness. However, once you dip to very dark environments, the quality follows suit and plummets. Meanwhile, the ultra-wide and telephoto sensors regularly take more processed-looking videos than I’d like to see. I still find the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro XL take the best-looking videos on the Android smartphone market, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max remains the king of smartphone videography. The Razr Fold isn’t bad if you stick with the main camera, but switch away and you’ll likely be disappointed.

🤳 Shooting with a foldable is always a dream. One thing that’ll never disappoint you is capturing content on the Razr Fold. Like many foldables, Motorola has optimized the experience so that you can use it as a tripod for hands-free group photos, use the cover screen as a viewfinder for your subjects to check themselves before capturing, show a fun animation to keep kids smiling while taking a picture, and more. The bigger canvas is also great for quickly seeing the photo you took with the viewfinder still open, and it’s even better for editing your photos later. If the Razr Fold winds up being your first folding phone, taking pictures with it might ruin taking pictures with a normal phone for you.

📐 Good looks, great durability. The Razr Fold has a unique design that manages to stand out well from the competition. Motorola’s woven fabric-like finish on the back gives it a premium feel, while the Panton Blackened Blue color gives it a sinister-yet-sophisticated look. There’s also a Panton Lily White finish that’s a lot prettier, but the Blackened Blue is the one to get for a sleeker aesthetic. I also like how the glass on the front curves around the sides a bit. It feels more organic/natural, for lack of a better word. Plus, the phone is durable; it’s rated IP48 for dust and water resistance (the same as the Galaxy Z Fold 7, but behind the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s IP68), it has Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 on the front (a first for any phone), and it uses a stainless steel teardrop hinge for better longevity.

🤏 Very thin… beside the camera bump. Motorola managed to keep the Razr Fold very slim at 4.5mm thick when open and 9.89mm thick when closed. While it does feel super thin when you’re holding it, the camera bump on the back adds a lot of thickness, to the point where it’s impossible to use the device when it’s lying on a desk. Maybe this isn’t a big deal to you, but for me, I like to type on my phone while it’s sitting on my desk, and it’s basically impossible to do that on the Razr Fold.

📺 Beautiful screens with plenty of space. The displays on the Razr Fold are stunning. The 6.6-inch AMOLED screen on the front has a sharp Full HD+ resolution, a 165Hz refresh rate, and can reach a staggering 6,000 nits of peak brightness. If that wasn’t enough, open the phone and you’ll find an 8.1-inch 2K AMOLED display that can reach 6,200 nits. Its refresh rate is slightly slower at 120Hz, but the difference isn’t noticeable. Both of these screens are slightly bigger than Samsung’s Fold 7, yet the device remains perfectly manageable with its slim design. The screens are also colorful, offer a great deal of sharpness and clarity, and are some of the best I’ve ever tested as a result.

✍️ Pen support is back… Another big perk with these screens? Both are compatible with the Moto Pen Ultra. It’s Motorola’s take on a stylus, letting you do everything from annotate screenshots to signing documents, doodling, navigating the UI, and more. It’s virtually identical to using an S Pen, something Samsung dropped support for on the Fold 7 to the dismay of many. Motorola was able to integrate it without making the phone too thick or bulky, and the result is a superior note-taking experience that many fans of handwritten to-do lists and reminders will appreciate.

💰 … for $100. The problem is it’s an extra $100 on top of the cost of the phone. Motorola doesn’t include it in the box or anything like that, so you’ll need to buy it separately. What’s more, the pen has nowhere to live inside the Razr Fold. Instead, it requires a dedicated charging case that keeps it juiced up, but is a pain in the butt to carry around. Toss it in a bag and you’re guaranteed to misplace it due to its size, and while you could always throw it in your pocket, it’s by no means an elegant solution. You’ve got to be a dedicated smartphone stylus user to accommodate these two headaches, which many of you might be. But for those who might not use the pen every single day, these roadblocks might be enough to stop you from buying it.

🚀 Flagship-level performance. Motorola made the curious decision to include the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset in the Razr Fold, not the cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 we’ve been seeing pop up in many Android phones. Fortunately, that hasn’t posed a problem at all. The Razr Fold offers blazing-fast performance thanks to the chip, along with the 16GB of RAM that Moto threw in. This means that multitasking is a breeze, apps open quickly, and it almost never misses a beat. It feels just like using a phone equipped with the most cutting-edge specs on the market, which is what you want from a phone that costs nearly $2,000.

📲 Software isn’t exciting. There’s not a lot to get excited about in the software department. While it does run Android 16 and has multitasking features like split-screen and an app dock, Motorola doesn’t do anything interesting in innovative to get the most out of the unique form factor of the Razr Fold. There are mo advanced drag-and-drop features, no multi-window view, and no unique cover screen features besides Flex View, which shows you a clock and a widget when you open the phone in tent mode. You get seven years of software upgrades which is good, but beyond that, the software story is a boring one. Those who want more advanced multitasking features will have to look elsewhere.

🔋 Best battery life on a foldable. The 6,000mAh battery in the Moto Razr Fold is the biggest you’ll find in North America, and it’s impossible to kill it in a day. Trust me, I tried. Between streaming YouTube in Madison Square Park, taking endless pictures, running apps side-by-side, and placing it on my desk in Flex View when I got back to work, this thing would keep chugging along no matter what. I’d regularly end heavy days with 45-55% left in the tank, so if you’re more mindful than me, you can easily achieve two days of usage on a single charge. When the time comes that you need to plug it in, Moto supplies super-fast 80W wired charging, something I wish more companies would adopt.

🧲 No Qi2 MagSafe support. The Razr Fold also comes with wireless charging and reverse wireless charging, but there’s a big caveat: there are no magnets built into the back for true Qi2 charging. The huge camera bump makes it a pain to try and align the phone with a wireless charger, and even if I do it successfully, it can’t budge from taht position. Otherwise, the camera bump’s slope gets in the way and misaligns it. Motorola could’ve one-upped Samsung here, but instead, it followed a similar, disappointing trend of a lot of Android phone makers in not including any magnets at all. If you want magnetic charging on a folding phone, you’re still stuck with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

🤖 Do you need this AI button? The answer is probably no, but I wanted to ask anyway. It sits way at the top of the Razr Fold, and when you trigger it, you get Moto AI on your screen. It’s Motorola’s custom app that integrates Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and more to give you quick access to the AI tools you might need. I’ve used it before on the Razr Ultra, and I’m not a fan. Sure, some of the AI features can be helpful in your everyday workflow, but the dedicated key that can’t be customized feels like a wasted opportunity more than anything, especially since it’s so high up on this phone.

Should you buy the Razr Fold?

Yes, if…

• ✅ You want the best battery life on a folding phone

• ✅ You want a great camera system

• ✅ You use a stylus with your phone

• ✅ You want something that looks unique and stands out

No, if…

• ❌ You want more robust multitasking (get the Galaxy Z Fold 7 or Pixel 10 Pro Fold)

• ❌ You value MagSafe charging too much (get the Pixel 10 Pro Fold)

• ❌ You want to take high-quality videos (get the Galaxy S26 Ultra)

Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.

🏆 Review Score: 4.5/5 – ‘Awesome!’

✅ Pros:

• 🔧 Excellent build quality and premium feel

• 🏎️ The F1-style wheel is better suited to some racing experiences

• 👏 Easy to set up and customize to your liking

• 🤝 Compatible with the existing Revosim Pure RS bundle

• 💰 More affordable than other wheels sold by competing sim makers

❌ Cons:

• 🤷‍♂️ The F1-style wheel isn’t really suited to rally or truck-driving games

• 😔 You can’t hot swap between wheels

Nacon: Revosim

The Shortcut Review

The Nacon Revosim Pure RS bundle is a fantastic and affordable way to get into sim racing as it comes with a powerful 9Nm wheel base, Hall effect, cell loaded pedals, and a wheel with a built-in RPM indicator.

However, the Nacon Revosim just got even better for F1 enthusiasts thanks to the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team custom set. It adds a new dimension to an already compelling sim racing setup and makes careering around the track even more fun and realistic than before. Read my full Nacon Revosim Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team custom set review below.

A review unit was provided by Nacon.

What I loved about the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team custom set ❤️

🤝 Created in partnership with the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team. Every element of the wheel and optional accessories feels premium and well-thought out. It’s easy to install: simply remove the central mounting screws with the included hex key, and you can effortlessly swap the Revosim Pure RS wheel for the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team one. A strong magnet bearing the team’s logo pops onto the center, covering up the mounting screws for a cleaner look.

🛞 The wheel itself is extremely comfortable to hold for long racing sessions. Its open-top design also means you can see your smartphone clearly, which can provide additional racing information using the Revosim app.

🏁 Make it yours. Further customization options include replacing the RS Pure shift paddles with carbon fiber ones, and a set of keycaps and stickers lets you visually map your controls using the Aston Martin Aramco F1 colors. A set of decorative rubber strips are also provided that slide into the Revosim base and come with two team logo magnets you can attach.

🏎️ Ready to race. After coming from the Revosim RS Pure wheel, I felt more in control using the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team wheel while playing games like Assetto Corsa Competizione because of its more compact profile and ergonomic grip. The wheel still delivered the same level of road-feel and feedback.

🧤 Fits like a glove. While optional, I’d highly recommend picking up the Aston Martin Racing Gloves. Not only do they look and feel great to wear, they’re also functional, giving you better grip. They’re also touchscreen compatible, letting you use your phone without having to take them off.

💰 Competitively priced. For €149.90, which includes the Aston Martin Aramco F1 gloves (the wheel is €129.90 without), you can transform the Nacon Revosim Pure with the Formula-style wheel. The wheel is also designed to be compatible with all current and future Revosim bases and hubs, including the upcoming console versions. The only component that will not be compatible with the future RS Initiale hub range is the carbon paddle shifters.

What I disliked about the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team custom set 💔

😔 You can’t switch between wheels quickly. Unlike wheels from other racing sims, you can’t switch between the type of wheel you want to use quickly on the Nacon Revosim. While it’s easy to install the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team custom set, you need to deal with several screws, which means you can’t really switch back and forth between wheel types on the fly.

🤷‍♂️ It isn’t really suited to rally or truck driving games. For rally driving games or racing games where larger wheel rotations are required, an F1-style wheel doesn’t really make sense. And because you can’t just quickly pop off the wheel and swap it for the original Revosim RS Pure wheel, this could be a deal breaker for some.

Should you buy the Nacon Revosim Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team custom set? 🤔

Yes, if…

• ✅ You already have the Nacon Revosim Pure Bundle and want an F1-style wheel.

• ✅ You want a more ergonomic wheel that doesn’t obstruct your view.

• ✅ You’re a huge F1 and particularly like Aston Martin as a manufacturer.

No, if…

• ❌ You predominantly play rally games or less sim-focused racing titles.

Subscribe now

Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.

🏆 Review score: 4.5/5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

✅ Pros

• 👩‍🎤 Improved ANC makes you feel like a main character with a personal soundtrack

• 🔊 High dynamic range amplifier makes sound louder, richer, clearer, and reduces distortion

• 🎧 Expansive soundstage for incredible immersion

• 📺 Dolby Atmos combined with head tracking creates a personal surround sound bubble

• 📀 Lossless 24-bit/48kHz audio over USB-C

• ⚜️ Uniquely designed and the most exquisitely built

❌ Cons

• ⚡ Battery constantly drains even while in “low-power mode”

• 🪫 Unimproved 20-hour battery life for the 3rd time

• 👜 Minimalist smart case still provides almost no protection

• 🔌 USB-C to 3.5mm connections require Apple’s official cable

Walmart: AirPods Max 2 - $509

Best Buy: AirPods Max 2 - $509

Amazon: AirPods Max 2 - $509

The Shortcut Review

The original AirPods Max were a game-changer for wireless headphones, and the $549 (on sale now for $509) AirPods Max 2 build on what matters most: sound quality and noise canceling. Equipped with a new high dynamic range amplifier, these headphones push sound that’s louder, richer, clearer, and even more immersive than ever. Highs are crisp and detailed, while mids make vocals sound full-bodied, and the bass sounds deeper without being overbearing. Apple also continues to take the crown for spatial sound. Head tracking lets you move around a convincing surround sound experience, and watching Dolby Atmos media with the AirPods Max 2 places you in your own personal surround sound bubble.

The AirPods Max 2 also excel with truly natural-sounding noise-canceling that quiets all outside noises to a low murmur. Putting on these headphones can make you feel like the main character in your own movie as you listen to your own personal soundtrack, while outside noises barely come through the headphones. Now the noise canceling isn’t perfect, as even small headturns can cause noise leaks to pass through the headphone’s ear cushions. This is the only area where the Sony WH-1000XM6 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2nd Gen come out on top, producing much tighter and constant noise-canceling.

On the outside, the AirPods Max 2 look and feel exactly like the original top-end headphones Apple introduced 5 ½ years ago. The fantastically premium design is still here, along with all the problems like the non-existent power button, minimally protective case, and 20-hour battery life. Otherwise there are plenty of other “new” features that pad out the list of updates these new headphones bring, but most were introduced on the AirPods Pro 3 or from other Apple OS updates, including Conversational Awareness, Camera Remote, Loud Sound Reduction, Live Translation, Personalized Volume, and Siri Interactions. But key features like Adaptive Noise-Cancelling won’t be coming to the original AirPods Max with Lightning or USB-C without the new H2 chip.

While the $549 (currently $509) AirPods Max 2 aren’t a revolutionary upgrade, they’re well worth purchasing at full price over a discounted pair of AirPods Max (with USB-C) just for the improved sound profile and noise-cancellation. As for existing AirPods Max users, you already have one of the best pairs of wireless noise-canceling headphones, and the AirPods Max 2 are just a little better, but you won’t miss out on much without upgrading.

Full Review

📐 Same premium design. There’s nothing physically new about the AirPods Max 2 for better or worse. Even after 5 ½ years after the original AirPods Max debuted, these headphones are still the most uniquely designed and the most exquisitely built. There are so many small touches to marvel at, including the intricately woven earcups, the ball joints built into the headphone yokes, and, of course, the iconic mesh “canopy” headband that curves downward to act as a cushion. While there are a lot of things I like about the AirPods Max 2’s design, I wish Apple would add a power button, a smaller foldable shape, or at least create a more protective Smart Case.

🏋️ Identical weight. The Apple AirPods Max 2 still weighs 13.6 ounces, just like last year’s model. This makes them heavier than both the 8.96oz Sony WH-1000XM6 and the 9.32oz Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2nd Gen. All the AirPods Max’s extra weight comes from its two aluminum earcups and Apple’s other premium materials. Thankfully, you hardly feel the weight because these headphones clamp tightly onto your ears, distributing the load to the sides of your head. The headband, meanwhile, acts more like a guide to keep the headphones aligned on your dome, as the woven fabric and metal rails apply almost zero pressure.

Sound quality and performance

🎶 Elevated sound profile. While there’s nothing new on the outside of the AirPods Max 2, Apple has upgraded them internally with a new custom high-dynamic-range amplifier that improves every part of the original AirPods Max’s sound profile. The bass response is deeper, vocals are clearer, the separation between instruments is even crisper, and there is less distortion at higher volumes.

What’s even more pronounced is the AirPods Max 2’s incredibly wide soundstage that envelops you even with just music playing in stereo. Spatial audio truly shines when you listen to Apple Music tracks mastered in actual Dolby Atmos rather than virtually remixed from stereo. Apple’s Personalized Spatial Audio and dynamic head tracking also does an incredible job of putting you in the center of movies and games as well. I just wish there were a way to extend the Apple TV 4K’s ability to pass-through HDMI eARC audio to the AirPods Max 2 as it can with a pair of HomePod 2.

👑 King of the hill. The AirPods Max 2’s better sound profile really comes to light when I compare them to its top two rivals, the Sony WH-1000XM6 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2nd Gen. Apple comes well ahead with a cleaner sound signature and dramatically wider sound that lets you hear every detail and nuance in a song. The AirPods Max 2 also produces more high-end extension than its competitors, so the separation between different instruments is more pronounced.

The Sony WH-1000XM6 delivers incredible detail with punchier bass, but a distinctly narrower soundstage, with the audio projected in front of you, whereas the AirPods Max 2 envelop you. The XM6s are also more responsive, allowing them to play complex and rich tracks like “London Lights” with incredible clarity, so that you hear the crispness of every drum beat and synth pop.

Comparatively, the AirPods Max 2 make the same song sound a little more luxurious by smoothing out the tonal curve between the rhythmic basslines and the sharp instrumental highs. That’s not to say Apple smooths out the edges, but rather balances the track so there aren’t any strong notes or distortion that takes you out of enjoying your music.

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2nd Gen, meanwhile, place greater emphasis on bass. Otherwise, Bose’s sound profile is the most neutral compared to Apple and Sony. What makes the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2nd Gen stand out is their flexible sound curve and two separate immersive modes for music and cinematic movies.

🤫 Improved ANC gives you main character energy. The noise-cancellation on the AirPods Max 2 is so complete that it makes me feel like a main character in a movie. It quiets all outside noises into a nearly silent murmur, especially conversations; meanwhile, all I can hear is my personal soundtrack. Basically, I’m Fin Shepard whenever he does something cool in the Sharknado movie series. Another thing I love about the noise canceling on the AirPods Max 2 is how natural it sounds, as if the headphone’s earcups just keep noise out really well.

🚰 ANC leaks. I’ve boasted about the almost perfect ANC, but it leaks quite a bit. Even turning one of the AirPods Max 2’s earcups to a high-pitched setting interrupts the noise-canceling experience. By comparison, the Sony WH-1000XM6 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones Gen 2 maintain an almost perfect noise-canceling seal with their more adaptive ANC technologies and algorithms – though at the cost of some sound quality.

🪫 20-hour battery life for the 3rd time. The AirPods Max 2 still has only 20 hours of battery life, the same as the original AirPods Max and the AirPods Max with USB-C. While it’s impressive that Apple has maintained the same battery life despite increased performance and, seemingly, no change in battery capacity, the Sony WH-1000XM6 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones Gen 2 both promise 30 hours of playtime with ANC.

The lack of a dedicated power button remains a problematic omission, making the Smart Case a necessary accessory to prevent any and all battery drain. Meanwhile, Bose has developed an even better low-power sleep mode that can last for months on end. The AirPods Max 2, meanwhile, will slowly drain their battery if left on their own. In my own experience, these headphones went from 25% battery life to fully dead in less than five hours.

Features

⚙️ New chip, new tricks. Apple’s new H2 chip is the secret sauce behind the AirPods Max 2’s greatly improved ANC. This chip debuted on the AirPods Pro 3 and adds an array of new features to Apple’s top headphones. Namely, there’s a new Adaptive Audio mode that balances and mixes the headphones’ ANC and Transparency levels to what it thinks is optimal for your surroundings.

While working in the office, it sounds more like pure transparency as I can hear the clack of my keyboard as I type. However, as soon as I step outside onto the noisy NYC streets, Adaptive Audio sets the ANC to max. If you prefer complete silence all the time, you’re better off leaving these headphones in noise-canceling mode.

🧠 Smart thinking. I personally find “Loud Sound Reduction” to be a far more useful feature as it turns up the volume whenever loud noises are around you, so you can continue hearing your audio clearly. Conversely, “Conversation Awareness” activates whenever you speak, lowering the volume and temporarily switching the headphones to transparency mode. This comes in super handy if someone talks to me while I’m in my ANC bubble. I can respond without having to awkwardly pause my audio.

🤝 Effortless device switching. Switching playback audio on the AirPods Max 2 between Apple devices is a breeze. Instead of manually pausing and playing on individual devices, the AirPods Max 2 automatically switch between devices as soon as I start playing music on my iPhone or streaming a video on my MacBook Pro. This makes Apple’s version of automatic device switching so much more seamless than Bluetooth Multipoint.

🔌 Hi-res USB-C audio. As with the previous AirPods Max with USB-C, you can get high-resolution 24-bit/48kHz audio over a wired connection. That audio bitrate puts the AirPods Max 2 ahead of the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2nd Gen (16-bit/48kHz), but behind the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 (24-bit/96kHz). While it’s in the middle of the pack, this larger audio signal over USB-C lets the AirPods Max 2 carry over more nuances from lossless music streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.

✈️ Travel with the right cable. Don’t be like me and bring the AirPods Max 2 on a flight, ready to enjoy a movie, only to find out that your USB-C-to-3.5mm cable does nothing. These headphones will only connect to 3.5mm devices if you use Apple’s official $49 accessory, and that’s because this specific USB-C-to-3.5mm cable features a built-in DAC/ADC. The other option is to get a $35 AirFly, which plugs into a 3.5mm jack and acts as a Bluetooth transmitter.

📸 Camera remote. One of the AirPods Max 2’s other new tricks is that it can remotely trigger the iPhone camera to take a photo or record a video. While it’s nice that these headphones can do one more thing, Camera Remote also works with any pair of AirPods or AirPods Pro, since iOS 26 added the feature last year.

🙂‍↔️ Head gestures. Head gesture Siri controls that debuted on the AirPods Pro 3 have also been added to the AirPods Max 2. You can nod or shake your head to pick up or hang up on a call. I mostly used this feature to stop Siri from reading every Slack notification that came through, but after three consecutive vigorous headshakes, the AirPods Max 2 stopped responding to my head gestures.

Should you buy the AirPods Max 2?

Walmart: AirPods Max 2 - $509

Best Buy: AirPods Max 2 - $509

Amazon: AirPods Max 2 - $509

✅ Yes, if…

• 🎶 You want the best-sounding wireless noise-canceling headphones

• 👨‍🎤 You want noise canceling that makes you feel like a main character walking around with your own personal soundtrack

• 🎵 You want your own personal surround sound bubble for movies and Dolby Atmos music

• 🎛️ You want high-quality audio without needing to mess with equalizer curves

• 🎧 You want the most premium set of headphones

• 🔊 You want wired lossless audio and low-latency audio

❌ No, if…

• 🧳 You want a more portable pair of headphones (get the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones Gen 2 instead)

• 🔋 You need a battery life longer than 20 hours (Sennheiser HDB 630 instead)

• 🚫 Constant noise-canceling headphones are a must (get the Sony WH-1000XM6 instead)

• 🏋🏻‍♂️ You’re looking for headphones to work out with(get the Beats Powerbeats Fit instead)

Subscribe now

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

🏆 Rating: 4/5

Editor’s Choice

Pros

• 💰 ReMarkable’s best E Ink tablet value yet

• 📐 Thin and lightweight design that’s effortless to carry

• 📺 Whiter E Ink screen that feels more like paper

• 🔋 Up to three weeks of battery life

• ⚙️ Solid performance

• 📱 Support for all of ReMarkable’s Connect features

Cons

• 💡 No backlight for reading and writing in the dark

• ⌨️ No keyboard support (well, not yet)

• 🎨 No color support

The Shortcut review

ReMarkable wants us all to be less distracted when we’re taking notes or reading e-books, and the company is bringing its mission statement to more people than ever before. The new Paper Pure, ReMarkable’s $399 replacement for the aging Paper 2 tablet, is a more accessible and affordable alternative to the $629 Paper Pro. When I reviewed the Paper Pro, I called it “a luxury notepad no one should buy,” mostly because of the price and its more limited capabilities compared to other tablets.

The Paper Pure changes that conversation in a big way. These tablets are designed to be less capable than an iPad or Android tablet, giving you a limited space to focus on writing, reading, sketching, and more. Paying a high price for that is a luxury no matter how you swing it, and even $399 can be a lot if you’re content with taking notes and writing on an alternative device.

But ReMarkable has the best distraction-free writing experience on the market, something I highly value as someone who often writes long articles and needs to avoid as many distractions as possible. The Paper Pure’s lower price point, updated design, and better performance make it an ideal entry-level E Ink tablet for anyone ready to deeply connect with their ideas and creativity.

Editor’s note: The ReMarkable Paper Pure is available to order starting May 6. Orders will begin shipping out in early June.

Review notes

📐 Lightweight, well-built design. The Paper Pure maintains ReMarkable’s design chops with its thin and light form factor. It swaps aluminum for plastic which, honestly, I don’t mind since it’s nice and light. It also doesn’t flex or bend, and at 6mm thick, you’ll barely notice it on your desk. It’s not quite as thin as the 5.1mm Paper Pro, but the difference is indiscernible to the naked eye.

🔲 A gorgeous black-and-white display. On the front, you’ll find a 10.3-inch E Ink display. I really like this size since it’s not too small and not quite as big as the Paper Pro. It’s also ReMarkable’s best black-and-white E Ink screen yet, since it has the whitest white point out of all of the tablets it’s ever shipped. Contrast is sharp thanks to its high resolution, and the textured finish on the top delivers an exceptional paper-like feel when you’re writing.

📺 Two big screen caveats. There are a couple of caveats with the Paper Pure’s display. It doesn’t support colors beyond black and white, so if you try to highlight something in your notebook with a color from the drop-down, you won’t see it (though it will appear when you view the note in the ReMarkable app on your phone or laptop). You also don’t get a backlight, which is the biggest downside of them all. It’s really hard to use the Paper Pure in dim lighting, whether you’re taking notes or reading a document. You’ll want to pick up a book light if you plan to use it at night or in a dimly lit cafe.

✅ All the same software features. While the hardware isn’t as capable as the Paper Pro, ReMarkable kept the software virtually identical. All of the same features like notebooks, Quick Sheets, document annotation, e-book support, folder organization, integration with cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox, cloud calendar management, and more are all here. There are lots of built-in templates for planning your day, taking notes, and even composing music. It’s simplistic, easy to navigate, and regularly gets new updates to improve the experience.

🧠 Distraction-free bliss. ReMarkable OS feels a lot different than using any other tablet’s software, simply because of how it avoids the rest of the world. You can wake the Paper Pure up, open a document, and enjoy writing without worrying about a notification or a social media app sidetracking your attention. Its simplistic interface doesn’t overcrowd you with buttons, shortcuts, and the like. Instead, you see your documents, you can open one up, and you can start writing. Having a dedicated device for this strict purpose is incredibly nice, despite it seeming somewhat redundant to anyone who writes or takes notes on iPads and smartphones.

📱 Connect continues to expand. To get the most out of your Paper Pure, ReMarkable has its Connect subscription. Adding another monthly subscription to your list may seem annoying, but in ReMarkable’s defense, the $3.99/month (or $39.90/year) service has grown exponentially over time. It enables things like unlimited cloud storage for all of your documents, Handwriting Search to make it easier to find documents, a way to convert Google Docs into notebooks, sending your notes directly to Slack, mobile and desktop app support, link sharing to notes, and more. The subscription used to give you access to a few bonus features like cloud storage and more templates, but over time, ReMarkable has expanded it and made it much more fruitful. Over time, the company plans to continue adding new features, too, so your tablet will get more and more capable after you buy it.

🤖 A little touch of AI. The Paper Pure does incorporate some AI into its feature set, but not in any way that feels annoying or shoved down your throat. Instead, ReMarkable uses AI to convert your handwriting into text, helping you take your handwritten notes and turn them into typed documents you can share with co-workers. I saw demos of the feature during my briefing, and it did a nice job at sorting through everything, organizing each note, and even noting which sections were highlighted. It can also summarize your notes and highlight action items for you and your team. This is my definition of “good AI” - ReMarkable limited its reach on the Paper Pure to humanize the experience, and only uses it occasionally where it might be useful.

⚙️ Good performance. ReMarkable did a nice job at optimizing the performance on the Paper Pure. It’s obviously much slower than traditional tablets due to the E Ink screen, but as far as E Ink devices are concerned, it’s pretty speedy. It’s about as fast as my Kindle Paperwhite (2024), and if you’ve ever used that device, you’ll know that documents and e-books open quickly, the screen refreshes fast, and it doesn’t take long to power it up whatsoever. There’s also 32GB of storage on board, which should be enough for most people to keep all of their notes and documents. (You’ll have unlimited cloud storage with Connect, anyway, so you’ll never run out of room.)

🔋 The best battery life on a ReMarkable tablet yet. There’s a 3,820mAh battery inside the Paper Pure that can easily cruise through two weeks on a full charge. ReMarkable says you can get up to 3 weeks depending on your usage, but considering I use mine a bit more than the average person, my battery life was shorter. Still, it’s the best battery life out of any ReMarkable tablet to date, including the Paper Pro, which typically gets me 6-10 days on a full charge. It’s nice knowing that I can keep the Paper Pure in my backpack and know it almost always has enough power so I can jot down a quick thought or get some writing done on the go.

⌨️ No physical keyboard support (well, not yet). Speaking of writing, while I do enjoy handwriting my notes on the Paper Pure, I’m a keyboard lover at heart. Unlike the Paper Pro, there’s no keyboard support on the Pure. ReMarkable doesn’t sell a keyboard case for the tablet, nor are there pogo pins to support one. That being said, ReMarkable did reveal to me that it’s working on adding support for third-party keyboards over Bluetooth. While no timeline for its release was given, at least the feature will arrive at some point.

📦 Make sure you get the bundle. The Paper Pure is good on its own for $399, but it’s great when you spring for the bundle for an extra $50. For $449, you get the Paper Pure, the far-superior Marker Plus which comes with an eraser on the other end, and a Sleeve Folio for protecting your tablet. It’s available in three beautiful colors, too: Desert Pink, Mist Green, and Ocean Blue, which is the one I got. Those on strict budgets will enjoy the non-bundle version quite a lot, but considering the value proposition here, you’re far better off springing for the extras.

Should you buy the ReMarkable Paper Pure?

Yes, if…

• ✅ You want a device to take notes or read without getting distracted

• ✅ You want to stop using paper notebooks and go digital

• ✅ You don’t need all the fancy features of the Paper Pro

No, if…

• ❌ Spending $400 on an E Ink tablet isn’t worth it to you (get a 10th-generation iPad instead)

• ❌ You want something even smaller for taking notes (get the ReMarkable Paper Pro Move)

• ❌ You want an E Ink tablet with a keyboard (get the ReMarkable Paper Pro)

Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. He’s been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.