Author: Press Room

Toward the end of every year, social feeds overflow with Spotify Wrapped flexes—colorful, curated snapshots of our year in music. But I’m too impatient to wait that long. There’s an easier, better way to show off your taste whenever you want. Spotify Wrapped Ignores How We Actually Discover Music Spotify’s 2024 Wrapped introduced a feature called Your Music Evolution, in an attempt to chart our music taste month by month. Spotify But it still misses how we discover music. Think about your last great musical find. Was it during a 2 a.m. rabbit hole session? Or perhaps you discovered your…

Cheap earbuds might seem like a bargain, but they often skip crucial features that make all the difference. The real question is: which features are you sacrificing without even knowing it? 6 Water Resistance Certification Gavin Phillips / MakeUseOf Cheap earbuds either skip water protection entirely or offer vague “splash-resistant” claims without any official rating. That leaves you guessing whether a sweaty workout or light rain might damage your earbuds. High-end earbuds, however, typically come with proper IP (Ingress Protection) ratings, like IPX4, IPX5, or even IPX7. IP ratings indicate how well your earbuds can withstand water or dust. For…

Fed up with shelling out big bucks for a flashy flagship? You’ll probably want one of the best mid-range smartphones instead. Gone are the days when opting for a sensibly-priced phone meant settling for a lacklustre experience; today’s crop offer performance and looks to match or even rival top-tier models, all for under $600/£600. Look through the following devices and you’ll spot premium styling, more than enough CPU muscle, and battery life that easily lasts throughout the day. Many come equipped with surprisingly good cameras, too. They’re built to last and should serve you for years to come. Our guide…

This week, sandwiched between emails about bake sales and discos, was a more ominous message from my kid’s school. Starting in 2026, a smartphone ban will target youngest year groups first and then creep through schools like rising damp. By 2030, every local school will be smartphone-free, bar when kids need one for medical reasons. Everyone else? They’ll be stuck with a data-free, camera-free, largely featureless ‘feature phone’, partying like it’s 1999. This is a bad idea. Before I get a deluge of angry emails from parents, teachers and politicians, I get it. Smartphones can be a real problem. Concerns…

Getting crisp 4K streaming at home does not require an overpriced smart TV. With a few smart picks, you can enjoy stunning pictures and sound for less, all without the hassle of sluggish built-in software. If you want crisp 4K visuals without paying a premium, focus on the display itself and skip the extras you don’t need. The best way to get a good UHD screen for less is to look for a TV with a high-quality panel that uses a free or subsidized operating system such as Fire TV, Roku TV, or Google TV. It is perfectly fine if…

Your phone and TV might live in different corners of your living room, but they’re a surprisingly powerful duo when you bring them together. Over the years, I’ve stumbled upon a handful of ways these two screens can really complement each other. Don’t just take my word for it, though; try a few out and see if I’m onto something. 5 Use Your Phone as a Remote Control TV remotes have a mysterious habit of disappearing right when you need them. But your phone is usually within arm’s reach, if not already in your hand. Most smart TVs come with…

Although Apple Music is my favorite music streaming service, the lack of some basic features is pretty frustrating. Some of these are available in other similar tools, which makes it even more annoying that you can’t access them. 6 Easy Device-Switching for Individual Plans One of the most perplexing areas in which Apple Music falls short is in the ability to easily switch devices on an individual plan. You can do so with a Family subscription and encounter no issues, but the personal plan is very frustrating. As soon as you open Apple Music on a different device, you’ll often…

ChatGPT is receiving an enormous upgrade designed to speed up your life and eliminate the mundane background tasks that distract us from work, play, and more. It’s new ChatGPT Agent launches fully automated agentic browsing—and it’s coming to you very soon. OpenAI Makes ChatGPT Supremely Useful ChatGPT is gaining the ability to use fully automated AI agents, known as ChatGPT Agent. Think of it like this. Up until now, ChatGPT could browse the web and find information for you, but you still need to remain engaged and help guide its research. However, now ChatGPT Agent can fully automate all these…

I’ve owned plenty of cheap headphones and can confirm that there are plenty of good options available. But while cheap headphones are tempting, you shouldn’t compromise on certain features. 5 Multiple Connection Options Although Bluetooth is nearly universal these days, it’s still a good idea to look for headphones with multiple connection options. Yes, Bluetooth is ubiquitous—but don’t settle for headphones that only support wireless connections. Bluetooth is great and can be enough, but your headphones should also support the classic 3.5mm jack for flexibility. Jerome Thomas / MakeUseOf A perfect scenario of when that 3.5mm jack comes in handy…

Home computers have come a long way since the ’70s, progressing from simple-text-based CRT monitors to full-colour 3D graphics, hi-res LCD screens, and hundreds of times more processing power in a simple desktop box than there once was in an entire room of hardware. Desktops were once all you could get, but notebooks came along and became the machine of choice for travellers. Even the best mid-range laptops have more power than most people will ever need. But are any of today’s models as distinctive as the following machines? Probably not. And so here’s our pick of the most iconic…