Budget-friendly gadgets are great

October is slower than usual in the tech industry, thanks in large part to Google and Microsoft for holding their regular hardware announcements earlier this year. Still, we’ve seen a fair number of companies unveil new devices over the past two weeks, while Amazon’s Prime Day continues. Whether you were busy shopping or watching Elon Musk talk about robotaxis and cybervans, the Engadget team continued to review the latest (and not-so-recent) products. As usual, this bi-weekly compilation is here to help you catch up, even though I missed last week’s edition (as I was out on break), the cadence is still a little off.

From Meta’s Quest 3S VR headset and DJI Air 3S drone, to Sony’s midrange suite of audio gear, these weeks have coincidentally been about a little premium, “un-flagship” affordability, if you will. . And it turns out you don’t need to throw chunks of your savings at companies to get solid equipment that’s worth the money.

Reviews of Sony LinkBuds Fit and LinkBuds Open and Bose QuietComfort Earbuds

by Billy Steele

The main thing I learned from Billy’s recent reviews of Sony and Bose headphones is that flagship, high-level noise cancellation is relegated to mid-range products. And I, for one, am happy about it. It seems like a lot of the things you’ll miss out on if you choose to save money are features like surround sound, tracking and things to do for a more focused, intuitive listening experience. Personally, I’m fine missing those things at the moment – I just want decent sound, good voice quality and competent background noise reduction.

Check out Billy’s review of Sony’s LinkBuds trio of devices even if you’re not in the market for headphones, because he’s put his ears through some real pain to test the oddly designed earbuds. In fact, the rejected subject of the review was “Why am I in pain?” Congratulations, Billy.

by Devindra Hardawar

Meta

The Meta Quest 3S delivers immersive virtual reality for just $300. It’s fast, comfortable to wear and has plenty of games and VR experiences to choose from.

Benefits

• Fast operation
• You are free to wear
• Excellent controls
• A large application library

Evil

• Older Fresnel lenses lead to artifacts
• There is no headphone jack
• Cameras for middle reality

$299 at Amazon

The Quest is arguably the best VR headset in the industry for consumers, especially considering it costs a fraction of the alternative options while providing a relatively high-quality immersive experience. Unlike the Apple Vision Pro, which costs $3,500, the new Quest 3S is more palatable at $300. And, as Devindra notes in his review, it’s comfortable, fast and allows wearers to access Meta’s vast library of VR apps and content. To quote Devindra, “It’s not Meta’s first $300 VR headset, but it’s still a great job.”

DJI Neo and DJI Air 3S reviews

by Steve Dent

DJI

DJI’s Air 3S is the company’s first LiDAR-equipped consumer drone designed to make night flying safer.

Benefits

• Excellent picture quality
• LiDAR improves detection of obstacles at night
• ActiveTrack 360 produces cinematic tracking shots
• Long battery life
• Now it has 42GB internal storage

Evil

• Sometimes you fail to see small obstacles

$1,099 from DJI

Continuing the trend of great products that cost less than usual, the DJI Neo is a great drone for just $200. Calling it the best $200 drone ever made might sound hyperbolic, but we really can’t think of any other similarly priced drone that comes close to delivering the same performance as the Neo. And even if one of its main problems, according to our reviewer Steve, is that it sounds like a banshee, I honestly think that would be a pro for me just for the pure humor of it all. I never thought I’d be in the market for a drone with a banshee sound but here I think $200 would be a fair price to pay for the aerial videos I can get, and I can listen to the singing and singing over the video anyway. .

On the other end of the spectrum, Steve also reviewed the high-end DJI Air 3S drone and Canon’s EOS R5 II, both of which will cost you a lot more money. The good news is that Canon’s EOS R5 II is now so advanced that it better takes on Sony’s rival offerings, while bringing interesting features like eye-control autofocus. Of course, it’s too early to be sure. But if you have the money for these premium products, you’ll get the experience of bleeding-edge technology, perhaps part of the appeal is that it may not always work properly.

by Dan Cooper

Remarkable / Engadget

reMarkable adds a color screen to its e-paper tablet, creating the best uninterrupted writing experience.

Benefits

• Color is a welcome and useful thing
• The backlight allows you to work in dark places
• Advanced performance

$579 at Remarkable

I know Dan was a little concerned about giving a device as niche as the reMarkable Paper Pro such a high score, but after some discussion, we both agreed it was worth it. As it stands, the reMarkable Paper Pro is arguably the best paper writing tablet with a color screen, even after this week’s announcement of the first color Amazon Kindle. Dan’s review, Paper Pro not only excelled in color, but was also very fast and reliable in the process.

I really appreciate how much care has been taken to easily blend the handwriting with the typed text for a natural note-taking and annotation experience. And even though it’s outside the usual theme of this kind of being an inexpensive product with premium specs, I’m still incredibly tempted to find ways to cough up the $600 or so needed to install the Paper Pro myself with the accessories Dan recommends.

Review of Phoenix Springs and Neva

by Jessica Conditt

I’m not a very active gamer, but I love learning about games from Jess. He recently reviewed the sci-fi mystery Phoenix Springs and the dreamy platformer Neva, whose pieces are so well written that I can’t help but check out each title to get a feel for how he clearly does them. Phoenix Springs follows a tech journalist and combines my favorite genres (science fiction and mystery), while Neva’s art looks just plain beautiful. I don’t know yet if I’ll ever find time to play the new games, but these two are definitely on my list.

Future updates: On the horizon

The Engadget team explores a lot of things, and as we begin writing our holiday gift guide, we’re thinking about products that we and our loved ones love. Many of us love e-readers and writing tablets. I definitely have my eye on one of the new Kindles announced this week, specifically the new Kindle Scribe and Colorsoft. Those won’t be available until later this year, so for now I’ll keep looking forward to the reMarkable Paper Pro. I’ll also wonder what Amazon hardware chief Panos Panay has up his sleeve, other than Diet Coke cans — something I learned (like many people) he’s excited about when I had the chance to talk to him in an interview this week.

Many of us are millennials and have a huge soft spot for retro games. Our editor-in-chief Aaron Souppouris spoke with the folks at Analogue, and you can read his well-written piece to learn more about the upcoming Analogue 3D.

This week, Apple surprised us by announcing the new iPad mini, made to offer more storage and power with the A17 Pro processor. It will also support Apple Intelligence, of course, and even though it seems like a minor update, my colleagues and I still like the idea of ​​a small tablet. If only it had a better screen.

All of those newly announced items are on our review list, alongside things like the Google TV Streamer and Samsung Galaxy S24 FE that were introduced a few weeks ago. As we approach November and all the holiday shopping that brings, hopefully the hardware is slowly starting to pick up. We’re still waiting for Apple’s Macs event, and we still remember being surprised by the announcement of Humane’s AI Pin late last year. But for now, we flounder while occasionally bathing in nostalgia and longing for a simpler time.