A power bank is easily one of the most useful things you can carry on you at any time. You never know when your phone will start blinking red, and you don’t want to be caught with a dead phone while out and about, do you? Well, if you don’t have one, today’s your lucky day. Right now you can get this 10K Baseus power bank with a 50% discount on Amazon. Yep, you read that right! Just use code NROBNZA3 at checkout. The Baseus Picogo is tiny enough to fit in the palm of your hand, which means it can slip into even the tightest pockets. The 10,000mAh capacity should be enough to recharge your phone about two times over, give or take depending on your particular model. But the best thing about it is the built-in USB-C cable, which frees you from having to carry around a separate cord when you’re on the go. When not in use, the cable plugs right into the power bank itself and turns into a convenient handle. With up to 45 watts of charging power, the Picogo can charge flagship phones like the iPhone 16 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra more than halfway in 30 minutes. And with the additional USB-C and USB-A ports, you can charge up to three devices at once. (When multiple ports are being used, the charging power is split between them.) Never get caught with a dead phone again. Get the Baseus Picogo power bank for $20 on Amazon and enjoy the convenience of its built-in USB-C cable. Don’t forget to use discount code NROBNZA3 at checkout to score this amazing 50% off deal before it’s gone! Save 50% on the 10K Baseus Picogo with built-in USB-C cableBuy now at Amazon Read...

Roku is spending $185 million to get into a business that most other streaming platforms have avoided. In early May, the company announced that it will acquire Frndly TV, the cheapest of all the live TV streaming services. For $9 per month, Frndly TV offers a bundle of channels you’d typically find in a cable TV package, including Hallmark, A&E, and The Weather Channel. While it’s normal for streaming platforms to offer their own free or premium streaming services, most aren’t selling their own bundles of cable channels with optional DVR service. Roku is doing something pretty unusual here, and while it says it’s just trying to boost subscription revenues on its platform, that doesn’t sound like the whole story to me. How Frndly fits in Frndly TV is what’s known in industry jargon as a “virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributor,” or vMVPD. You could also use the terms live TV streaming services, streaming channel bundles, or cable replacements. Whatever the nomenclature, the point is that these are essentially cable TV packages delivered over the internet. You get a big bucket of cable channels, a grid-based channel guide to flip through, and DVR functionality for recording live airings and watching them at your leisure. Most major streaming platforms have stayed out of this business, which involves cutting carriage deals with numerous TV programmers (and dealing with the risk of blackouts when renewal negotiations fail). It’s a messy business and one that’s barely profitable, if at all. So while you can access services like Hulu + Live TV and Fubo on a Fire TV Stick or Apple TV 4K, Amazon and Apple haven’t bothered putting together channel bundles of their own. (The only exception is Google, which operates YouTube TV and has its own Google TV/Android TV streaming platform.) Nonetheless, Roku sees an opportunity in Frndly TV, which claimed to be profitable in 2022. While Roku once described itself as an advertising company, lately it’s been talking up its plans to grow subscription revenue as well. The company already gets a cut when users subscribe to services on its platform, but with Frndly TV it can claim 100 percent of the revenue for itself. The near-term playbook, then, will look like it did for the Roku Channel, the ad-supported streaming service Roku launched in 2017. Roku makes more money when people watch the Roku Channel instead of other ad-supported services, so it’s aggressively promoted its own service in practically every corner of its home screen. The company has made no secret of its plans to do the same for Frndly TV. “We’re going to use [the platform] to drive Frndly, which is now part of Roku,” CEO Anthony Wood said during an earnings call. Thinking bigger If all Roku does with Frndly TV is use its home screen to peddle more Frndly TV subscriptions, that’d be pretty boring. And maybe that is the entire strategy. But my theory is that Roku will use Frndly TV as the first step toward offering a broader lineup of pay TV channels. Frndly TV, after all, is a niche within a niche, with channels that focus largely on reality TV and reruns. It carries none of the top 10 cable channels and only eight of the top 50. None of those channels cover news or sports. As of late 2022, Frndly TV had a mere 700,000 subscribers. By entering the vMVPD business, Roku instantly becomes a major player that can negotiate more and better carriage deals on behalf of its 90 million households. It would be weird if those efforts started and ended with whichever programmer has the syndication rights for Columbo and Bonanza. An equally plausible outcome is that Roku expands its channel offerings over time, taking advantage of TV programmers’ newfound willingness to allow for more flexible bundles. It could then tie those offerings into its home screen and live TV guide, with a built-in billing system to manage subscriptions. For folks who still have cable or just want an easy way to access cable channels, Roku could present itself as the simplest solution. I’ve always wondered why no streaming platform has done this—here’s me arguing for Apple to do it in 2017—and now Roku is in the best position to pull it off. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter weekly newsletter to get more streaming advice every Friday Read...

Looking to finally invest in a laptop that can handle demanding work and deliver an immersive gaming experience? Your search might be over with the Gigabyte G6 KF now on sale for just $1,000 at Best Buy. You’re getting some really great specs for that price! What makes this laptop so magical? The gorgeous 16-inch IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate is definitely up there, complete with its 1920×1200 resolution that’s perfect for on-the-go gaming. That’s bolstered by the included GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. Now, that may not be the latest or greatest graphics card, but it’s still powerful enough to play your favorite games or take on creative hobbies like video editing. Then there’s the speedy 13th-gen Intel Core i7-13620H processor and stunning 32GB of RAM. While the processor isn’t surprising to see in a laptop at this price, the amount of memory certainly is. Between this and the RTX-powered guts, you’re coming out a winner. It’s a great laptop with a great configuration, so if you’ve been looking for a strong laptop for work and gaming, get the Gigabyte G6 KF for $1,000 at Best Buy while this deal lasts! If you miss it, you can still score an excellent higher-end laptop from our best laptops roundup. Save $200 on this powerful RTX-powered gaming laptopBuy now at Best Buy Read...

If you want to feel like Indiana Jones every time you pull your portable SSD out of your bag, all without sacrificing any performance, then you’ll love the SK Hynix Beetle X31 and its golden chassis. This mega-fast drive is currently on sale at $65 for 1TB, a deal you won’t want to miss. The SK Hynix Beetle X31 is easily one of our favorite portable SSDs on the market, and we loved it enough to give it a 4.5-star rating and our Editors’ Choice award in our hands-on review of it. It’s a top performer among 10Gbps drives, delivering lightning-fast transfers via USB-C for all sorts of files, including those behemoth videos you’re hoarding. This external SSD is also small enough that it fits right in the palm of your hand, making it that much more portable and travel-friendly. It measures 2.91 x 1.81 inches—that’s pocket-sized!—and it has a shiny golden exterior with rounded edges for that premium feel. Don’t worry about dropping this thing because it’s extra resistance against drops. Don’t miss this hot opportunity! Snag the 1TB SK Hynix Beetle X31 for $65 before this “limited-time deal” expires. Get 1TB of fast portable storage for just $65Buy now at Amazon Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Extremely fast synthetic benchmark results — at times DRAM for excellent random performance 5-year, 600TBW warranty Cons Write speeds varied from 300MBps to 13GBps on our usual test bed Pricey Our Verdict This fantastically speedy PCIe 5.0 SSD will deliver the 14GBps goods. But it had compatibility issues on our test bed with write speeds all over the place — as high as the advertised 13GBps, but as low as 300MBps. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: WD SN8100 Retailer Price Sandisk $180 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket With WD’s 8TB Black SN850X being our top-rated PCIe 4.0 SSD, and the WD Black SN7100 holding sway as the second-ranked HMB (host memory buffer) PCIe 4.0 SSD, I was expecting great things from the company’s latest: the PCIe 5.0 WD Black SN8100. Well, I got great things, but also some not-so-great things — for reasons that remain unclear. Note that I will revisit this review if and when the “things” situation (read the performance section) with the SN8100 clears up. Also, it seems Sandisk, after a recent “split” from WD, is now marketing WD drives — i.e., this is the Sandisk WD Black SN8100. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best SSDs for comparison. What are the WD Black SN8100’s features? The WD Black SN8100 is a PCIe 5.0, NVMe 2.0, 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) M.2 SSD. It uses stacked BiCS8 TLC NAND and a Sandisk controller plus DRAM for fast random operations. The WD Black SN8100 close up. Sandisk provides a five-year warranty on the WD Black SN8100, mitigated by a 600TBW-per-terabyte-of-capacity rating — in other words, if you write more than 600TB to the drive, it may go into read-only mode and the warranty is void at that point. Note that most SSDs are good for far more writes than their rating, and it’s unlikely you’ll write anywhere near that much in even 10 years. How much does the WD Black SN8100 cost? Sandisk sells the WD Black SN8100 in three capacities: 1TB for $180, 2TB (tested) for $280, and 4TB for $550. That’s more than the Samsung 9100 Pro and the equally fast Crucial T705 (which are both on sale for $170 and $142, respectively, at the time of this writing), but in the same ballpark as their MSRPs. I’d expect the SN8100 to settle in at a competitive price. All things being equal, that would make it a good value, but… How does the WD Black SN8100 perform? When operating correctly, the SN8100 was right up there with its fastest PCIe 5.0 competitors. However, hot on the heels of the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD with USB4 (that’s the actual name) not always connecting at full speed, I experienced a somewhat similar issue with the WD Black SN8100. Albeit only with writes. When using the same M.2/PCIe 5.0 slot with which I’ve successfully tested all NVMe SSDs over the last two years, the 8100 initially performed up to snuff. Subsequently, however, write speeds in synthetic benchmarks dropped to 2GBps/PCIe 3.0 levels, and then mysteriously to 600MBps/SATA levels and even lower. The phenomenon was also wildly inconsistent: One day performance was as expected, the next day it would fall off the planet. Reboots would seem to cure the issue, then it would reappear. This is not the write speed you want from a PCIe 5.0 SSD. The SN8100 sometimes wrote at 13.5GBps but sometimes dropped as low as 300MBps. Go figure. Moving the WD Black SN8100 to a ROG PCIe 5.0/NVMe adapter card nestled in the test bed’s sole PCIe 5.0 slot, write performance consistently reached expected levels — tracking without fail at 13.5GBps in all the synthetic benchmarks. Thermals were not an issue as the SN8100 never cracked 50 degrees Celsius. However, Sandisk touts the drive’s outstanding energy savings, so maybe there’s another reason for it throttling down writes, which require far more energy than reads. One day performance was as expected, the next day it would fall off the planet. I retested the two competing drives, Crucial’s frantastic T705, and Samsung’s blazing 9100 Pro on the adapter card, but both performed slightly worse, so the numbers on the charts are from the original tests in the usual M.2 slot. No need to punish them for WD/Sandisk’s issue. With those caveats, the SN8100 did quite well, even taking the top spot in a couple of tests. With the inconsistency caveat, the SN8100 did quite well. Even taking the top spot in a couple of tests. Once again, the SN8100 was right up there with its competitors and even managed two first places in CrystalDiskMark 8’s random tests. Once again, the SN8100 was right up there with its competitors and even managed two first places in CrystalDiskMark 8’s random tests. Our 48GB transfer tests had the SN8100 falling slightly behind the competition. Not by much, but still just outside of the margin of error. Our 48GB transfer tests had the SN8100 falling slightly behind the competition. Not by much, but still just outside of the margin of error. The SN8100 again lagged behind the other two drives in the real-world 450GB write test, though not by a lot. Note that the top-performing drives in this test are almost all HMB (host memory buffer) designs. And mostly PCIe 4.0. Go figure. The SN8100 again lagged behind the other two drives in the real-world 450GB write test. Although slightly slower in the real-world transfer tests, the SN8100 is still a very fast SSD. The issues with our motherboard M.2 slot are mysterious, and a rather long phone call with Sandisk failed to shed light on the matter — the company was unable to replicate the issue and a second SN8100 exhibited the same behavior. I’m inclined to chalk it up to motherboard/drive incompatibility that you’re unlikely to experience. But that’s certainly not a promise, so run CrystalDiskMark 8 several times across boots before the return window closes. It can be difficult to spot SSD slowdowns with the naked eye, and as I said, the issue was inconsistent. Should you buy the WD Black SN8100? The WD Black SN8100 is one of the fastest NVMe SSDs in synthetic benchmarks that I’ve ever tested. But believe me when I say that it gives me no pleasure to recommend that you check compatibility using CrystalDiskMark 8 or similar before fully committing to your purchase — WD/Sandisk has created nothing but stellar storage products up until recently. Again, I’ll revisit this review if the situation changes — hopefully with a solution to the uneven write performance mystery and a better star rating. How we test Our storage tests currently utilize Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on a Z790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of memory total). Intel integrated graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the operating system. Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, and other factors. The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped as well as the capacity tested. SSD performance can vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to read/write across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report (systems being roughly equal), by all means — let us know. Read...

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I hoard tech devices, but funny enough, I don’t keep piles of tech accessories. I tend to buy cables, dongles, and organizational bits infrequently. I wait until I need them, since I figure I can always buy them. But that soon may not be the case, as a lot of such stuff comes from China. Even as tariff policies are changing, shipments dropped pretty dramatically over the last month and a half. Plus, when availability goes down, prices go up. So I’m biting the bullet and finally stocking up on a few small but key items—the same things that many friends often grumble about not having on hand. Chances are, you’ll want to grab some of these, too. 1) Cables Anker Somehow, I always need more USB-C cables. (I recently rescued an e-reader and an unwanted phone, so that may have something to do with it.) Right now a pack of two is under $10. I also recently decided to rework my layout for networking gear within my home. Longer cords would make the project easier, and I may as well get faster ethernet cabling anyway. A 50-foot CAT 6 cable is $28, but if I’m willing to forgo future-proofing, I can grab a CAT 5e variant for just $10. Plus, I always need HDMI cables. So at least one cheapie $9 six-foot one goes in the cart, too. 2) Zipties HAVE ME TD / Amazon A lot of zipties are made in the U.S.—but since I don’t know if their factories rely on materials and parts made overseas, I figure this is an easy buy now, too. A pack or two of zipties doesn’t take much space or much money ($4/each). I own Velcro ties as well, but I hoard my gigantic roll for PC building projects and other places where I may want to adjust or redo the cabling. I won’t stay rich in Velcro ties if I use them everywhere. (Even if they’re only $10 for 100, they’re preeeecciouuusss to me.) Zipties are more versatile around the house, too. For tech, I use them to tidy up cabling at my desk, behind my PC, and along the back of my entertainment center. But they also come in handy with my plants, organizing craft supplies, securing loose pieces of (cheap) furniture, and the like. Pretty much every time I’m grumbling about a twist-tie breaking but being too stubborn to use one of my precious Velcro ties, I should be using a zip tie. So now I’ll have plenty. 3) USB dongles StarTech / Amazon So, in theory, USB ports can hold up to removing and inserting cables many times over. In practice, death can come faster than expected. (RIP to the charging port on my old laptop after someone tripped over the charging cable.) Whenever I can, I buy USB extender dongles for USB ports I know I’ll be swapping devices in and out of frequently. I’ve been making use of a few older USB 2.0 models I already had, but recently I started using gear needing USB 3.0. So that gets an upgrade, and I’m getting two just in case. (May as well, at $8 a pop.) 4) Cable adapters Cable Matters / Amazon I have a lot of HDMI cables. (At least, in theory I do—they’re stashed all over my place so I can’t always find them right away. Hence buying more because I may as well.)  I don’t have many specialty display cables, like HDMI to mini-DisplayPort and HDMI to micro-HDMI. I use them infrequently, but they’re valuable when doing tech support or stretching life out of older hardware. I could buy more of the specialty cables, but I’m snagging adapters instead. (Right now, I’m starting with a $10 HDMI to mini-DP option.) Converting a standard HDMI cable gives me much more flexibility, like if I need a longer cable than the specialty one I own. Read...