I’ve reviewed a lot of Aukey products, but never had the chance to test out one of the company’s power stations. So a few months ago, I reached out to the Aukey team and asked to check out the $250 PowerTitan 300. This power station offers enough ports to connect and power almost anything you can think of, and it’s not terribly expensive. Additionally, Aukey sells a 100W solar panel kit that you can use to charge the PowerTitan or small devices, like your phone or tablet, when you have a clear sky. Note: This review is part of our roundup of portable power banks. Go there for details ..read more

Pre-pandemic, the number of true wireless earbuds with noise canceling was just a trickle. Now they are entering the market in a steady stream, and just in time. Even with reduced travel demand, in-ear headphones with active noise-canceling (ANC) still have their uses—blocking out background conversations in busy households, muffling the cacophony of loud streets, and the like. With the predecessor WF-1000XM3, Sony pit a strong contender against Bose’s well-regarded noise-canceling competition. Now Sony’s successor ANC buds have improved across the board, making the WF-1000XM4 one of the top c ..read more

The trusty Pavilion has come a long way. With a magnesium aluminum chassis that looks elegant and feels durable and impossibly light, the HP Pavilion Aero 13 looks and feels more like a model from the company’s higher-end Envy or Spectre line than a mainstream Pavilion. And yet the Pavilion Aero 13 line starts at a reasonable $750. Despite its light price and weight, the Pavilion Aero 13 is roomy and powerful. The laptop is based on a 13.3-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio that makes the display feel more spacious than a standard 16:9 display of the same size. The keyboard runs from edge ..read more

It’s easy to see why people mistakenly believe that all USB-C cables are essentially the same, and that differences are mostly superficial and a way to mark up prices. After all, it’s just a cable, right? Wrong. We can tell you from testing more than a dozen USB-C cables that they are not all the same. You will see huge performance differences in transferring data and charging devices depending on the particular cable you buy. Unfortunately trying to find a quality USB-C cable among the multitude of options available can be daunting. So we bought 14 cables ranging from the biggest, most recogn ..read more

In a field dominated by square or rectangular design, the egg-shaped $160 Nexar Pro dash cam (with its equally egg-shaped discrete interior camera) stands out—in a good way. The Nexar Pro is also one of the cheaper options in a dash cam offering cloud storage, bested only in affordability by the previously reviewed Nexar Beam. This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best dash cams. Go there for more reviews and buying advice.  To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Previously, I reviewed the RockPals 300W portable power station and rated it 4.5 stars. It had reliable performance, plenty of ports, and a large display that kept you up to speed on everything the power station was doing. Now I’m taking a look at a device that has the same exact name, but a completely different design. The updated power station lost the dual flashlights, has been shrunk down quite a bit, and the screen no longer details every aspect of the station’s performance. Note: This review is part of our roundup of portable power banks. Go there for details on competing produ ..read more

Hotspot Shield in brief: P2P allowed: Yes Business location: United States Number of servers: 1,800+* Number of country locations: 85 Cost: $95.88 per year VPN protocol: Standard TLS1.2 / DTLS1.2 tunnel using OpenSSL 1.1 libraryData encryption: AES-GCM (128- and 256-bit) and ChaCha-poly1305 supportedData authentication: All supported cipher suites perform authenticated encryption using an AEAD model.Handshake: Standard TLS1.2/DTLS1.2 To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

I’ve been quiet for the last few months, but I can explain. I was tasked with testing several power stations, ranging from affordable to almost too expensive. The goal? Find a range of portable power stations for all budgets and use cases. Admittedly, testing took far longer than I expected. But, alas, here I am, ready with the first review born out of months of testing, frustration, and more testing. First up is the RAVPower Portable Power Station 252.7Wh Power House, a $179 powerhouse that looks more like a portable speaker than something you’d plug a 110v gadget into, or that could power a ..read more

Adata’s XPG Gammix S70 Blade is the second fastest NVMe SSD we’ve tested, bettering Samsung’s excellent 980 Pro by a smidge—the drive it replaces in the number two spot. It’s also PlayStation 5 compatible and offers a large improvement in real world performance over its predecessor, the previously reviewed and fast-in-its-own-right XPG Gammix S70. This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best SSDs. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

If you’re asking yourself if all USB-A to USB-C cables work the same, well, the short answer is no. Not at all. To illustrate our point, we reviewed two six-foot, gray-braided Amazon Basics USB-A to USB-C cables that look virtually identical and, surprisingly, cost virtually identical amounts. A USB 3.1 model cost $12.40 while a USB 2.0 model cost $11.90. Our prior evaluation of pure USB-C cables revolved around three features: Charging performance, data transfer performance, and monitor cable performance. But our testing of the USB-A to USB-C cables we’re comparing today showed they real ..read more