Another dark day for Peloton. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peloton’s CEO Barry McCarthy is stepping down after announcing yet another round of layoffs, this time affecting about 15 percent of its remaining workforce, or roughly 400 global team members. It’s the fifth round of layoffs to hit the pandemic darling and comes after McCarthy said on its Q1 2023 earnings call that the company was done with layoffs and that the “ship was turning.” “Hard as the decision has been to make additional headcount cuts, Peloton simply had no other way to bring its spending in line with its revenu ..read more

If you’re not a Samsung user, this is the best Android smartwatch you can buy. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google I/O is right around the corner, and if history repeats itself, the company will likely use its annual keynote to announce new software features across all of its various platforms, including Android, Chrome, and Search. Google also sometimes brings a surprise device announcement to the party, but we wouldn’t bet on a new flagship smartwatch considering the Google Pixel Watch 2 was only released in October. If you’re a Pixel fan looking to upgrade, the flagship Wea ..read more

For Fossil, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When Fossil announced it was leaving the Android smartwatch space, I wasn’t surprised. The signs had been there for a while. What I didn’t expect was how sad it made me feel. Fossil’s smartwatches had never been the best. Their battery life was meh, health tracking could be iffy, and before Wear OS 3, the company was often let down by Google’s neglect. But now that Fossil has called it quits, it’s left a massive vacuum in the Wear OS ecosystem. Who, if anyone, can fill that void? Is there even a point ..read more

Amazfit’s GTR 4 offers an impressive feature set for its price, including an OLED display and dual-band GPS. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic are some of the best on the market. Yet, at almost $400, they’re not for everybody, especially since you’ll need to be tapped into a particular operating system to make the most of either wearable. Thankfully, for everybody else, there’s the platform-agnostic Amazfit GTR 4, which is currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Amazfit’s online storefront for $16 ..read more

There’s a new cat-eye frame called the Skyler. | Image: Meta Meta just announced a slew of new updates for its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg just dropped an Instagram reel showing off a new cat-eye frame style for the glasses and a video calling feature. You can also now connect the glasses with Apple Music, and last but not least, the multimodal AI assistant is live for everyone in the US and Canada. You can peep a pretty clear demo of the video calling feature from Zuckerberg’s reel. In it, he talks to Eva Chen, who runs fashion at Instagram, about the new Skyler frames and ..read more

Overall, pulling out your phone is still faster, but it is handy for identifying things when you’re out and about. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It can be handy, confidently wrong, and just plain finicky — but smart glasses are a much more comfortable form factor for this tech. When the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses launched last fall, they were a pretty neat content capture tool and a surprisingly solid pair of headphones. But they were missing a key feature: multimodal AI. Basically, the ability for an AI assistant to process multiple types of information like photos, audio, and ..read more

Streaks aren’t the only way to be consistent. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Six weeks ago, I was having a tough time sticking to my running routines and goals. Physically, I was mostly fine. Mentally, the thought of running — a sport I usually love — made me roll into a blanket burrito and never leave my bed. I started hating myself, but none of my usual fitness apps and trackers were helping. After building a weeklong streak, I couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed one Saturday. I broke it and spent the next day wallowing in guilt and self-pity. Fed up, I went digging around the ..read more

Photo by Sheena Vasani / The Verge Skip Crossrope unless you really love skipping rope. Like everybody else, my New Year’s resolution was to work out more. After moving to a new city, I fell out of my workout routine, and it didn’t help that the gym chain I belonged to was now a 30-minute drive in Los Angeles traffic. So I started researching workouts I could do from home. Jump roping is fun and a great, full-body cardio workout that can also improve agility and coordination. So when I heard the $199 Crossrope AMP Jump Rope Set would quantify the experience and help me incorporate strength tra ..read more

As funny as it was when the AI Pin utterly failed at translating Korean and Japanese, it also broke my heart. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Of all the things the Humane AI Pin promised, I was most intrigued by translation. In a demo, a man speaks to Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri in Spanish. The AI Pin automatically translates it to English. Chaudhri replies in English. Again, the AI Pin translates his words back into Spanish. There are notable pauses when the AI is processing, but it’s a powerful concept. Unlike with Google Translate, there was solid eye contact between both ..read more

OnePlus could be a strong alternative to Google or Samsung for Wear OS smartwatches. At the end of February, a large package arrived on my doorstep. Inside were 11 boxes containing the same version of the $299.99 OnePlus Watch 2. My eyes watered and I whispered, “Not again.” This was a shipping accident. My box had 10 more watches than I needed for a review. It happens and normally doesn’t hold any larger meaning. But I was nervous because the original OnePlus Watch was by far the worst smartwatch I’ve ever had the misfortune of reviewing. Everything that could go wrong did. The fitness and he ..read more