Cameron Faulkner

Sometimes, one purchase more than makes up for the annual cost of a Costco membership. HP’s OmniBook 3 is a good example of that. It has a Snapdragon X processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 1200p OLED screen, and through September 6th it costs just $449.99 ($200 off) at Costco. Seems like a capable Arm-based machine for the price that’s great for entertainment, too.

Privacy screen protectors that appear black when viewed to the side aren’t new. Neither are ones that display logos or messages. But I’m tickled by the “Intimacy Shield” from Joi AI. The pitch makes its screen-dimming effect seem like a breakthrough, though I guess it gets credit for injecting some corny graphic T-shirt energy into the screen protector space.

That’s part of a vulnerable apology by Nex CEO David Lee for the current state of Starri, one of the Nex Playground’s most popular games. Its recent 2.0 update “missed the mark,” according to Lee, who wept while reading stories of how its changes disrupted family time around the motion-controlled console.

If that sentence means anything to you, you may want to know more about RayNeo’s new GT glasses. They cost the same as Xreal and Viture’s feature-light $299 video glasses, but they stand out by having built-in three degrees of freedom to let you pin their virtual screens in space (their rather small 46-degree FoV is a bit disappointing, though). They’ll go up to $329 at a later date.

Originally $199, the Neo that shoots at 4K /30 frames per second and can follow you around is down to $139 through third-party sellers at Amazon. While it lacks a few impressive features in the newer, pricier Neo 2, it’s still a fantastic entry-level drone.

Acer’s $1,199 Nitro XV275X P is coming Q1 2027, and it has some appealing specs. Its 27-inch matte IPS screen has 2,304-zone Mini LED backlighting (up to 1,400 nits), with support for 5K via HDMI 2.1, USB-C or DisplayPort 1.4 at 165Hz refresh rate and a fast 0.5-millisecond response time, or 330Hz at QHD. It seems just as good for productivity as for gaming with its 90W USB-C charging, KVM switch, and picture-in-picture settings.

That’s a stat shared by Sonos CEO Tom Conrad at the company’s Open House event. Always interesting to hear the numbers. You can read about the new gear (and a big update to its app) in our post, but stay tuned for more coverage.