Twelve pygmy hogs (Porcu salvania) were released back into northeast India last week as part of a conservation program made to resurrect the species from near-extinction in the 1960s. The pigs remain extremely rare in the wild, with an estimated 250 persevering out there.
The X-Men have never been especially shy about swapping and combining DNA with one another, but post-“House of X”, the idea of mutants procreating has taken on a different significance that’s being explored in Way of X from writer Si Spurrier, artists Bob Quinn and Java Tartaglia, and letterer Clayton Cowles.
US road safety regulators are set to dramatically increase the reporting requirements for car crashes where driver-assistance tech like Tesla Autopilot was engaged at the time, the NHTSA confirmed today. Under the new policy, serious incidents involving vehicles equipped with SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), or SAE Levels 3-5 automated driving systems (ADS), will need to be … Continue reading
The HP Pavilion Aero 13 was revealed this week for the 2021 season claiming it’s HP’s “lightest consumer laptop”. This machine weighs in at less than 1 kilogram (less than 2.2 pounds) and comes in a variety of fashionable colors. This is also the company’s first laptop with a 13.3-inch display with a 16:10 Aspect Ratio, 2.5k resolution, and a … Continue reading
It’s very nearly July, and that means there’s a new batch of Xbox Live Games with Gold right around the corner. Microsoft revealed what that next round of free games is today, and though there aren’t any particularly big titles in the lineup, there is one game that’s sure to please fans of a certain obscene, alcoholic squirrel. Yes indeed, … Continue reading
Amazon and Wondery will air the SmartLess podcast one week before episodes hit other audio platforms, starting on August 1st. Amazon is paying as much as $80 million for the three-year deal, Bloomberg reports.
Actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes created and host SmartLess, in which they chat with another famous person. The gimmick is that one of the hosts invites on a guest whose identity remains a mystery to the others until the conversation starts. Guests so far include Vice President Kamala Harris, George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, Stacey Abrams, Stephen Colbert, Billie Eilish and Paul McCartney.
SmartLess will initially be available on Amazon Music and Wondery+, and it’ll be ad-free on the latter. Wondery will handle ad sales and marketing for the show. The deal also gives Amazon and Wondery the right to partner with future podcasts from the SmartLess team.
This is yet another major deal for a single podcast. Earlier this month, Spotify scooped up the rights to Call Her Daddy, reportedly for around $20 million a year. Spotify has shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars on other podcast deals, including ones with Joe Rogan, the Obamas and the Duke and Dutchess of Sussex. Amazon also has exclusive podcasts, such as shows with Will Smith and DJ Khaled. It bought the Wondery podcast network last year.
There’s something a little counter-revolutionary about high-end gaming machines made by suit-and-tie PC businesses. The idea of Lenovo, makers of the ThinkPad, building a gaming machine worthy of comment feels a little weird, and yet the Legion 5 Pro is just that. The Walmart-exclusive model that I’m testing costs $1,530, pairing AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 graphics. Powerful and affordable? That’s almost revolutionary.
Rounding out that spec list is 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. Mercifully, both components are user upgradeable. That piddly drive will barely hold more than a couple Calls worth of Duty before you’re reaching for an external drive. But these are the sort of smart compromises that Lenovo opted for to keep the price down, letting you add more RAM and storage as needed.
And then there’s the screen, a 16-inch, 165Hz QHD, X-Rite Pantone-validated IPS display with the new, taller 16:10 aspect ratio. At 500 nits, the panel can hold its own in bright light compared to many of its rivals, and the matte screen reduces the risk of glare. Watching 4K video on this thing is a very pleasant experience and I’ve enjoyed working from this device the past week or so that I’ve been using it. It certainly makes you want to spend hours at a time staring at gigapixel images of, say, Paris, which I definitely didn’t spend a long time doing this week (cough).
Lenovo wasn’t looking to pull up any trees with this design, which is little more than a refinement of what went before. It’s not as thin or light as its rivals, and looks better in a dark room lit only by the glow of an RGB keyboard and the odd Nanoleaf panel. But if you’re buying it as a desktop replacement that’ll spend 90 percent of its time plonked on the same desk, it’s fine. Oh, and the aluminum chassis is rock solid, giving you confidence on those occasions when you do need to take it somewhere. That matte gray paint job, while very business forward, hides a multitude of palm sweat-based sins, but will attract every speck of dust in a three-mile zone.
The Legion 5 Pro’s chunky chassis also means that you’ll find an excellent supply of I/O running around its deck. You get four USB-A (3.2 Gen 1) sockets, two USB-C (3.2 Gen 2) connections, HDMI, Ethernet and a 3.5mm headphone / microphone jack, as well as the proprietary power port. On the right-hand side, you’ll also find a hardware camera mute button, which replaces the dedicated hardware shutter from previous versions.
Even after several days of use, using Lenovo’s TrueStrike keyboard remains a pleasant but weird experience. The keys have a depth of 1.5mm, but Lenovo uses “soft landing” switches to make each actuation feel a little deeper than that. Every time you hit a key, you’re expecting the hard jerk of a mechanical keyboard, only to find a pillowy end and bounce back up. It’s like filling your shoes with water on a hot day and then stepping into them: It’s very useful, but your brain is telling you that something’s amiss here.
It’s worth noting that Lenovo took advantage of the Legion 5’s bigger deck size to include a numerical keypad. The company says that the numpad itself is full size, but to my eyes and fingers, it feels a little squashed compared to a regular external PC keyboard. The RGB backlighting is perhaps appropriately muted, but can be set to four different lighting zones when required. The trackpad, meanwhile, is perfectly functional, and the bigger size is welcome given how tight previous models have been.
I have less to say about the machine’s 720p camera, which is the very definition of serviceable. Light blooms, everything’s uncomfortably fuzzy and the overall effect is that of most ‘60s TV shows when they’d get the Vaseline-smeared lens for close-ups. If you’re looking to make a living from streaming, or you’re a professional Zoom-call-haver, buy an external device. Poor webcam aside, Lenovo gets props for offering a dedicated camera disconnect button since there wasn’t room in the space-starved lid for its customary shutter.
None | PCMark 10 | 3DMark (TimeSpy Extreme) | Geekbench 5 | ATTO (top reads/writes) |
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16 (AMD Ryzen 7 5800H 3.2GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB, 140Watt TDP) | 6,871 | 4,899 | 1,411 / 7,416 | 3.19 GB/s // 2.54 GB/s |
ASUS ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition (AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, AMD Radeon RX 6800M) | 6,992 | 5,189 | 1,457 / 7,691 | 2.8 GB/s // 1.5 GB/s |
Surface Laptop 4 15 (AMD Ryzen 7 “Surface Edition’ 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Radeon Graphics) | 6,620 | 512 | 1,048 / 6,551 | 1.9 GB/s // 985 MB/s |
MSI GS66 (2021) (Intel Core i7-10870H, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA RTX 3080) | 5,639 | 4,538 | 1,247 / 6,505 | 3.1 GB/s // 2.9 GB/s |
Benchmarks don’t tell the whole story, but the Legion 5 Pro comes in close enough to machines priced a couple hundred bucks more. When playing demanding AAA games like Cyberpunk and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I got between 50 and 60fps with the settings appropriately tweaked. Naturally, you’ll lose a little bit of that when you enable ray tracing, but it can handle hard work relatively well. The Legion 5 Pro has three pre-set performance modes which can be set inside the Vantage utility, or cycled through when you hit Fn+Q. One neat addition is that the power button will change color depending on which mode you’re in: Auto offers a white glow, Quiet a cool blue, and Performance an angry red.
Using a machine like this for general productivity work is a bit like taking an F-150 to buy a box of cereal, but it’s more than possible. After all, if all you’re doing is crunching documents, writing term papers, poking at spreadsheets and using Slack, this has more than enough. When transcoding a 28.2GB UHD H.265 video file to 1080p, Handbrake was able to crunch through it at over 40 fps, making it sturdy enough for even halfway professional video editors.
The Legion 5 Pro uses a dual-fan system which pushes hot air out of its chassis through a quartet of exhausts. Two vents at the back are complemented by one on each side, and if you’re not blessed with huge amounts of room, beware. Leave your hand, mouse, gamepad or drink next to one of those vents for too long and they will become uncomfortably warm. Playing Cyberpunk and Shadow of the Tomb Raider was kicking out enough heat that I wondered if I could make s’mores.
This problem is exacerbated with the aluminum underside of the chassis which gets too hot to touch. After a couple hours of gaming, I picked up the machine to move it somewhere else and damn: I thought I’d pulled a baking sheet straight out of the oven. It’s not hot enough to burn you, but it’s not something you wanna touch if you value not being in pain.
It’s also impossible to sugarcoat the sheer noise that this machine makes when the fans spin up. This thing is noisy — noisy enough that you’ll need to dial your speakers up to drown it out or grab a pair of headphones to claw back some of that immersion. This is an occupational hazard of gaming laptops, but it’s worth noting that this system is loud.
Another tick in the “not ideal” column is battery life, and despite packing an 80WHr battery, it will not last long when removed from an outlet. Our standard battery rundown test loops a video until the computer dies, with the brightness set to 65 percent and all battery-saving tech disabled. It managed to last for four hours and 43 minutes while using the integrated Radeon graphics, which is fine in the gritted-teeth sense of the word. Certainly, while you can handle a few emails or some light browsing while sat on your couch, this is not a device you can take away from a socket for a full working day without fuss.
One of the reasons that the Legion 5 Pro is compelling despite some of its flaws is its price, which is something. Lenovo has managed to undercut several of its competitors here, and there’s no wonder it’s only intermittently on sale right now. If you want a machine from Alienware with similar specs (the romantically-named M15 Ryzen Edition R5 Gaming Laptop) it’ll cost you $1,900. For that, you’ll get a Ryzen R7 5800H (same as here), RTX 3070 with 8GB RAM (same as here), 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD (same as… you get the idea).
If getting RTX 3070 graphics is a dealbreaker, you could opt for the Razer Blade 15 Base Model with a 15.6-inch FHD display, 10th-generation Intel Core i7-10750H CPU, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. You will, however, have to pay $2,000 for the privilege, which may be a non-starter for some. ASUS also offers the ROG Strix G15 — an all-AMD version of which we reviewed a few weeks back — with an RTX 3070, priced at $1,800. If you were looking for a machine in that $1,500-or-so bracket, you could get the $1,600 Razer Book, with a Core i7-1165G7 processor and Intel Iris Xe graphics. Alternatively, for $1,500 Acer’s Predator Triton 300 SE packs a Core i7-11375H CPU and NVIDIA’s RTX 3060 GPU, which seems like a fairly reasonable deal all things considered.
Despite all of the chaos that has so far made up the current decade, we’re seeing a new dawn of AMD’s high-er end chips winding up in gaming laptops. This Ryzen 7 5800H can beat (select) Intel chips in a number of benchmarks, and you can expect to see it crop up in a number of other machines across this year. And while wealthier buyers may be tempted by a far pricier machine with RTX 3080 graphics, the 3070 here shouldn’t make you feel like a second-class citizen.
There is lots to like about this machine, although the snips made to push the price down are sure to rankle some. The battery life is well below par, the thermals could do with refinement, and the webcam would look retrograde on even a five-year-old machine. But, if you’re going to stick this on a desk, keep it constantly plugged in to power and never do more than the odd Zoom, does any of that matter?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has implemented a new policy that will require car companies to report incidents involving semi- and fully autonomous driving systems within one day of learning of an accident. In an order spotted by The Washington Post, NHTSA mandates automakers fill out an electronic incident form and submit it to the agency when one of their systems was active either during a crash or immediately before it. They must report an accident anytime there’s a death, an injury that requires hospital treatment, a vehicle that’s towed away, an airbag deployment or when a pedestrian and or cyclist is involved. The order covers Level 2 advanced driver-assistance systems to Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles, meaning it includes the gamut of everything from Tesla cars with Autopilot to Waymo taxis.
“This action will enable NHTSA to collect information necessary for the agency to play its role in keeping Americans safe on the roadways, even as the technology deployed on the nation’s roads continues to evolve,” the regulator said. NHTSA said it would also require automakers to send in monthly reports detailing all incidents with injuries or property damage involving their automated driving systems. Companies that fail to comply with the order could face fines of up to $22,992 per day, according to The Post.
NHTSA’s order comes some two months after a 2019 Tesla Model S was involved in a high-profile crash where investigators initially said there was no one behind the car’s wheel. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later said it examined home security footage that showed the owner got into the driver’s seat before the fatal accident. Mere weeks ahead of that incident, Robert Sumwalt, the chair of the NTSB, sent a letter to NHTSA in which he called on the agency to implement stricter regulation related to automated vehicle technology. NHTSA “must act” to “develop a strong safety foundation,” he said, citing Tesla frequently in his letter.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t impressed when Amazon added a rotating base to the new Echo Show 10. Sure, the swiveling screen is useful for following you around the room during video calls, but it also felt gimmicky and unnecessary. Plus, it needs a lot of room to move around so you’re losing a significant amount of counter space. That’s why I’m glad the Echo Show 8 and 5 haven’t repeated that design. In fact, Amazon has changed very little between this edition and the last, but trust me when I say that’s a good thing.
It’s the Echo Show 8 that has seen the most changes, but most of those are under the hood: It now has a faster octa-core processor plus a much-improved 13-megapixel wide-angle camera (the previous model only had a 1-megapixel sensor). Plus, the Echo Show 8 can follow you during video calls without the need for a swiveling display. Instead, it uses digital panning and zooming, the same tech you’ll find in Facebook’s Portal devices (plus the Echo Show 10, when it’s not moving around).
This digital pan-and-zoom works well enough that I feel like there’s a cameraperson keeping my face in frame during video calls, tracking me as I move across my living room. This face-tracking feature works on every video calling platform that the Echo Show 8 supports, which includes Skype and Zoom, in addition to Amazon’s own services. (You can make video calls via the Alexa app or from Echo Show devices.) I found the video and audio quality to be generally quite good. That said, the auto-framing can be a touch glitchy; it sometimes takes a few seconds for it to kick in. Facebook’s Portal does a comparatively better job at this sort of automatic tracking, with hardly any lag.
The Show 5, on the other hand, only brings minor changes. It now has a 2-megapixel camera, up from one megapixel, which is still pretty meager. And it comes in a light blue color in addition to the usual black or white. Its camera does not have the pan-and-zoom capabilities of the Echo Show 8, probably thanks to its significantly lower resolution. Notably, the Show 5 currently does not support Zoom. (Amazon has said that it’s working with Zoom to roll out support to more devices, so this could change.)
The rest of this review might seem like deja vu, as everything else here is very similar to previous generations. Both devices have the same minimalist design. The Echo Show 8 has a 1,280 x 800 resolution while the Show 5 settles for 960 x 480. Photos and video look good on both, though I do prefer watching videos on the Show 8 simply because the screen is bigger. Both the Echo Show 8 and 5 also have an ambient light sensor, which adjusts the screen’s brightness and color temperature according to their surroundings.
On top of both the Echo Show 8 and 5 are volume controls, a microphone mute button, plus a camera shutter for privacy. The Show 8 has a better sound system than its smaller sibling, with two speakers instead of one. It delivers surprisingly powerful bass and impressive volume, easily filling my small office. The audio from the Show 5 isn’t too bad for its size, but it just doesn’t sound as good. I should note that both the new Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 5 lack the 3.5mm headphone jack featured on their respective predecessors, which means you can’t attach them to larger speakers.
Both the Echo Show 8 and 5 have a sunrise alarm feature, which slowly brightens up the display to mimic daylight’s arrival. However, the Show 5 is the only one that lets you tap the top to snooze. This is likely because Amazon is marketing the Show 5 as an alarm clock designed to be on your nightstand, while the Show 8 is meant more for the living room or the kitchen.
Like the new Echo Show 10, the two smart displays have Amazon’s updated home screen, which features multiple cards that let you view several topics at once, such as weather and sports next to each other. It’s contextual to the time of day as well; I saw the latest headlines during the day, for example, while at night I noticed a suggestion for a relaxing songs playlist. I like this mix of rotating screens a lot; it’s one reason why smart displays are a lot more useful than, say, a smart speaker. You can get a glance of information passively, without having to actively ask for it.
Using the Show 8 on my computer desk is a treat as well; it’s great as a digital photo frame and it displays the current time and weather conditions as well. I also found it useful in the kitchen, since it has access to a large library of recipes from sources like Food Network and Allrecipes; I can say “Alexa, how do I make chicken noodle soup?” to bring up a list of relevant results. All of the recipes have step-by-step cooking directions; some even have accompanying photos and videos for additional guidance.
The Show 5 fits better on my bedside table. Of course, it works just fine in other areas of the home as well, but its smaller size makes it best suited as an alarm clock. That said, I’m not entirely comfortable with having devices with cameras in the bedroom (even if there is a privacy lens cover). One of the reasons I think Google’s Nest Hub and Lenovo’s Smart Clock make for ideal alarm clocks is that they don’t have cameras at all, which helps allay at least some privacy concerns.
As with other Amazon smart displays, the latest Echo Shows support video streaming from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu. YouTube isn’t supported natively, though you can still access it via the built-in Silk browser. It’s definitely not as integrated of an experience as you get on Google’s smart displays. Additionally, there’s no support for Disney+, Paramount+ or HBO Max, all of which are available on Google’s smart displays.
The Echo Show 8 and 5 offer easy access to smart home controls, which you can use to adjust the temperature of your smart thermostat, control Philips Hue lights and more. As you might expect, these Echo Show displays are especially useful if you’re a frequent Amazon shopper. Adding items to your shopping cart is as easy as telling Alexa to do so. Plus, it shows a reminder when a Subscribe & Save order is about to ship, which helps avoid surprise packages.
I didn’t get a chance to test it, but it’s also worth noting that the Echo Show 5 is available in a Kids Edition, which comes with a year’s subscription to Amazon’s Kids Plus. It features a child-friendly home screen and a two-year guarantee against damage. Also important: It lets parents control the content and features children have access to.
The closest competition to both Amazon smart displays is Google’s second-generation Nest Hub, which has a 7-inch display. It retails for $100 — a little cheaper than the Echo Show 8 ($130) and a little pricier than the Echo Show 5 ($85), but it also offers slightly different features. The Nest Hub is better for those who prefer Google Assistant to Alexa, and it also offers more video streaming options. I also tend to prefer the Google smart display software, as it’s more visually appealing and intuitive than Amazon’s. It doesn’t have a camera so you’ll miss out on video calls and the speaker system isn’t as good.
Fundamentally, however, it’s not the hardware that will dictate which smart display you buy as much as which tech giant’s ecosystem you want to be a part of. If you already have Nest home devices and you want YouTube integration, you’re much better off with a Nest Hub. But if you’re already an Alexa user, an Echo Show would be a better option.
As for which Echo Show you should pick, the Echo Show 8 delivers the most value for the money. Compared with the Echo Show 5, it has a bigger display and superior audio, which is more than worth the extra $45. And it has the same auto-framing camera as the much more expensive Echo Show 10 (even if it lacks the rotating display). If, however, you don’t care much about video calls, and prefer one that doubles as an alarm clock, the smaller Echo Show 5 could be the better bet.
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