Google’s Pixel Buds Pro remain one of our preferred sets of true wireless earbuds, having earned a review score of 87 earlier this year for offering effective active noise cancellation (ANC), responsive on-ear controls, a solid seven-ish hours of continuous playback time with ANC on (and up to 11 or so hours with it off), and a powerful bass-forward sound that works especially well with hip-hop and modern pop tracks. A recent firmware update also added a more robust EQ tool. That said, in an increasingly crowded market, they’re a tougher sell at their typical going rate of $200.
Today, though, Wellbots has a deal that brings the earbuds down to $150 when you use the code ENGN50 at checkout. We’ve seen a few deals on the Pixel Buds Pro in recent weeks, but this deal marks the lowest price we’ve tracked for them to date, beating the previous low we saw during Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale earlier this month by $2.
We’re fans of the Pixel Buds Pro on the whole, but the earbuds do have some caveats worth noting. Call quality is just okay, for instance, and we found the included transparency mode to sound overly muffled. Its IPX4 water-resistance rating is basic, there’s no aptX support, and we had a few more issues with pairing than we’d have liked in testing.
All of those cost a fair bit more than the Pixel Buds Pro as of this writing, though. Upcoming Black Friday sales could always bring lower prices, but for Android users in particular who want a well-rounded pair of wireless earbuds in the $150 range today, this deal should provide good value.
Beyond the Pixel Buds Pro, Wellbots has a few discounts on additional Google devices we like. The Nest Audio smart home speaker, which we gave a score of 87 upon its launch in late 2020, is down to $50 with the code ENGN50. That matches the lowest price we’ve tracked. On the smart display side, the 10-inch Nest Hub Max is down to $159 with the code ENGN70, while the seven-inch Nest Hub is available for $50 with the code ENGN50. Those displays earned scores of 86 and 89, respectively, and both offers come in about $5-15 lower than the typical deal prices we’ve seen in recent months. Finally, the diminutive Nest Mini speaker is down to $20 with the code ENGN29—not the lowest price we’ve tracked, but still a decent price for those looking to hop on the smart speaker bandwagon.
Over the course of Pokémon’s first eight generations, the number of catchable monsters is nearing 1,000. And yet in that same time, the basic formula for the series’ gameplay has largely stayed the same (aside from some small tweaks or offshoots like Legends: Arceus). But after getting the chance to preview Pokémon Scarlet ahead of its official release in November, it feels like GameFreak has remixed a ton of longstanding tropes in a way that brings a new spark to its next release.
Starting off with the Paldea region (which draws inspiration from the real-world Iberian peninsula), Pokémon Scarlet and Violet expands on previous games (most notably Legends Arceus and the Wild Area in Sword and Shield) by offering a fully open-world design. This means there’s no set path when it comes to taking down gyms, which gives you much more freedom to choose where you want to go and in what order. On top of that, to help traverse the world, you get access to the game’s legendary Pokémon (either Koraidon or Miraidon, depending on which version of the game you choose) very early on, instead of having to wait until endgame to catch them like in previous titles.
Unlike previous titles, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet feature a full open-world design.
Nintendo
Even the gyms themselves have gotten an update, with the trials that you need to pass in order to battle Brassius (the leader of the Artazon gym) taking place around town instead in a single room or building. The impact of this is that the world of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet just feels more vibrant and lived in, which adds a new dimension to how you experience the game.
Of course, there’s much more to Pokémon than just gym battles, as riding your legendary Pokémon lets you literally run, jump and fly across the landscape. As you explore Paldea, you’ll encounter wild monsters roaming the region, which you can choose to battle or avoid as you see fit, though you’ll run into some random battles as well. There are even rare Titan Pokémon that you need to battle multiple times to best as you try to complete your Path of Legends, which is a separate story branch from your gym battles and run-ins with Team Star. And while you’re out exploring the world, if you don’t feel like directing combat yourself, you can bring out your lead Pokémon to find items or auto-battle other nearby monsters (with the fight taking place off-screen).
Mela is one of the bosses in Team Star and the head of its fire crew, the Schedar Squad.
Nintendo
Scarlet and Violet’s open-world design also means there are more places to run into Team Star (this generation’s Team Rocket equivalent). During one event, I had to break my way into a barricaded compound while using the new auto-battle system to take down 30 different monsters before my team ran out of HP. After that, I had to battle one of Team Star’s leaders while she rode a huge vehicle, which had a massive health bar to match. Meanwhile, standard combat still consists of turn-based battles with each monster having access to four different moves. And when it comes to catching wild Pokémon, your best bet is still to whittle down their health with attacks and status ailments before tossing a Pokéball at them. There’s no need to aim your throw like in Legends: Arceus.
When your Pokémon terastallizes, they turn all crystalline and get a crown that corresponds to their tera type.
Nintendo
But for Scarlet and Violet Gamefreak has added a new twist called Terastallizing, which allows a Pokémon to change their normal type to its hidden Tera Type. Take for example Tyranitar, which is normally a rock/dark type but changes to ghost type when Terastallized. This unlocks new ways to punish your enemy’s weaknesses while also giving you access to the new Tera Blast TM so you can take full advantage of your Pokémon’s more powerful altered state.
Alternatively, for people who like more cooperative fights, there are four-player Tera raid battles that allow you to team up with friends to catch Pokémon with rare Tera types. And unlike traditional combat, there’s no turn order to follow. You can spam moves to your heart’s content and if you get knocked out, you can cheer on your fellow trainers while you wait to be automatically revived. As someone who has long thought Pokémon’s core combat system has needed an update, raid battles are a lot of fun as a break from the main story, even if they do feel a little button mashy.
Bellibolt is one of the new electric-type Pokémon in the Paldea region.
Nintendo
And these are just some of the bigger changes. Gamefreak has tweaked a lot of other mechanics in a way that makes the whole franchise feel fresh again. So let me list a bunch here rapid-fire style. Instead of the standard eight gym badges to collect, now there are 18. Character customization is way deeper and can be changed at any time from the standard menu screen. Also, other trainers won’t initiate a battle on sight as they have in the past, you actually have to walk up and engage them on purpose. There’s even a new auto-heal feature that uses potions from your inventory to recover HP after battle, which saves you time sifting through menus over and over again. And what could have the biggest impact on Pokémon battles in Scarlet and Violet is that now you can now craft your own TMs.
In raid battles, you can fight together with up to four friends to take down terastallized Pokémon.
Nintendo
So while I only had a little more than an hour to play Pokémon Scarlet during my preview, I’m really happy to see Gamefreak mess around with its traditional format. The world is big and beautiful, there are now three main storylines that you can complete as you choose and there are a lot of other remixes and quality-of-life changes that make the series feel like it’s gotten a reno and a fresh coat of paint. And we haven’t even talked about all the new Pokémon yet.
I normally always go with the plant-type starter, but this time around I already know I’m choosing Fuecoco. There’s something about his goofy toothy grin I just can’t ignore. Then there’s Lechonk, which is a masterful play on words, and one of your rival’s main Pokémon Pawni is so cute and fluffy that I almost can’t handle it.
In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, you can ride your legendary Pokémon to quickly traverse the Paldea region.
Nintendo
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I was this excited for a new mainline Pokémon game. My only small concern is that I did notice a bit of frame-rate choppiness in some areas, which could indicate that Scarlet and Violet’s new open-world design is really taxing the Switch’s horsepower. However, since my time with the game was in a development build created for this preview and not a full retail version, it’s difficult to say if we should expect similar performance upon release. Regardless, I can’t wait to play more when Pokémon Scarlet and Violet officially go on sale for the Nintendo Switch on November 18th.
On November 2nd, the original Mario Party game and its sequel will be available on Nintendo’s Switch Online service. The games were first released in the late 90’s for the N64 and feature board games with various themes that you can play together with up to four friends. Like with every board game, you roll a dice to advance. At the end of each turn, you play a mini-game — some of them are are solo games, but others make you cooperate with or play against friends. Or CPU-powered bots… in case you don’t have anybody to play with. The first Mario Party has 56 different mini-games you can play, while the second one has 65, including duel mini-games that weren’t available in the debut title.
Although these two will be available on the service within a couple of weeks, Nintendo has lined up several more N64 games for addition. In 2023, the gaming giant will add Mario Party 3 to Switch Online’s selection, along with Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Stadium 2, which are strategy games that don’t have storylines. Since all the titles we’ve mentioned so far were originally released for N64, that means you’ll need a Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription to be able to access them. The tier will set you back $50 for an individual membership. That’s just a bit more than $4 a month, which is also what the basic subscription costs, except you’ll have to pay for a year-long membership at once.
On the one hand, Ultra Short Throw (UST) projectors offer a top-notch home theater experience at a fraction the cost of a comparably sized TV. On the other, features like Dolby Vision that you expect on a good 4K TV are nowhere to be found on any projectors, UST or otherwise.
That just changed with the launch of the Formovie Theater home projector. At a street price of $3,000, you get up to a 150-inch picture, a triple-laser 4K DLP projector with Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, speakers tuned by Bowers & Wilkins and Android TV. With Formovie’s color management system, it also promises color accuracy we’ve only seen on $5,000+ models like Samsung’s Premiere.
I’ve had a chance to test the Formovie Theater in a variety of scenarios, including Netflix, Prime, Disney+ and other streaming services along with a Blu-ray UltraHD player. Cutting to the chase, it was very impressive, apart from one or two issues.
Design and features
Steve Dent/Engadget
Though you may have never heard the name Formovie, it’s a joint venture between two better-known entities, Xiaomi and Appotronics. The latter makes the ALPD laser engines used in a number of projectors, including Barco commercial movie theater models. The Formovie Theater is based on the Fengmi T1 sold in China, but adds Dolby Vision and a color management system (CMS).
It has a nice-looking, discreet design that would fit into most living rooms. The rectangular dark-gray-and-black body is relatively small, with a pair of fabric-covered main speakers on the front and two tweeters on the side. As usual on UST projectors, the triple-laser light source and lens element are located in a trough at the top, with a sensor designed to shut off the powerful light should you poke your head in front of it (which I did, multiple times). It’s cooled by a fan that can be mildly distracting during very quiet passages.
It uses a 0.47-inch Texas Instruments XP DLP chip with a 1080p native resolution and 4X pixel shifting that effectively delivers a true 4K image. With 2,800 lumens of light power, it’s in the mid-to-upper-range of UST brightness levels. The triple laser allows it to cover 113 percent of the Rec 709 and 107 percent of the HDR BT.2020 color gamuts, while delivering an excellent 3,000:1 contrast ratio.
It also eliminates the rainbow effect that happens with single lasers and a color wheel. The $3,300 Hisense PX1-Pro and $3,500 Vava Chroma are some of the few other models in this price range with a triple laser engine – others (LG’s CineBeam HU915QB, the Samsung LSP9T and AWOL Vision LTV-3500) are $5,000 and up.
Steve Dent/Engadget
The Formovie Theater is also the only model for sale in the US with official Dolby Vision certification. As you probably know, Dolby Vision is an advanced form of HDR (high dynamic range) that uses dynamic metadata programmed by content creators on a frame-by-frame basis. To that end, brightness, color and contrast levels are generally superior to the HDR10 found on most projectors.
Keep in mind that projectors, even the latest UST models, generally aren’t as bright as 4K TVs – so you lose some impact of Dolby Vision. However, the Formovie can display more colors than any TV and even most monitors out there, so you do get the HDR benefit of a wide gamut and billions of colors. Other models like Samsung’s Premiere support HDR10+, which is similar to Dolby Vision but much less widely supported.
Another key feature is Android TV 11.0 support. Unlike with some other projectors, it supports 4K and Dolby Vision HDR streaming, so you can get the most out of Disney+, Apple TV+ and other supported services. It also comes with YouTube and numerous other apps, along with Google Assistant voice control. And you get a decent remote to access all that content, adjust picture settings and more.
You’ll notice that I didn’t mention Netflix there. As it stands, the Netflix app isn’t supported by Formovie’s Android TV implementation. “At this time we are negotiating with the Netflix team, however, we can’t commit that Netflix will work on our device in the near future,” a spokesperson told me. Sure, you can use a $30-50 4K streaming stick, which I did, but it’s unfortunate that the world’s most popular streaming service isn’t available natively.
Steve Dent/Engadget
Other than that, however, the Android TV experience is good, with every other streaming app (Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, etc.) working well. It has Chromecast built-in so you can cast from your phone, tablet or PC. The remote is basic but functional, with dedicated buttons for YouTube and Google Assistant. The latter can be activated by the usual “Hey, Google” command that’s picked up by the projector’s far-field microphone.
In any case, Formovie is still ahead of some rivals in terms of its smart TV implementation. Optoma’s latest UST projector, the CinemaX D2, only offers smart TV features through an external dongle, for which they charge a cool $200.
It comes with three HDMI inputs at the back, including one with eARC enhanced audio capabilities. It also offers SPDIF digital output, a 3.5mm line out, two USB-A ports and an ethernet input. The 42-millisecond lag time (according to Projector Central), is sufficient for light gaming, but not anything beyond that.
Finally, the Formovie Theater has a fairly impressive audio implementation. The built-in speakers are tuned by HiFi company Bower & Wilkins, and it supports Dolby Atmos surround sound if you have a compatible soundbar or 5.1 system.
Image and sound quality
Steve Dent/engadget
Setting up the Formovie Projector was fairly straightforward on my 100-inch ALR screen. At that size, the bottom of the screen sits 14.6 inches from the bottom of the projector at a distance of just nine inches away. Once the projector is roughly in place, you use the thumbwheel controls on the feet to level it front to back and side to side. It’s best to avoid keystone correction as it can distort the picture, but it’s there if needed. Some focus adjustment may be required the first time you use it, but it’s best to wait until the projector has warmed up.
I had high expectations for the Formovie Theater’s image quality, and I wasn’t disappointed. I started by testing it in an environment with daylight coming in to see how it would function as a TV substitute.
With just “Movie” mode selected in SDR (standard dynamic range) mode, I saw a vibrant 4K image with natural-looking colors and accurate skin tones. Sharpness was good, though not quite up to what I’ve seen with Samsung’s much more expensive Premiere models. It’s likely that the lens (a critical piece of gear on a UST projector) isn’t quite as good, though something obviously has to give on a projector costing less than half as much.
Color accuracy is lower “Sport” or “Vivid” modes, but they offer the most brightness and highest contrast levels, well over 3,000:1 – the best of any UST projector. So these are good settings for watching regular cable TV, sports and so on, even with a fair amount of ambient light coming in. Other settings include “Standard,” “Game” and “Child,” designed to work well for kids’ shows and cartoons.
Steve Dent/Engadget
Next, I switched over to Dolby Vision mode, with the projector displaying the Dolby Vision logo when it detects a source. I found it best to use this mode with the room as dark as possible.
I watched desaturated scenes of Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit, detailed segments in Prime Video’s LOTR: Rings of Power and the bright and punchy F1: Drive to Survive from Netflix. I also watched MIB International, Thor: Ragnarok, Loki, and other movies and series, along with Aquaman and Earth on Blu-ray UltraHD.
Right out of the box, colors in Dolby Vision HDR mode looked accurate through a variety of sources, with much better detail in the shadows and bright sections than in SDR mode. Colorful scenes in MIB International and Earth showed off the wide range of colors and gamut available. Skin tones were pleasing and colors generally looked accurate. However, contrast was slightly reduced compared to the SDR. Another very small issue is that very bright scenes lacked detail, possibly because the projector isn’t tone-mapping them correctly.
I also looked at HDR10 content from Prime Video (which mostly supports HDR10 and HDR10+, and offers just a few Dolby Vision shows), including Bosch and The Boys, along with some 4K HDR10 YouTube content from Mystery Box. Again, Everything looked very punchy and bright, with colors that seemed to pop out of the screen.
Steve Dent/Engadget
The Formovie Theater has a slight blue bias out of the box, but it has a wide array of controls to correct that (white balance, grayscale and a Color Management System). Using an Xrite i1 Display Pro, I was able to get a nearly perfect white level, but frankly, it was a tiny adjustment – something hard to see by eye. However, you should definitely turn on the “Color Space” mode (it’s off by default) or it won’t read the correct gamut from your source.
As for audio quality, the Formovie’s sound was crisp and free of any distortion, matching some soundbars I’ve heard. Dialogue was clear, whether from deep or high voices, so I never missed any key moments. It even offers good soundstage that projects out to fill out the large screen.
It lacked bass as you’d expect, but overall, sound was surprisingly good for built-in speakers. I’d imagine that most people springing for a product like this would also invest in a 5.1 home theater setup to get the best out of the projector’s Dolby Atmos support – but the Formovie’s speakers do the job very well if you don’t.
Wrap-up
Steve Dent/Engadget
The $3,000 Formovie Theater offers features and image quality not found in any other UST projector even remotely in this price range. With a triple-laser engine and Dolby Vision, it delivers a bright picture, high contrast and accurate colors. And if you’re not quite satisfied with the picture right out of the box, there are a wide range of controls to adjust and calibrate it.
When you’re not in movie purist mode, it’s also a great projector to use with some daylight streaming in for sports and regular TV. And the audio capabilities are a strong bonus, giving you a very minimalist setup if you don’t feel like splurging on a 5.1 surround sound system. The main disadvantages are the lack of Netflix support and a slightly noisy fan.
Best of all, the pricing is on the low end for a UST projector, and spending an extra couple of thousand dollars doesn’t give you a lot more. In fact, if you really want Dolby Vision, the Formovie Theater is the only UST projector option available.
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