Hasta La Gadget!

Garmin has just announced a pair of new smartwatches intended for explorers and extreme fitness enthusiasts. However, these are high-end gadgets with high-end specs and, accordingly, high-end price tags.

First up, the Epix Pro series. The main draw of these watches is that they ship with a bright and crisp AMOLED display, a design choice Garmin has begun to fully embrace, providing a vivid picture without drawing too much battery life. There’s also a built-in flashlight with multiple intensities and a strobe mode, a red-only visual display option for darker conditions and plenty of advanced fitness features.

To that end, the Epix Pro series includes “dozens” of new, preloaded activities like soccer, basketball, horseback riding, racquet sports and plenty more. The fitness trackers now offer endurance scores and hill scores for advanced metrics. Runners and walkers will also receive notifications regarding points of interest along the route. There are new weather map overlays to view local environmental conditions and upgraded shading for making it easier to understand elevations within topographic maps. The Epix Pro line is available now and launches in three sizes (42mm, 47mm and 51mm.) Prices start at $900.

The Fenix 7 Pro series is for serious explorers, with solar charging, a powerful LED flashlight, mapping upgrades and a red safety light, all of which are intended to provide greater awareness when training in the dark, like a ninja. The heart rate sensor also got a significant boost, with new optical sensors and sport-specific algorithms that track your pulse rate across a diverse array of activities. There’s no ECG app, however, so you’ll have to look elsewhere if that’s a primary concern.

The new endurance score feature measures how easy it is to engage in prolonged physical activities, combining V02 sensors, hill scores and previous training data. Just like the Epix Pro, the Fenix 7 boasts an updated mapping system with weather overlays, points of interest and improvements to topographic maps. There’s also new preloaded activities like whitewater rafting and motocross. The Fenix 7 Pro is available in multiple sizes and designs, starting at $800.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/garmin-reveals-high-end-smartwatches-for-explorers-with-deep-pockets-110022376.html?src=rss

“Let’s do some math,” Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu mockingly responded to Republican Ralph Norman’s grumble on Fox News.

It’s officially the end of an era for the original Google Chromecast, with the first-generation model no longer receiving any updates or support, 9to5Google reports. Chromecast first came on the scene in 2013 as a key-sized device that promised to provide a Smart TV experience for $35, and it has done just that. Google has upgraded the initial Chromecast’s hardware throughout the years to keep up with streaming denands but is now leaving it behind for good.

In a release on Chromecast’s informational hub, Google asserted that “Support for Chromecast (1st gen) has ended, which means these devices no longer receive software or security updates, and Google does not provide technical support for them. Users may notice a degradation in performance.” Google last updated Chromecast’s support page back in April, meaning the announcement has gone unnoticed for some time now. 

Through the lens of Google alone, a complete pull-back on the 10-year-old Chromecast original has been a long time coming. The company has only looked after the first-gen’s bug and security issues (rather than larger-scale updates) since 2019. The last update came in November 2022 and was the first in three years. Google has also released newer versions since the first-gen, like the cheaper $30 Chromecast with Google TV (HD) and the $50 4K model. 

If you’re a loyal first-gen Chromecast user, the only thing to do now is to make sure it’s fully upgraded and hope for the best. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-has-officially-stopped-supporting-the-first-gen-chromecast-095205330.html?src=rss

Uber launched its Uber One subscription service in 2021 with the promise of various perks like free deliveries, but the main benefit was a five percent discount on eligible rides. Now, the company is eliminating that in favor of six percent cashback (in the form of Uber Cash) to be used toward rides, Uber Eats and more, TechCrunch has reported. This despite the fact that Uber One doubled its subscriber base to 12 million last year with the discount marketed prominently on the app.

“As Uber One is the best way to save across Uber and Uber Eats, we’re making it even easier to use your benefits on Uber’s full suite of products,” Uber’s consumer communications lead Becky Katz Davis told TechCrunch. In a letter to subscribers, the company suggested that consumers use their Uber Cash on fancier vehicles or Uber Eats orders. 

The move appears to be a way to help Uber boost its ride count and margins. Uber One subscribers now make up 27 percent of total booking, and over 50 percent in some markets, the company said recently. In addition, the service is “profitable,” Khosrowshahi said in an earnings call earlier this year. “And what we find is it’s a very, very effective way, essentially, to draw frequency and higher engagement with our customer base.” 

Uber One arrived effectively as a replacement for Uber Rewards, the company’s airline-like rewards program that was dropped last summer. The shift from discounts to Uber Cash could be a risky play, though. Uber brags on its Uber One landing page that members “save on average $27 per month with Uber One.” Now, though, riders will need to do some calculations to see if the new system is worth the $10 per month or $100 annual subscription price. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ubers-one-subscription-swaps-ride-discounts-for-cashback-rewards-085948944.html?src=rss

The new Volvo EX30 may be a compact EV, but the automaker’s expectations from it are unusually big, and it has reimagined traditional interior elements.