This is the second month in a row that Samsung managed to headline our monthly Best Gadgets list. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 were impressive enough to share the spotlight. In the market for a comically large TV? The 86-inch Vizio TV offers a lot of size for not so much money. The Beats Pill returns, reclaiming its spot as one of the best portable speakers you can buy now. And finally, have you ever imagined what it would be like to be a modern-day bard? Teenage Engineering’s EP-1320 Medieval Sampler should help fulfill that very particular fantasy.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is a better phone than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 in many small and a few big ways. It is a better-feeling phone and better-looking, too. The new clamshell’s crease on the internal screen is far better than that of the Z Flip 5. Rather than a ravine, it feels more like a short gully. It doesn’t catch the light nearly as much, and it feels much smoother to run your finger over it. This is the first flip foldable with a vapor chamber to cool the device under pressure.
The Z Flip 6 is also more powerful than the previous gen, but not in any way you’ll feel during use. It’s good that it still lasts a little longer than the previous Flip. The new clamshell has a 4,000 mAh battery compared to the 3,7000 mAh last year’s. I wish it were both a beautiful piece of tech and something that fits a broader niche in terms of functionality.
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The Galaxy Z Fold 6 retraces all the steps that have worked so far for the company to find some relative success in this niche gadget category. It’s powerful, well-built, and capable of handling all the software tricks Samsung pushes through Galaxy AI. The Z Fold 6 is a worthy update if you’re due for a new foldable and are three years behind. If you can hold out, waiting a year to see how Samsung refines the camera hardware wouldn’t hurt.
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is like a portable TV screen that you can prop against the mirror as you groom for the day. It has a laptop-like desktop mode you can engage by plugging it into a display. It can stream cloud games and transform into a handheld console by fitting into accessories like the Razer Kishi Ultra.
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Apart from the absence of dust resistance, I couldn’t find a single flaw on this phone. It aces the crease and hinge, features a battery that lasts all day, and takes beautiful night and awe-inspiring action shots. More importantly, it offers the largest and most functional external screen with incredibly easy navigation and enough functionality not to make you want to flip your phone open for quick tasks.
Motorola made two big claims on this phone: an external display that “allows you to do everything without flipping the phone open” and “outstanding low-light performance,” both successful. Last year’s Razr lacked both, so if you’re considering upgrading from that one, there’s no reason you shouldn’t.
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I believe the Pill is a modestly priced speaker that offers so much more than you would expect from it. It also seems to have no premium for being made by Apple, commonly referred to as the Apple Tax, which is surprising. At just $150, it features impressive high-end and mids, a bunch of portability-focused features, and some frills such as the Amplify and Stereo Modes or the lossless audio over USB-C.
There are punchier low-end alternatives out there for the same price, so I wouldn’t recommend the Pill for just the bass. The 24-hour battery life is more than double what you get on similar speakers in this range (10-15 hours), and the new Android compatibility features extend the target audience to people who want to carry around a small speaker that can produce some big audio.
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The Vizio’s 86-inch 4K TV is an interesting option at $1,000 MSRP for its mammoth size. My office watched a week and a half of the 2024 Paris Olympics action on this 86-incher. The screen was so large it wouldn’t fit on the table we brought to a new office space, so it sat on the floor instead but entertained the entire Giz staff. It’s a DLED TV, so you can’t expect such picture quality you’ll find on 4K QLED like Sony’s Bravia 7, but you’re also not paying more than $2,000 MSRP for the 65-inch or bigger version of the TV.
You’ll likely need a little to help put the feet on this big boy, but once they’re on, I found the 86-inch screen is very, very stable. I could rack it with most of my strength and not even hear the plastic strain. Vizio’s redesigned UI is now easier than ever to navigate. Once the main page is loaded, it’s easy to find your most-used apps and services in the folders next to your apps and inputs. Vizio’s updated UI lets you access your apps easily without any jumbled menus or unnecessary clicking around—and that’s the most important thing. The TV and settings menus are also straightforward, and they avoid all the unnecessary clicking around I get on LG TVs. It’s better to go into this TV without any bright-eyed visions of big-screen bliss, especially if your main hope is to save a few hundred bucks on your display.
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If you are hankering for modern medieval tunes, the EP-1320 is one of the most fun devices you can use. The EP-1320 has 128 MB of storage and 64 more MB of memory than the EP-133, which this is a reskin of. Effectively, the Medieval is an EP-133 with the added 220 default medieval instruments and sound effects. You can still load your own sounds and samples onto the EP-1320.
It’s so portable with relatively simple controls that I could go from knowing nothing about Teenage Engineering’s sampler to creating a simple track from scratch in less than an hour. The demo songs included with the Medieval are useful for a quick burst of inspiration; I enjoyed all the different samples on the device. If you’re especially keen on the theme, it will become your favorite little device for playing around with tunes.
The Asus TUF Gaming A14 is a subtle but surprisingly powerful gaming laptop that won’t break the bank at $1,500. It has a slim profile and no-frills design but is a powerful device under the hood. The new AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 chip easily beats Intel’s Meteor Lake lineup from earlier this year. It’s brought down by a lack of upgradability and limited spec options, but it makes up for it by being a smooth operator. It feels more like an ultrabook than a gaming laptop. It weighs just a bit more than 3 pounds, and while the keyboard backlight is bright, it’s not overt. It runs quietly, even under stress, and can still play graphics-intensive games at fair frame rates.
No other business laptop in HP’s line-up does it better than the HP Elite x360 1040 G11 2-in-1, as long as you don’t mind dealing with a bit of bloat. Priced at $2,300, the Elite x360 comes to the arena with a Core 7 Ultra processor and integrated Intel graphics, which lends itself to high performance. The Elite also brings a bright, responsive touch display, four powerful speakers, almost 12 hours of battery life, and a comfy keyboard. You get those 360-degree hinges and a bundled pen to add even more versatility. And for IT departments and consumers who value security, the Elite x360 has many features to protect your data. It’s a lean, mean, business-ready machine.
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