Strings of code in Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app hint at an upcoming pair of over-ear headphones that could compete with the AirPods Max, SamMobile reports. Samsung's reportedly referring to the headphones as the "Galaxy H1," and SamMobile says they could launch sometime in 2027. That would make these the company's first pair of over-ear headphones since the Level On in 2015, which was released well before Samsung acquired Harman and a number of other audio brands.
Connection status icons in the app standard show the design of over-ear, wireless Bluetooth headphones, but not necessarily exactly what these will look like in the end. Samsung …
The good news? Despite that, there are still many great options, including the selection we’ve tested and highlighted below.
Before you go for the cheapest option you can still find, consider biting the bullet on a more powerful laptop, especially if you’re buying for a college student. Prices are likely to continue rising well into next year — especially since all the memory being made through 2027 is already allocated. You can get a mostly tolerable laptop for under $500 and a good one for around $700, but spending more to get something like a MacBook Air gets you better build quality and enough performance headroom to last through four years of college and well beyond. (Many Verge writers and editors are still using M1 MacBook Airs from 2020). But even the modest options below (new or refurbished) should easily be good for more than a few years. The key is to avoid something that feels slow or janky on day one, if you can. It’ll only get worse from there.
If your school or curriculum recommends certain laptops or minimum specs, then you already know what to aim for. If not, our rule of thumb is to go with a Mac running Apple silicon or a Windows laptop running Intel or AMD chips released in the last few years. (For Windows machines, don’t go any older than 2022 or 2023 — Intel’s 13th-gen “Raptor Lake” or AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series.) Snapdragon X chips are also great options unless you’re a college student who needs to run specialized software not compatible with Windows on Arm (or if you want to play games).
But try to get 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage or more if you can — especially for college students. Eight GB of RAM is workable on macOS with the MacBook Neo, but Windows laptops struggle a bit with it. And for the most budget-conscious or anyone shopping for younger kids, a quality Chromebook is still great.
The best cheap laptop
Apple MacBook Neo
Score: 9
Pros
Cons
Impressive performance for the price
Perfect for a middle school or high school student
The best mechanical trackpad around
Solid speakers and screen
Small limitations: 8GB of RAM, slow storage, no keyboard backlighting, and only 20W charging with the included charger
Wish it weighed a little less, and its colors were more vibrant
The MacBook Neo is the easy pick for students from middle school to high school who need a laptop. There’s still no beating its balance of build quality and good-enough performance at this price. Students and teachers can get it starting at $599, and Apple offers refurbished models for $599 for the rest of us as well. If you can justify spending an additional $100, it’s worth getting the model with twice the storage and a Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which makes logging in and entering passwords much less of a hassle.
The A18 Pro chip is powerful enough for most high school students (and adults), and everything from its trackpad to its speakers and screen range from good to great, which is not the case for Windows laptops in this price range. Its only shortcoming by comparison is having just two USB-C ports. The 8GB of RAM and 256GB of base storage mean a student eventually pushes the limits of what this laptop can do sooner than a more powerful MacBook Air, but the Neo is still significantly cheaper.
The Neo is the best cheap laptop, but the MacBook Air is still the best laptop for most people, and the standard recommendation for college students. Every part of it is a step up from the Neo: It has a much more powerful processor, and it starts with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of much faster storage. And few laptops can match the Air’s overall build quality. It also means spending $1,299 (or $1,199 for students) on a 13-inch model, or $1,499 for the 15-inch. It’s a shame the Air no longer starts at $999 like it did just last year, but it’s still worth springing for if you’re buying for the long term.
The Airs have been so good for so many years now, you don’t miss out on much by buying a refurbished model if it’s substantially cheaper. Keep an eye on Apple’s refurb store, and retailers like Best Buy sometimes have great deals too.
Asus’s Zenbook A14 is a bit of a MacBook Air wannabe, but it’s a compelling alternative if you value a superlight Windows laptop with long battery life. The 2025 model sports an Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip, a nice 14-inch OLED display, and a sleek textured beige finish.
Asus Zenbooks are some of the sleeker, better-looking Windows laptops, and the Zenbook A14 is Asus’ wannabe MacBook Air. It has a good Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a lovely OLED display in an ultra-light chassis (it’s just 2.4 pounds / 1.09kg), all for $1,000 or as low as $700 on sale. It even has a solid port selection, with one USB-A, two speedy USB4, and HDMI 2.1. I really enjoyed the larger Zenbook A16 version when I reviewed it, but the A14 is even lighter and significantly cheaper. Like its larger sibling, the A14 is coated in Asus’ Ceraluminum finish that gives it a nice textured feel and unique look. (It’s a beige laptop!)
A cheap laptop with a great processor
Acer Aspire 14 AI
Score: 6
Pros
Cons
A great, well-rounded processor in a cheap laptop (if you get it on sale)
Acer’s Aspire 14 AI didn’t impress me with its screen, speakers, or build quality when I tested it against the Neo, but for $500 or $600 on sale, which it often is, it’s hard to beat. It has a solid Intel Lunar Lake processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a bunch of speedy ports. Getting two USB-A, two Thunderbolt 4, and HDMI 2.1 on a $600 laptop? Hell yeah.
A Lunar Lake chip means you get great battery life, and you can even do some light gaming. Its screen isn’t pretty and everything creaks, but with the money you save you can overcome some of its shortcomings with a mouse and monitor. Just keep in mind that the appeal of this laptop is what you’re getting for the price. If the deal winds change and Aspire 14 AIs are selling for $700 or more, consider something else.
I’m still testing the HP OmniBook 3 for a full review, but I’ve used it enough and I like it enough at around $500 to give it a nod. Its speakers and screen are not good quality, but they’re slightly better than the Acer Aspire above — just don’t look too close, or you’ll notice that its 1920 x 1200 resolution isn’t very sharp at this scale. At 16 inches you’re getting a big screen for cheap, but this laptop doesn’t feel large, as it weighs only 3.65 pounds / 1.66kg and is about 0.63 inches / 16mm thick (at its hinge, where it’s slightly thicker). And its sizable battery and efficient Snapdragon X chip allow it to last long on a charge. Plus, it’s got an ample-sized numpad for you numbers people.
Consider a refurbished ThinkPad
Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 (Intel 13th-gen, refurbished)
Lenovo ThinkPads are workhorse enterprise laptops, making older refurbished models a great pickup on the cheap. The T14 Gen 4 from 2023 came with Intel Raptor Lake chips, a 14-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS display, and plenty of ports — among them, Thunderbolt 4.
ThinkPads are awesome. They have great keyboards and trackpads, sturdy builds, lots of ports, and even a TrackPoint. They’re typically very expensive when bought new, and they have a reputation for lasting a long time. They’re Lenovo’s business line, so there’s a constant stream of used ThinkPads entering the secondhand market when companies refresh their fleets. That makes them a great candidate for buying refurbished or used. Lenovo sells many refurb units directly, so you know you should be getting something in good shape. Many of them are still expensive, but this ThinkPad T14 is an attractive example, offering a 13th-gen Intel chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for around $700. Or for a bit more you can get this ThinkPad L14 Gen 5 with a newer Intel Meteor Lake chip for around $1,000.
A Chromebook is good for web browsing, doing homework, and nailing the basics of browser-first computer use — when done well. The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 is a mainstay of The Verge’s laptop recommendations, despite being a few years old. It’s very affordable at just $350, and even with its 12th-gen Intel chip and 8GB of RAM it’s more than serviceable for ChromeOS. Google’s new Googlebooks are coming in the fall, but some earlyleaks are pointing at those potentially being pricier laptops (making me wonder what exactly their appeal will be).
A great convertible Chromebook
Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 (2025)
Score: 7
Pros
Cons
Excellent battery life
Speedy performance
Stylus support
Crummy, muffled-sounding speakers
No biometric login
Feels slightly pricey at $700 when a Lenovo with OLED and more RAM is just $50 more
If you can afford a slightly pricier, newer, and better Chromebook than the Asus, check out the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514. Its full price of $749 is a bit much, but when discounted to $600 like it is at the time of this writing it can be worth it. The Arm-based MediaTek Kompanio Ultra in this Chromebook paired with 12GB of RAM gives it very good performance and excellent battery life. And since it’s a convertible, it’s also great to use with an optional stylus for note-taking, drawing, and sketching.
A lot of automakers talk about wanting to minimize or eliminate driver distractions so as to make the experience of driving more rewarding and safer overall. Lamborghini has a different strategy; it wants the driver to become one with their vehicle. This helps explain the storied super car maker's tagline for the new Revuelto SV: the quantum of driving.
"For us, quantum of driving is the moment when you get into the car, you start driving the car, and the car and you become one piece," said Alessandro Farmeschi, product line director for the Revuelto, the Italian brand's top V12 powered model. "And you start just thinking about your drive, …
The version of The X-Files: I Want to Believe that premiered in 2008 was not exactly the movie co-writer / director Chris Carter intended to make. Carter wanted to bring agents Mulder and Scully back to the big screen with a grisly story about faith and the supernatural. But executives at 20th Century Fox felt that Carter's ideas were too dark, and he was pushed to turn the project into a PG-13 feature. Now, almost two decades after I Want to Believe's theatrical debut, Carter is back with a new director's cut of the film for Hulu that's much closer to his original vision.
"We got to tell a good X-Files story," Carter said of the original …
Arguably the coolest new photo feature for the Pixel 11 lineup is Google's new Camera Looks, which process image data differently at the sensor level to produce photos that don't have that "smartphone" look. The result is new styles like "Digi," which mimics the style of photos taken by older digital cameras. But to use Camera Looks, at least initially, you'll need to have one of Google's Pixel 11 phones.
"Our latest camera updates are only available on our latest devices," Google spokesperson Alex Moriconi tells The Verge. "We're always looking to bring experiences to more users, but have nothing to share at this time." That last sentence …
The AI opportunity is huge, but "it would also be a grave error in our minds to let excitement weaken our investment discipline," Kushner warns in his first-ever investment letter.
Over the last couple of weeks, hackers have targeted and broken into the systems of several water plants in the United States. Here’s what we know and don’t know about this wave of attacks allegedly carried out by the Iranian government.
Claude Monet's first paying work was caricature. At fifteen, he sold unflattering drawings of well-known men around Le Havre through a framing shop, and crowds gathered at the window to look at them. By his own later account, he was among the most successful artists in the Norman port city. — Read the rest
Roger Waters built the opening of Pink Floyd's "Money" in 1972 out of spliced tape: cash registers, torn paper, and coins. Open Culture posted a video of a German band that played those same sounds live at Abbey Road Studios, where Pink Floyd recorded The Dark Side of the Moon, and identifies the drummer as Sina Doering. — Read the rest
Pompous scholars were a standard joke on the Italian stage through the 16th century. Arnoud Visser writes in The Public Domain Review that Francesco Belo, a playwright from Rome, published the first play to put one at the center. In El pedante, from the 1520s, the schoolmaster Prudenzio "talks in a mangled mix of Latin and vernacular." — Read the rest
Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street. (Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)
The End of Oak Street is a movie from another time. I mean this both literally and figuratively.
In the literal sense, The End of Oak Street is about a street that is transported back in time. We open on an unhappy family at a block party sometime in the early 1980s, judging by the clothing, cars, and music. Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) is struggling to keep it together as her marriage to Greg (Ewan McGregor) disintegrates. She’s unhappy and writing a novel about that unhappiness; he’s out of work and delivering pizzas to make ends meet.
Their kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) are like the kids of so many 1980s movies: not nearly as oblivious as their parents seem, but hopeful life can revert to normal. Though everyone’s confusion may be amplified by how disjointed this whole opening segment is; there’s a weird disconnect here between how Denise and Greg react to his leaving the block party to make deliveries and what we learn later about his work situation. But picking nits about how much Greg has told Denise about their financial difficulties seems moot when, moments later, there’s a storm, a flash of light, and the entire neighborhood goes back to the Mesozoic for reasons that are never really explained.
Again, this is quite literally a movie about a town transported through time. The people of this pleasant neighborhood wake up as bait for dinos, mangled by marauding meatasauruses. (And I feel the need to warn that this is a hard PG-13; my kids love the first two Jurassic Park films, but I don’t know that I’d take them to this. Not just because of the violence—again, people literally eaten alive/ripped apart—but because there is an extended sequence of dog peril.1) The last hour or so of The End of Oak Street is like all the best parts of the Jurassic Park films rolled into one: an extended chase-hide-escape-repeat segment, featuring raptors, T. rexes, pterodactyls, and, uh, giant snake things, with writer-director David Robert Mitchell doing an outstanding job of building the suspense by hiding the beasties just long enough to stoke our interest and let the terror mount.
Just to linger on Mitchell for a moment, this movie calls to mind the work he did in It Follows, a film in which a stranger slowly walking towards you became a portent of existential dread. The heroes of that movie aren’t being chased by dinosaurs but by a poltergeist that functions a bit like a sexually transmitted disease, ambling at a steady pace in the direction of those who have been cursed. Never before has an audience been kept on the edge of their seat by the image of an old woman walking across a high school campus; Mitchell knows precisely where to position his actors to instantly convey a sense of space and the directions from which danger might spring. (For a bit more on It Follows, check out Assigned Viewing, below.)
Christian Convery, Maisy Stella, and a colleague in The End of Oak Street. (Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)
For all its references to 1990s dinosaur movies and 2010s indie horror, however, The End of Oak Street is rooted firmly in the cinema of the 1980s. And that’s what I mean, figuratively, when I say this is a movie from another time. It is an original film, bereft of intellectual property, focused on a family in peril that comes together through adversity, with a high-concept idea that is, on its face, a little goofy. I mean, look: It’s a goofy idea, this whole ‘unexplained wormholes transport a town back in time 200 million years, forcing ordinary folks to face off against dinosaurs.’ But if you can abide that weirdness, you realize that this is a more Spielbergian film than anything Steven Spielberg himself has made in the last few decades. (No surprise that J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot, the team behind Super 8, produced The End of Oak Street.) This movie is pure Amblin, undiluted 1980s.
The domestic box office has been on a real winning streak lately, particularly in the form of mega-blockbusters like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. But the real story of the year has been the surprise success of originals like Obsession and nouveau-IP like Backrooms. But those were low-budget breakouts; The End of Oak Street is a much pricier affair, with genuine stars and big effects. And, again, kind of a weird premise, one that’s hard to explain in a trailer. It’s a strange movie.
But it’s an original, and I think you’ll enjoy it.2 And we need strange, one-off originals like this to succeed if we want movies beyond the big tentpoles driven by superheroes and tired franchises.
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On this week’s Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, I talked to FIRE general counsel (and former chief counsel to FCC for a time in the 1990s) Robert Corn-Revere about the unprecedented overreach of Brendan Carr’s FCC and his active efforts to stifle speech that hurts the president’s feelings. Of particular interest here is Carr’s effort to redefine “in the public interest” as “in Trump’s interest,” a dangerous precedent for a regulatory body.
Coyote vs. Acme review
Lana Condor, Wile E. Coyote, and Will Forte in Coyote vs. Acme. (Courtesy Ketchup Entertainment)
This is, in part, a brief history of the economics of the streaming age and, in part, a review of the movie itself. A little taste of both parts:
At a reported cost of around $70 million, Coyote vs. Acme is perfectly representative of a very weird moment in history, when studios were a.) strip-mining their intellectual property while b.) throwing theatrical budgets at streaming-first productions, only to c.) realize this was a terrible way to do business if you’re not named Netflix and don’t have streaming revenue of $12 billion a quarter.
As understanding of that last part kicked in, Zaslav and his number crunchers figured (probably correctly) that it made more sense to take a tax writeoff on these films rather than dumping them to streaming, the idea being that you’re not likely to generate more subscribers by airing it than the tens of millions in tax savings you’d make by killing it. So they unceremoniously dumped a Batgirl film and a Scooby-Doo film before spending millions on post-production. This led to some noisy but impotent complaints. But when Warner Bros. announced in late 2023 that Coyote vs. Acme was to meet the same fate—despite having been completed and being ready for release—the online masses went into open revolt. Eventually, indie distributor Ketchup Entertainment picked up the title for a reported $50 million and, at the end of this month, is releasing it in theaters.
Was it worth the wait?
I’m pleased to say that Coyote vs. Acme is cleverly constructed and features lots of fun little gags from both the worlds of law and Looney Tunes, though it is decidedly “clever chuckle” funny and rarely “laugh out loud” funny.
I’m a pretty big fan of David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, despite the fact that I also find it incredibly frustrating for one very simple reason: It doesn’t follow its own rules. Horror movies need rules and internal consistency, and the rules for this horror movie are all over the place. To wit: It’s about a girl who is cursed with a sort of demonic poltergeist after having sex with a man similarly cursed. Having sex passes along the curse. (Imagine: spooky STD.) If the currently cursed person is killed by the murderous ghost, which only the cursed can see, the curse reverts back to the last cursed person, and the spooky STD walks, slowly, directly toward that person. The problem with this film that the following in It Follows is awfully plot-dependent, which undercuts the tension. If there are no rules, there are no stakes. (Mitchell plays fast and loose with the “rules” in The End of Oak Street in ways that I hint at, but do not reveal, in the second footnote below.)
Small complaint, I guess, as the movie is effective enough that I keep returning to it. And while I think his Under the Silver Lakeis a more profound film—indeed, I think it’s among the most important films of the last decade in terms of helping us understand how we got where we are, societally—It Follows and its treatment of sex as the curse of the younger generations also hits a pretty interesting mark.3
Though there will definitely be a contingent of people who are angry about the temporal paradox introduced by the film’s finale. We won’t go into that here; suffice to say, if you’re the sort of person who gets mad because a sci-fi movie doesn’t make perfectly logical sense, well, this may not be the movie for you.
If and when you find yourself in need of music that will meet you at the intersection of I love you more than oxygen and I hope you become a ghost in a house that I can burn to the ground and then build and burn again, Phoebe Bridgers will most certainly have something for you.
On “Lost Weekend,” Bridgers’ third full-length solo release and her first major release of original material since wrapping up her work with boygenius, the musician’s name is one of many in the stacked liner notes that include everyone from her partner Bo Burnham (who co-wrote seven of the album’s 16 tracks) and Maya Hawke (co-writer of two tracks) to Jack Antonoff (who produced the album), American Football’s Mike Kinsella, boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus and Conor Oberst, who adds harmonica to the song “I Can’t Wait” — but it’s still all her.
While standout tracks “I Can’t Wait,” “Kill Me” and “Haunted” are different in tone than the album’s main single, “Lost Boys,” that’s to be expected on an album that isn’t just about heartbreak or grief or the persistent search for joy, but all of that and more. In this one album, Bridgers not only mourns the loss of her father (who died in 2022) and the end of her highly publicized relationship with Paul Mescal, she sings of the everyday pain and pleasure that comes with just living.
“I have no secrets, only feelings/And I know those go away/There is a difference/Between lying and deciding what not to say,” she sings on “Haunted,” and that just hits so hard, as her songs are known to do and do especially well here, regardless of what mood you need them to help you through, which is the sign of a musical success.
Nearly two years ago, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in New York City. A massive manhunt followed, resulting in the arrest of Luigi Mangione, who quickly became a sort of folk hero for people fed up with the state of healthcare in the U.S., even if they may not support the use of violence in fixing or protesting the system.
On Friday, Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges in Thompson’s death.
“I shot Mr. Thompson and he died,” he told the court. “I knew what I was doing was illegal.”
Mangione also explained his motive: his back injury and experience with the U.S. healthcare system as a patient drove him to kill Thompson, although he was not specifically a customer of UnitedHealthcare. However, the company has a large reputation for denying claims to customers, especially compared to other insurers.
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s on Dec. 9, 2024, and police said they found a 3D-printed gun and a 3D-printed silencer in his backpack, as well as a notebook describing grievances with the healthcare industry, such as “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
Mangione is to be sentenced at a separate hearing on Dec. 18, which will be determined at the full discretion of the judge. At the state level, Mangione still faces murder charges and the possibility of life in prison, though his defense is expected to argue that both cases cover the same alleged conduct, which is essentially double jeopardy.
Where’s Harry Crane? Who cares? There’s a new episode of the podcast. Comedian, co-host of the Oh Hell Yeah podcast, handsome iconoclast, and MYAM producer, Brent Flyberg, returns to talk to Matt & Vince about part two of Mad Men’s season five premiere, “A Little Kiss.”
The whole office is still talking about Don’s birthday party, and it did have the effect Megan intended (“everyone is going to go home and have sex.”) for at least one department head, but no one wants to hear about that.
Joan visits the office, Don & Megan leave early to have some very weird sex, Pete upgrades his workspace, and Lane is a horny little freak with money problems. Should be relatable for most of our listeners.
Are you more of a virgin Lane or a Chad Don? Tell us in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.
Support the Pod: become a patron atpatreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for Pig Vomit, John B., The Plantain, & The Tangerine.
Am 20. August 2026 erhält Stalker 2 - Heart of Chornobyl nicht nur seine erste Story-Erweiterung Cost of Hope, sondern auch das große Update 2.0. Was für kostenlose Verbesserungen und Neuerungen die Aktualisierung mit sich bringt, hat Entwickler GSC Game World nun bekannt gegeben. Ein wichtiger Part ist die Technik.
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