Articles by Ara Wagoner

Your phone may or may not be dirtier than a toilet seat right now, but luckily you can fix that with the best phone sanitizer. After all, our phones pick up a whole heap of bacteria, germs, and other nastiness when we set them down throughout our days. Cleaning our phones is paramount. While ultraviolet phone sanitizers can cost a pretty penny, they’re 100% worth the investment if they can keep you from getting sick, now more than ever.

Best by a landslide

PhoneSoap 3 UV Cell Phone Sanitizer and Dual Universal Cell Phone Charger

Staff Pick

$80 at Amazon – $80 at Best Buy – $80 at Target

PhoneSoap is one of the originals and is still one of the most trusted ultraviolet phone sanitizers around. Reliability and excellent build quality are part of why we love PhoneSoap’s products.

Flip and repeat

HoMedics UV Clean Phone Sanitizer, UV Light Sanitizer

From $21 at Amazon – $80 at Best Buy – $28 at Walmart

This sanitizer keeps a slim, travel-friendly profile by being collaps…

The best Samsung Galaxy S20 cases protect one of the most beautiful phones ever made, consisting of slippery metal and scratchable glass. So if you’re worried about scuffing up the investment, there’s no time like the present to grab yourself one of the best Galaxy S20 cases that are available right now, from heavy-duty to leather to thin and lightweight options.

Mesmerizing colors

Caseology Parallax

Staff Pick

From $14 at Amazon
$15 at Walmart

This hybrid honey of a case has a lot in common with the Spigen Neo Hybrid. Still, it’s got better color combos for that great protection, including a new teal “Aqua Green” that is even more alluring in person than the renders do justice.

Durable and diamond clear

Ringke Fusion X

From $11 at Amazon
$13 at Walmart

The Fusion X is one of those cases you’ll either love or hate the second you see it. I love it, and if you do, too, this rugged clear case will give you a distinct look and some beefy corner air cushions.

Fabulous fi…

The best chargers to buy today for laptops, Android phones, and everything in between these days are GaN chargers, short for Gallium nitride. Semiconductors made with Gallium nitride like the Anker Nano II can be smaller than traditional silicon chips, and smaller chips make smaller, lighter, and ultimately better chargers. The tech has been around for a couple of years now, but this is still a relatively small field. These are the best GaN chargers with Power Delivery charging you can buy today.

Too small to pass up

Anker Nano II 45W

Staff Pick

This 45W charger is smaller than most 30W chargers, thanks to what Anker calls “GaN II” chips, making it even more efficient and limiting heat buildup. The folding prongs also make it perfect for travel.

$36 at Amazon $36 at Walmart

Best dual-port charger

RAVPower GaN PD 90W Wall Charger

I love the utility of this charger. You can charge a Macbook at top speed, charge two Chromebooks at top speed, or fast-charge a laptop and a tab…

As millions of us continue to learn and work from home, Prime Day deals will make a great time to replace your aging desktop or add another Chromebook to your family’s collection. Most of the best Chromebooks have been available for over a year now, which means that deals are much more likely this year than they were last year — when we were also in the midst of the 2020 Chromebook shortage.

Part of why Chromebooks have (almost) always had great deals on Prime Day is that mid-range Chromebooks come down to budget prices, and budget Chromebooks come down to impulse-buy prices. Considering that Chrome OS is designed to run on more affordable hardware to begin with, and that means that Prime Day is the best time to get a laptop, especially a budget laptop.

No matter your budget this Prime Day, Google has durability and usability standards for almost all Chromebooks — because most models are designed for chaotic classrooms or unforgiving businesses — that make Chromebooks ideal f…

The Google Pixel 4 is a significant switch from the previous Pixels, ditching the two-tone glass and the fingerprint sensor. However, it’s still a glass-backed flagship phone. While it’s important to protect any phone from dust, dirt, bumps, and scratches, it’s especially important to do this from the get-go with a glass-backed device. So whether you want a clear case that can show off the Pixel 4’s loveliness or prefer a more robust heavy-duty case to keep things locked down, we’ve spent hours looking for the best Pixel 4 cases out there.

Slim grip

Spigen Liquid Air

Staff Pick

This slim case features a wonderful texture on the back and sides, allowing you to add a bit of drop protection and a lot of grip without succumbing to the same old siren song of the carbon fiber case.

$13 at Amazon

Dependable defender

Tudia Merge Series

Prefer your cases with a bit more protection? Tudia’s Merge Series features the classic hybrid format, four color options, and an excellent price …

“What’s the best Pixel 4 wireless charger?” That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. After being hobbled on the Pixel 3, Google has answered our prayers and made the Pixel 4 more widely compatible with fast Qi charging by supporting 10W charging on far more chargers through the Extended Power Profile, but finding EPP chargers has needed a decoder ring and a fair amount of luck, but I think we’ve cracked it with this group. There are plenty of amazing wireless chargers out there. And whether you prefer vertical stands that you can use with Motion Sense’s swift face unlocking and flat pads, there are ample options now for the Pixel 4.

Name-brand quality

Anker PowerWave Alloy Pad

Staff Pick

Anker has many wireless chargers available, but this is one option that people consistently report offers a quick charge for the Pixel 4. Even better, this is one of the few Anker pads that are compatible with Power Delivery or Qualcomm QuickCharge.

$30 at Amazon$30 at Walmart$30 at…

The best Chromebook can provide a top-notch computing experience today and for years to come. They’re perfect for students, grandparents, and anyone looking for a trouble-free laptop with long battery life. We’ve reviewed and rated the absolute best Chromebooks so that you can find the best value at any budget. Our buyer’s guide will help you find the perfect Chrome OS laptop or tablet if you’re switching from a Windows or Mac, or if you’re buying your first laptop entirely.

What are the best Chromebooks you can buy today?

The beauty of the Chromebook market is that there are so many options to choose from. If you want something specifically for portability and battery life, there are numerous dependable choices. Similarly, if you don’t plan to move it from a desk and would prefer a big, beautiful display and plenty of CPU power to back it up, there are lots of options for you, too.

Our top pick is the Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook, which hits all of the right markets when it comes t…

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

I have used Chromebooks since 2014 and used them full-time for four years. Some of my Chromebooks have been premium and luxurious, like the Google Pixelbook and the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, but the ones I’ve used longest are 11.6-inch budget-minded models like the Lenovo C340 and C330. Many tech enthusiasts revile Chromebooks as “fake laptops,” thinking they can’t “do anything” because they don’t support classic computer applications like Windows and Mac.

Well, I’m back on my first new Windows laptop in a decade, the Acer Aspire 5 that I will be reviewing in the coming days. It’s been a serious adjustment, coming back here after all these years on a Chromebook, and as I remember all the arguments people make about why a “cheap” Windows laptop beats a cheap Chromebook, they’re just all falling flat for me.

Chromebooks are not just cheap, disposable laptops

Let’s start with the definition of “cheap” in each category. A “cheap” Ch…

The best password manager is one you actually use.

While Google may be trying to build a password-free future, the present current forces us to make a new account and new password for almost every single website we use. From our most secure banking apps to some frivolous web game we use to kill time between meetings, everything has a password and an email/username that we need to keep track of.

While most of the best password managers are paid and add features like VPNs, 2FA token keeping, and identity monitoring, you don’t really need most of that stuff. For most of us — myself included — we just need somewhere to easily dig out passwords when logging into our apps and websites, and Google Password Manager does that perfectly for free on Android and Chrome. Here’s how to use Google Password Manager on both of these platforms to enter, modify, or delete your passwords.

Google Password Manager:

How to use on Android
How to add passwords on Android
How to activate or manage …

I’m not mad, Fossil, I’m just disappointed.

What you need to know

Fossil admits none of its current Wear OS watches will see the new Wear platform.
Fossil was hyping premium watches coming later this year that will be powered by the new platform to CNET when it confirmed what we’ve been dreading for weeks.
Considering all Fossil watches were powered by either the Wear 3100 or 2100, this isn’t surprising, but it’s still a major disappointment to anyone who bought a Fossil watch in the last year or two.

Now’s both a wonderful and terrible time to be an Android smartwatch fan. On the one hand, Google and Samsung are finally teaming up to give us the new Wear platform that we’ve wanted for years. On the other hand, it means that it’s hard to recommend buying any of the best Android smartwatches today, because we already know that no Tizen watches will get the new system, and there’s a giant question mark looming over whether any current Wear OS watches get the new system.

Fossil ha…