Articles by Harish Jonnalagadda

The best Kindle e-reader is often the best e-reader money can buy. Like Xerox and Velcro, the Kindle brand name is now synonymous with e-readers, and Amazon dominates the category. The new Kindle Paperwhite (11th Gen) is a fantastic starting point if you’re looking to get started, and there are plenty of other great picks available at various price points. Here are some of our top choices when it comes to the best e-readers on the market.

1. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (11th Gen): Best overall

The Kindle Paperwhite set the benchmark for affordable e-readers for a long time now, and the latest model adds even more compelling features to the mix. The highlight is the IPX8 water resistance, which lets you take your e-reader to the pool. The Paperwhite can survive in up to two meters of water for an hour, giving you much more flexibility to use the e-reader.

Like the previous edition, the Kindle Paperwhite (11th Gen) has 8GB of internal storage, giving you the option of adding even mor…

Google and Samsung’s combined might is still not on par with Apple.

The Apple Watch occupies a cult-like status among iPhone users, and I didn’t understand why this was the case until I started using the Apple Watch Series 6 last year. But once I did, it was immediately clear why the smartwatch was so popular; it had features I actually wanted to use, the hardware was gorgeous, and watchOS was cohesive in a way that Wear OS and Tizen never were.

Simply put, the Apple Watch is in a league of its own. Because of its dominant lead in this segment, Apple hasn’t changed much with this year’s Apple Watch Series 7: the screen is larger and has thinner bezels, there’s IP6X dust resistance, and faster charging. You still get ECG and blood oxygen monitoring, all the workout modes you need, a bright OLED panel, and all-day battery life with wireless charging.

Samsung and Google redoubled their efforts with Wear OS 3, combining their strengths to create a unified smartwatch platform. While th…

The holiday season is on the horizon, and that means we’re starting to see some great Black Friday deals on all kinds of cool tech gear, from the best Android phones to the best headphones and wireless earbuds to pair with them.

Black Friday headphone deals:

Best headphone deals
Wireless headphones
Wireless earbuds
Wired earbuds

We’ll be regularly updating this list collection through the Black Friday weekend, so be sure to check back frequently if you don’t see the phone deals that you’re looking for. There are pretty stellar Black Friday headphone sales every year, but there can be a lot to sort through to find the best deals.

Whether you’re looking for something to keep you entertained on a walk or jog, noise-canceling headphones to let you concentrate while at work, or something that just sounds amazing for your epic video game battles, we’ve got you covered.

Where to find the best Black Friday headphone deals

There’s no shortage of sites where you can find headphone …

The best network-attached storage (NAS) for home is one that lets you stream your media collection and back up all the devices on your network seamlessly. A NAS essentially lets you create your private Netflix or Spotify, and most models on this list let you access your media over the internet. If you’re looking to build your own media server or need a solution for backing up data, these are the best NAS enclosures for your home, although if you were to start somewhere, we’d recommend the Synology DiskStation DS220+.

Synology DiskStation DS220+

Best overall

Bottom line: The DiskStation DS220+ ticks all the right boxes: it has robust internals, making it ideal for Plex 4K streaming, two Gigabit ports, and versatile software that offers a ton of features.

Pros:

Ideal for 4K Plex streaming
Up to 32TB of storage across two bays
Two Gigabit Ethernet ports
Versatile software with plenty of features
Powerful internal hardware

Cons:

No M.2 caching
No eSATA port

The DiskStati…

Here’s what we know so far about Google’s foldable Pixel phone. Or phones, according to rumors.

A mock-up of how the Google Pixel Fold could look.

For months, over-confident leakers claimed Google planned to release a Pixel foldable phone alongside the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro in fall 2021. Unfortunately, the Pixel launch event came and went without a foldable, but all isn’t lost; we’re confident Google is actively developing the Pixel Fold and that it’ll arrive in early 2022.

Google hasn’t announced a foldable phone yet — or even that it’ll be called the Pixel Fold — but it tipped its hand when it announced Android 12L, a new OS due out in early 2022 that improves the Android experience on tablets and foldables. So just as the Pixel 6 and Android 12 launches coincided with one another, the 12L release could signal when to expect Google’s next phone.

Samsung, Huawei, and Motorola all pioneered the category of foldable phones, pushing out expensive prototypes to eager consumers. …

Best answer: Face Unblur is a new feature on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro that relies on Google’s machine learning algorithms to ensure when you take a shot of a moving subject, its face isn’t blurry. It does this by taking photos from the primary and wide-angle lenses simultaneously and stitching them together to deliver images with clear detail.

Face Unblur makes great use of machine learning

Go through your phone’s gallery, and you’ll find at least a few photos where the subject you’re trying to capture is moving too fast, leading to a blurry face. Google aims to solve this problem with the Face Unblur feature on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. This feature relies on the custom Tensor hardware and uses Google’s machine learning skills. When it detects a subject moving too fast, it automatically takes an image from both the primary and wide-angle lenses and stitches them together. Here’s how Google describes it:

Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro simultaneously take a darker but sharper photo on the Ul…

OnePlus’s latest limited edition phone is its most ambitious yet.

OnePlus is known for creating some of the best limited edition phones in the industry; the Chinese manufacturer partnered with Disney for the OnePlus 5T Star Wars and OnePlus 6 Avengers Edition, and then switched gears to team up with Formula 1 outfit McLaren for the OnePlus 6T McLaren and OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren.

For 2021, the brand is leveraging another beloved franchise for a limited-edition variant of the Nord 2. OnePlus is partnering with Bandai Namco to introduce the OnePlus Nord 2 x PAC-MAN Edition, which is one of its most ambitious efforts yet.

The Nord 2 x PAC-MAN Edition is set to launch soon, and ahead of its debut, I had an email interaction with Oliver Zhang — who oversees OnePlus’s product portfolio — to talk about what the company is doing to differentiate the limited edition model. Zhang noted that OnePlus’s special edition products have to deliver in two areas: they should meet the “signature Fa…

OnePlus’s latest limited edition phone is its most ambitious yet.

OnePlus is known for creating some of the best limited edition phones in the industry; the Chinese manufacturer partnered with Disney for the OnePlus 5T Star Wars and OnePlus 6 Avengers Edition, and then switched gears to team up with Formula 1 outfit McLaren for the OnePlus 6T McLaren and OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren.

For 2021, the brand is leveraging another beloved franchise for a limited-edition variant of the Nord 2. OnePlus is partnering with Bandai Namco to introduce the OnePlus Nord 2 x PAC-MAN Edition, which is one of its most ambitious efforts yet.

The Nord 2 x PAC-MAN Edition is set to launch soon, and ahead of its debut, I had an email interaction with Oliver Zhang — who oversees OnePlus’s product portfolio — to talk about what the company is doing to differentiate the limited edition model. Zhang noted that OnePlus’s special edition products have to deliver in two areas: they should meet the “signature Fa…

Black Friday is just a few short weeks away, and it is always a great time to buy storage enclosures and hard drives. There have been a few shortages around hard drives in recent months, but availability is thankfully getting back to regular levels as we head into the holiday season.

While network-attached storage (NAS) enclosures haven’t had the same issues with availability, this category hasn’t seen as many new launches as in previous years. However, you’ll already find a few enticing deals for NAS enclosures, with other deals set to kick off in the coming weeks.

If you’re already using a NAS enclosure and are looking to make the switch to a new model, looking to increase the storage of your home server with additional hard drives, or are getting your first NAS, Black Friday is the ideal time to do so. In the meantime, I’m rounding up a list of NAS enclosures that you should take a look at during Black Friday.

Black Friday NAS deals:

Best NAS deals
NAS enclosures
Internal H…

OnePlus 6 and 6T users are not able to download any media on WhatsApp or access existing photos and video.

What you need to know

An OxygenOS 11 bug is affecting WhatsApp on the OnePlus 6 and 6T.
The bug blocks media from being downloaded, and a reset doesn’t solve the issue.
OnePlus hasn’t detailed when a fix will be available.

The Android 11-based OxygenOS 11 stable build launched nearly a year ago, and it made its way to the best OnePlus phones, including the OnePlus 8, OnePlus 7, and the Nord series. OnePlus also said it would roll out the update to the OnePlus 6 and 6T, making Android 11 the third platform update for these phones.

It took a long time as OnePlus had to work through a litany of issues, but the OxygenOS 11 stable build is now making its way to the OnePlus 6 and 6T. While that’s welcome news, the build has a particular bug that makes WhatsApp unusable. After switching to OxygenOS 11 on the OnePlus 6T, a family member was unable to download any media from What…