Can you replace your standard stick or upright vacuum with a robot vacuum that does all the work for you? I thought it had to be worth a try. Like most of us, I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life wrestling with a manual vacuum cleaner. The old faithful. The likes of Dyson, Vax, Shark and, naturally, Henry. I’ve not always had a great relationship with vacuuming – one of avoidance and utter boredom in my 20s – but I’ve come to understand why some might find it therapeutic, mindful, even satisfying....

The Looki L1 is one of the most unique wearables I spotted at CES 2026 . It’s a tiny little camera that’s shaped like some kind of obscure Pokémon and worn around your neck. It then tracks your day, provides AI “help”, and gently criticizes your life choices. At least, it did in my case. To test out the L1, I decided to wear it for a full day of the show....

In summary Xiaomi President predicts phone price rise AI bubble increasing memory costs Samsung could buck trend Smartphones are about to get even more expensive, according to a prominently placed executive, which means this Black Friday could be the ideal time to upgrade. Xiaomi President Lu Weibing has been speaking on his company’s third quarter earnings, and he had some interesting things to say about the immediate future of the smartphone industry....

LAS VEGAS — A healthcare network in Illinois is investing $40 million in Alcatel-Lucent switches to consolidate data centers into a private cloud. Advocate Health Care is the largest integrated healthcare system in Illinois, and the largest emergency and Level 1 trauma network in the state. It employs 37,000 people and has more than 250 sites of care, including 10 acute-care hospitals and two children’s hospitals. With all of those facilities, Advocate needed to consolidate, centralize and virtualize IT operations to reduce costs and power consumption, increase availability and uptime, make the network more flexible and speed application deployment, said Gary Horn, vice president of technical services and CTO in Advocate’s Information Systems department....

At a Glance Expert’s Rating Our Verdict An attractive, retro-tinged design and solid feature set are enough to make the Instax SQ6 an easy recommendation – throw in the low price point and it becomes one of the best instant cameras on the market right now. If you want to shoot square format instant prints without breaking the bank, this is probably the camera for you. Best Prices Today: Instax Square SQ6 Instax boasts that the SQ6 is its ‘first square format analogue instant camera’, which might confused anyone who remembers the Instax SQ10 – but since that was technically a digital-analogue hybrid, we’ll let Instax sneak through on a technicality....

Intel is still the leading CPU manufacturer worldwide, but the competition is stronger than ever. The rapid recent rise of AMD is reflected in the impressive Ryzen range, while Apple has successfully moved away from Intel and embraced its own silicon. After a few years of minor updates, Intel shifted to a new hybrid architecture with the launch of 12th-gen Alder Lake chips. It seems to have been a success, with significant improvements to both performance and power efficiency....

The end-of-life writing is on the wall for Intel’s high-end Itanium chip, with the launch this week of the high-performance usurper, the chip maker’s 15-core Xeon E7 v2 chip. Intel’s Itanium is found mostly in Hewlett-Packard servers running the HP-UX, OpenVMS or Linux operating systems. But the Xeon E7 v2 chip, which is based on the x86 instruction set architecture, is slowly encroaching on the market occupied by Itanium, with Intel positioning it as a high-performance alternative that can run Windows and Linux....

At a Glance Our Verdict The iPhone X is a glimpse of how Apple sees the future of its platform. Moving to a bezel-less design is something that maybe should have happened sooner, but it’s good to finally see an iPhone like this. Much depends on the Face ID technology though, so it’s too early to judge how the new layout and design will work day-to-day. The cameras look impressive, as does the OLED display, but the ‘bump’ might take some getting used to....

At a Glance Our Verdict With the new 6.5in screen option on the iPhone XS Max Apple now offers a direct rival to the Galaxy S9 Plus. But, despite Samsung’s phones remaining at their original selling prices, they’re still by far the cheaper option. That’s if you buy your phone outright, but even on contract there’s still a large gulf between these phones. If money is no object, the choice is – oddly – harder....

Sky is one of the most popular suppliers of TV, broadband and mobile phone services throughout the UK but being a big company doesn’t stop things going wrong sometimes. Here’s how to check what’s happening if you’re having problems with your service and you’re wondering ‘Is Sky down?’. Is Sky down? There could be a number of reasons why you’re experiencing problems with your Sky service such as Sky Q ....

At a Glance Expert’s Rating Pros Fast as any Gen 4 drive Sensibly priced Should work with PS5 Cons No hardware encryption No heat spreader included Only 1- or 2TB Our Verdict If you put aside the lack of encryption, everything else about the Exceria Pro is good or excellent. It’s one of the fastest Gen4 designs, marginally undercuts most of its competitors and provides a sufficient lifespan for most users....

At a Glance Expert’s Rating Our Verdict The Lenovo IdeaPad 720S is a laptop that proves you can sometimes get more if you pay less. Its more versatile than a lot of £1000-plus portable laptops because it has a separate graphics card, making it a passable gaming machine. That it adds this without ruining battery life or portability is excellent. It is one of the most versatile portables around. The one regret is that the laptop doesn’t have Nvidia’s latest GeForce MX150 graphics, using the older 940MX kind instead....

At a Glance Our Verdict It might be expensive but if you’re looking for a tablet with a difference, the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro has a Quad HD screen and a built-in projector. Stay tuned for a full review. Best Prices Today: Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro With its top-end specs, it’s not overly surprising that the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is a bit more expensive than its rivals like the iPad Air , Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10....

At a Glance Expert’s Rating Our Verdict LG has gone down an unexpected route with leather models which we like apart from a couple of colours. The so called ceramic model will be cheaper but feels cheap and plasticky. On the whole, hardware is once again strong – particularly the camera – but not massively different from the G3 and has tough competition. We feel build quality could be better with a metal frame and dimensions going down, not the reverse....

At a Glance Our Verdict Overall we’re quite surprised to see that the iPhone 6 and LG G4 are reasonably evenly matched in a way. They both have stand-out features as well as downfalls, so it’s going to be a case of weighing up the features you Consider to be most important in a smartphone. For example, if you want an exceptionally good camera or enjoy taking lots of selfies you might want to opt for the LG G4, but for a slimmer, more compact smartphone you’ll be better off choosing the iPhone 6....

At a Glance Our Verdict We’re excited at the thought of a Smart Display with the Google Assistant, and although LG’s seems powerful it’s not winning us over in the looks department. Proper testing might mean the audio proves it the one to go for but for now we’re keener on the Lenovo Smart Display. Best Prices Today: LG ThinQ Smart Display WK9 Smart speakers are all the rage but we’re seeing more and more smart displays now....

At a Glance Expert’s Rating Our Verdict If you have many devices currently attached to your network and need a more powerful router the Linksys EA9500 will fit the bill – but we just can’t recommend it at the price. It’s very impressive is certain areas – more clearly with four devices at once, but most people’s needs will be covered by much more reasonably priced alternatives. Best Prices Today: Linksys EA9500 Things are really moving on in the world of routers ....

Our expert team knows how to take the hard work out of Prime Day shopping. Overwhelmed by deals and prices? We know how to spot and verify the top deals on phones, tablets, smartwatches, air fryers, electric toothbrushes and much more. Tech Advisor Prime Day 2025 Live Deal Tracker 7 months ago , By Chris Martin Epic deals on Samsung’s brand-new phones We’re winding things down now (still a lot of valid prices in deals we’ve posted since day 1 so have a scroll through) but this is too good to miss....

Up until the very recent unveiling of the Circular Ring 2 , with its FDA-cleared atrial fibrillation detecting powers, we hadn’t seen a smart ring that promised deep health-tracking abilities. Most are designed to monitor your general well-being and fitness, though can deliver the kind of data that if you know what to look for, could suggest that something’s not quite right. Oura introduced a new feature to its Oura Ring Gen 3 and new Oura Ring 4 smart rings that it says can help to detect early signs of sickness....

The first Phase in Marvel’s Multiverse Saga has closed out on a wholesome festive note with The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which debuted on Disney+ last Friday. The short was a stark contrast to the last feature film in the series, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a nuanced and complicated exploration of grief – a movie that was itself the antithesis of the tongue-in-cheek (but also very hit-and-miss) comedy-legal series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law....