Wongsakorn 2468/Shutterstock If you’ve invested (probably a good portion) of your hard-earned money in an OLED monitor or TV, you may have noticed one of the most annoying features of panel technology, especially during gaming: flickering, especially in the darkest areas of the screen. This type of flickering, which is not unique to OLED panels, is called variable refresh rate (VRR) flickering and is caused by large fluctuations in frame rate, the speed at which images are rendered by your display. This flickering is more evident in gaming, as games…
Author: Amelia Scott
MDV Edwards/Shutterstock We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Affordable home security isn’t as hard to find as it used to be, especially with brands like Blink on the market. The Amazon-owned tech company specializes in indoor and outdoor security cameras that won’t break the bank while still offering essential features like motion detection, two-way audio, and strong battery life. Most Blink products also have an LED status light for instant monitoring of device status, and if yours is flashing red, it could mean different things, although…
Kenneth Cheung/Getty Images Google Maps and Waze are two of the most popular navigation apps available on Android and iPhone, and although Google owns them both, the apps offer very different experiences. Google Maps is the more comprehensive navigation app of the two, with a richer design that offers more detail on geography and road layout than Waze. Google Maps also includes more discovery tools that make it easy for users to find places of interest and key information about them while supporting public transportation and walking directions. Finally, Google…
Christian de Looper/BGR We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X2 series chips, comprising the X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme, at the Snapdragon Summit held in September last year. In addition to the two chips, there is also the Snapdragon X2 Plus, which was later revealed by the company. During the launch, the silicon maker claimed that the X2 series offers significant improvements in performance and efficiency over the first-generation Snapdragon X series, offering a high core count of up to 18…
Images Tada/Shutterstock We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. The M1 MacBook Air was a monumental laptop because it marked Apple’s move away from Intel processors to its own system-on-a-chip (SoC), known as Apple Silicon. The M1 was the first Apple Silicon chip, introducing unified memory in which the CPU and GPU share the same memory pool. It offered significantly better performance and efficiency than the Intel chips that preceded it, resulting in exceptional battery life. The M1 MacBook Air launched in November 2020, making it almost…
Piksel/Getty Images When you need to charge your phone, it’s easy to think that any USB cable will do. As long as it transmits power from the wall outlet to the phone, even a cable purchased at a gas station, supermarket, or dollar store at an ultra-low price will technically work. But voltage and consistency are important when charging a phone. These are the things that these cheap, no-brand USB charging cables fail the most. You may save a few dollars by purchasing this important accessory on the cheap, but…
Sumitbiswas1/Shutterstock Although limited, there are several free cloud storage options available today. Even though these services offer much less storage than Google Drive’s paid plans, which can offer more than 1TB, they still help many users. Phone or computer storage can run into problems when you least expect it, a common mistake that could cost you all your data, causing important photos and files to disappear without you being able to do anything. Even though you don’t have the same freedom of uploading everything to the cloud with these free…
Danny E. Martindale/Getty Images We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. A player’s choice of headphones plays a big role in immersing them in their 9,999th time playing “Skyrim” (it’s a coping mechanism). It also plays an important role in gaining a competitive audio advantage over their competitors and overall comfort when locked down. Mainstream manufacturers routinely try to grab buyers’ attention with RGB, gimmicky software and low frequencies that can only be described as sonic booms that completely obliterate the footsteps and ambient noise that “Warzone”…
Noderog/Getty Images Something you quickly learn when you first become an audio enthusiast is that this field is full of dense jargon. For example, if you heard someone talk about “squelch” in an audio receiver, what would you think that refers to, other than maybe some kind of unpleasant wet noise? Fortunately, the “squelch” has nothing to do with wet noises; Rather, it is a feature found on most audio receivers that keeps the audio channel closed when nothing is playing. If you’ve ever listened to music through cheap speakers…
Artistegndphotography/Getty Images We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. While you may not have much say in what happens in your office workspace, one of the huge benefits of having a home office is that you can take complete ownership of it. This is true whether you’ve just created a home office or have been using one for years, because almost anything you install in your workspace can be upgraded at any time. That might not seem like it right now, as a global RAM crisis is…