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Apple has a colorful new Apple Watch band on sale ahead of Pride Month in June. This year’s Pride Edition Sport Band is available to order online now and to purchase in stores on May 24 for $49.

The band takes inspiration from the pride flag’s rainbow colors, Apple said in a press release earlier this month, along with five other colors that represent Black and Latin communities; those who died from or are living with HIV/AIDS; and transgender and nonbinary individuals.

“The new Pride Celebration watch face and iOS wallpaper honor the combined strength and mutual support of the LGBTQ+ community,” Apple said.

Watch this: How to Choose Between the Apple Watch 8 and SE

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The Pride Edition Sport Band is available in 41mm and 45mm sizes and is compatible with Apple Watch Series 3 and later.

You can also get a new Pride Celebration watch face and iPhone wallpaper if you have a device running WatchOS 9.5 or iOS 16.5.

There might be some massive changes coming to Apple Watches this year. The company will reportedly reintroduce widgets when it debuts WatchOS 10 at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month.

The Pride Edition Sport Band also gave Apple the opportunity to acknowledge LGBTQ+ organizations that the iPhone maker supports, including advocacy organizations like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the National Center for Transgender Equality and The Trevor Project.

For more on Apple Watches, here are the best Apple Watch deals you can take advantage of right now.

The cheaper graphics cards in a given line aren’t the most exciting to discuss — they’re always about what’s been stripped away to make them meet certain price points, size and power requirements — but that’s true for a lot of products that people need to buy rather than just talk about. Nvidia’s latest step-up-from-the-bottom GeForce RTX 4060 Ti falls squarely into that realm. Targeted at high-quality 1080p up to mid-quality 1440p gamers, the 4060 Ti is a solid GPU and smart upgrade from a 20-series or older, but not quite as attractive for using as a budget GPU for video-editing or some other types of creative tasks.

The card is for upgrades, new builds with low-power — a power supply of 600w or less — or compact systems where you can’t fit or support a triple-slot, 11-inch long card. There are two variants of the 4060 Ti, 8GB and 16GB, which start shipping this week. Nvidia will only offer an 8GB version of the Founders Edition cards, which start at $400; $500 and up 16GB models will come from its partners. The new entry level in the 40-series, the RTX 4060, won’t be arriving until July, and will come only through partners.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition (8GB)

Like

• A good size, power draw and slot bandwidth for older systems
• Solid high-quality 1080p gaming and a nice boost for ray tracing over older gear

Don’t like

• Not as well-suited to some creative tasks as it could be

Size is in the eye of the beholder, though: After a parade of 2.5-plus slot, 11-inch-plus cards, my reaction to the 4060 Ti was “Wow it’s small.” My colleague Josh Goldman‘s was “That thing’s huge!” It’s a lot shorter than the Intel Arc A750, for example, a lower-end card that also has dual fans (albeit the Nvidia card has one on each side rather than both on one side and full ventilation on the back) but a lot more venting on the edges.

And the 4060 Ti runs pretty cool. It has the same design as the RTX 4070, with an intake fan on each side vent on the back and connector bracket.

The RTX 4060 Ti has a lower-than-typical bus requirement — it fits in an eight-lane PCI slot instead of the now-more-common 16-lane slot — which, combined with its relatively low maximum board power of 160 watts and true two-slot width, makes it an especially nice fit in smaller and older systems. The RTX 4070 is also a good fit, but requires a slightly higher wattage power supply.

But the tradeoff of going lower power is memory bandwidth. Nvidia spins its narrower memory path (128-bit vs. 192-bit for the RTX 4070) and its concomitant “meh” memory bandwidth by emphasizing “effective” memory bandwidth, where the higher number comes from the increase to 32MB L2 cache, up from 2MB in last-generation 128-bit GPUs — 288GB/sec. actual vs. 554GB/sec. effective, in this case. (Cache is a fast-retrieval location for frequently and recently used data, like game textures and ray trace calculations.)

In theory, that also means that you can get away with less VRAM, since you don’t have to store much of what’s in the cache in the card’s main memory. Hence, 8GB rather than 12GB or more that’s found in competitors. It also means that you’ll need to use the bundled power adapter if you don’t already have PCIe 5 PSU connectors; even though it only uses the same 8 pins as older systems, it still needs to be adapted to Nvidia’s now-standard PCIe 5 12-pin connector.

Enlarge Image

That’s fine for a lot of gaming. But it’s not a great choice for some creative applications, such as video editing, where the cache hits can be less frequent than with games. Creative applications also tend to use system memory a lot more, so that eight-lane bus bandwidth — could become a bottleneck. And because of that, along with the narrower memory data path, simply bumping up to the 16GB version of the card won’t necessarily help. It’s too bad, because that means it’s not an unreservedly recommendable choice as a budget creative GPU.

But the card does deliver on gaming for max-quality 1080p to decent 1440p (where “decent” means roughly 100fps at high quality, which means you have some leeway to increase quality at the expense of frame rate or vice versa). It’s also a good entry if you want to use ray tracing, especially given the surprisingly good performance uplift you get by using DLSS; for instance, in Guardians of the Galaxy in 1440p at maximum quality with ray tracing, even DLSS 2 boosted from 66fps to 114fps on the Balanced setting. (DLSS 3 performs a lot better, but doesn’t have nearly the broad support of DLSS 2.)

Without having tested the forthcoming RTX 4060 or AMD competitor Radeon RX 6750 (an older model which remains in the line), I’m reserving judgment on where the RTX 4060 Ti sits on the price/performance spectrum relative to other available options. But thus far it looks like the Ti makes a solid choice for 1080p gamers hoping for a GPU that can last a few years.

Relative performance of other GPUs

Apple has long siloed its creative apps into professional and consumer buckets. Pros (or advanced amateurs) used Final Cut for video and Logic Pro for audio, while everyone else used iMovie and GarageBand. Mac users who wanted to upgrade and were willing to pay for the pro-level software could jump from the mainstream apps to the more advanced ones, but iPad owners didn’t have that option.

Now that Apple is launching both Final Cut and Logic Pro for iPad, I can see both of these new versions being used for on-the-go production. For example, editing video while on location, or casually putting together beats on a plane or train trip. The new iPad version of Logic Pro is especially interesting to me, as I have a long history of using various digital audio workstation, or DAW, apps over the past 20 years, including ProTools, Adobe Audition and Logic — even going back so far that I previously used Logic on Windows PCs before Apple bought the brand in 2002.

iPad vs. Mac

I spent several days trying out Logic Pro on an iPad Pro and found the experience to be a mostly familiar one, although some of the navigation can be tricky if you’re using a touchscreen interface to recreate what is typically done with a keyboard, touchpad and mouse. Using a keyboard case like Apple’s Magic Keyboard helps somewhat, although there’s still a learning curve.

But once I got used to manipulating the software through the touchscreen, it opened up new possibilities, and one of my favorite parts of the experience was using my fingers to pinch and zoom on audio waveforms and MIDI data.

The experience is mostly similar to Logic Pro on the Mac, with a few important caveats. First, instead of a flat $199 one-time purchase, as on the Mac platform, both Logic Pro and Final Cut are $5-per-month subscriptions (or $50 annually) on iPad. It’s subscription-only, with no one-time-purchase option. Yes, that’s the increasingly common standard across many types of software and services, but it also means you’ll have to buy one package for Mac and subscribe to a second for iPad if you want to use Logic Pro on both. And you might want to do that, as sessions are transferable between platforms. ProTools also shifted to a (more expensive) subscription-only model last year.

Apple iPad Pro 12.9 $1,149 at Amazon

Another potential issue is that third-party plugins will need new iPad versions, which may or may not ever arrive. Many music apps rely on a wide variety of plugins from companies like Waves, and the most famous (or infamous) plugin is probably Antares’ Auto-Tune. That said, this is less of an issue for Logic Pro, which has always had a huge collection of included plugins for everything from EQ to mastering to guitar effects, as well as instrument sounds, loops and all the other building blocks needed to make music.

There’s also a new feature in the iPad version of Logic called Beat Breaker, which Apple describes as a “time and pitch-morphing plug-in.” It lets you take loops and samples, easily cut them into slices and play with the speed, pitch, direction and even order of those slices. It’s not for every type of music, but I could see it being interesting for taking stale loops and making them sound fresh and different.

If you’re planning to use an external input device, like a MIDI controller, note that it’ll need to operate without any special drivers. On a Mac, it’s easy to add new drivers, but on the iPad, it’s got to be plug-and-play. Fortunately, my Yamaha P-45 digital piano worked fine as a MIDI input device, and that’s what I used to create a short demo song.

Making music

I plugged my keyboard into the iPad using a USB-B-to-USB-C cable and was immediately able to start laying down tracks. I haven’t used Logic Pro regularly in years, so I went through a few of the included tutorials, which are actual session files that walk you through various features of the app. As far an interactive tutorials go, the lessens included here are pretty good.

This demo is really just a very basic short groove. I laid down a chord progression using an electric piano sound, added some vibraphone licks, bass and pads, all accompanied by Logic Pro’s built-in virtual drummer.

Even though the iPad interface took some getting used to, I was able to manipulate individual MIDI notes, change sounds and tweak effects, quantize my playing and do everything I’d expect to from a desktop DAW.

One thing I found useful — flipping the iPad to a portrait view, I was able to see more of the track view and the mixing board view at the same time. In landscape mode, the mixer view was largely cut off.

If I were working on new music regularly, Logic Pro for iPad would be a great way to do mixing and editing from anywhere, and I especially like being able to prop an iPad on the music stand of my digital piano and connect it via USB-C for real-time recording.

I don’t think it’s a complete replacement for the Mac-based version of Logic — sometimes you just need the full keyboard and mouse version (using an iPad Magic Keyboard is close but not perfect), or third-party plug-ins or the ability to jump between other non-iPad apps. And you’ll be adding yet another monthly subscription to the ever-growing pile.

I’ve had a lot of weird existential feelings trying to use Final Cut Pro for the iPad, which is available today along with Logic Pro. Existential because, well, I’m not a pro video editor. Could I be? Should I be? This is Apple’s ongoing creative invitation it extends through the possibilities of its pro hardware. I’ve been here before.

The Apple Pencil was my invitation to be an artist, and I never took it. It’s nice that it’s there, though. The same is true for Final Cut Pro, an overdue pro video editing tool made only for iPads running M1 chips or later. This is one of those pro apps I was expecting Apple to have when the M1 iPad Pro first arrived back in 2021. Now that it’s here, I’m also wondering how much I will ever personally use it.

Apple already offers free iMovie and GarageBand creative apps that are perfectly fine, although iMovie has always felt too limited in its layout and design. Final Cut Pro immediately feels a lot more flexible, with overlapping timelines for video, animation and audio, a really cool scrubbing jog wheel that feels more granular for minor edits (and brings me back to my old linear video editing days 25 years ago), and works well enough for touchscreen and keyboard/trackpad. Or, maybe, both at once.

Apple iPad Air M1 $598 at Amazon

I played around with Final Cut Pro on an iPad Air with an M1 chip, the lowest entry point in Apple’s iPad catalog that works with Final Cut Pro (the M1 and M1 iPad Pros are also supported). It worked well enough for me, although the smaller iPad display, compared to my 13-inch MacBook Air, made looking at some preview windows and track details feel a little more challenging.

I’m particularly interested in that last part because Macs still don’t have touchscreens, and some inevitable further fusion of Macs and iPads seems like it’s been in the works in slow motion for about five years now. Final Cut Pro isn’t as full-featured as the Mac version, and it’s also designed, weirdly, to funnel its output up to the Mac app but not the other way around. In that sense, it feels like an intermediary step for any pro video editor… something you’d use in the field, maybe, beginning video editing work before perhaps finishing off on a Mac.

Because the Mac app has more plug-ins (something I haven’t even begun to play with), and has the advantage of larger Mac displays and external monitors, I’d expect any video editor doing professional work to default to that, especially since Macs with M1/M2 processors are so good and small already.

However, I see a lot of advantages bubbling up here in Final Cut Pro on iPadOS. The scrub tool is clever (although trackpads on Macs could do something similar). Some support for instant Pencil animations opens up possibilities for ways to blend graphic art and video editing, although the doorway in Final Cut Pro feels more slightly opened than truly maximized.

It almost doesn’t matter what I think. The decision to take a dive doesn’t cost much: Apple made this and Logic Pro its first pro creative subscription apps, which cost $5 a month each and also have a one-month free trial. Turning on and off the subscription could also allow someone to work on a project only when they needed to, turn it off, and come back months later if another gig or need opened up. Projects can still be shared when the subscription is turned off, but not edited.

I’m confused by some decisions here. Final Cut Pro doesn’t support true external monitor extension, even though iPadOS and M1/M2 chips do. The app mirrors whatever’s shown on the iPad display to a connected external monitor, but it feels like this should have been a chance to stretch out the iPad Pro’s capabilities.

The subscription model also leaves me feeling very mixed: It’s a relatively affordable way to add in the pro app to your life as opposed to the $300 price on the Mac. At $50 a year, that would equal six years of use. For sure, in six years’ time, Apple will have evolved its Mac and iPad computer landscape, requiring some new software to buy anyway (not to mention whatever mixed-reality features might dovetail with the company’s rumored headsets). Maybe renting creative tools does make more sense. It’s a similar model to how Adobe works, and makes me wonder how many people will choose Apple’s new app over another like Adobe Premiere Rush, which also has multitrack timeline editing features.

But it also makes me wonder why iPad Pros just don’t come included with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Or, get a year-long included subscription, much like Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade deals get offered. Maybe that’s going to happen. Maybe Apple folds its new pro apps into yet another subscription tier in its ever-expanding subscription services catalog. It’s all a clear reminder that iPads are extremely capable of running high-end software, but I knew that already. Now I just want Mac and iPad workflows to feel even more logically interconnected, too.

Adobe is building generative AI abilities into its flagship image-editing software with a new Photoshop beta release Tuesday. The move promises to release a new torrent of creativity even as it gives us all a new reason to pause and wonder if that sensational, scary or inspirational photo you see on the internet is actually real.

In my tests, detailed below, I found the tool impressive but imperfect. Adding it directly to Photoshop is a big deal, letting creators experiment within the software tool they’re likely already using without excursions to Midjourney, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or other outside generative AI tools.

With Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI technologies arriving in Photoshop, you’ll be able to let the AI fill a selected part of the image with whatever it thinks most fitting – for example, replacing road cracks with smooth pavement. You can also specify the imagery you’d like with a text prompt, such as adding a double yellow line to the road.

Firefly in Photoshop also can also expand an image, adding new scenery beyond the frame based on what’s already in the frame or what you suggest with text. Want more sky and mountains in your landscape photo? A bigger crowd at the rock concert? Photoshop will oblige, without today’s difficulties of finding source material and splicing it in.

Photoshop’s Firefly, which is scheduled to emerge from beta testing in the second half of 2023, can be powerful. In Adobe’s live demo, the tool was often able to match a photo’s tones, blend in AI-generated imagery seamlessly, infer the geometric details of perspective even in reflections and extrapolate the position of the sun from shadows and sky haze.

Such technologies have been emerging over the last year as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-Ecaptured the imaginations of artists and creative pros. Now it’s built directly into the software they’re most likely to already be using, streamlining what can be a cumbersome editing process.

“It really puts the power and control of generative AI into the hands of the creator,” said Maria Yap, Adobe’s vice president of digital imaging. “You can just really have some fun. You can explore some ideas. You can ideate. You can create without ever necessarily getting into the deep tools of the product, very quickly.”

Now you’d better brace yourself for that future.

Photoshop’s Firefly AI imperfect but useful

In my testing, I frequently ran into problems, many of them likely stemming from the limited range of the training imagery. When I tried to insert a fish on a bicycle to an image, Firefly only added the bicycle. I couldn’t get Firefly to add a kraken to emerge from San Francisco Bay. A musk ox looked like a panda-moose hybrid.

Less fanciful material also presents problems. Text looks like an alien race’s script. Shadows, lighting, perspective and geometry weren’t always right.

People are hard, too. On close inspection, their faces were distorted in weird ways. Humans added into shots could be positioned too high in the frame or in otherwise unconvincingly blended in.

Still, Firefly is remarkable for what it can accomplish, particularly with landscape shots. I could add mountains, oceans, skies and hills to landscapes. A white delivery van in a night scene was appropriately yellowish to match the sodium vapor streetlights in the scene. If you don’t like the trio of results Firefly presents, you can click the “generate” button to get another batch.

Given the pace of AI developments, I expect Firefly in Photoshop will improve.

It’s hard and expensive to retrain big AI models, requiring a data center packed with expensive hardware to churn through data, sometimes taking weeks for the largest models. But Adobe plans relatively frequent updates to Firefly. “Expect [about] monthly updates for general improvements and retraining every few months in all likelihood,” Adobe product chief Scott Belsky tweeted Tuesday.

Automating image manipulation

For years, “Photoshop” hasn’t just referred to Adobe’s software. It’s also used as a verb signifying photo manipulations like slimming supermodels’ waists or hiding missile launch failures. AI tools automate not just fun and flights of fancy, but also fake images like an alleged explosion at the Pentagon or a convincingly real photo of the pope in a puffy jacket, to pick two recent examples.

With AI, expect editing techniques far more subtle than the extra smoke easily recognized as digitally added to photos of an Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006.

It’s a reflection of the double-edged sword that is generative AI. The technology is undeniably useful in many situations but also blurs the line between what is true and what is merely plausible.

For its part, Adobe tries to curtail problems. It doesn’t permit prompts to create images of many political figures and blocks you for “safety issues” if you try to create an image of black smoke in front of the White House. And its AI usage guidelines prohibit imagery involving violence, pornography and “misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive content that could lead to real-world harm,” among other categories. “We disable accounts that engage in behavior that is deceptive or harmful.”

Firefly also is designed to skip over styling prompts like that have provoked serious complaints from artists displeased to see their type of art reproduced by a data center. And it supports the Content Authenticity Initiative‘s content credentials technology that can be used to label an image as having been generated by AI.

Generative AI for photos

Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI tools began with a website that turns a text prompt like “modern chair made up of old tires” into an image. It’s added a couple other options since, and Creative Cloud subscribers will also be able to try a lightweight version of the Photoshop interface on the Firefly site.

When OpenAI’s Dall-E brought that technology to anyone who signed up for it in 2022, it helped push generative artificial intelligence from a technological curiosity toward mainstream awareness. Now there’s plenty of worry along with the excitement as even AI creators fret about what the technology will bring now and in the more distant future.

Generative AI is a relatively new form of artificial intelligence technology. AI models can be trained to recognize patterns in vast amounts of data – in this case labeled images from Adobe’s stock art business and other licensed sources – and then to create new imagery based on that source data.

Generative AI has surged to mainstream awareness with language models used in tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Google’s Gmail and Google Docs, and Microsoft’s Bing search engine. When it comes to generating images, Adobe employs an AI image generation technique called diffusion that’s also behind Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and Google’s Imagen.

Adobe calls Firefly for Photoshop a “co-pilot” technology, positioning it as a creative aid, not a replacement for humans. Yap acknowledges that some creators are nervous about being replaced by AI. Adobe prefers to see it as a technology that can amplify and speed up the creative process, spreading creative tools to a broader population.

“I think the democratization we’ve been going through, and having more creativity, is a positive thing for all of us,” Yap said. “This is the future of Photoshop.”

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

Microsoft has begun building an AI chat interface straight into its single most important software product, the company said Tuesday. The tool will perform tasks like summarizing documents, suggesting music, offering tech support for your PC and answering questions you might ask a search engine or AI chatbot.

Windows Copilot is scheduled to arrive in a preview version of Windows via an icon in the task bar that looks like a loop of blue ribbon. Clicking it opens a chat interface sidebar where you can type questions or prompts like “enable dark mode” and click buttons to take actions. Microsoft will begin testing the feature in June, said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s marketing chief for consumer products.

It’s a major new step in Microsoft’s embrace of artificial intelligence technology. Previously the company had built AI into its Bing search engine and Edge web browser, but Windows is used by millions more people and for many more hours a day.

“We are bringing the Copilot to the biggest canvas of all, Windows,” CEO Satya Nadella said at the company’s Microsoft Build developer conference. The arrival of AI chat interfaces is as important to computing progress as other major moments like the arrival of the internet or the iPhone, he said.

Read More: Windows 10 Is Being Phased Out. Here’s What That Means for You

And the change reflects a growing seriousness in modern AI. Google has begun building AI directly into search, Gmail, Docs and other key services used by billions of people. Adobe on Tuesday released a beta version of Photoshop that uses AI to generate new imagery. AI remains experimental, but no longer is AI on the periphery of the world’s biggest tech products.

Watch this: Windows 11 Gets AI Copilot

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Microsoft also is building its Copilot technology into its Office suite of productivity tools.

Google has taken a different approach with its AI, restricting its more free-wheeling chatbot technology to its Bard chatbot and adding more factual, literal tools to search, Gmail and other mainstream tools.

Mehdi thinks that’s a mistake, though. Indeed, he hopes Google keeps the functions separate because that’ll help Microsoft’s prospects, he said.

“Customers have told us they’re not a separate thing. They think it’s all integrated,” Mehdi said in an interview. “The ability to be able to ask any question from where you are, to get search-like answers, that’s a powerful thing for customers.”

Read More: Microsoft Rolls Out Tool That Connects Your iPhone to Your PC

Microsoft added AI-boosted search results and an AI chatbot to its Bing search engine in February. It relies on OpenAI, an artificial intelligence powerhouse in which Microsoft has invested, for the core language processing technology. Thanks in part to the feature, Bing usage crossed the threshold of 100 million people per day, Mehdi said, though he wouldn’t reveal the pace of the growth.

Also at Build, Microsoft announced it’s making plugin technology available to Bing and Windows Copilot so developers can integrate their own software. That’ll let you tap into those apps using Microsoft’s AI interfaces.

And Microsoft announced that OpenAI is using Bing search engine data to help improve its ChatGPT chatbot. Search engines can be used to “ground” generative AI tools that can often make up incorrect information.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

If you’re a serious online gamer, a decent headset is a must-have. It allows you to strategize with your teammates, trash-talk your opponents and the improved audio makes it easy to be aware of every shot and step happening around you. And right now, you can take advantage of Amazon’s Gaming Week sale to snag one for less. The online retailer is currently offering up to $82 off Sony InZone PS5 headsets, with prices starting at just $58. The sale runs through May 28, so we’d recommend getting your order in before then if you don’t want to miss out on these savings.

There are three different InZone headset models to choose from, which all feature a flip-to-mute boom mic, and support 360-degree spatial audio for a truly immersive gaming experience. Plus, they allow you to create a personalized sound profile with custom EQ that’s optimized for your play style. The most affordable model available is the wired InZone H3, which you can snag for $58, $42 off the usual price. Or you can upgrade to the wireless InZone H7, which promises a 40-hour battery life and is on sale for $148, which saves you $82 compared to the usual price. Or, for hardcore gamers, there’s the high-end InZone H9 wireless headset. It’s only available with a small $22 discount, dropping the price down to $278, but gives you noise-canceling capabilities, LED lighting and synthetic leather earpads. All three headsets work with PS5 and PC.

You can find more great deals on games, hardware and accessories at Amazon’s Game Week sale, and you can check out our full roundup of all the best PS5 deals for more bargains on Sony gaming gear.

The future of gaming is here, and it’s cloud-based. With Amazon Luna gaming gear, you can enjoy tons of great games — from AAA titles to charming indies — without a console or powerful PC rig. And right now, you can snag some for less during Amazon’s Gaming Week sale. The online retailer is currently offering up to 32% off Luna controllers and accessories, as well as bundles with streaming devices and tablets. The sale runs through May 28, so you’ll want to get your order in before then if you don’t want to miss out on these savings.

Amazon Prime Member already get free access to a small selection of games, and with a $10/month Luna Plus subscription, you can stream a huge library of games on your phone, tablet, computer or smart TV — without having to download them or have a physical copy. All you need is a controller, which has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built-in so it can easily connect to your devices wirelessly. Right now, you can pick up the basic Luna controller for $50 ($20 off), or you can bundle it with the phone mount for $65 ($18 off) and enjoy your games on the go. If you want a slightly larger screen that’s still portable, you can snag this controller and Fire HD 8 tablet bundle for $120 ($50 off). Or you can bundle the controller with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, one of our favorite streaming devices for 2023, and convert just about any TV or monitor into a smart TV with cloud gaming for $85 ($40 off).

And be sure to check out the full selection of Gaming Week deals for more bargains on games, controllers, headsets and much more.

Proton, the Swiss-based privacy company behind Proton Mail and Proton VPN, launched an all-inclusive online privacy solution for families on Tuesday. Proton Family bundles all of Proton’s services into a single subscription plan that covers up to six users. In addition to Proton’s flagship service, Proton Mail, the bundle includes access to Proton VPN (one of CNET’s top VPN picks), Proton Drive and Proton Calendar. Proton’s latest service, a password manager called Proton Pass, will be available with the Proton Family plan once it exits beta.

Proton Family starts at $20 per month and includes premium access to Proton’s services, along with 3TB of shared storage space and an additional 20GB of bonus storage space per year, Proton said in a press release. The idea behind Proton Family is to ensure youngsters can safely go online while minimizing exposure to the often intrusive practices of Big Tech. Stressing online privacy to children and others who may not necessarily understand all of the potential risks that lurk online is more important than ever — especially at a time when apps designed for children are collecting alarming amounts of data.

“A family plan has been among our most sought-after services, and I am delighted to announce its launch today. As a parent, I am eager to teach my children the proper ways to approach email, cloud storage, and internet security from the beginning,” David Dudok de Wit, Proton’s product lead said. “I know I am not alone in this. The Proton Family plan takes us one step closer to our mission of making privacy the default for everyone.”

Proton offers a version of each of its services for free (including Proton VPN, which is the only truly free VPN CNET recommends), but full access to all of Proton’s premium features requires a paid subscription. Proton has built a solid reputation with its suite of online privacy tools, and $20 a month for all of those tools together for up to six users with Proton Family is an excellent deal — especially once Proton Pass is made available to subscribers. As a comparison, if you purchase individual subscriptions to the Proton services available now, you’ll pay $5 per month for Proton Mail, $5 per month for Proton Drive and $10 per month for Proton VPN. That adds up to $20 per user, which is the same price you’ll pay for the entire Family plan, which will also include the password manager once it releases.

You can purchase Proton Family directly or upgrade your current subscription to any of Proton’s services to Proton Family. Once you’ve signed up, you can start inviting family members to join your Proton Family plan. If you want a bundled subscription to all of Proton’s services for yourself only, you can opt for the Proton Unlimited plan, which includes up to 500 GB total storage across the services for $12 per month or $120 per year.

For more on privacy, check out CNET’s tips for creating better passwords, six tips for keeping your personal data private and what to know about VPN trackers.

There are a ton of streaming services to choose from these days, and if you want to subscribe to them all, it’ll cost you a pretty penny. However, Paramount Plus you can nab a month of service for free. It’s been 30 years since Cheers aired its final episode, but it remains a beloved and iconic series. Right now you can use code CHEERSATX to bump up the usual one-week free trial to an entire month, giving you the chance to binge the long-running show about a place everybody knows your name — or check out the rest of the massive catalog of TV, movies and live sports on the service.

There are two different plans to choose from — Essential or Premium — and the code works for either version. The $5-a-month Essential plan gives you access to Paramount Plus shows and movies with limited commercials, as well as NFL on CBS, top soccer games and CBS live news. The $10-a-month Premium plan has no ads (except for live TV), gives you access to additional sports and your local CBS channel, and allows you to download shows and movies. After your trial, your subscription will auto-renew at the regular price unless canceled.

It’s worth noting that the above code also works with the Paramount Plus and Showtime bundle, so you can actually get a month of both services for free if you want. Just be aware that you’ll be charged the bundle price (from $12 a month) on your renewal date if you don’t cancel before then. And be sure to check out our roundup of all the best streaming service deals for even more ways to save.