What better thing to give this holiday season than the best gaming gifts around? Whether you’re looking at a new console like the PS5 or Xbox Series X or want to grab some new games and accessories, you can’t go wrong with any of the products on this list.
Yes, the PS5 from Sony is now easier to buy than at any point in its two-year lifespan, but you still have to hunt around a bit. The Xbox Series X and Series S are generally easy to get your hands on now, as is the OLED Nintendo Switch. If you’re looking for the absolute best gaming gift, any one of these gaming consoles is a sure hit.
Going a little further afield, Meta’s Quest 2 is still the VR headset to beat, even though Meta/Facebook recently raised the price. Newer VR headsets like the PSVR 2 (for PS5) aren’t coming until next year, and the recently released Meta Quest Pro has a $1,500 price tag, which clearly suggests it’s aimed at early adopters with money to burn, rather than casual gamers.
Handheld gaming has been experiencing a renaissance in 2022, with the Nintendo Switch joined by the Analogue Pocket and Panic Playdate — two retro-feeling mini-consoles that will give you classic GameBoy vibes. On the other end of the spectrum, the Steam Deck from Valve (also still hard to find) is a full-featured mini gaming PC.
For an overall favorite, the $499 PlayStation 5 is for gamers who want high-profile, Sony-exclusive games like God of War or Horizon: Forbidden West. The $499 Xbox Series X is great for gamers who want a whole ecosystem of Xbox Game Pass games that work across Xbox, PC and even tablets and phones (via cloud gaming).
Out best budget pick for a game console is the Xbox Series S, which does almost everything the bigger Series X does, but for $299. Another budget idea: For $49, you can pick up a Microsoft Xbox controller, in a variety of colors — it’s a great gift because it works across Xbox, gaming PCs, iPads and iPhones, even Apple TV.
The Xbox Series X is a powerful 4K gaming machine that works best with a similarly advanced 4K TV. The platform offers exclusives like Halo and Forza, as well as for games from Microsoft-owned Bethesda, including the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, and the upcoming Starfield.
The Xbox’s biggest advantage is the excellent Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which includes many of the biggest new games, for $15/month, and also includes PC and cloud gaming.
For exclusive games like God of War: Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part 1 and Horizon: Forbidden West, PS5 is the way to go (although some of these games eventually make it PCs much later on).
The smaller, cheaper Series S version of the new Xbox plays all the same games, but outputs them at 1440 resolution, which lies somewhere between traditional HD and 4K. More importantly, it’s great for downloading and playing the huge catalog of Xbox Game Pass games, or for free-to-play online games like Fortnite.
The Xbox controller has become the unofficial industry standard. It connects via Bluetooth, so it works on not only Xbox consoles, but also your PC or Mac, iPhone, Android phone or iPad, and even the Apple TV.
Since nearly every PC game, and many iOS games, are already mapped to work with this game controller, so it’s as close to pick-up-and-play as a gaming accessory can get.
For the budget-friendly price of $50 this remains one of the most comfortable gaming headsets under $100 you’ll ever clamp over your ears. Among the updates from the previous version, the Cloud Stinger 2 now has an expanded frequency response on both ends, an updated headband with rotating earcups, a bendier boom for the mic and a better on-ear volume dial.
This fourth iteration of Nintendo’s Switch hybrid handheld adds a bigger, better built-in display (now an OLED screen), plus a redesigned kickstand and TV dock. For anyone looking to jump into Switch or add a second unit for household multiplayer, this is the default model to consider.
Taking the openness, flexibility and scale of PC gaming and putting it into handheld form has long been a holy grail for a devoted subset of WASD gamers. The Steam Deck comes closer than anything I’ve seen to nailing that formula.
The Steam Deck is made by Valve, the company behind the hugely successful Steam online game store/platform, but you should know what you’re doing before committing to the device. It’s a handheld AMD-powered PC running Linux (with an overlay called Steam OS), and it plays many, but not all, of the PC games on the Steam online store.
If you’re prepared to do some tweaking and experimenting with settings, and feel comfortable with general PC game troubleshooting (versus the plug-and-play ease of living room consoles), the Steam Deck is a fantastic gaming device.
For anyone with a pile of old Game Boy games, the Analogue Pocket is a Game Boy revival dream come true. The Pocket plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges, and other retro handheld games like Sega Game Gear with separately sold adapters. A sharp color screen and a battery with USB-C recharging mean games play and look fantastic. A separately sold dock can play games on a TV screen, too.
The Panic Playdate is tiny, yellow, has a nonbacklit black-and-white screen, and plays its own unique indie games, 24 of which come included with the purchase price. Games are controlled with buttons, a D-pad, and a wacky turning crank that’s used in multiple games to good effect. The Playdate’s adorable and weird, very experimental-feeling, and we have no idea what future games will arrive. But it’s destined to be a collector’s item for handheld and indie game lovers. It’s currently available for pre-order with an estimated ship date of early 2023, but you can print out your receipt and put it in the stocking of your favorite gamer.
The Quest 2 is the easiest to use VR headset, even though the starting price has jumped from $299 to $399. It’s totally self-contained, need no cables or external tracking cameras, and plays a pretty diverse set of games, from shooters, to puzzle games to theme park rides.
And it’s not just for gaming; it can be used for fitness training, virtual theatergoing and even VR meetings. Caveat parentis, though: The user has to login to Facebook, so be wary if you’re giving it to a kid.
There are a lot of great reasons to start your own website. Whether you’re looking to create your own blog, kick off a side hustle or build a portfolio, there’s no better time than right now to build a website. It’s an exciting process, too. Picking your own personal design to represent yourself is one of the many exhilarating parts of building your new website. However, there’s a lot more to it than just clicking around and hitting save when you’re happy.
First off, you need to have an idea for what your site should contain or be about, and you have to choose a company to house your website. The number of web hosting services can be confusing and the choice can be hard. So we looked over the data for 22 web hosting services to make things a little easier on you.
Note: Pricing for web hosting is a bit tricky to follow. Listed prices are generally introductory rates attached to contracts that usually last a year or more and renew at the regular (higher) rate at contract’s end. Make sure to take regular rates into account when trying to figure out a long-term hosting provider. You can also see our recommendations for how web hosting providers should advertise their prices.
Unlimited traffic, so no need to scale up plans to handle additional traffic
99.99% uptime guarantee
Cons:
Website builder costs extra
Plan prices increase, sometimes by huge margins, over time
Our take
IONOS has the lowest starting price point of any other service on this list, but once the plan renews, the price increases drastically. IONOS also has customer support numbers for 14 countries, making it a good choice for international customers.
Hosting plans
Ionos offers shared, VPS, dedicated and managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting. The company also differentiates between hosting plans meant for smaller and larger organizations to help customers better understand what plan is best for them.
Security features
Ionos offers security features that go beyond what other web hosting services offer. All plans include SSL certificates, malware scans and DDoS protections. Some plans also help repair damage malware might cause on your website. Backups at least once every 24-hours are also standard with each plan, and each backup is held for 20 days. A full set of a customer’s data is also stored in two separate data centers as a security measure, that way customers will always have access to their data, even if one data center is brought down by a cyberattack.
Uptime
Ionos has a 99.99% uptime guarantee, which is a higher guarantee than most other web hosting services. Battery-operated power supplies and backup generators help maintain power to Ionos data centers so your site and services stay online even if its data center loses power.
Customer support
Support is available any time, either by phone or chat. A directory also provides customer support numbers for customers in 14 different countries. Ionos also offers a personal consultant who will be your main point of contact if you need help with your site. A personal consultant and phone numbers for different support centers around the world gives Ionos customers more ways to get help compared to some other hosting providers.
Other features
Ionos offers a status page to alert customers when services go down or are being repaired. The page also logs the times when services go down and are brought back up, and it lets customers know of any scheduled maintenance.
Pricing
Ionos’ prices start lower than most other web hosting services for similar services. However, prices rise — shared and WordPress hosting rise by over 1,000% — after a certain amount of time. That means Ionos is a good entry point for web hosting, but it may not be the best long-term home for your website if cost is your primary concern.
Produces three times the amount of wind energy it uses
Cons:
Phone support isn’t active 24/7
Prices of some plans are above average
Our take
GreenGeeks’ promise to offset its energy needs makes this service a clear choice for climate-conscious customers. Some plans also offer unlimited storage and bandwidth. However, prices are a little high compared to other plans.
Hosting plans
GreenGeeks offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting plans. Each plan offers tiered options that let you scale up as your site’s needs grow. Some plans are managed, but at a higher cost. Each plan also includes a website builder so you don’t have to build your site from scratch.
Security features
Each plan includes a slew of security features like SSL certificates, DDoS protections, daily backups, malware cleanups and more to help protect your site.
Uptime
Like most web hosts, GreenGeeks offers a 99.9% uptime.
Customer support
GreenGeeks says it checks its servers every 10 seconds for any issues, while other services might check every 30 seconds, minute or longer. This means if your site runs into any issues, GreenGeeks might already be working on resolving it before you contact them. For more direct customer support GreenGeeks offers 24/7 chat support, but phone support is only active from 9 a.m. to midnight ET.
Other features
For every hosting account, GreenGeeks plants a tree, and GreenGeeks also creates three times the amount of energy used through renewable energy sources. Data centers contribute about 0.3% of global carbon emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, so GreenGeeks’ environmental commitment makes it a web hosting option that gives back.
Pricing
GreenGeeks’ pricing is average compared to other web hosting services. However, most of the lowest prices from GreenGeeks require a three-year contract paid in full upfront. Other contracts are available at an increased price per month, but must also be paid in full upfront.
24/7 “Guru Crew” customer support by chat, email or phone
Free site migration when coming from another service
Servers are physically secure on site
Cons:
Lowest prices require three-year contracts
Some plans don’t offer enough to justify higher prices
Our take
A2 Hosting offers great customer service options, as well as many different types of multi-tiered hosting plans. Plans offer a lot of features at no extra cost. The biggest downside is that the cheapest plans require a three-year contract.
Hosting plans
A2 Hosting offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress, reseller and cloud hosting, including tiered options within each plan. Shared hosting, for example, offers plans labeled Startup, Drive, Turbo Boost and Turbo Max. These additional plans give customers more options to choose from to better fit their needs, and allow customers to scale their operation as needed.
Security features
Each plan comes with security features like an SSL certificate, dual firewalls, virus scanner and brute force defense. Each plan comes with a Patchman enhanced security tool, which regularly costs about $25 a month, as well as DDoS protections that can detect DDoS attacks as soon as they happen to help keep your site safe. A2 Hosting also boasts about the physical security of its servers — in order to access them, someone needs to have two separate key cards to enter the parking lot and the server center.
Uptime
A2 Hosting has a 99.9% uptime commitment. An uptime of 99.9% means your site shouldn’t be down for more than nine hours a year, which is the industry standard.
Customer support
The real distinction for A2 Hosting is its commitment to customer support. A2’s “Guru Crew” is available by chat, email or phone 24/7. And if you want to figure something out without talking to anyone, A2 Hosting has a large Knowledge Base filled with information to help you develop and grow your site.
Other features
If you are looking to switch web hosting service providers, A2 Hosting offers free site migration. The average cost of a site migration in 2021 was between $300 to $400, making this a generous offer.
Pricing
A2 Hosting pricing is about average at first glance, but the lowest prices also come with a three-year contract, so to get the lowest price you are locked into this service for a long time. Some of the service’s tiered plan options might not offer enough to justify the price increase, as well. The Turbo Boost and Turbo Max shared hosting, for example, are $7 and $13 per month, respectively. The plans appear to have two differences: Boost has 2GB of physical memory compared to the Max’s 4GB. In addition, Max offers “5X More Resources” by using nonvolatile memory express drives, which are faster than solid-state drives. Nonvolatile memory express drives don’t seem much faster than SSDs on paper, but if you’re trying to sell something in real time online every second — or millisecond — counts.
Month-to-month payment plans not available for all plans
Our take
InMotion Hosting has one of the longest money-back guarantee time frames, so even if you aren’t totally satisfied with its service you can still get some cash back after a month or two. However, InMotion Hosting only has US-based servers, so it’s not the best choice for anyone with an international audience.
Hosting plans
InMotion Hosting offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting with different tiered options for each type of hosting. InMotion Hosting also offers hourly managed hosting services. These services can be purchased for one, two or three hours for $40 to $100 per month, or outside of a plan at $75 per hour.
Security features
Each plan comes with free SSL certificates, DDoS protections and hack and malware protections. Automatic daily backups are also available for some plans.
Uptime
InMotion Hosting offers 99.99% uptime, placing InMotion Hosting above the standard in terms of uptime. Customers should expect less than an hour of downtime per year, compared to nine hours for companies that only offer 99.9% uptime.
Customer support
InMotion Hosting’s customer support offers more ways for customers to contact them than many other services. Customers can contact a customer support representative by phone, chat, or email 24/7, they can file support tickets or Skype with a representative. InMotion Hosting also offers customers access to a database of instructional posts, as well as a community forum customers can look through for the answer to a question if you can’t find it anywhere else.
Other features
Most web hosting services offer a 30-day money back guarantee, but all InMotion Hosting plans come with a 90-day money back guarantee. That makes InMotion a great option for anyone who’s trying out a website for the first time but isn’t sure if they’re ready for a longer commitment.
Pricing
As with other web hosting services, the listed price is only applicable before the renewal cost. These can be confusing when comparing prices since some plans appear to cost the same despite one offering more perks. For example, the shared hosting Launch plan costs $5 a month with a three-year contract and the shared hosting Power plan costs the same for the same contract length but has more features — seems like a no-brainer to go with the Power plan, right? However, after the contract ends, the Launch plan renews at $12 a month and the Power plan renews at $16 a month, leaving subscribers paying more for the Power plan.
HostGator makes it easy to start and maintain a website with a database of tutorials and walkthroughs. If you already have a site, you can transfer it to HostGator for no extra charge. Make sure you read the fine print when it comes to backups, though — it left us with questions.
Hosting plans
HostGator offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting plans with tiered options. Each plan comes with unmetered bandwidth and disk space so you can load as much data on your site as you want. That makes it a great option for anyone with lots of video, images or animated page elements.
Security features
HostGator offers free SSL certificates, DDoS protections and automated backups. After the backups are taken, HostGator scans the files and makes sure they are free of malicious code, and if any is located the files are quarantined. However, HostGator writes that anyone with “critical business information or important data are STRONGLY encouraged to seek a third-party backup service…” (emphasis theirs). Undermining your own backup system is an odd choice.
Uptime
HostGator has an industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. Shared and reseller hosting customers can request a one-month refund if their uptime doesn’t meet that guarantee. However, VPS and dedicated hosting customers won’t get a refund if their uptime isn’t met. Instead those customers receive a prorated credit for how long the server was down.
Customer support
Customers can reach HostGator customer support representatives by chat, email or phone 24/7. A database also offers customers video tutorials, articles and guides. Not all services offer video tutorials, which could help solve an issue when it feels like talking to customer support over the phone or online isn’t helping.
Other features
HostGator offers a 45-day money back guarantee, which is above average when compared to most other web hosting services. The tutorials and walkthroughs available also make it easy for first-time site managers to get started.
Price
In addition to renewal prices jumping after a plan’s contract ends, add-ons can also significantly increase the price. Restoring backups, for example, costs an additional $25. So while, yes, HostGator offers automated backups, you still have to pay extra to access those backups, which makes it feel like backups are really an additional cost. This is certainly unusual.
Some monthly plans relatively affordable compared to other providers
Offers cyber insurance as an add-on
Free website builder with each plan
Cons:
Price almost doubles with renewal of some plans
No 24/7 phone support
Our take
Namecheap is cheaper than other services on this list, but only for certain contract lengths, like month-to-month plans. Namecheap also offers cyber insurance and Namecheap Legal to help you if your site is taken down by malicious actors. But Namecheap doesn’t have 24/7 phone support, which could be an issue if something goes wrong on your end and they aren’t available.
Hosting plans
Namecheap offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting. The plans offer tiered options, and the differences in plans are spelled out and easy to follow. Features shared across plans are easy to recognize, so you don’t have to read too deep into plans.
Security features
Each Namecheap plan comes with a free virus scanner, two-factor authentication and DDoS protection to help secure your data and the data of your visitors. SSL certificates are also free for one year, but then are an additional cost, starting at $6 a year. Namecheap also offers optional cyber insurance at an extra cost in case your data falls victim to a cyberattack. Cyber insurance plans start at an additional $6.50 a month and cover things like legal costs, damage repair and fines that could spring from a data breach. However, cyber insurance is currently only available in the US.
Uptime
Namecheap has a 99.9% uptime guarantee for VPS and reseller plans and 100% uptime guarantee for most shared, VPS and dedicated plans. Namecheap explicitly states one dedicated server plan has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. If uptime does drop, customers are eligible for a service refund, which could give you a month of free hosting.
Customer support
Namecheap has 24/7 online chat support, ticket filing and database of informative and instructional posts and videos. However, there’s no phone support, which could make it difficult to get the help you need if something goes wrong with your site. Namecheap does have a Status Update section so you can see if others are experiencing a similar issue or not.
Other features
Namecheap offers some useful free and paid applications and services to customers. Some of the free applications include a logo maker, an online marketing tool and a graphic design tool. Paid applications and services include an online ID authentication tool and Namecheap Legal, which connects you to legal services to help tackle legal issues your business might run into.
Pricing
Some Namecheap plans are relatively affordable compared to the competition, especially monthly plans. Shared plans, for example, cost $3.88 on a month-by-month basis. Monthly plans from competitors can cost upward of $10 a month. Yearly contracts are less expensive than monthly plans, but the cost of those same plans can double in some instances upon renewal. One shared plan offers a two-year contract that costs a total of $37.88 (about $1.58 a month), but it renews at $84.88 (about $3.54 a month.) The renewal price is more, yes, but it’s still less than the renewal price for most other services. Dedicated hosting month-by-month plans appear less expensive with a starting price of $56.88 for your first month. This plan then renews at $80.88 a month. Dedicated hosting plans with a one-year contract appear more expensive than the month-by-month plan, but are less expensive over that 12-month period.
Customer support phone service not available all hours
Our take
AccuWeb Hosting has data centers around the world to better serve international customers. It offers both Linux and Windows servers for web hosting needs, but phone support is limited to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET, which is less than ideal if you’re in another time zone.
Hosting plans
AccuWeb Hosting offers shared, VPS, dedicated, WordPress, reseller and different cloud hosting options. There are options for cloud shared and cloud VPS hosting plans as well. Customers can also choose which of AccuWeb Hosting’s global data centers will host their data. This means if you anticipate most of your traffic to come from outside the US, you can choose to have your data in a different data center so your site loads quicker for non-US visitors.
Security features
AccuWeb Hosting offers free SSL certificates with each plan, free antivirus tools and free daily backups, which are an upgrade over the more standard weekly backups. Security tools like malware cleanup are also included.
Uptime
While AccuWeb Hosting guarantees an impressive 99.99% uptime, its cloud hosting plans offer 100% hardware uptime. However, just because the hardware is up 100% of the time, doesn’t mean your site is reachable all the time as well. If a server is up and running but the network is down, sure the hardware is fine, but your site still won’t be reachable.
Customer support
Customers can chat and file tickets with customer service 24/7, but phone services are limited. Right now, phone service is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET and based in the US and Canada, despite having data centers around the globe.
Other features
While other services limit the number of domains an account can have and usually only allow one domain with basic shared plans, AccuWeb Hosting gives you unlimited domains no matter what plan you sign up for. Other services also limit the number of email accounts basic shared plans can host, usually between one and 10, but basic shared plans with AccuWeb Hosting offer 150 business email accounts, so instead of sending an email from your personal account, you can send an email from your business account and give your message more credibility.
Pricing
Some AccuWeb Hosting plans, like shared plans, are a little higher than other services, while mid-level plans, like VPS plans, are cheaper than other services. If you choose a shared plan, but plan to scale up to a VPS plan, the price averages out.
These services don’t offer one of the three hosting options, don’t include sufficient security features, an uptime guarantee or have some limited customer service options. The following services aren’t as robust as our top picks, but they’re still reasonable offerings.
Dreamhost offers a 97-day money back guarantee, which is the longest money back time frame for a web hosting service on this list. If you’re new to web hosting, this time frame could give you enough time to make an informed decision about whether to stay with Dreamhost or not. It offers shared, VPS, dedicated and WordPress hosting plans, as well as an upgraded WordPress plan called DreamPress. Dreamhost has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and plans come with security features like SSL certificates and malware remover. Dreamhost’s drawback is it doesn’t offer 24/7 chat or phone support. Chat support is available seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. PT, and phone support is only available upon callback request. Dreamhost does offer a step-by-step online guide with how to handle technical issues if you think you need tech support. The least expensive plan is also only for one month of hosting. Afterwards, the price renews to the standard rate which is about quadruple the starting price.
Hostinger offers a competitive price point. Shared and WordPress plans start at $2 a month, VPS plans start at $3.95 and cloud hosting plans start at $10 a month. There are also video modules on YouTube to show you how to, for example, build your WordPress site or how to change your domain name. Plans include SSL certificates and all servers have an advanced security module to protect your data. Some lower-tier plans offer weekly backups, while higher-tier plans offer daily backups. Hostinger has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, too. Customer support is limited, though. Live chat is available 24/7, as is email, but Hostinger doesn’t offer phone support.
SiteGround is a good option if you’re new to web hosting. It offers a 99.99% uptime, 24/7 customer support and plans include security features like SSL certificates, spam protection and a web access firewall to help protect your site. The company also has a 100% renewable energy match. However, Siteground offers shared, cloud, WordPress and reseller hosting options, so while these are good options to have, as your site grows and gains more traffic you might want to consider a service that offers VPS or dedicated hosting.
GoDaddy Web Hosting offers unmetered storage and bandwidth with its plans so you can upload as many images and videos onto your site as you want. GoDaddy offers shared, VPS, dedicated and WordPress hosting plans, has a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 customer support. However, its security offerings are inconsistent. For example, SSL certificates are included with some higher-tiered shared plans, but not lower-tiered plans. If this is your first site, you might want to start with one of the lower-tiered options, but the lack of security features might push you to get a more expensive plan.
HostPapa has global data centers, so you can choose the best data center to reach your visitors the quickest. Hosting options include shared, VPS, managed WordPress, reseller hosting and PapaCare Plus, which is similar to managed shared hosting. HostPapa has free SSL certificates, DDoS protection and other security features included in each plan, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 phone, chat and email support. However, the lack of a dedicated hosting option means if your site grows too large, you will have to migrate to another service. Also, if you choose HostPapa, make sure to look over what you are buying when you’re checking out. As I went through checkout, some features, like automated backups and a security tool, were automatically added for an additional charge. When comparing plans, these additional features are mentioned and marked as included in higher-tier plans, but not in all plans.
Hostwinds offers unlimited storage and bandwidth, as well as unlimited free business email accounts with each plan. It offers shared, managed and unmanaged VPS, dedicated, reseller and cloud hosting plans, has a 99.99% uptime guarantee and offers 24/7 chat support. Hostwinds plans also come with free SSL certificates and free nightly backups. However, in comparison to other services, Hostwinds isn’t as forthcoming with information on other features or plan differences. Usually services show detailed charts that lay out what features come with plans. Hostwinds’ shared chart, for example, only lists bandwidth, disk space and how many domains come with each plan. Since bandwidth and disk space are unlimited, the only noticeable differences with each plan are the domains offered with each plan, the price and name of each plan.
Bluehost specializes in WordPress hosting and offers additional resources, like its Blue Flash customer support team, for anyone who chooses WordPress hosting. It offers shared, VPS and dedicated hosting as well as managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting. All plans include free SSL certificates, two-factor authentication and anti-spam protections. Bluehost customers can call or chat with a customer support representative 24/7. Bluehost doesn’t offer an uptime guarantee, but instead says it resolves issues within 15 minutes of them being reported. However, it doesn’t say how many issues you should expect on average. If your site is down for about 15 minutes a week, your site could be down for about 13 hours a year, which is higher than standard.
GlowHost’s worldwide data centers give you the flexibility to host your site from a certain region if you anticipate most of your traffic will come from that region. Glowhost offers shared, cloud VPS, dedicated, semi-dedicated, reseller and what Glowhost calls an elastic plan which it compares to a managed VPS plan. Security features include free SSL certificates and McAfee Secure, which starts at $30 a year, and customer support is available by phone or chat 24/7. Uptime is harder to discern though. Some dedicated hosting plans guarantee 100% uptime, but a Glowhost administrator in 2008 said it could range between 99.5% and 99.9%, which means your site could be down for at least a day over the course of one year.
iPage offers customers a free website builder to get their site up and running, as well as e-commerce tools to easily integrate into your site. iPage offers shared, VPS, dedicated and WordPress hosting plans, and has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. The service also offers 24/7 chat support, as well as phone support available seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m. Eastern time. Each iPage plan comes with a free SSL certificate, but additional security features like daily malware scans and backups are not included. To fill those security gaps, iPage offers SiteLock, which starts at an extra $3.99 a month. iPage’s site is also hard to navigate in comparison to other services. For example, I had to scroll to the bottom of its homepage to find additional web hosting plans, like VPS and dedicated.
Mochahost, unlike most other web hosting services, offers a lifetime discount guarantee. However, this discount doesn’t apply to every contract, so it can be a headache to figure out where the lifetime discount does or does not apply. From what we’ve seen, the lifetime discount guarantee is usually attached to three-year contracts, but these contract lengths aren’t usually the lowest priced. The advertised prices might be the lowest price, but that doesn’t mean they’ll save you the most money. The largest discounts often apply for just one month, and the renewal price could be double that original cost. Longer contracts, like those that are three years long, are more expensive for the first month, but you’ll save money in the long term because the lifetime discount is lower than the renewal price of shorter plans. In other words, longer contracts that appear more expensive save you money after about the second month. Mochahost offers shared, VPS, dedicated cloud, WordPress and reseller plans, a 100% uptime guarantee and 24/7 live chat support. Phone support is also available on callback. Free SSL certificates are included in each plan as well, but other security features, like spam and malware filters, come at an additional cost or with more expensive plans.
WebHostingPad offers shared, managed and unmanaged VPS, WordPress and a mini hosting plan for smaller sites. Each plan includes free SSL certificates and SiteLock Lite, and WebHostingHub has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Chat support is available 24/7, but phone support is only available Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central Time. WebHostingPad also offers competitive prices, starting at $1.99 a month, but they’re only available with four-year and five-year contracts. There is a mini plan that has a fixed price point of $3 a month, but it’s offered with a three-year contract, otherwise the price is $3.50 a month for one year or $3.25 a month for two years. Domains are also an additional $17 at checkout.
Most of these services specialize in one type of hosting, like shared or WordPress, which means they’re not the best if you plan to grow your site. They also tend to be missing some security features and customer support options. However, they could be right for you and your needs if you have specific or smaller-scale hosting needs.
Liquid Web: No shared hosting. Security features include an integrated firewall and standard DDoS protections. Offers 99.99% uptime and 24/7 chat or phone support. Prices start at $15 a month.
Web Hosting Hub: Offers shared and WordPress hosting. Has free SSL certificates but other security features cost extra. Offers 99.9% uptime and has 24/7 chat and phone support. Prices start at $6 a month.
WP Engine: Offers WordPress hosting. Security features like free SSL certificates and daily backups. Has a 99.95% uptime guarantee and offers 24/7 chat and phone support. Prices start at $20 a month.
Kinsta: Offers WordPress hosting. Security features like free SSL certificates and automatic backups. Has a 99.9% uptime and 24/7 chat support. Prices start at $35 a month.
Pantheon: Offers WordPress hosting. Security features include DDoS protection and automated backups. Offers 99.9% uptime and customer support is available 24/7 via chat, phone or even Slack. Prices start at $41 a month.
Finding the right web hosting service can help you launch a blog or a website for your small business.
Richard Peterson/CNET
Criteria for web hosting services
While we didn’t test the services, we did carefully examine each service’s offerings and ranked them according to essential web hosting features. Here’s what we looked for to determine the best web hosting services. You can also check out CNET’s 11 things to know about web hosting for more information about these and other features.
Hosting plans: We checked to see if the service offered shared, VPS and dedicated hosting plans. Inclusion of all three plan types allows customers to scale their plan up as their site grows.
Security features: Services need to include some basic security features such as SSL certificates, DDoS protections and backups to protect your data as well as your visitors’. The best web hosts do this at no extra charge.
Uptime of 99.9% or higher: An uptime of 99.9% or higher ensures your site won’t go down for more than 20 minutes a month, so you keep losses of readers and sales to a minimum.
Customer support: All services offer some kind of customer support. Some say they offer customer service 24/7, but they mean you can email them any time. That’s a good start, but what if you have an issue that needs immediate attention? Some offer live chat which is better, and others offer phone support which is best.
The best web hosting services meet all four of those criteria. If a service falls short on one or more of those measures, you’ll find it in our list of other web hosting services to consider or our list of additional web hosts we looked at.
Web hosting terms to know
Some web hosting terms can be confusing. If a term in this list or on a web hsoting service’s site has you scratching your head, I’m going to explain them in more detail here.
What’s a CMS and what does it do?
Content management systems can help create and maintain your website. A CMS is a lot like the tools used to create posts or upload pictures to your social media profile, for example. A CMS does the same thing, but for your site. You don’t need a CMS, but without one you’ll have to code your site from the ground up. In addition to WordPress, a few other CMS tools are Joomla and WooCommerce.
What’s FTP?
A file transfer protocol is a method for transferring large files — like videos and other data-heavy files — from one location, like a server or computer, to another. Think of FTP as a type of delivery service. Imagine you order a television from a company and have it delivered to your home. The delivery truck that drops off the television at your home is the FTP. If you’ve ever used software like FileZilla, you’ve used an FTP. While FTP is generally vulnerable to malicious actors intercepting your data, secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) and FTP over SSL/TSL (FTPS) offer safer ways to transfer your files and data with security measures, like firewalls and data encryption. If given the option, always choose SFTP or FTPS rather than FTP when choosing a web hosting service.
I keep seeing the phrase ‘e-commerce’ in some hosting plan descriptions. What’s that?
Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is buying and selling items online. If you’ve bought anything online like a new shirt, food or digital music, you’ve participated in e-commerce. Web hosting services will usually mention e-commerce in plan descriptions to signal it includes tools to help get your online shop up and running. If you plan on opening an online store or selling items online, you should look for plans that include e-commerce tools and resources.
What are CDNs?
Content delivery networks, or content distribution networks, are groups of data centers and servers that help deliver content to people on the internet based on a visitor’s physical location. Imagine you are hosting a site out of Dallas:
Without a CDN, if people from the Netherlands try to access your site, your visitors might have to wait a while for the content of your site to be delivered to them because of the distance. However, if your web hosting service uses a CDN and has a data center in the Netherlands, your visitors from the Netherlands will access a version of your site stored in the much closer data center. This version of your site has some cached files stored in it to boost webpage load times and reduce bandwidth usage. This is good for you since some web hosting services limit bandwidth usage, and faster load times means happier visitors.
According to a study by Digital.com, half of shoppers expect a site to load in three seconds or less, and almost a quarter of shoppers said slow load times are their main source of dissatisfaction when shopping online.
Web hosting is the act of storing a website’s data on a server or series of servers. Imagine a website as a work of art. That art needs to be housed somewhere for people to see, and web hosting is like a gallery where your art can be stored for others to view.
Data centers are filled with servers that can house hundreds of websites.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
What are the basic types of hosting?
There are three common types of web hosting: shared, virtual private server and dedicated hosting.
Shared hosting is typically the most basic, and the least expensive, type of hosting. Continuing the art example, shared hosting is like a small gallery presented in a coffee shop. Yes, the art you created is there, but so is art by other people. Shared hosting is similar. You’re usually charged a few bucks a month to house your site, but you don’t get a lot of resources to help you take care of your site. These plans usually cost between $2.50 and $15 a month.
VPS hosting is a step up from shared hosting and is a little bit more expensive. Here, your art is stored in a gallery downtown. Other art is still stored and displayed alongside yours, but unlike shared hosting, each artist has their own booth within the gallery. With VPS hosting, you get more resources which allow you to handle more traffic and display more items. These plans usually cost between $20 and $80 a month.
Dedicated hosting is when you house your site on a whole server without anyone else. This is like having the entire art gallery to yourself. Everything there is your art and you get dedicated people to help take care of your art. These plans are the most expensive, but you get the most resources. Dedicated hosting plans usually cost between $80 and $300 a month.
What are some other types of hosting?
Some other types of hosting include reseller, cloud and WordPress hosting.
Reseller hosting involves subscribing to a web hosting service and selling that space to a person who wants to put a website online. Back to the art example: Imagine you don’t own any art, but you see a bunch of people who want to display their art. You have some money so you buy a space in a building for artists to display their work and charge them for using that space. That’s reseller hosting. You buy space on a server, not to use, but to resell to people in order to make money.
Cloud hosting is like having copies of your art featured online, instead of just physical locations. That way, even if one gallery is closed your art is still viewable somewhere else. Cloud hosting is similar in that your data is stored in a network of servers so if anything happens to one server, visitors can still view your site like usual. These are generally used by larger businesses and organizations.
WordPress hosting is optimized to use WordPress as a content management system. WordPress is a popular system used by many organizations, offering over 54,000 plugins to help build your site. This system is designed to be easy to learn, which means WordPress is a good choice for people who are hosting their first site.
What’s uptime and why is it important?
Uptime is a measurement of how long your site operates without going offline. The longer your site stays up, the more traffic it can handle and the more money you can potentially make if your site is for a business. Imagine you’ve narrowed down where to hang your art to two places: One is open two days a week and the other is open seven days a week. You want more people to see your art so you go with the place open seven days a week. That’s similar to uptime. However, uptime can be confusing. Generally when you see something is 99% effective, you think that’s pretty good. But a 99% uptime means your site is down for over three days a year. The industry standard uptime is 99.9%, and anything more is best for you and your visitors. Most web hosting services have uptime guarantees and offer some form of reimbursement if your site is down longer than the guaranteed uptime.
What are the differences between unmanaged and managed hosting?
Unmanaged hosting plans place responsibility for some administrative work on you as the customer. Managed hosting plans, however, leave the heavy lifting to the web hosting service provider. Unmanaged is like if you hang your art in a gallery and you have to clean it, make sure it’s hung right and generally maintain it. Managed is like gallery employees handling those tasks for you. Unmanaged plans are generally more cost effective, but managed plans free up your time to focus on your site.
What security features should I look for in a hosting service?
Some of the key security features you should be on the lookout for are secure socket layer certificates, distributed denial of service protections and web application firewalls.
SSL certificates are a form of cryptographic protocols that encrypt and authenticate data between servers, machines and applications operating within a network. These are like a coded language between the server your site is hosted on and the computer of a visitor. Only your server and your visitor’s computer have the keys to the coded language, ensuring no one intercepts any of your or your visitor’s data.
A DDoS attack is a flood of traffic to your site that overwhelms and shuts down your site, and potentially the sites of others depending on your hosting plan. Imagine you hang your art up in a coffee shop, for example, and someone doesn’t like your art so they convince hundreds of thousands of protesters to swarm the shop to stop anyone from seeing your art. Not only can most people not see your art because of the crowd, but people can’t see other artist’s work either. Having DDoS protections in place helps monitor your site’s traffic for anything suspicious, and stops DDoS attacks from happening before they cause significant damage.
A WAF is a layer of security on your site that filters, monitors and blocks malicious traffic from accessing your site. You have hung your art up, and in order to protect your art and anyone who’s come to see it, the gallery has hired a bouncer to pat down people as they walk in to see your art. The bouncer is the WAF. If traffic looks suspicious, the WAF blocks it.
DDoS attacks can make your site unreachable for an extended amount of time.
James Martin/CNET
What are website builders? Do I need one of those?
Not necessarily, but if this is your first site you might find a website builder helpful, and some web hosting services offer free website builders with plans. Instead of coding your site from scratch, website builders are tools that help you easily create your site through simpler interfaces.
What is site migration? Can I do that myself?
Site migration is the process of moving your already established website from one web hosting service to another. You might do this because the price to renew your current web hosting service increased dramatically or you’re unhappy with your current service. Some services will migrate your site for free, while others will charge you to migrate to their service. You can migrate your site manually, but you could lose traffic as well as content if done improperly. If it’s your first time migrating from one service to another, it might be best to let someone else handle it.
Should I use a Linux or Windows server?
It depends on your goals, but a Linux server will work for most people. Servers that run the Linux operating system support most programming languages and have more features web developers might expect. Linux is also the more popular server operating system, powering about 37.8% of all websites on the internet, according to Web Technology Surveys. A lot of website-creation tools and applications run on Linux so they will work on these servers with no extra effort. Linux servers are also generally cheaper than Windows servers. If you’re a small business owner maintaining your own site, or you’re starting your own blog or online store, a Linux server has what you need.
Servers that use the Windows operating system use the programming language C#. That means if you already know Python, Perl or another language, you’ll have to learn C#. Windows servers also use Microsoft-specific tools and applications like Microsoft Access, Microsoft SharePoint and MSSQL. If you run into issues with these applications or your server, you can contact Microsoft’s customer support who should be able to solve your issue in a timely fashion. Linux is an open-source operating system, so while there is a community of people working to fix bugs, you’ll likely have to dig around to find a solution that works for you. Many large corporations and organizations use Windows servers, so if you want to work for one of them in the future, you could benefit from practicing with your own server and putting that on your resume.
If you’re a commuter or just want that extra something to help you focus, noise-canceling headphones are the way to go. Headphones with active noise cancellation make it easier to focus in on your music, podcasts or audiobooks by blocking outside noises. This can make noisy commutes on the bus or train much more bearable. Active noise cancellation (or ANC) is achieved by microphones on the headphones that detect noise and work to eliminate it before it reaches your ears. They’re particularly good at canceling out continuous droning sounds like jet engines or railway tracks, making them a favorite of frequent commuters and travelers.
The truth is that budget headphones aren’t as great for listening to music and other audio as premium noise-canceling headphones from Sony, Bose and others, but you can find some pretty decent noise-canceling models for far less money. Here’s a look at some of the best cheap noise-canceling headphones I’ve tried, all of which cost less than $100, and a few even come in under $50. All of these headphones offer decent sound quality, active noise cancellation and a comfy earcup to boot (not an earbud to be seen on this list).
As far as sound, comfort level and build quality go, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than Anker’s SoundCore Life Q30 for the money. It doesn’t have quite the clarity or bass definition as some of the top premium models, but it’s less than a third of the price and gets you about 75% of the way there in terms of sound. It’s well balanced overall, with punchy bass, and there’s an app that allows you to tweak the sound. Noise canceling is good for the price, though not up to the level of the Sony WH-1000XM4 or Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. Battery life is rated at an impressive 40 hours with USB-C charging.
The only area where the Q30 falls a little short is for voice calls. It picks up your voice fine in quieter environments but it just doesn’t reduce background noise all that well.
Compared to the Q20 (see below), the Q30 does offer improved sound (it’s not a huge difference, but it definitely is a notch up) and a more premium design. There’s also the new Life Q35 ($130), which adds support for Sony’s LDAC audio codec for high-resolution audio streaming with music services that support it. I’m not sure it’s worth the upgrade for $50 more, but hopefully the Q35 will come down in price over time.
Edifier’s makes some good-sounding PC speakers and true-wireless earbuds and it’s done a nice job with its W820NB noise-canceling headphones. The first thing you’ll notice about them when you put them on is that they’re comfortable — the earpads are nicely cushioned and the headphones fit snugly on your head. They also sound good for their price, offering just enough clarity and decent bass performance. Their sound didn’t blow me away but I was fine listening to these headphones for a while; they sound pretty pleasant.
There’s also an ambient mode that lets outside sound in and a low-latency gaming mode. They’re decent enough for voice calling and battery life is pretty impressive with up to 49 hours of battery life on a single charge at moderate volume levels (and noise-canceling off).
A couple of things are missing. There’s no carrying case or headphone jack — they’re Bluetooth only. But the 820NB headphones are still a good value.
Anker’s SoundCore Life Q20 is arguably the best value in noise-canceling headphones. Not only do these budget noise-canceling over-ear headphones sound quite decent for their regular list price of $60 (they often sell for $10 less with an instant coupon at Amazon), they’re also comfortable to wear thanks to their puffy ear pads. Expect that price to go down even a bit more as Anker has now released the SoundCore Life Q20 Plus, which adds app support and USB-C charging (instead of Micro-USB).
No, the Life Q20 doesn’t sound as good as premium Bluetooth headphones such as the Sony WH-1000XM5, but the audio quality sounds pretty good, which is all you can ask for noise-canceling headphones at this price. It’s fairly well balanced with a reasonable amount of clarity and plump bass that’s not bloated or muddy (there’s a bass boost or BassUp mode if you want an extra helping of bass with your music). Also, the noise cancelation is acceptably effective at noise reduction and blocking out ambient sound and it’s decent enough as a headset for making calls. Battery life is good at 40 hours. A simple carrying pouch is included.
Founded by four former Amazon employees, Wyze is known for its value security cams but it’s now doing a nice job with value headphones. Its over-ear noise canceling headphones offer a comfortable fit with deep memory foam ear pads and solid all-around performance. Their noise canceling is quite good, although you do get some added passive noise isolation from the tight seal the ear pads give you (your ears will get pretty steamy in warmer weather). These are Alexa-enabled, so all you have to do is press a button to access Amazon’s voice assistant, or you can use your phone’s native voice assistant if you prefer. There’s also a transparency mode that lets ambient sound in.
As for sound quality, these are on the warmer side — they have lots of bass and a pretty open soundstage, though they lack that extra clarity and definition you get from higher-end models (the bass is a touch loose). In other words, the sound is quite good for the money but not ridiculously good.
Battery life is rated at up to 20 hours at moderate volume levels and I thought the headset performance was decent as well. A cloth carrying pouch is included along with a USB-C charging cable and a cord for using these as wired headphones.
There aren’t too many on-ear noise-canceling headphones. Beats’ Solo Pro is one of the best, but it’s rather expensive at $300, though we’ve seen it on sale for half that price. Meanwhile, these cheap noise-canceling headphones, the JLab Studio ANC, cost less and deliver solid all-around performance for a budget model with decent sound quality, noise canceling and battery life (28 hours with ANC on). While they may not be stellar for making calls, they do work well as a headset — callers said they could hear me clearly, even with some outside noise around me. A carrying pouch is included.
The Studio ANC headphones are reasonably comfortable for an on-ear model (I prefer over-ear), but those with bigger heads may feel it clamps a little too tightly.
Tribit makes one of our favorite budget pairs of headphones for sound quality — the Tribit XFree Tune. That’s not an active noise-canceling headphone, however. This model is. You can find similar wireless ANC headphones from other generic headphone companies on Amazon (Taotronics, for example, has a model with a similar design), but this over-ear headset does sound quite decent and its noise canceling works pretty well and eliminates plenty of ambient noise and background noise. It doesn’t sound quite as good as the XFree Tune does with music, but it’s among the better sounding budget models in this roundup and also features USB-C charging. Plus, it has a decent battery: Battery life is rated at 30 hours.
Panasonic calls the style of its RP-HTX90N Bluetooth headphones “retro-modern” and that’s exactly what it is. Based on one of our favorite budget wired pairs of earcup headphones, the RP-HTX80, this wireless version with active noise canceling is comfortable and lightweight. These are warmer closed-back headphones that lack treble clarity and aren’t terribly dynamic, but the audio quality is pleasant overall. Battery life is rated at 24 hours of playback, and a 15-minute quick charge gives you two and a half hours of juice.
The noise canceling is decent, though not stellar. Ultimately, for its slightly higher price tag, the biggest reason to buy this model is for its design and comfort level.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory may have achieved a remarkable new high point for fusion reactions, generating even more energy than was pumped in during a recent experiment, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The publication suggests scientists “with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment” have discussed the result and analysis is ongoing. A major announcement is scheduled to take place at LLNL on Tuesday, Dec. 13. It’s expected to be livestreamed by the Department of Energy at approximately 7 a.m. PT.
The National Ignition Facility operates an “inertial confinement fusion” experiment, which sees almost 200 lasers fired directly at a tiny capsule of hydrogen. According to Nathan Garland, a physicist at Griffith University in Australia, the lasers create a plasma around the capsule which eventually starts an implosion — these conditions allow for fusion reactions to take place.
Fusion is the reaction that powers our sun and it works by smashing two atoms together. This requires extreme pressure and extreme heat but trying to recreate the conditions in a lab is “super difficult,” noted Garland.
The energy released by fusing two atoms together is massive and, importantly, releases no carbon dioxide. Unlike fission — splitting atoms — used in nuclear power plants, fusion also leaves behind no radioactive waste and there’s no risk of meltdown, either. In short, if we could harness fusion power, it would revolutionize energy, allowing us to generate clean power without pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
If the FT report and chatter on social media is correct, scientists at LLNL could have achieved “fusion energy gain” which is denoted by the letter Q. In a fusion experiment, if Q > 1, then we’re on our way to a bona fide energy breakthrough, one that scientists have long been dreaming of reaching. “It is a big deal for sure, if true,” Garland said.
But, as with all science, it’s good to be cautious and not overhype results yet to be fully analyzed. We have been here before, after all. In 2013, reports swirled the NIF had achieved this exact feat. It wasn’t the case.
A spokesperson for LLNL told CNET “our analysis is still ongoing, so we’re unable to provide details or confirmation at this time” and provided a link to the media advisory — which, in all caps, suggests a “MAJOR SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH.”
The result won’t mean that we suddenly have an endless supply of energy. It’s likely the reaction that took place at NIF lasted for just a fraction of a second or even less. But this is the first step in a journey toward fusion energy as a viable, serious technology to power our world. It provides a proof of concept that fusion experiments like this can reach Q > 1.
So while I’m always cautious about throwing around the word “breakthrough” when reporting on cutting-edge science — especially in the realm of fusion energy — it does feel like it might be justified here. We’ll have to wait and see.
Updated Dec. 12: Changed sentence to “smashing two atoms together” rather than “heavy” atoms because hydrogen is, of course, a very light atom.
Before the US Federal Trade Commission sued to block Microsoft’s $68.7 billion purchase of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard, Microsoft reportedly offered its competitor Sony the right to sell military shooter as part of its PlayStation Plus service, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The offer would help Microsoft avoid scrutiny by regulators such as the FTC, which are pushing back against the deal.
Sony and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for confirmation on the offer.
In its lawsuit against Microsoft, the FTC argued that the software giant will “harm competition” among game console makers including Sony and Nintendo.
The FTC said in its complaint that Microsoft had used previous acquisitions, including of ZeniMax Media, to make several high-profile upcoming titles like the space exploration game Starfield and the vampire shooting game Redfall exclusive to devices powered by its software.
“Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content fromits gaming rivals,” Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau ofCompetition, said in a statement. “Today we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over aleading independent game studio and using it to harm competition inmultiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets.”
“We have been committed since Day One to addressing competition concerns, including by offering earlier this week proposed concessions to the FTC,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement after the FTC’s announcement. “While we believed in giving peace a chance, we have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present our case in court.”
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick released a statement Thursday saying, “I want to reinforce my confidence that this deal will close.”
The FTC’s move against Microsoft marks one of the US government’s biggest efforts to take on the tech industry, which has witnessed companies like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta becoming some of the most highly valued companies on the planet. Amid all that growth, competitors and regulators have been asking whether the tech industry has too much power and whether companies have been acting as monopolies.
Sony and its PlayStation console division have raised concerns about the deal to regulators in the US and abroad, saying Microsoft’s assurances to keep hit titles like Call of Duty available for the PlayStation aren’t enough.
In 2009, 19-year-old folk singer Taylor Mitchell was attacked by a pack of coyotes while on a hike at the Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Canada. She was just about to start the popular Skyline Trail when climbers in the area saw the animals close- in, unprovoked.
Onlookers called 911, and Mitchell was airlifted to a hospital in Halifax, but 12 hours later, she died from her injuries.
This marked the very first documentation of a coyote attack in North America that resulted in a human adult fatality (in 1981, 3-year-old Kelly Keene was killed by a coyote on her family’s property), raising questions about whether it’s no longer safe to co-exist with these furry mammals.
“We didn’t have good answers,” Stan Gehrt, a professor in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources and leader of the Urban Coyote Research Project, said in a statement.
But after conducting a multi-year investigation into the incident, Gehrt appears to have offered some insight into the situation at last.
According to a paper published last month in the Journal of Applied Ecology, he along with a crew of wildlife researchers found that coyotes in the region of Mitchell’s attack have adopted an unusual dietary change. Rather than rely on smaller mammals like rodents, birds and snakes for food, they seem to be hunting moose for their meals due to extreme climate conditions forcing the former to move away.
As such, the team believes it’s possible these coyotes learned to attack larger mammals, like humans, and are therefore more prone to killing people.
“We’re describing these animals expanding their niche to basically rely on moose. And we’re also taking a step forward and saying it’s not just scavenging that they were doing, but they were actually killing moose when they could. It’s hard for them to do that, but because they had very little if anything else to eat, that was their prey,” Gehrt said. “And that leads to conflicts with people that you wouldn’t normally see.”
Stan Gehrt with a captured coyote being tagged and fitted with a tracking device.
Stan Gehrt
Coyote forensics
Before and after the 2009 tragedy, Gehrt’s project noticed a few dozen less-severe human-coyote incidents in the park as well. He and colleagues even fitted them with what are basically GPS trackers so they could document the animals’ movements and better understand why they were behaving in such surprisingly vicious ways.
“We had been telling communities and cities that the relative risk that coyotes pose is pretty low, and even when you do have a conflict where a person is bitten, it’s pretty minor,” he said. “The fatality was tragic and completely off the charts. I was shocked by it — just absolutely shocked.”
To arrive at their conclusions — that coyotes in Cape Breton National Park were feasting on large moose – the team first collected whiskers of both the coyotes implicated in Mitchell’s death and those related to other more minor incidents between 2011 and 2013. They then collected fur from a wide range of potential coyote prey such as shrews, southern red-backed voles, snowshoe hare, moose and even humans — for humans, they gathered hair from local barber shops.
Seth Newsome, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and corresponding author of the study, performed an analysis of specific carbon and nitrogen isotopes within all the samples.
Eventually, Newsome confirmed that, on average, moose constituted between half and two-thirds of the animals’ diets, followed by snowshoe hare, small mammals and deer, according to the press release. Plus, the researchers analyzed coyote droppings, which confirmed the isotope findings further.
Here’s what it looks like to put on one of the GPS collar types, as done in this study.
Urban Coyote Research Project
Interestingly, they also only found a few examples of individuals having eaten human food, debunking any claims that coyotes’ attraction to human food might’ve been a factor in Mitchell’s attack.
“These coyotes are doing what coyotes do, which is, when their first or second choice of prey isn’t available, they’re going to explore and experiment and change their search range,” Gehrt said. “They’re adaptable, and that is the key to their success.”
From those movement devices, the team tested to see whether coyotes in the park were just familiar with people. However, patterns showed that the animals largely avoided areas of the park frequented by people. Instead, they preferred walking around at night.
“The lines of evidence suggest that this was a resource-poor area with really extreme environments that forced these very adaptable animals to expand their behavior,” Gehrt said. Or as the paper puts it, “our results suggest extreme unprovoked predatory attacks by coyotes on people are likely to be quite rare and associated with unique ecological characteristics.”
If you’ve been interested in trying League of Legends but were put off by the thought of having to unlock 160-plus characters, Microsoft has great news for you. The wildly popular multiplayer online battle arena is coming to Xbox Game Pass. It’s a behemoth of a partnership: League has been around since 2009, has spawned an unbelievably successful esports scene and has even been turned into a Netflix animated series. And Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is CNET’s pick for the best deal in gaming. This new partnership makes that already great deal even better.
The presence of League (and Riot Games’ other titles, like Valorant and Legends of Runeterra) in Game Pass isn’t a huge deal in itself. League of Legends is free to play, so you don’t save money by getting access to the game through Game Pass. You do, however, get access to every single League of Legends champion for free for as long as you keep your Game Pass subscription.
I did the math: There are currently 162 champions in League. They cost, on average, about $6.50 to unlock. That means you’d save more than $1,000 with Game Pass, compared with paying to unlock each champion individually. For context, that would pay for more than five years of Game Pass Ultimate. You’ll also immediately unlock new champions when they’re released, typically about five times per year.
A few caveats worth mentioning: First, paying for champions isn’t the only way to unlock them — the game lets you unlock champions for free over time. Players can use Blue Essence, which you acquire just by leveling up and earning the first win of the day. There’s also a rotation of 16 free champions to play each week, which lets you sample other champions for a week at a time. So you can unlock the whole roster without paying for champions — just very slowly over time.
Second, Game Pass technically doesn’t grant you ownership of all 162 champions, according to Riot’s FAQ. It unlocks them for play, but the game doesn’t consider you an owner, which means you won’t be able to buy skins for the champions you’ve only unlocked with Xbox Game Pass. You’ll still need to buy the champion if you want to buy skins (using paid Riot Points or free Blue Essence). Champions and other content that you’ve unlocked with Game Pass will have a special indicator as a differentiator from content you own.
That means if you end your Xbox Game Pass subscription, or if the partnership dissolves in the future, you’ll no longer have access to the champions you’ve only unlocked through Game Pass. But champions you own will still be available to you.
League of Legends is one of several Riot Games coming to Xbox Game Pass.
Microsoft
Still, this partnership is a steal if you’re new to League of Legends or Valorant, especially if you already have Game Pass. (Valorant agents can also be unlocked for free over time but cost $10 to unlock immediately. Players will save about $140 compared with paying to unlock new agents, not to mention future ones.) You’ll have the ability to try out new champs and agents at will, and still have the ability to permanently “buy” the ones you really like for free, just by playing the game.
You can link your Riot account to your Xbox profile by going to the Xbox sign-in page and signing in to both your Xbox and Riot accounts. If you already have Game Pass, you should get a notification when you sign in to the game once the content has been unlocked. Riot says this process may take up to 24 hours.
If you aren’t already subscribed, Xbox Game Pass for PC costs $10 per month, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which combines the console and PC passes and also includes cloud gaming, costs $15 per month.
You’ve likely seen the new filter your friends have been using on social media that transforms their photos into artwork. It’s called Lensa AI, and the viral photo-editing app takes your uploaded photos and creates “magic avatars” using your face. However, the photo editor doesn’t come without privacy concerns. We’ll explain below.
Lensa AI is free to download on your phone, but you’ll have to pay $4 to upload up to 20 photos for editing. You’ll then receive 50 avatar images based on the photos you submitted.
We’ll explain what you need to know about the Lensa AI photo-editing app. For a look at a similar image service, read about the NewProfilePic photo editor.
What is Lensa AI?
Lensa is a photo-editing app available on iPhone and Android with a feature that takes your uploaded selfies and turns them into avatars. The app can also be used to edit your photos, from skin retouching to blurring backgrounds, and can be used to edit videos.
The service isn’t free to use, but the app has quickly topped the charts in the iPhone App Store’s Photo & Video section. A monthly subscription will run you $8, and an annual subscription costs $30.
Who created Lensa?
Lensa isn’t new. Actually, it’s been around since 2018 and was created by Prisma Labs, which also has a self-named photo-editing app. Based in California, Prisma Labs was founded in 2016 by Alexey Moiseenkov and a team of Russian developers, including Andrey Usoltsev, Oleg Poyaganov and Ilya Frolov.
When Moiseenkov resigned as CEO of Prisma Labs and left the company in 2018, Usoltsev took the lead and became the CEO, a Prisma Labs representative told CNET.
Soon after launch, Prisma became one of the most downloaded apps in the world and won the App of the Year award from both the iOS App Store and Google Play.
Lensa
What are the concerns with using Lensa?
Since the app recently gained popularity, privacy concerns have surfaced — specifically, about how user data is being used. For instance, Lensa can use your uploaded photos to train its AI.
The Lensa privacy policy says it doesn’t use your uploaded photos for anything other than to apply filters and effects to them. However, it adds a slew of ways it may use your information (other than photos and videos), including the following:
To train its neural network algorithms.
To provide, improve, test and monitor the effectiveness of Lensa.
To provide personalized content and information to you in relation to Lensa.
To diagnose or fix technology problems in relation to Lensa.
There’s also the app’s terms of use, which states that when you download the app and upload your photos, you’re granting Lensa a “perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable, sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, create derivative works of your User Content, without any additional compensation to you and always subject to your additional explicit consent for such use where required by applicable law.”
What Prisma says happens to your avatars
The Prisma Labs representative told CNET the following: “After the batch of Avatars is created, the shared photos are deleted permanently from our servers, as well as the copy of an individually trained model. Each time a user purchases a new pack of Avatars, the process repeats from scratch; that’s why we ask you to upload photos every time you request a new package.”
What to do if you’ve already used the app
If you’ve recently submitted your photos to the app and are now concerned with how your data is being used, you can take action. You can send an email to privacy@lensa-ai.com and request that your personal data be deleted. If your photos are being used in advertising, send an email to contact@lensa-ai.com to remove those permissions.
However, the Lensa privacy policy adds that it may reach out to you to better understand your request “in case of a vague access, erasure, objection request or any other request in exercise of the mentioned rights.” And if this isn’t possible, it notes that it reserves the right to “refuse granting your request.”
Any approved requests could take up to 90 days to process.
If you decide to use the app, we recommend carefully reading the terms and conditions, as well as the privacy policy, to know what you’re getting into.
With the headphone jack now being part of the feature list that’s specific to select devices, Bluetooth headphones have become even more prevalent in recent years. However, the key feature of great Bluetooth headphones is the ability to connect to two devices at the same time.
The capacity for connections to multiple devices simultaneously allows people to do things like play video games, watch movies or perform other tasks, while also monitoring their phone in case an urgent call comes in — or maybe they just want to listen to music while engaged in another activity. That’s where multipoint Bluetooth earbuds come in.
Multipoint Bluetooth pairing shouldn’t be confused with multiconnection Bluetooth, which allows you to pair several devices (often up to seven or eight) to your headphones and have the headphones remember the device for easy repairing. However, without true multipoint Bluetooth pairing, a given pair of headphones can only be actively paired to one device at a time — you have to manually switch over to another device if you want to access that as the audio source.
Apple and Samsung offer a variation of multipoint Bluetooth pairing called “automatic switching,” which only works for their respective devices. For instance, you can have your AirPods Pro connected to your iPhone and Mac simultaneously (and an iPad) but a non-Apple device can’t be in the mix for simultaneous pairing. Samsung’s various Galaxy Buds have a similar arrangement with Galaxy smartphones and tablets.
In the past, business-focused headphones — some of which featured integrated boom microphones — offered advanced multipoint Bluetooth pairing. But the feature has gradually come to more consumer headphones, which are what we’re focusing on here. (We also have a list of best headphones for WFH that includes some of the more business-class headsets with boom mics and USB dongles for reliable wireless PC connectivity.) Unfortunately, multipoint Bluetooth pairing isn’t easy to implement at all, let alone implement reliably, particularly with true-wireless earbuds.
“Up until recently, Bluetooth chips supported a maximum of two simultaneous connections,” explains Jonathan Levine, CEO and founder of Master & Dynamic. “This makes multipoint easy for headphones, where a wire connects both ear cups. However, for a true wireless product, one of the two connections gets consumed by the other earphone — leaving only one available connection to an audio source. Cutting-edge connectivity protocols have allowed true wireless products to connect much more seamlessly and bypass the maximum limit of two connections.”
Still, some companies like Master & Dynamic and Jabra, which have been early adopters of the latest Qualcomm SoCs (systems on a chip), added multipoint — and sometimes other features — via a firmware upgrade long after their new earbuds have launched. The Jabra Elite 7 Pro has finally been upgraded with multipoint Bluetooth and Master & Dynamic’s MW08 and MW08 Sport should get the feature soon. Both companies use Qualcomm chips.
That said, enough headphones now support multipoint that we’ve pulled our favorites together here. Note that this list does not include the aforementioned Apple and Samsung headphones, as their respective automatic switching only works within their own branded ecosystem.
The QuietComfort 45 has virtually the same design as its predecessor, the QuietComfort QC35 II, which many people considered one of the most comfortable over-ear headphones — if not the most comfortable. It has the same drivers, according to Bose, and the buttons are in the same place. However, there are small but notable changes. First off, these thankfully have USB-C instead of micro-USB.
Secondly, the microphone configuration is different. Not only have the mics been shifted on the headphones, but there’s now an extra external microphone for voice pick-up, which means the QC45 has a total of six microphones, four of which are beamforming and used for voice. By contrast, the QC35 II has a total of four, two of which are used for voice. (The Bose Noise Canceling Headphones 700 also have six microphones total.)
These headphones are excellent for making calls. They’re similar to the Bose Headphones 700 in that regard. They also include top-notch noise canceling and multipoint Bluetooth pairing, so you can connect them with a PC and your phone simultaneously. Read our full review of the QuietComfort 45.
When Sony released the WH-1000XM4 in 2020, it highlighted a couple of key improvements beyond slightly better sound and noise cancellation. The headphone not only offers better voice-calling performance but it adds multipoint Bluetooth pairing so you can connect to two devices — such as your phone and PC — at the same time. That means that if a call comes in while you’re using the headphones with your computer the audio will switch to your phone when you answer the call.
The Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 probably still have a slight edge for voice calls, but the 1000XM4 is arguably a tad more comfortable and also has some other slight improvements to its noise canceling and sound that makes it a great all-around choice for working from home.
Panasonic’s Technics EAH-AZ60 buds don’t have quite as premium a feel as the earlier EAH-AZ70W, but they sound sweet with clean, well-balanced sound, well-defined bass and good detail. They feature active noise canceling (it’s good), a transparency mode, multipoint Bluetooth pairing so you can connect to your computer and phone at the same time and it has very solid voice-calling performance with good noise reduction. The buds are IPX4 splash-proof and are rated for up to 7 hours of battery life on a single charge at moderate volume levels.
They’re missing a couple of features usually found at this price point: Namely, an ear-detection sensor that automatically pauses your music when you pull the earbuds out of your ears, and wireless charging (the former feature is more important). The step-down EAH-AZ40 also sound good but the EAH-AZ60 not only have larger drivers (8mm compared to 6mm), but they support Sony’s LDAC audio codec and have two additional microphones for voice calling and noise canceling (the EAH-AZ40 doesn’t have noise canceling).
The No. 5909 are premium audio brand Mark Levinson’s first headphones. Yes, they’re expensive at $999 and probably a wee bit overpriced, but they’re excellent. They have a sturdy design without managing to feel hefty on your head (read: they’re substantial, but not heavy) and they’re comfortable to wear over long periods thanks to their nicely padded (and replaceable) leather-covered earcups and headband.
Not only do they have good noise canceling and excellent sound, but their voice-calling performance is top-notch, making them one of the best noise canceling headphones options on the market. Plus, they have multipoint Bluetooth pairing so you can pair them with two devices, such as a computer and a phone, simultaneously.
The No. 5909 are high-res certified with support for Sony’s LDAC and Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive codecs that allow for near-lossless streaming over Bluetooth. Apple’s iPhones and iPads don’t support those codecs while certain Android devices do. Using the No. 5909 headphones over Bluetooth on my iPhone 13 Pro, it sounded a tad more natural and refined than the AirPods Max (the No. 5909 had a touch more “pure” and accurate sound).
I did notice a difference when I paired the No. 5909 to my Google Pixel 4 XL, which has support for LDAC, and using the Qobuz audio streaming service that offers high-res streaming. Overall, the sound had a little more depth and texture, and there’s a touch more sparkle, definition and openness.
I was a fan of Creative’s original Sound Blaster Jam headphones that came out in 2015 and had a decidedly retro look and feel, with good sound for the money. Now they’re available in a 2.0 version that has some key upgrades, including Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C charging, improved call quality and multipoint Bluetooth pairing that allows you to pair it to two devices simultaneously. Battery life is rated at up to 22 hours.
I was able to pair this wireless headphone set with a Mac Mini and an iPhone 12 Pro and then switch audio between them. Often when pairing Bluetooth headphones with Mac and Windows PCs, one can encounter some issues, but once I got the headphones paired with both my PC and phone, they made a good pair of work-from-home headphones. Also, the price is right for parents looking for a decent set of kids’ headphones for remote learning and everyday use.
Comfortable for on-ear headphones, the Jam V2s are lightweight and have nicely balanced sound with good detail and bass that’s ample but not overpowering. Call quality was good in my tests with callers saying they could hear me well even on the noisy streets of New York. No carry pouch is included, but you do get an extra set of foam ear pads, which is good, because they will wear out over time.
The headphones have physical buttons for controlling volume and playback, and there’s aptX support for devices that support the wireless streaming codec.
Anker makes several earbuds that cost less than $100. But its Soundcore Liberty Pro is its “high-end” model that features premium sound, as well as support for Sony’s LDAC audio codec with compatible devices (mostly Android phones).
Available in four colors, the third-gen Liberty 3 Pro buds have updated dual drivers and are about 30% smaller than their predecessor. They fit my ears significantly better than the Liberty 2 Pro earbuds, which I didn’t love as much as some people. This new version is improved and a good value compared to other so-called premium buds.
The Liberty 3 Pro deliver a solid noise-canceling experience (they also have three different transparency modes) and feature Anker’s HearID ANC that “analyzes your ears and level of in-ear pressure to create a tailored profile that optimizes noise reduction and reduces external sound to suit your ears.”
The earbuds also perform well — though not exceptionally — as a headset for making calls and feature multipoint Bluetooth pairing. They’re IPX4 splash-proof and deliver up to 6 hours of battery life with noise canceling on and up to 8 hours with it off. The case charges wirelessly, and I liked how the tips of the buds are illuminated by a pair of LEDs on the inside of the case when the buds are charging.
Released in mid-2020, the Jabra Elite 45h were essentially billed as the best on-ear headphones for the money. While there’s nothing fancy about them, they’re among the best value on-ear headphones right now, with good sound quality, a sturdy design and comfortable fit — for on-ear headphones, anyway. They perform well as a headset for making calls too, and include a sidetone feature that allows you to hear your voice so you don’t talk too loudly. Battery life is also good and it has multipoint Bluetooth pairing so you can connect to your computer and your phone at the same time, and easily switch between the two should a call come in on your phone. It mostly works.
Note that the $274 Evolve2 65, which has an integrated boom microphone, is essentially the souped-up office version of these headphones.
As far as sound, comfort level and build quality, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than Anker’s SoundCore Life Q30 for the money. It doesn’t quite have the clarity or bass definition as some of the top premium models, but it’s less than a third of the price and gets you about 75% of the way there in terms of sound (it’s well balanced overall with punchy bass and there’s an app that allows you to tweak the sound). Noise canceling is good for the price, though not up to the level of the Sony WH-1000XM4 or Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. Battery life is rated at an impressive 40 hours with USB-C charging.
The only area where the Q30 falls a little short is for voice calls. It picks up your voice fine in quieter environments but it just doesn’t reduce background noise all that well. However, it does offer multipoint Bluetooth pairing and is a solid value overall.
Yes (IP57 — Can be Submerged for 30 Minutes Up to 1 Meter)
Coming in at 16% smaller than the Elite 75t, the Elite 7 Pro are Jabra’s top-of-the-line earbuds in its new range and include the company’s new MultiSensor Voice technology with a bone-conduction sensor, four microphones and intelligent algorithms to deliver new “ground-breaking call quality,” Jabra says. The voice calling performance doesn’t quite live up to the hype, but Jabra has updated the buds’ firmware and added multipoint Bluetooth pairing and other small improvements.
These have adjustable active noise cancellation, Jabra’s HearThrough transparency mode and Bluetooth 5.2. They offer up to nine hours’ play time at moderate volume levels with noise canceling on, and nearly three additional charges in the charging case — total battery life is rated at 35 hours. The charging case has wireless charging capabilities.
The earbuds’ IP57 rating means they are dust-resistant and fully waterproof (they can be submerged in up to 1 meter of water). For those who like to use only a single bud, you can also use either bud independently in a mono mode.
AfterShokz has changed its name to Shokz and released new ninth-gen bone-conduction headphones that offer improved bass performance compared to the company’s earlier flagship model, the Aeropex (now called the Shokz OpenRun). That makes the OpenRun Pro the best bone-conduction headphones you can get right now, although they still can’t match the sound quality of traditional headphones.
Bone-conduction wireless headphones don’t go on your ears — they actually deliver sound through your cheekbones. The big benefit of this technology as a safety feature for running is that, thanks to its open design, you can hear what’s going on around you — traffic noise in particular — while listening to music or having a phone conversation (yes, they perform well for voice calls). Also, some race coordinators don’t allow runners to wear anything in their ears, which is where headphones like this come in handy.
They do offer fuller sound with more bass, but it’s an incremental improvement, not a huge leap forward. Like other bone-conduction headphones these are strongest in the midrange where voices live so they’re best for podcasts, talk radio, newscasts and audiobooks. They’re also good for making calls and, like other Shokz models, have multipoint Bluetooth pairing.
Shokz also makes other more affordable models as well. The OpenComm, which integrates a boom microphone, also has multipoint Bluetooth pairing.
Yes (IP55 — protection against low-pressure water streams)
While Jabra’s Elite 75t series has been out a while, they’re still one of the better true wireless earbuds out there and have added noise canceling via a firmware upgrade. Earlier firmware updates improved voice-calling performance. These buds were also among the first to offer multipoint Bluetooth pairing and use different wireless technology from Jabra’s latest buds.
The Elite 75t isn’t quite as comfortable to wear as the AirPods Pro, but they arguably sound a touch better, with clearer overall sound and slightly better bass definition, so long as you get a tight seal. (The step-up 85t have more powerful bass.)
With the arrival of Jabra’s new line of wireless earbuds that includes the Elite 3, Elite 4, Elite 7 Active and Elite 7 Pro, we’re seeing nice discounts on the Elite 75t. Even though it’s an older model, it remains a good value at around $100 and sometimes costs less. Alas, Jabra’s latest buds, while good, don’t offer any major improvements.
With the arrival of Jabra’s Elite 7 Active and Elite 7 Pro earbuds, the once top-of-the-line Elite 85t are no longer Jabra’s best buds. But they were released after the Elite 75t — they’re bigger and have more powerful noise canceling — and should stick around for a while.
The Elite 85t include a wireless charging case (it’s a $20 upgrade for the Elite 75t), larger 12mm drivers for improved sound and six-microphone technology — three on each ear, two on the outside, one on the inside — for improved voice calling with better noise reduction (four of the microphone are used for active noise canceling).
Like the Elite 75t (and new Elite 7 Active and Elite 7 Pro), these earbuds feature multipoint Bluetooth pairing so you can pair them with your phone and computer at the same time (and take calls with your phone when they come in). They’re IPX4 splash-resistant and deliver 5.5 hours of battery life with noise canceling on and 7 hours with it off.
Microsoft’s over-ear noise-canceling Surface Headphones 2 were released in 2020 and the biggest change from their predecessor is the price: The original Surface Headphones launched at $350, while the Headphones 2 cost $250. Like the original, there’s a lot to like about this second-gen model. While they’ve lost their hands-free Cortana voice-control feature (a change no one will lament) and the sound quality hasn’t improved (it’s decent but not stellar), the combination of some small design tweaks, better battery life, upgraded Bluetooth and the new lower price help bump their rating up and make them more recommendable.
Their multipoint Bluetooth pairing capability allows you to pair them with two devices at the same time and since they’re Microsoft headphones, they are designed to be paired with Windows PCs, including the company’s Surface models. These also work well for making voice calls on your phone.
Tablets have gotten pretty advanced over the past few years, and some of the latest models work great as a simple and more compact alternative to a full-size laptop. Take, for example, Lenovo’s Tab P11. This 2021 model is something of an Android version of the top-rated Duet Chromebook, and right now you can pick one up at a discount. Amazon currently has the upgraded Tab P11 Plus on sale for just $300, which is $120 off the usual price.
The big attraction here is that — unlike a lot of tablets — this deal also includes a detachable keyboard cover and Lenovo’s Precision Pen 2. In other words, it’s got everything you need for both work and play in the box. There’s no set expiration on this deal, so there’s no guaranteeing how long it will be available.
While the P11 Plus tablet won’t be able to compete with Lenovo’s powerful full-size laptops, it boasts some pretty impressive specs for its size and is perfect for light work and entertainment on the go. It features an impressive 2K 11-inch display, and at just 0.3 inches thick and weighting in at just 1.1 pounds, it’s extremely portable. Internally, it’s equipped with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of built-in storage, plus a MediaTek Helio G90T Tab octa-core processor for speedy performance. It runs the Android 11 operating system, which means it has access to thousands of apps from the Google Play Store, and it has a battery life of up to 15 hours on a single charge.
If you’re in the market for a different model, you can check out our roundup of all the best tablet deals you can shop right now.
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