When you first set eyes on the Logitech Cube Mouse, you'll immediately think one of two things:

"That's not a cube." 
"What is that tiny thing?"

At just about an inch wide, two inches long and half an inch thick, the mouse looks and feels more like a chubby pencil eraser than a device to control a cursor on screen. Sit one next to one of the company's wireless travel mice — which are themselves pretty small — and it's still utterly dwarfed by the larger peripheral. It fits into any pocket with ease, including the key pocket in a pair of jeans. And, at 25 grams (less than an ounce) it's light enough that you can comfortably hang it by its Micro USB charging cable while you top off the internal battery. Is it a good mouse, though? Read on.

Form

While it may be small and its purpose impenetrable until you put it to use, the miniature rectangular prism is definitely a mouse. It's got a 1000dpi laser sensor, a 2.4GHz wireless radio which connects to one of Logitech's tiny USB receivers, a capacitive touch surface on top, and even some sensors inside to determine whether the mouse is right-side up or upside-down. That's pretty neat, because it lets you pick up the mouse and use it as a presentation clicker as well. More on that in a bit.

Visually, it's quite an attractive design. There's a smooth, hard, glossy, transparent, resin-like plastic covering a white (or black) ribbed design on all six sides, while a glossy black (or white) fills in all the seams at every vertex and edge. The entire bottom panel doubles as the mouse's anti-skid foot, which is kept perfectly flat, while the other sides curve in slightly to allow a better grip. As you'd expect, the glossy surfaces attract fingerprints like moths to flame, and they're easy to scuff up, too. Thankfully, you probably won't notice except in direct light, as the curves typically tend to keep the surface from being fully illuminated. Around back, there's a nice firm silver power switch, which triggers an otherwise hidden green LED light when you turn it on, and the Micro USB charging port.

Function

Functionally, the Cube is a bit cramped for big hands or long mousing sessions. It's not very comfortable at all. The boxlike design definitely looks neat, and it's small enough to use on your laptop's palmrest, but it's not anywhere near as ergonomic as its close competitor the Swiftpoint mouse. All the basic functions are there, though. Like the clickpads you'll find on recent notebooks, the entire top surface of the mouse is one big button, but the function changes depending on where your finger is. If you press down in the finger indent at the front, it left-clicks; if you press further back, it right-clicks, and if you slide your finger across the top of the mouse, you can scroll fairly well, albeit with a slight delay. There's no middle mouse button, I'm afraid to say.

The accuracy of these gestures depends heavily on software, though, and they're not foolproof here: when I tested out the right-click in the game Batman: Arkham City(where it's critical in order to keep criminals from pounding on Batman's skull) I found that it required a very deliberate, careful press to get the gesture to reliably register. Also, though Logitech offers a piece of desktop software that's supposed to improve scrolling, it had the opposite effect for me: out of the box, the Cube felt like it had fairly smooth inertial scrolling with a little jitter on occasion, but it got worse after installing the client. Your milage may vary.

Pick up the mouse, and the laser sensor automatically shuts off as it switches to presentation mode, where the controls are as simple as can be: tap the mouse button to go forward one slide (Page Down) or flip it upside down and tap to go backward one slide (Page Up). It works seamlessly just as advertised, so I can't really complain, but it feels like Logitech missed an excellent opportunity here. Once you flip the mouse upside-down, there's a handy laser sensor right in front of your face, but it's turned off: why couldn't Logitech invert the sensor's vertical axis when it flips, and turn it into an optical trackpad as well? Go ahead and turn your own mouse upside down, and drag your thumb across the sensor surface. See what I mean? With its embedded sensors and uniform design, the Cube Mouse could be a proper air pointer, but perhaps that didn't occur to the company.

What I can complain about is the Cube's battery life: where most of Logitech's portable pointers can last months or even years on a couple of AA batteries, I only got about a week out of the Cube before it had to be recharged. It's pretty easy to charge it, mind you, and just about any Micro USB cable will do the trick, but it's one more thing you'll have to worry about before your big presentation. Also, while the Cube Mouse's wireless range is fairly good assuming a straight line of sight, and shouldn't be any trouble in a large conference room, it dips quite a bit as the battery drains.

If you’re looking for a premium, ultraportable laptop, there aren’t many options to be found in the Windows world. Apple’s been owning this segment of the laptop market for so long that it almost feels like other companies have given up. But they haven’t, and HP is trying its hardest to change that perception with the new Spectre.

In terms of premium design and ultraportable features, the Spectre is as good as you can get. It’s super thin (the thinnest in the world, according to HP), super light, and super well-made. It’s made of aluminum and carbon fiber and even has some coppery-gold bling in case you forget that this isn’t your run of the mill bargain bin laptop. It’s priced premium too: the Spectre starts at $1,169, and the unit I’ve been testing sells for $1,249. In case you haven’t figured it out, those are Mac prices and HP is putting Apple’s computers – namely the MacBook and the MacBook Air – squarely in its sights with the Spectre.

It’s easy to compare the Spectre to the MacBook just based on how thin it is, but a more accurate description would be that the Spectre takes the best hardware features of the MacBook and mates them with the best hardware features of the MacBook Air. The Spectre weighs just under two and a half pounds and is a mere 10.4mm thick when closed, making it just as portable as the MacBook. But it still has a 13.3-inch display, full-size keyboard (with real key travel), and Intel’s more powerful Core i5 and i7 processors – features that are found on the MacBook Air, not the MacBook.

The Spectre’s design is eye-catching, but it can be polarizing. The dark brown metal finish stands out from the sea of silver aluminum laptops, and the details in the speaker grilles and the logo on the lid are handsome. But the display hinge, while very fancy and cool-looking, is clad in a shiny coppery-gold finish, and it’s definitely not a look for everyone. It’s also very prone to picking up fingerprints, which makes it go from "premium" to dirty-looking in just a few minutes of use.

EYE-CATCHING, POLARIZING DESIGN

The 13.3-inch display on the Spectre is larger than the MacBook’s 12-inch screen and it’s higher-resolution than the MacBook Air’s panel. At 1080p, it won’t win any awards for pixel density (and in fact, the smaller MacBook actually has a lot more pixels), but it’s plenty sharp enough for its size. It’s also bright with good viewing angles and covered in Gorilla Glass 4 for durability. The biggest limitation I’ve found with the display is actually due to the hinge: it doesn’t tilt back far enough for my needs, making working on the Spectre while at a standing desk more awkward than it should be.

Despite the Gorilla Glass, the Spectre’s display isn’t a touchscreen, which is a bit odd for a high-end Windows 10 laptop. While many other Windows machines attempt to be more than a laptop by transforming into a tablet, the Spectre is content with just being a very well executed traditional laptop that expects you to interact with it solely through the keyboard and trackpad. HP says that a touchscreen panel would have made the Spectre thicker, so it was omitted in the pursuit of thinness.

In terms of other traditional laptop qualities, the Spectre hits the right marks. The keyboard is comfortable with good travel and backlighting. I had no trouble getting up to my usual speed typing on it. Likewise, the trackpad is smooth and glassy and tracks very well without making the cursor jump around erratically. It’s smaller than the trackpads on Apple’s computers or even other Windows machines, however, and that can make it feel cramped. I didn’t miss a touchscreen on the Spectre very much… until I got frustrated with the small size of the trackpad and wished I could just reach up and poke my finger at the display.

The Spectre is also more powerful than you might expect such a thin laptop to be. The Core i7 processor and 8GB of RAM in the model I’ve been testing have had no trouble handling the various day to day activities I’ve been throwing at them. The Spectre can multitask between a bunch of apps easily, crunch through Word documents and Excel spreadsheets without issue, and can even handle image editing in Photoshop without really breaking a sweat. The Spectre is by no means a gaming machine, nor is it designed to be, but it’s more than powerful enough for productivity work

Part of the reason the Spectre doesn’t break a sweat is because of the fan system HP designed for it. Most ultrathin computers, such as the MacBook, use Intel’s weaker Core M processors, which don’t require a fan. But as I mentioned earlier, the Spectre has the Core i chip, and it needs a fan system to keep it cool. HP’s solution for this maintains the laptop’s ultra-thin profile and sucks in cool air from underneath the computer and directs the hot air out the back of the machine. It’s a clever bit of engineering and it’s effective at keeping the processor running at its top speeds. (HP refers to the system as "hyperbaric cooling.") I occasionally heard the fans spin up when doing demanding tasks such as system updates or heavy photo editing, but most of the time they were not noticeable to me.

THE SPECTRE DOESN'T SKIMP ON PERFORMANCE

Like many other ultrathin computers recently released, the Spectre relies on USB-C for all of its wired connectivity. But instead of just one port as you might find on the MacBook and other tablet / laptop hybrid computers, HP has installed three USB-C ports on the Spectre. You can recharge the Spectre through any one of the three ports, but two of them support high-speed Thunderbolt connections, so you can actually push multiple external 4K displays with the Spectre. Having three ports is definitely better than one, but because USB-C is still so new, I had to carry around a handful of adapters to plug anything into the Spectre, even if I just wanted to charge my phone. (HP is throwing in a USB-C to USB-A adapter with Spectre machines bought from Best Buy; others, such as HDMI or ethernet adapters, run $49 a piece.)

Not everything is perfect with the Spectre. Despite having four speakers and Bang & Olufsen branding, audio output is tinny and unpleasant. But I’m more disappointed with the Spectre’s battery life. Despite HP’s claims of 9 hours and 45 minutes of stamina, the Spectre lasted 7 hours and 21 minutes in our rundown test using the Edge browser, and 5 hours and 10 minutes with the same test in Chrome. In my everyday use, which consisted of a lot of web browsing in Edge, and using apps such as Word, Twitter, Slack, and Mail, I was able to use the Spectre for about six hours before it needed to be recharged. That’s long enough to cover me in a cross country flight, but not long enough to last an entire workday. Depending on your needs, the Spectre’s battery life might not be a deal breaker, but if you’re looking for the ultimate mobile machine, the Spectre probably isn’t it.

Despite my few complaints with the speakers and battery life, the Spectre is still an excellent laptop. It does all of the things a traditional laptop should do: it has a great display, great keyboard, good trackpad, fast, quiet performance, and can be used on your lap without feeling like it’s all going to fall apart. And the Spectre does all of this while being thin and light enough to carry around all day.

With the Spectre, HP has proven that it can build a premium, ultraportable laptop that competes with Apple’s MacBook and MacBook Air. There’s really nothing else like the Spectre in the Windows world right now, and while battery life could certainly be better and I’d love a larger trackpad, I can’t think of a more appealing Windows 10 laptop.

HP PROVED IT CAN COMPETE WITH APPLE

"Most appealing" certainly doesn’t mean "best," though. If you are a normal person who doesn’t care about thinness and style above all else, there are better options. The XPS 13 is still the de-facto laptop for Windows, and if you want more power, Microsoft’s own Surface Book is a good option. But if you want to make a statement and are willing to take a few compromises, the Spectre 13 is a very thin stick of a laptop that speaks loudly.

In a world full of smartphone photography and digital cameras, shooting pictures on film has become a niche endeavor. Instant film, popularized by Polaroid in the mid-to-late 20th century, is an even deeper niche. But Fujifilm’s newest product, the Instax Share SP-2 printer, is a smart little bridge between the digital and analog worlds.

Fujifilm’s first Instax Share printer — which, like this new version, prints on Fujifilm’s 2-inch-by-3-inch Instax "Mini" film — was a clever idea and pretty fun to use. But it felt like a beta version of the idea. The hardware was forgettable and it was slow. Now, two years later, we have the SP-2, and it finally feels like Fujifilm has nailed the execution.

The new Instax Share printer still has a few faults — and at $199, it’s not particularly cheap — but it’s the most fun and immediate way to turn the photos on your phone into something tangible, especially if you stick to the basics.

The most important changes with the new version of Fujifilm’s printer are that the photos print faster, the overall quality has improved, and the connection between the phone and the printer is better. I used it with a Galaxy Note 5, iPhone 6, and even an old iPhone 4S and never had trouble quickly connecting to the printer. At one point I was even in the middle of using the new "split" feature — which lets you print one photo across two different prints — and the connection timed out, but when I reconnected the printer it picked back up in the right spot.

It now only takes about 10 seconds to print photos, which is great — that’s almost twice as fast as the original printer. The photos look better this time around, too, because Fujifilm now uses OLED technology to expose the film, and the resolution has been bumped to 320 dpi. (The SP-1 used LED tech and printed at 254 dpi.) Prints actually look crisp — or as crisp as an instant photo can — and the colors are vibrant.

Fujifilm made a number of software tweaks, but the Instax Share app is still the weakest part of the experience, especially if you’re trying to do more than just print right from your camera roll. For instance, the app offers a lot of different frames and designs that you can overlay on whatever image you’re printing, but you have to toggle through them by tapping a single button. That means if you see one you like but you skip past it, you have to cycle all the way around to get back to it.

Of course, that’s assuming you want to use these frames in the first place. It’s a matter of taste and how you decide to use the printer, really — a "Happy Birthday" frame might help you in a pinch, for example — but I found them to be garish and overly simple. This applies to the Facebook and Instagram tie-ins, too — you can print photos directly from those accounts, but they show the caption, number of likes or hearts, and the logo of the service you printed them from, all in about as unsubtle a manner as possible. And if you have a lot of photos on either service, you’ll have to be patient — the app struggles under the weight of downloading all those thumbnails.

Fujifilm nailed it with the hardware, though. Instead of a looking like a shiny plastic toy, the pinter now looks pretty sleek, with a polygonal design and (a choice of) either gold or silver accents. The only downside of the new design is the power button, which is so mushy and has so little travel that it’s hard to tell if you’ve turned it on, or whether you’re pressing the right part of the printer to begin with.

FORGET THE FRILLS AND JUST HAVE FUN PRINTING

I enjoyed using the Instax Share printer the most when I just stuck to the basics. No filters, no editing — just taking something digital and turning it into a real thing. There’s just something inherently thrilling about that, even if I don’t have any idea what to do with them after they’ve printed.

And I found joy in this in ways that Fujifilm hadn’t prepared me for. Fujifilm is trying to sell people the idea of the Instax Share printer as being a way to bring your smartphone photos to life, instead of forgetting about them the moment you close the camera app. While that is mostly the case, I also got a huge kick out of digging through and printing out photos that were stored on my phones (or on Google Drive), especially the ones that I took with other cameras.

Concert photos that I took years ago — and hadn’t seen since — took on a new life. Pictures of family members and pets when they were younger now had a place to exist outside of a forgotten cache of ones and zeroes. I especially took joy in finding photos, memes, and other web detritus that I didn’t own (oops) and printing out those — something I’m guessing Fujifilm might officially frown upon. "Here come dat boi, ready to be pinned to your mood board," if you will.

This is the best part about the new Instax Share printer, especially now that it’s finally out of its awkward first phase and has become a polished product. It’s not just a way to make tangible the digital photos you take with your smartphone, it’s a conduit to the physical world for any digital image. There may not be a ton of purpose and practicality in that, but it sure as hell is a lot of fun.

As headphones go, Bose guaranteed itself a hit earlier this month when the company unveiled the Quiet Comfort 35s. These new $350 headphones feature Bose’s best-in-class noise cancelation and are capable of hushing busy streets and packed flights down to a whisper that vanishes completely once your music starts playing. And these are the first Bose headphones to offer that peace and on-demand isolation wirelessly. I’ve been using the QC35s for a couple weeks now, and that’s all it took to sway me into buying them. These won’t be my sweat-soaked gym headphones (Beats Solo 2 Wireless) or my open-back “audiophile” headphones (Grado) that stay at home. But if you can deal with the price, the QC35s just might be the perfect everyday headphones.

That doesn’t mean they’re the best-looking headphones around. The "Bose look" is very established by now, and the QC35s do nothing to break out of that mold. They’re for the professional crowd and frequent flyers, so you’re not going to get the same "fancy headphones" aesthetic that you’d expect from, say, Sennheiser. Put more plainly: they’re boring, and that’s just fine for a lot of people. Bose currently offers two options (black or silver), though you’ll be able to customize the colors later this year much like the QC25s. So at least that’ll allow for some personalization.

But what the QC35s lack in style, they make up for in divine comfort. The headband is a little wider than the older wired QC25 headphones, which is a blessing for my enormous cranium. The part of the band that makes contact with your head is wrapped in Alcantara, an ultrasuede-type material that’s very soft and cushiony. The earcups, made from synthetic leather, wrap nicely around your ears and create a nice seal and noise isolation — even before you power on the noisecancelation feature.

The areas that you touch most often are built from glass-filled nylon (which Bose swears is way better than regular plastic), and stainless steel is used for the headband spring and pivot points (where the QC35s fold) for added durability. I’ve never encountered any build quality issues or reliability concerns with prior Bose headphones, so I don’t expect these to be any different.

On the face of the right earcup is a power toggle, which you’ll use to turn on the headphones and also to quickly switch between the two devices you’ve paired most recently. Reach behind your right ear and you’ll find the volume controls with a play / pause button in the middle. (You can hold that button down to activate Siri on the iPhone, or double / triple press to either skip tracks or go back to the previous song.) Beneath the buttons is the microUSB jack for charging, and over on the bottom of the left earcup is a 2.5mm headphone jack. If you’re listening with the included 2.5-to-3.5mm cable, Bluetooth automatically switches off and battery life jumps from an already generous 20 hours up to 40 hours since you’re using all of that charge for noise cancelation.

THEY LOOK VERY MUCH LIKE BOSE HEADPHONES

You can also go wired if the battery dies completely, but sound quality takes a serious dive in this scenario since you also lose Bose’s Active EQ. Plus, the entire point of dropping $350 on these headphones is going wireless. Be free! And know that the option’s there for when you’re stationary. The wireless connection proved largely reliable over the course of my review, with only a couple split-second dropouts in midtown Manhattan. But 99 percent of the time, it worked without issue.

The QC35s have NFC built in, so pairing the headphones is a bit quicker on Android than iOS, but it still took under 30 seconds to get going on my iPhone. You’ll hear voice feedback whenever you turn them on, alerting you to how much battery percentage remains and also which device the QC35s are currently linked to. As I said earlier, switching between two music sources — say, your laptop and smartphone — is as easy as giving the power toggle another slide forward. (The headphones can even maintain two connections simultaneously if you wish.)

Bose’s Connect app promises to make switching between multiple devices easier, and it’s also how you’ll install firmware updates. But the idea of headphones requiring an app feels positively silly to me; it’s overkill. So I never bothered and, surprise, everything still worked fine. Only if you plan to pair your headphones with a long list of other gadgets do I see it being worth the install.

So how do these noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones sound? In my listening time so far, they’re slightly richer and fuller than the SoundLink II headphones (also wireless, but sans noise cancelation) that Bose released last year. And that’s to say they sound pretty good. The "no highs, no lows, must be Bose" tagline is straight up unfair at this point, as the experience you get is anything but sterile or flat. My test material has included the latest releases from Drake, Sturgill Simpson, Chance the Rapper, Brian Fallon, my 2016 Spotify playlist, and random selections from Discover Weekly and my iTunes library, which contains only Apple Lossless files.

For the most part, the QC35s present a faithful reproduction of the recordings that I know best, though bass is notched up a bit. The soundstage isn’t as expansive and detailed as $1,000 headphones, but it’s still very pleasing. Acoustic guitars ring through with wonderful clarity and presence; harmonies have enough space to make every vocal note feel distinct; and the QC35s deliver plenty of thump when needed, like during Beyonce’s "Freedom" or through the entirety of Views. I didn’t experience the same distortion issues that drove my colleague Chris Ziegler awayfrom these headphones. Whether it’s differing music tastes or volume preferences, I was left impressed, and he obviously had a different takeaway. 

Now I’m sure audiophiles would recommend putting $350 elsewhere if sound quality alone is your deciding factor. But that’s not why you buy the QC35s. It’s the noise cancelation that’s the secret sauce here. Bose’s arrangement of microphones in each earcup continuously listens to the outside world around you, sending an equal and opposite signal to your ears that cancels out all that background noise. It never goes away completely; if you’re not listening to any audio, you’ll still hear coworkers talking at the office or a baby crying on a plane, for example. But those sounds are much, much quieter than they’d normally be, and the moment you begin playing music, it’s like you hit the mute button on everything (and everyone) around you.

SOUND QUALITY IS GOOD, AND THE NOISE CANCELATION CAN FEEL LIKE MAGIC

It’s a blessing to have these things on the subway; you’re no longer just pretending that you can’t hear the people next to you. You can’t use ‘em everywhere, though. Since there’s no water resistance, I still have to deal with people grunting at the gym. Even wearing them outside on hot New York days has me a little wary of shorting them out. Bose’s 20-hour battery life estimate seems right on; I end up charging them probably once every three days — and that’s usually when the battery is at around 40 percent. The QC35s also have a noise-rejecting dual-microphone system built in for voice calls and Siri, which worked well enough in my tests. I’ll always feel a little foolish talking without a phone next to my ear, though.

The QuietComfort 35s are exactly what Bose promised they’d be. They’re the best noise-canceling headphones around, and the best-sounding headphones that the company has produced yet. Now you’ve got the added convenience of them being wireless — just in time for an iPhone without a headphone jack. Do I recommend them? If you’re someone seeking escape from outside noise or distractions, then yes. Wholeheartedly. While $350 isn’t cheap, this is one of those instances where you can know you’re buying the best thing available right now. If you don’t need to live in your own world of silence, then plenty of other headphones will do. But it’s hard to leave that peace and quiet once you’ve had it.

Don’t blink, because there’s another new pair of earbuds promising the dream of true wireless on the market: the Motorola VerveOnes. Debuted at Mobile World Congress and on sale this month, they start at $200, and they skip things like heart rate monitoring and fitness tracking. These buds are all about audio, and to be clear, the name is just a licensing deal, as they’re really made by a company called Binatone. I’ve been testing the $250 version — the IP57 waterproof VerveOnes+ — for the last week. While they get a few things right, the experience is still a far cry from what you’d want from truly wireless earbuds. 

Let’s start with the good, because there actually is some — in the right light. In these early days of truly wireless earbuds there are two connections you have to worry about: earbud to earbud, and earbud to phone. The VerveOnes are, in both respects, the best at maintaining their wireless connection out of the handful of wireless earbuds that I’ve tried.

The earbuds sync shortly after you put them in your ears and are fairly straightforward to use. That said, every once in a while, one earbud (in my case, the right one) will drop the audio for about a second. At best it's an occasional annoyance and at worst it's enough to be a deal breaker, though Binatone is handling the problem better than most of the competition. Bragi, for example, had to delay production so it could build a hearing aid technology called Near Field Magnetic Induction into the Dash earbuds in order to get around using Bluetooth between buds. Earin, essentially the first to market last year, just went ahead with Bluetooth — a decision that totally marred the experience of their earbuds. Perfecting this connection is obviously not an easy task.

More importantly, I never had problems with the phone-to-earbud connection, which was the biggest problem with the Dash. I could put my phone in any pocket or out on my desk and the Bluetooth radios in the VerveOnes+ were powerful enough to keep the connection going. (Reading some of the other reviews of the VerveOnes+, though, it seems like your mileage may vary with this issue. My former colleague David Pierce ran into far more Bluetooth trouble over at Wired.)

As for the headphone basics, the VerveOnes+ sound decent — they won’t impress audiophiles, but they’re as good as the most common wired earbuds. There's definitely enough bass for me, but I don't crave the heavy, overpowering bass like many fans of big Beats cans. Call quality is better than the awful experience I had with the Dash, but it’s still not pleasant. And the battery life is okay, too: three to four hours between charges.

MORE BAD THAN GOOD

The earbuds come with a tube-shaped charging case that provides an extra two to three full charges for the earbuds. It's small enough to fit in a pocket but it's definitely not small — I keep finding myself yearning for smaller cases with every set of earbuds I try, Earin's pen-sized case being the exception. The VerveOnes+ snap snugly into the case, though it takes a little while to get used to the force necessary to get them in and out.

The base model of the VerveOnes+ starts at $200, but I had the VerveOnes+, which are IP57 waterproof. That means they can be submerged in up to three feet of water for up to 30 minutes. You won't really be able to go swimming with them — Bluetooth just doesn't work in water, and there's no internal storage like on the Dash — but it's nice to know they're protected and it makes them easier to clean.

But as I dug down deeper into the experience of using the VerveOnes+, I kept running into more problems — enough, in fact, to squash my optimism about what little good there was to be found with these earbuds.

For one, there’s the fit. I don’t consider the VerveOnes+ to be huge, but they’re a little bit bigger than the Dash, and the hardware is less polished. Because of this, they’re probably the most uncomfortable wireless earbuds I’ve tried — not so bad that I didn’t want to use them, but enough that I was always looking forward to taking them out at the end of my commute. (On the other hand, I never had to worry about killing the battery!)

Then there are the buttons. Each earbud has one, but they are very inelegant. They don’t require a ton of force to click, but that action — and the resulting sound and feeling — was an unpleasant experience in my ear. And since they’re just buttons, there’s no way to use them to control the volume of the earbuds. Instead, you can only use them to do things like play, pause, skip tracks, or activate your phone’s voice assistant.

On the software side, Binatone tried to build some interesting features like audio pass-through and an equalizer, but they are essentially only accessible through the app and only when the earbuds are snapped into the charging case. You can access the EQ settings by long pressing on the left earbud but it’s a slow, grueling process that no one is going to waste their time sitting through.

The Dash proved to me how useful audio pass-through can be with wireless earbuds — it totally solves the problem of not being able to hear someone speaking to you — but the feature is only valuable if it’s quickly accessible. On the Dash, all you have to do is swipe an earbud. On the VerveOnes+, you’d either have to always leave the pass-through on, or you’d have to take the earbuds out and put them into the charging case and then open the app. It’s an infuriating UX choice and a waste of a useful feature.

For all of their current troubles, wireless headphones, in general, are still a pretty magical experience. There’s something about that moment when you remember that you’re free from wires as you hold your phone out in front of you. The effect is doubled when you’re using tiny, truly wireless earbuds.

The VerveOnes+ do a couple things well, at least when you compare them to what's already on the market. And if you’re dying to own wireless earbuds, these are not the worst ones you can buy. But that's about the best thing you can say about them because, like the current competition, they’re far from perfect. They're plagued by problems we hopefully won't have to put up with once other big companies reshape the market by releasing their own wireless earbuds, and that's just not good enough.

Hot on the heels of Tag Heuer another watch maker has turned its hand to anAndroid Wear wearable, although this time it's Casio - a brand famous for putting calculators, TV remotes and more on our wrists.

What it's created this time is the Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10, an absolute mouthful of a name which will set you back a cool $500 (around £350, AU$700) when it goes on sale in April.

That's a touch more expensive than the Huawei Watch ($400), but no where near as pricey as Tag's Connected wearable.

Front and centre of this rugged wearable is the sizable 1.32-inch, 320 x 300 display which is certainly a presence on the wrist, especially when you include the overly bulky housing it's been clad in.

The screen is circular, but like the Moto 360 series it features the "flat tyre" segment at the base of the display. For whatever reason this chunk wasn't as noticeable as on Moto's watches, and I suspect it has something to with the Smart Outdoor Watch's massive frame.

It fills the wrist, and for those with slimmer forearms the Smart Outdoor Watch just looks ridiculous. A smartwatch for the dainty this is not, but it's not trying to be.

As the name suggests this is a watch for the outdoors, and Casio's built the Smart Outdoor Watch to US Military Standard, protecting it against drops, shocks and vibrations, plus it's water resistant up to 50 meters.

It is surprisingly lightweight however, so even though you'll still notice it on your wrist thanks to the sheer scale of the Smart Outdoor Watch, it will at least not feel like it's trying to wrench your arm off.

On the right side of the watch you'll find a trio of chunky buttons providing quick access to key apps and tools - handy if you're in the pouring rain and the touchscreen isn't playing ball.

On the other side is Casio's rather strange proprietary charging socket, which sees the charging cable rather crudely shoved into the side of the watch. There's no dainty pin pad or wireless charging dock in sight here. Still, at least it's not the awful cage from the Samsung Galaxy Gear. Yuk.

The Casio Smart Outdoor Watch runs Android Wear, which means it's compatible with most Android and iOS handsets, allowing your phone notifications to be displayed on your wrist.

There's also the other standard array of features including Google voice commands, the ability to reply to certain messages and access to a variety of apps from the Play Store.

Casio has gone further than most Android Wear manufacturers though, adding additional features to the WSD-F10 including a compass, barometer and altimeter as it looks to appeal to hikers and those with a love for the outdoors.

There's also a tide graph, perfect for fishing and surfing, while a dedicated cycling mode and velocity metre tracks the speed and distance of your ride. It'll even remind you to drink water, and notify you when the optimum time is to jump in a boat and get your rod out.

There's oddly no heart rate monitor included on the rear of the watch though, so you won't get any BPM readouts.

The display itself is bright and clear - which is should be considering its size - but it's a little more complex than that. The Casio Smart Outdoor Watch actually features a dual-layer display, compromising of a low-power monochrome LCD and then a colour LCD.

The monochrome layer provides an always on display for the time and date, which is easy to read even in direct sunlight, while the more power intensive colour layer powers up during normal usage.

How this effects battery life is currently not clear, as there appears to be some confusion over just how long the Smart Outdoor Watch will last on a single charge.

I've heard seven hours with everyone on, five days and even a whole month if you only use the monochrome - you'll have to wait for the full review where we'll find out just how long it goes.

The display itself is bright and clear - which is should be considering its size - but it's a little more complex than that. The Casio Smart Outdoor Watch actually features a dual-layer display, compromising of a low-power monochrome LCD and then a colour LCD.

The monochrome layer provides an always on display for the time and date, which is easy to read even in direct sunlight, while the more power intensive colour layer powers up during normal usage.

How this effects battery life is currently not clear, as there appears to be some confusion over just how long the Smart Outdoor Watch will last on a single charge.

I've heard seven hours with everyone on, five days and even a whole month if you only use the monochrome - you'll have to wait for the full review where we'll find out just how long it goes.

Alienware has a long list of memorable gaming PCs in its 20-year history, and perhaps one of the most notable has been its mid-size tower, the Aurora. We've been waiting patiently for a follow up to the Aurora R4 and its maneuverable fins since it was released in 2011.

Now, it's finally here with the Alienware Aurora R5: a leaner, meaner and even more head-turning gaming desktop than the new Alienware Area 51.

Design

The Aurora R5 is looks the part of a tower of power, but it's surprisingly tiny despite its dominating silhouette. Measuring about 1.5 feet tall and just over a foot in depth, it's a far smaller system than your traditional mid-tower case and almost veers into Mini ITX territory.

The second thing you'll notice about the Aurora R5 is how sleek it is. There are no flat edges on any side of the case. Instead, they all slide off at odd angles, and even the desktop's two feet are pitched at different inclines. That all might seem random, but it adds up to a gorgeously modern design.

Alienware's designs have classically exuded an exotically extraterrestrial quality to them. However, the Aurora is more industrial and seems more like something from our own future rather than an alien pod, like the Area 51. Ultimately, though, there haven't been many gaming PCs with a uniquely asymmetrical design like this before.

Some elements of Alienware's older designs also bleed through here, including the side panels that bend at the corners, like the company's gaming laptops. You'll also find that signature glowing alien head and tri-beam accent lights on the sides, all of which are customizable through the Alienware FX software.

Curiously, one element that's missing here is the center spine, which has been a part of almost every Alienware design since the Area 51 Predator 1. Instead of a wedge shape at the front end, the R5's façade is flat and almost completely plain, save for the glowing logo, an extremely thin disc tray and ventilated front intake. One welcome new design element is a rear handle that makes lugging around the system a lot easier.

Clever girl

Of course, the Aurora R5 has way more going for it than just a new look. Alienware has re-engineered its entire internal layout, having found a way to fold components into each other to save space without sacrificing accessibility or easy upgradability.

Most gaming PCs come with a top- or bottom-mounted power supply. However, the R5 comes with one that's turned on its side and attached to an articulating arm that swings out of the case and closes over the motherboard.

It's a literally head-turning design that helps reduce the height of the PC while using up the empty space over the processor and CPU cooler, which is otherwise unoccupied on almost all other desktops.

The power supply assembly doesn't interfere with other components, like crushing the memory modules. The folding arm is also designed to just glide over the graphics cards, and it has a small nook for cables to run through and a space cut into it to prevent the side panel from clamping down on them.

You might think that this would have a negative effect on cooling, but it actually works pretty well. A fan pulls in cool air through the front while the GPU(s) breathes through fins cut into the side panel, and heat radiates through the top.

Our Intel Core i7 chip and Nvidia GTX 1080 kept cool as a cucumber while gaming and powering the HTC Vive. That said, our unit came with the optional liquid cooling system.

It's a big upgrade from the usual CPU fan cooler, though it partially blows hot air directly into the rear handle. This means a portion of the heat travels a few inches before smacking into a solid plastic panel.

Spec Sheet

Here is the Alienware Aurora R5 configuration sent to TechRadar for review:

• CPU: 4GHz Intel Core i7-6700K (quad-core, 8MB cache, up to 4.2GHz with Turbo Boost)
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X RAM)
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 RAM (2,133MHz)
• Storage: 256GB PCIe SSD, 2TB HDD (7,200RPM)
• Optical drive: Tray-loading dual layer Blu-ray reader
• Ports: 7 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB-3.1 Type-C, 6 x USB 2.0, Ethernet, 4 x DisplayPort, HDMI, optical out, headphone jack, microphone jack, 7.1 surround sound out
• Connectivity: Intel 3165 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2
• Weight: 32.67 pounds (14.82kg)
• Size: 8.35 x 14.19 x 18.6 inches (212 x 360.5 x 472.52mm; W x D x H)

Don't let the Aurora's small size fool you – it's a full-fledged gaming desktop and can even be VR-ready, depending on your configuration. The R5 starts at $799 (about £599, AU$1071) with an Intel Core i3 processor, Nvidia GTX 950 GPU, 8GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive.

In reality, though, you can't really play many demanding games with this starting spec. So, you'll likely have to step up to the $1,099 (about £825, AU$1,473) Intel Core i5 and Nvidia GTX 970 configuration, if you want a smooth, say, Overwatch experience. Even at this price point, the Aurora R5 is more affordable than the Lenovo Ideacenter Y900 and Acer Predator G6 – with cheaper upgrades to boot.

Meanwhile, the $2,529 (about £1,899, AU$3,390) configuration you see above is a nearly maxed out unit with a few extras, including the upgraded 850W power supply plus the liquid-cooling system.

With the higher-spec PSU, I plugged in a second Nvidia GTX 1080 for my enjoyment … err, I mean, testing. The system ran like a dream with the extra card and it really is amazing, how fully stocked you can make the Aurora despite its small size.

Of course, there's the option of upgrading your system even more ways, and Alienware has made the entire process tool-less. You won't even have to contend with thumbscrews to remove the expansion slots, and there's room for two SSDs to slide in on tool-less trays as well.

Benchmarks

Here's how the Alienware Aurora R5 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

• 3DMark: Cloud Gate: 30,764; Sky Diver: 32,393; Fire Strike: 15,315
• Cinebench CPU: 865 points; Graphics: 132.5 fps
• GeekBench: GeekBench: 4023 (single-core); 16,067 (multi-core)
• PCMark 8 (Home Test): 4,563 points
• The Division: (1080p, Ultra): 91 fps; (1080p, Low): 201 fps
• GTA V: (1080p, Ultra): 78 fps; (1080p, Low): 176 fps

With Nvidia's latest and hottest Pascal GTX 1080 graphics card and an Intel Core i7-6700 CPU on board, the Aurora R5 tore up all the benchmark tests I put it through. It easily put up some of the best scores I've seen from a gaming machine, and it even put the overpowered Maingear Shift to shame in certain respects.

With a single GPU, the R5 was able to play GTA V at 78fps on Ultra, whereas the Shift achieved a 73fps performance with two Nvidia GTX 980 Ti cards. Pascal offers so much more performance than Maxwell, it easily outpaces every Nvidia-powered gaming desktop we've reviewed in the past.

Final verdict

The Alienware Aurora R5 is a revolution in gaming desktop design. Putting the power supply on an articulating arm and having it float over the motherboard is a completely unorthodox approach, but it makes a lot of sense when you put it to practice.

This helps reduce the overall height of the case while minimizing the amount of unused space in the case. As a result, the Aurora is dramatically smaller than most pre-built PCs.

While Alienware's systems have a reputation of being exorbitantly expensive, the Aurora R5 is approachable at $1,099 (about £825, AU$1,473) for a decent configuration – more affordable than some of its competitors. From there, you could upgrade the components yourself through a painless and tool-less DIY process.

The Alienware Aurora R5 is a gorgeous and well-planned system light on in space and price, but heavy on power and potential.