I picked up All Systems Red on a Wednesday morning, meaning to read for five minutes, maybe ten. I'd picked it because there was a mean-looking robot on the cover and, obviously, I have a weakness for robot stories. Also, because it had the word "Murderbot" right there under the picture. All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries.

I test and review dozens of cars, trucks, and SUVs every year.Most are impressive. But there are some things that annoy me.

What matters more: how a phone looks or how it performs? “How it performs” might be the obvious answer, but how a phone looks — its design, screen, and ergonomics — vastly affects how it feels to use. If you have to make a trade-off, sometimes performance is the right choice. That’s the story behind two of this season’s most promising new phones, the Nokia 7.1 and the Motorola One. Both phones look a lot like new iPhones, with tall screens, dual cameras, and notches on top. But they come with one critical difference: they sell for half the price — $349 for the Nokia 7.1 and $399 for the Motorola One.

One of the earliest marketing slogans for Sony’s first video game console was “Don’t underestimate the power of PlayStation.” It’s now 24 years later and it’s the power of nostalgia that can’t be undervalued, particularly when you first turn on the PlayStation Classic and are instantly teleported back more than two decades by the iconic Sony Computer Entertainment splash screen and sweeping synth sound

This is probably not the byline you were expecting for a review of some Apple hardware. It comes as a bit of a shock to both of us, to be honest, but here we are: I have a Mac mini on my desk, along with a Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard. It's all hooked up to an LG 4K 21.5-inch display, all supplied by Apple.

For the past few years, Google’s Wear OS smartwatch platform has been best described as in a rut. While Apple has been making impressive strides with the Apple Watch and even Samsung has turned its Gear lineup into competent smartwatches, Wear OS has languished with slow software updates and next to zero hardware advancements. Google addressed this somewhat with the most recent update to Wear OS that brought some interface improvements.

Two years ago, Google’s release of the first Pixel smartphone radically raised the bar for the image quality we could expect from mobile cameras. Today, even as everyone else struggles to catch up, Google is extending its lead with the introduction of an equally revolutionary new camera. It’s called Night Sight, and it effectively lets your phone camera see in the dark. Only it doesn’t require any additional hardware or cost: Night Sight is a new camera mode for Pixel phones.

In the dog-eat-dog world of food delivery services, the landscape changes often and drastically. But one company remains unscathed. It’s Postmates, a pioneer in on-demand delivery that’s been gaining a foothold on the US market all along.

The fan is blowing on this brand-new MacBook Air with Retina Display. It’s a familiar sound: a computer trying to cool down a processor that’s being overtaxed by one of the eight or so apps I have running. (In this case, it’s TweetDeck going rogue.) But it’s also a sound you don’t hear on more futuristic computers like the iPad, the Surface Pro, or even the Pixelbook. Still, fan or not, the computer is handling everything I’m doing just fine, and a quick restart of the app quiets it down.

A top-tier phone for a top-tier price. Huawei swings for the fences with its powerful, full-featured flagship – and it's worth the cost, if you can stomach a four-figure pricetag. In a year where every new phone raises the bar a bit higher its predecessor, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has just enough premium features to stand out from the crowd. It’s a powerful smartphone with three rear cameras and a modicum of distinctive style...

When Razer debuted the original Razer Phone, the gaming specialist focused on creating a phone for mobile gamers, largely succeeding. Razer's original phone was the first to feature a smartphone display with a 120-Hertz refresh rate and audio that sounded better than that from most laptops. True, there were some bugs to work out, but it was an admirable first effort.

Samsung was one of the first phone makers to embrace big screens, making display real estate a focal point in its Galaxy Note lineup. It's a move that smartphone shoppers have also embraced, and one that competitors have tried to ape with phablets of their own.

Earlier today we reported that Google's latest Pixels had some low audio quality when recording videos, but that isn't the only issue to have appeared since the pair of phones launched. There are also widespread reports that the Pixel 3 XL's two stereo front-facing speakers have drastically different volumes. According to a statement made by Google on Reddit, this profound difference in sound balance is intentional.

Obscuring the display with physical watch hands sounds like a great idea, right? Android smartwatches may be about as dead of a form factor as Android tablets, but that isn't stopping OEMs from continuing to pump out these little packages of wrist-mounted sadness. The latest is LG's "hybrid" smartwatch, the Watch W7, which one-ups the usual Wear OS hardware package by slapping physical, analog watch hands on top of the display.

Apple’s brand-new iPhone XS Max features the company’s largest smartphone display ever — a 6.5-inch Super AMOLED variant — but otherwise comes with camera specs that on the surface look pretty much identical to last year’s iPhone X. A closer look reveals important changes, however.

HMD Global is starting to gain momentum in India following the launch of the Nokia 6.1 Plus. The phone introduced a notched design and improvements on the hardware front, but more than that it signaled HMD's intent to become more aggressive in the Indian market. Retailing for just ₹15,999 ($220, the Nokia 6.1 Plus goes up against of the likes of the Redmi Note 5 Pro and the ZenFone Max Pro M1 in the country.

With Red Dead Redemption 2 coming later this year, interest in Wild West games is at a heightened level. So it’s interesting to take a look at a game in development that seems broadly similar to RDR 2, but is taking a very different approach to the subject. This Land is My Land — due out in the first half of next year — is an open-world game set in late 19th century frontier, but it’s played from the point of view of a Native American.

The Nokia 6 series holds special value for HMD Global. The Nokia 6 was the first Android device to feature Nokia branding, and it was one of the manufacturer's best-selling devices last year. The phone wasn't without its faults, however, as the Snapdragon 430 was underwhelming in day-to-day usage.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note phones have always been about more. More screen, more battery, more specs, more power, more features; if you want more of something, the Note is the phone to get. It’s a phone designed and built for the power user who won’t settle for anything less. The new Note 9 gives the most more of any Note phone. It has the biggest screen, the fastest processor, the biggest battery, the largest storage, and the most features.