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Google vows to make Search ‘better’ after redesign backlash

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Over the coming weeks, Google says, it will continue to test changes. Desktop users will see a variety of favicon placements. It’s hard to say at this point what that will look like. It’s also unclear how Google will differentiate ads.

Last year, Google brought the favicons to mobile Search. The goal was to make it more evident where info is coming from. According to the company, the changes have been well received on mobile. Google says early tests for desktop were positive, too, but that the company is “always incorporating feedback from our users.” In other words, Google seems to have heard your complaints, and it’s working to figure out the best way to redesign its desktop Search.



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The best touchscreen winter gloves

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The snug fit of the Moshi Digits Touchscreen Gloves‘s knit design makes typing easier, and the microfleece lining is soft, cozy, and warmer than some of the other gloves we tested. Sure, while you wear them you won’t be able to properly compose a tweetstorm about how hot Timothée Chalamet looks in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, but you should be able to easily text your friends that you’ll meet them “inside the movie theater in 10.” We also found that the Moshi Digits dry faster and have a better grip than other knit gloves. The company recently redesigned the glove to lengthen the older version’s frustratingly short fingers and fit a wider variety of hand sizes. Because the Moshi gloves have a simpler and more elastic fit than others we tested, it should be easy to determine which of the gloves’ three sizes are the right fit for you.

Sizes: S, M, L

Colors: light gray (S, M), dark gray (L)

Materials: acrylic and nylon shell, microfleece lining

If you’re particularly worried about an accurate fit, consider the Black Diamond HeavyWeight ScreenTap Fleece Gloves, which have a stretchy fit that hugs the hand like a second skin and makes typing more accurate than with other gloves we tested. (The difference in ease of typing between the Moshi Digits and the Black Diamond gloves was negligible, though.) The Black Diamond pair’s fleece material also blocks wind better than traditional knit fabrics (like that used in the Glider Gloves) and is water-repellent. But these are designed to be liner gloves, so they’re not very warm on their own. Unless you’re going to be active, you may want to pair the Black Diamonds with an outer glove in extremely cold temperatures and in the snow. The Black Diamond gloves’ stretchy material also means sizing is more forgiving than with some other gloves we tested, and the company offers more specific sizing than Moshi (XS to XL, rather than just S to L).

Sizes: XS to XL

Color: black

Materials: fleece shell, goat leather palm

If you live somewhere with temperatures that rarely drop below 40 °F, you can get away with the less insulated but more accurate Glider Gloves Urban Style Touchscreen Gloves. They’re the least warm of the gloves we recommend and a little baggy, but you can easily size down for a tighter fit. And they’re a good option if you work in a cold office and need something thin for all-day use.

Sizes: S/M to XL

Color: black with a mélange pattern

Materials: acrylic, nylon, spandex, copper yarn

If you want a pair of fancy leather gloves that will keep you warm through the winter, the Canada Goose Workman Gloves are surprisingly accurate, given their thickness, and they still look stylish. But be prepared to spend a little more. The plush, thick Workman gloves are the warmest pair we recommend, with an exterior of goatskin leather with wool trim and a lining of polyester faux fur. These gloves also have ribbed cuffs to keep cold from reaching your fingertips. Although all of our testers noted their accuracy, the Workman Gloves have touchscreen capabilities only on the index finger. We found them to be surprisingly cozy, but we don’t expect them to keep your hands warm when the temperature starts dipping below zero.

Sizes: S, M, L, XL

Colors: black

Materials: goatskin leather, wool trim, polyester faux fur lining

The Kent Wang Deerskin Gloves have a classic design, a cashmere lining, and above-average touchscreen accuracy. They weren’t as warm as the double-layer knit Moshi Digits, but our testers found them to be about as warm as the Black Diamond fleece gloves. Like the Canada Goose Workman Gloves, they’re expensive. Because the Kent Wangs are sold in specific sizes and the leather is less stretchy than our knit and fleece recommendations, it may be harder to get a proper fit. If that’s the case, you can opt for a custom pair, for $25 more.

Sizes: 7, 7.5, 8.5, 9.5, 10.5

Colors: black, dark brown

Materials: calf leather palm, deerskin back, cashmere lining

Who should buy these

Regular gloves don’t work with the capacitive screens on phones and smartwatches, so if you want to use your device when it’s cold out, you’ll need to either take off a glove or use gloves that are designed to work with touchscreens.

Unfortunately, every touchscreen glove we’ve tested exists on a continuum of “warm but inaccurate” to “cold but good for typing,” and no glove was truly good at both. Inaccurate gloves led to incoherent text messages, and thin but accurate gloves left us freezing when we wore them in cold weather. In an era in which voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant are increasingly accurate and useful, you may be better off just using a normal glove and talking to your phone instead.

In our trials, we focused on gloves that existed in that middle ground of the continuum—those suited to when you’re out walking the dog or waiting for a train, rather than those designed for Arctic conditions or heavy labor. They’ll keep your fingers from freezing while you’re brushing the snow off your windscreen, and they will allow you to fire off a quick text or get Google directions.

Touchscreen gloves also break down quickly—a pair of good touchscreen gloves will last you a full winter or two if you’re lucky, because the conductive material that enables touchscreen compatibility wears down over time.

How we picked and tested

Touchscreen gloves

Over the past five years, we’ve tested more than 80 pairs of touchscreen gloves. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

We’ve researched hundreds of gloves over the past five years. In our most recent update, we looked at 47 pairs, tested 20, and panel-tested nine winter gloves with four testers who had various hand sizes and aesthetic preferences. We chose gloves to test based on several factors, including our previous picks, companies with great reputations in outdoor wear, strong owner reviews, availability across major retailers, and a wide variety of styles and fits.

Heavy-duty gloves aren’t great for typing, and the thinnest gloves won’t keep your hands much warmer than if you were wearing no gloves at all. So we focused mostly on the middle ground: gloves that would be warm enough to get you through a commute.

To start the latest update to this guide, I (Justin Krajeski) tested 20 gloves myself. This meant wearing four pairs of gloves each day for a week on my commute, during lunch breaks, and while running errands around New York City in December. After 11 pairs were eliminated, a panel of Wirecutter staffers with very different hand shapes and sizes tested each pair of gloves for accuracy, fit, appearance, comfort, and ease of use (like when you pull a key card from your pocket to enter a building). We tested the nine finalists on the loading dock of our Long Island City office on a day when the weather oscillated between rain and light snow, with the temperature at about 40 °F. While blaring the latest King Princess record, Wirecutter staffers used each set of gloves as they attempted to fill out a survey on their phones, and we used their responses—and typos—to inform our picks.

In 2018, we tested each glove’s durability and drying time. We ran strips of Velcro across each pair 10 times to see how easily the fabric snagged. We also melted crushed ice on each pair of gloves and tracked the drying time. This told us how fast they’d dry after an afternoon snowball fight with the kids or during the commute home on a sleeting day.

Our pick: Moshi Digits Touchscreen Gloves

Touchscreen gloves

Photo: Michael Murtaugh

No pair of touchscreen gloves is going to let you type a message with flawless accuracy and also keep your hands warm for hours on end. But if you need to type when it’s cold out, we recommend the Moshi Digits Touchscreen Gloves. After seven years of testing, these are the best touchscreen winter gloves we’ve found. They’re easier to type in than the competition, they’re warm enough to use for your winter commute, and—after a recent redesign to include larger hands—they fit a wide range of hand sizes.

The typing experience with the Moshi Digits is pretty good. But keep in mind that “pretty good” is like saying “unbelievably great!” in another product category. By comparison, when we asked a tester if the Lululemon Cross Chill Run Gloves were keeping their hands warm, they typed the response: “By A.G. kk. Not a all.” The Moshi’s knitwear pattern is taut and flexible, which is ideal for dexterity. And the seams are thin on the fingertips, which makes typing more predictable and reliable than with most other knit gloves. All of the fingers have the conductive fiber sewn in (that’s what makes it possible to use gloves with a modern touchscreen), so you can type text messages with your thumbs or poke with your pinky.

Our testers thought typing was easy while wearing the Moshi Digits and filling out a survey on their phones. In our testing in 2018, we found that the gloves’ thicker insulation caused testers to have to press down hard on their screens to get a response. But even though the gloves are still double-layer, that complaint seems to have been addressed in the new version of the Moshi Digits. Single-layer gloves, including those from Agloves and Glove.ly, offered more dexterity but were less predictable at typing because the fingertips were too long.

Touchscreen gloves

All of our panelists loved the soft microfleece lining in the Moshi Digits. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

The Moshi Digits were the coziest gloves we tested. Think of them as a combination of that fuzzy scarf Nana made you last year and the winter blanket that your pet hogs on the sofa. The gloves have a knitted exterior, are lined in microfleece, and were the softest and among the warmest gloves we looked at. In our thermal camera testing, it didn’t show much difference between them. In previous years’ testing, a panelist thought the gloves performed well during high-energy activities, such as shoveling snow, and found they were “plenty warm” for a 15-minute dog walk.

Touchscreen gloves

The Moshi Digits have rubberized grip lines and dots that help keep your phone from slipping out of your hand. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Although most knitted winter wear can be a pain to dry, the Moshi Digits dried quickly in our tests. It took an hour for these gloves to dry, compared with the six hours that the equally thick Smartwool Cozy Gloves needed. The Moshi Digits’s knit construction easily catches on Velcro, and though the snagging didn’t tear the glove or do any other real damage, it did lead to general fuzziness.

Moshi recently redesigned the Digits to lengthen the older version’s annoyingly short fingers and transition from just two sizes (S/M and L/XL) to three (S, M, L), which means that they should now work well for a wide variety of hand sizes. When we tested the large Digits with people who had bigger hands, they said the gloves felt good and fit “much better than the medium-sized gloves. Although they were a little tight around my fingers, it was much more manageable.” Just keep in mind that Moshi measures hand size from wrist to fingertip, as opposed to palm width, so confirm your size before ordering.

Runner-up: Black Diamond HeavyWeight ScreenTap Fleece Gloves

Touchscreen gloves

Photo: Michael Murtaugh

The Black Diamond HeavyWeight ScreenTap Fleece Gloves offer a stretchy fit that hugs your hand and makes it easy and accurate to type. They weren’t quite as warm as the Moshi Digits, but their fleece material blocks out wind better than traditional knit fabrics. They’ll work best at keeping you warm if you pair them with an outer glove and save solo use for when you’re being active. Black Diamond offers a more specific range of sizes than Moshi does. Although that means you’re likely to find a more accurate fit for your hand type, it may just be easier to buy one of the simpler elastic options from Moshi.

Of the gloves we tested, the Black Diamonds were among the most accurate at typing, although the difference in accuracy between the Black Diamonds and the Moshi gloves was negligible. The stretchy fleece material covers your hand nicely and offers good dexterity that makes typing easier. Like the fingers on the Moshi Digits, all of the Black Diamond gloves’ fingers are conductive—but it’s easiest to type with your index fingers because the fit there is better (the gloves’ thumbs were either too long or a little too tight on our testers). Most of the typing mistakes we made with the Black Diamonds were due to seam placement on our fingers, which some panelists felt made typing uncomfortable and less accurate, but most didn’t notice.

Touchscreen gloves

The Black Diamond gloves have a patch of goat leather on the palms that makes gripping slippery phones easier. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Although the gloves are about as decent for typing out texts as the Moshi gloves are, they won’t keep your hands very warm. The gloves are from Black Diamond’s liner series (meaning you can wear them with an outer glove) and are recommended solo in temperatures from 25 °F to 40 °F. In 2018, they received mixed reviews on how well they insulated during our walk-in fridge testing: Our panelists thought the elastic cuffs did a pretty good job of preventing the 30 degree Fahrenheit air from seeping into the gloves, but their fingertips were still cold. In real-world testing, these gloves kept our hands warm enough for a short dog walk in mid-30s (Fahrenheit) temps—although we don’t recommend them for those times you’re stuck outside your friend’s Bushwick apartment at 9 p.m. in 10 °F weather.

The manufacturer says these gloves will fight off the cold better when you’re active rather than standing still, stating they’re “ideal for skiing, trail running or hiking with your smartphone.” This is a point commonly made about soft-shell gear: that it will keep you warm enough while you’re active, but that you’ll need something substantially warmer if you’re standing still.

If you get splashed by a passing vehicle during your morning commute, these gloves will dry out by lunchtime. When we melted crushed ice on the gloves, it took just two hours to air-dry them, thanks to their DWR (durable water-repellent) coating. The Smartwool Cozy Gloves were just as thick, but they took more than six hours to dry.

Of the gloves we tested, the Black Diamonds fit the most hand shapes and sizes, and they come in sizes from XS to XL. Comparatively, the Moshi Digits come in only three sizes (S, M, L), but their simple, more elastic body means the limited sizing will still fit a wide variety of hand sizes. The Black Diamond gloves’ stretchy fleece shell offers just enough give that the gloves were never too loose in the palms nor too snug in the fingers. The stretchiness also made it easy for our testers with long fingernails to move up a size without compromising the overall fit.

The Black Diamonds are all about function, not fashion. While the soft and fluffy gray Moshi Digits are practically cuddle-worthy, the Black Diamonds are available only in black, and the stretch-knit fleece design reminded one panelist of what thieves wear in heist films. The only branding is a small Black Diamond logo on the back of the hand. A large patch of black leather on the palm makes it easy to grip slippery phones and metal railings. You can also connect the two gloves with a tiny clasp, so they stay together at the bottom of your bag.

We know from our experience over the past seven years of testing that it’s hard to find a good pair of touchscreen winter gloves that are reliably in stock. If you can’t find the Moshi Digits or the Black Diamond HeavyWeights, and none of the other gloves that we highlight here appeal to you, consider a different model from the Black Diamond ScreenTap series, like the LightWeight or MidWeight versions. These gloves are thinner, so they’re not as warm as the HeavyWeight gloves we recommend (and the HeavyWeights aren’t even that warm, so take that into account). But they have the same design, so we’re confident they’ll provide the same level of dexterity and typing accuracy as the HeavyWeight version.

A thinner pick for warmer climates: Glider Gloves Urban Style Touchscreen Gloves

Touchscreen gloves

Photo: Michael Murtaugh

The Glider Gloves Urban Style Touchscreen Gloves were our original pick, a few years ago, and we still like them. Their conductivity is great, and because they’re thin, they’re also very accurate if you get a good fit (we recommend sizing down if your fingers are shorter than average). But they’re the thinnest gloves we tested, so they aren’t ideal for colder climates.

Because they’re so thin and fit a little baggy, they don’t trap body heat as well as our other picks. They’re single-layer knitted gloves, so they’re less resistant to wind than the Moshi Digits or the Black Diamonds, and they stop being warm enough in the low 40s (Fahrenheit). The manufacturer says the loose fit is normal, and the size guide for the gloves states that the gloves “contain 2% spandex material that will conform to your hand the more you wear it.” We long-term tested the gloves and found that they didn’t change much in shape, though. (Make sure you reference the company’s sizing guide to find the right size before ordering.) The Glider Gloves are interwoven with conductive copper yarn, so the entire glove is touchscreen-compatible.

Touchscreen gloves

The palms on the Glider Gloves feature a silicone cluster of holes for extra grip. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

These gloves are slow to dry if you get them wet—they took five hours to dry during our tests, which was longer than most pairs we reviewed. (The Smartwool Liner Gloves were equally thin and needed just an hour or two to dry.) The Glider Gloves are still a great buy if you live in a more temperate area or venture out into the cold for only short bursts at a time. Their low insulation also makes them a good choice for people who want to wear gloves all day—for example, in a cold office—but need normal dexterity.

The gloves are available in black with a striped, olive green design (aka a “neutral mélange pattern”). The fingers and palm are covered in a cluster of small silicone, honeycomb-style hexagonal holes to keep slippery devices from falling out of your hands. And the gloves are thin enough to roll into a bundle (like a pair of socks), so you’ll spend less time digging through your bag to find them.

The best leather touchscreen gloves

Touchscreen gloves

Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Leather touchscreen gloves provide a more formal and refined alternative to the standard knit and fabric options that you see in most stores. Though they’re significantly more expensive, they’re the way to go if you need an option that’s suitable for wearing with a business suit or to a formal event, or if you’re searching for a particularly nice gift for someone.

Touchscreen gloves

The Canada Goose Workman Gloves are made from goatskin leather, and their insides are lined with polyester faux fur. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

If you’re looking for a pair of dressy leather gloves that will keep you pretty warm throughout the winter and can be used with a surprising amount of accuracy (considering how heavy they feel), the Canada Goose Workman Gloves are our favorite choice. They’re a good (albeit expensive) option for people who want the look and feel of all-leather gloves while maintaining touchscreen compatibility. The Workman Gloves are goatskin leather with wool trim, and their insides are lined with polyester faux fur. Plus, they have ribbed cuffs to keep any cold from reaching your fingertips. Although all of our testers were impressed by their accuracy, the Workman Gloves have touchscreen capabilities only on the index fingers. And though they’re the warmest of the gloves we tested, they’re still not designed for truly frigid conditions.

Touchscreen gloves

The Kent Wang Deerskin Gloves are lighter-weight for milder winters and look more refined than other, warmer options. Photo: Sarah Kobos

If you’re willing to trade a bit of warmth for a more refined look, we like the classically designed Kent Wang Deerskin Gloves, which are made of calf leather and deerskin. They’re cashmere-lined, and even though they’re warmer than the Glider or Black Diamond gloves, they’re not on the same level as the Moshi or Canada Goose options. And because they’re leather and are sold in specific sizes, it’s harder to get a proper fit than you would with a softer and stretchier material, like those used in our non-leather picks. But you can opt for a custom pair for $25 more.

Although the Canada Goose gloves have touchscreen capabilities only on the ends of the index fingers, the entire surface of the Kent Wang gloves is touchscreen-compatible. They were better at typing than the other leather gloves we tested in 2018—though not as good as our other picks. The thick seams along the fingers meant we had to use our finger pads (not the tips or sides, which is a natural position) to type and swipe.

The Canada Goose gloves were the warmest pair of gloves we tested that remained accurate to type with. While probably not warm enough for below-zero temperatures, they’re well suited as an everyday, stylish-looking glove for cold commutes, dog walks, or other regular activities in a New England winter. The Kent Wangs are better suited to the milder seasons of the West Coast and the South, or for dressier occasions like winter weddings or going to the orchestra.

The Kent Wang gloves’ deerskin exterior shed moisture and prevented water stains better than most other leather gloves. If you drop your phone in the snow, you don’t have to think twice about water damage to either the Canada Goose Workman Gloves or the Kent Wangs when you pick it up.

Animal rights advocates have criticized Canada Goose for how it sources both animal fur and goose feathers for its iconic jackets. Neither of these materials is used in these gloves, but some people prefer to avoid the company entirely on ethical grounds.

Both sets of leather gloves fit our testers’ hands well, with a little more give in the knuckles and palms than other leather gloves, which can be too constricting (like the Mujjo and the Nordstrom Cashmere Lined Leather Touchscreen Gloves). This helps with typing dexterity and means you’re less likely to take the gloves off in frustration when responding to a quick Slack message or an email. You can buy the Canada Goose Workman Gloves in sizes S to XL. The Kent Wangs are sold in sizes 7 to 10.5, but aren’t available in whole sizes after 7 (they go from 7 to 7.5 to 8.5, and so on). If you’d prefer to wear a whole size—or your hands are particularly petite—you can spend an extra $25 for a custom-sized pair.

A good-enough pair you can go into the store and grab right now because your fingers are freezing

We tested Target’s Wild Fable Women’s Tech Touch Gloves and its Goodfellow & Co. Men’s Solid Knit Fingerless Tech Touch Gloves for our winter 2019-20 update. We found the Goodfellow & Co. gloves difficult to type in. But Target’s Wild Fable Women’s Tech Touch Gloves—which are designed as a one-size-fits-all pair of gloves—worked for the men and women in our test panel, regardless of hand size. Our panel agreed that the Wild Fable gloves were comfortable to use and provided some warmth for their fingers, but everyone acknowledged that these gloves wouldn’t last for a brisk walk through freezing temperatures. Even so, we found Target’s gloves to be totally adequate when you’ve run out to complete a few errands but forgot your Moshi Digits, and you need to spend a few bucks on a pair of touchscreen gloves so your hands don’t fall off your forearms.

Touchscreen gloves

We found Target’s gloves to be totally adequate as a last resort. Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Target frequently adds and removes listings for its gloves, so we can speak with certainty about only the two we tested. But even so, we think that if you’re in a pinch, whatever you find in the store will probably be good enough.

How these gloves work

Touchscreen gloves

Photo: Sarah Kobos

For a capacitive touchscreen (the technology used in most touch-capable phones, tablets, and computers today) to register that you’re interacting with it, you have to poke it with something that conducts electricity, such as a finger or a stylus. Touchscreen gloves are embedded with special materials to achieve the same effect.

Early attempts at touchscreen gloves used patches of conductive material sewn into the fingertips. Some manufacturers still do this, but gloves made using this method wear out quickly.

A more common method is to weave conductive thread (typically silver or copper; the two have about the same performance and durability) into the fabric, either just in the fingertips or throughout the glove. The thread conducts electricity from a finger to the tip of the glove covering that finger.

A third method, used in leather gloves, embeds leather with nanoparticles of silver, which produces full-hand conductivity. This technology is more forgiving of a loose fit than knit gloves with conductive thread, because the leather can conduct electricity from any part of your hand to any fingertip.

(You can make your existing gloves touchscreen-capable by sewing special thread into them or treating them with special drops. But judging from the cost and reviews of those items, we recommend simply buying a proven pair.)

The competition

2020 update

The Aegend and TrailHeads running gloves worked poorly with our capacitive touchscreens, and they were thin, so they didn’t keep our panelists’ hands warm during testing.

When we tested the Black Diamond LightWeight WoolTech Gloves, we found they were more like windbreakers for your hands than gloves meant to actually protect you from severe—or even mild—winter weather conditions.

The Burton Men’s Touch N Go Glove was baggy, and its poor fit didn’t help when it came to typing on our phones.

When I say that I could not type more than “t fdkf hag” while wearing my Dimore Winter Gloves and that they ripped at the seams when I pulled them over my knuckles, I mean that literally.

We tested the men’s Isotoner Faux Suede and Microfiber Touchscreen Gloves, smartDRI Microfiber Touchscreen Gloves with Berber Spill, and smartDRI Nylon & Fleece Touchscreen Gloves with Gathered Wrist. Although all the gloves from Isotoner were warm, the thumb slots on the Faux Suede and smartDRI Microfiber touchscreen gloves were way too big for my thumbs. This made the typing experience particularly frustrating. Plus, the Faux Suede gloves may be difficult to match with your outfit; plaid is a very specific stylistic choice. The smartDRI Nylon & Fleece gloves didn’t have the same issue as the other Isotoner gloves we tested, but they weren’t as comfortable as our top picks.

Touchscreen gloves

This is an example of what typing in the L.L.Bean Cresta Wool 250 Liner Gloves looked like. Maybe an alien was speaking through me? Otherwise the L.L.Beans were just terrible to use.

We tested the L.L.Bean Cresta Wool 250 Liner Gloves in women’s and men’s sizes. We found that not only were we unable to use the touchpad on our laptops, we were unable to type anything resembling the English language.

The Lululemon Cross Chill Gloves were not well-received. We found them difficult to type in and not very warm. As Updates writer Jordan Bowman said, “Please skip these at all costs.”

When we tested the Lululemon Resolute Runners Gloves, we ran into similar issues. SEO Content Strategist Lauren L’Amie really liked the look of the gloves. She found the fit snug and the material soft. But once she started using them to type, she turned to me and said: “Help, they are the worst!”

No one particularly liked the fit of the Mission Workshop The Strasse touchscreen winter gloves. People were divided about the look of the gloves—some thought they looked sleek, while others found them ugly. Half of the testers thought these gloves kept their hands warm, but the other half found this pair left them cold. Everyone agreed that we shouldn’t recommend them.

The Mujjo Insulated Touchscreen Gloves and Double-Insulated Touchscreen Gloves were comfortable and attractive, but they had poor accuracy while typing.

2018 update

The fit on the Black Diamond Midweight Softshell Gloves was baggy for all of our testers, and this made typing nearly impossible.

The Columbia Ascender Softshell Gloves are available only in men’s sizes, and our testers thought the soft-shell material crinkled too much. And the fit was tight, which made typing uncomfortable.

The Columbia Trail Summit Running Gloves (men’s and women’s) were a strong contender for a cool-weather pick because they fit well and typed with greater accuracy than most thin gloves we tested. But they sold out in the women’s sizes during our review, and the touchscreen ability didn’t surpass that of our Glider Gloves pick.

The Columbia Thermarator Fleece Gloves (women’s and men’s) were thin and lacked a lining, which made them scratchy to wear. The fit was bulky, and only conductive patches on the index finger and thumb pads were usable.

The Isotoner Women’s smartDRI Chevron Shortie Touchscreen Gloves were too tight in the palms and too long in the fingers. The poor fit made typing impossible.

The Nordstrom Cashmere Lined Leather Touchscreen Gloves are sold in a women’s cut, so they fit petite hands better than our Kent Wang pick. But they fit a little tighter, which makes them harder to wear, and they’re thinner, so they’re not as warm.

We tested two styles of Smartwool gloves: the Cozy Gloves and the Liner Glove. The touchscreen sensitivity was poor, and they fit baggy on most of our testers.

We retested a few gloves from the North Face, including the Apex+ Etip and the Commutr. Even with gender-specific sizing available, the fit wasn’t ideal. (Our testers who identify as women thought the women’s fit was too tight, and the unisex gloves were too boxy.) The arc of the gloves (which the North Face calls “radiametric articulation”) left our hands frozen at an uncomfortable angle, and we couldn’t flex our fingers. All of this made typing on our devices impossible.

2014–17 testing

We tested the following gloves for previous versions of this guide (discontinued models are not listed):

The Agloves Sport and Polar Sport gloves are thin, and they just don’t compare to the Moshi Digits in warmth or quality.

Burton’s Men’s AK Tech gloves are a decent soft-shell option, but their fit was poor, and the typing accuracy was abysmal.

The Glider Gloves Winter Style Touchscreen Gloves were our previous main pick. They offered the best combination of warmth, touchscreen sensitivity, and grip at the time. In 2015, Glider added a longer cuff and an improved conductive mix. But in our tests, the touchscreen sensitivity was worse, not better.

J.Crew’s Wool Smartphone Gloves for men are warm and fit well, but you can activate a touchscreen only with your finger pad. The leather is also slippery, which isn’t great when you’re holding an expensive smartphone.

The North Face Etip gloves have clunky conductive panels, and the Denali Etip gloves (men’s and women’s) fit boxy—both of these things made precise typing almost impossible.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions.

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More than 20 attorneys general are trying to ban 3D-printed guns

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The 3D-printed weapons are also known as “ghost guns” because they don’t contain registration numbers that could be used to trace them. Opponents fear that if blueprints are shared online, criminals who aren’t legally allowed to purchase firearms, might be able to obtain the so-called ghost guns.

The battle over 3D-printed guns began in 2013, when the Texas-based company Defense Distributed posted blueprints for a 3D-printed pistol. More than 100,000 copies were downloaded before the US State Department stepped in, ruling that Defense Distributed was violating International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

Defense Distributed countered that it had a First Amendment right to post the blueprints online. For a few years, the case bounced between a Texas district court, a US Court of Appeals (both of which denied Defense Distributed’s injunction request) and the Supreme Court (which declined to hear the case). That could have been the end, but in 2018, under the Trump administration, the US State Department and Defense Distributed reached a settlement, which allowed Defense Distributed to continue sharing its firearm files.

But the debate was far from over. States quickly joined together to sue the Trump administration, arguing that the settlement violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Tenth Amendment. There was a temporary ban on 3D-printed firearms, then an extension. Meanwhile Defense Distributed used a loophole to share the blueprints with private customers. In November, a Seattle judge overturned the settlement between Defense Distributed and the US State Department because it failed to give a proper explanation and thus violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

Apparently not ready to give up, yesterday, the Trump administration finalized new rules that transfer the regulation of 3D-printed guns from the Department of State to the Department of Commerce. According to a press release shared by New York AG Letitia James, “loopholes in Commerce regulations mean the agency will lack the power to regulate 3D-printed guns in any meaningful way — effectively allowing their unlimited distribution.”

In the lawsuit filed yesterday, the AGs argue that the new rules are unlawful. At this point, it’s hard to say if this legislation will be any more successful than the last.

The 21 attorneys general involved in the case represent Washington (where the lawsuit was filed) California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

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A breath-sensing AR project helps visualize your impact on the world

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To experience Breathe, you’ll need to strap on a Magic Leap AR headset, which is hooked up to a breath-detecting sensor. This is the first time such a biometric sensor has been connected to the Magic Leap, according to Breathe director Diego Galafassi. He told Engadget at a recent demo that the idea for the project came about in summer 2018, after he had been in an interview with an anthropologist. “We were talking about air in the atmosphere, and the way in which the air can help us reframe that relationship,” he said. “We breathe all the time, of course. But we rarely stop to think about it or perceive our breathing and how that can become perhaps a really interesting portal for us to talk about changes in the atmosphere.”

The project also draws from environmental information like the air quality in the city you’re in. So those at the festival in Park City, Utah, will see fewer clusters than I did in New York, for example. Wind direction will also affect the air currents in the experience.

When you start Breathe, you’ll see a cluster of glowing particles in front of you. As you inhale and exhale, they move about. Since my demo used an early version of the experience and the headset didn’t have the breath sensor attached yet, I wasn’t able to see this for myself. Still, I could swat at placeholder dots in mid-air and watch them disperse.

The version of Breathe that I watched also lacked the narration by Beetz, so it didn’t make much of an impact. But, it did give a rough idea of what viewers can expect, and in its early stages the piece reminded me a lot of Treehugger VR that launched at Tribeca 2017. The earlier work also used glowing spots to demonstrate our relationship with the world around us, and Breathe is meant to do the same.

“The project is about trying to harness the power and possibilities of new media and AR technologies to establish a different kind of relationship to the natural world and realize how embedded we are in this huge planetary system,” Galafassi said. The idea is that if you can immediately see an action as small as drawing a breath change things around you, you might feel more strongly about the consequences of your practices.

Breathe will be showcased at Sundance, and move on to a residency at the Phi Centre in Montreal for a few months after that. Galafassi said his team is in talks with various institutes in the US and Europe to display the experience, so you might get a chance to check it out soon.

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I am my own spy: A personal surveillance story

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That was my first experience with internet-connected cameras, but it wouldn’t be my last. Over the years, I acquired other cameras: an Amazon CloudCam to keep an eye on our cat and the Nest Hello video doorbell as it was a more sensible upgrade over my jerry-rigged Dropcam (plus I could use it to see who was at my front door without leaving the couch). The latest addition to the collection is the Google Nest Hub Max, as that can double as a Nest Cam as well, giving me yet another vantage point into my living room. But while people often purchase these webcams for security purposes, I found that I was inadvertently using them to feed my inner voyeur.

Google Nest Hub Max

This wasn’t my intention, of course. As I mentioned, I initially got the CloudCam to monitor our cat when we were away. I positioned the camera on a bookshelf in the living room to get as wide a view as possible, as our cat often lazed on the couch or slept on a cat tree by the window. As I was in the office, I would get the occasional alert that the camera noticed something moving, and I’d open the app to see her rolling about in the sun or simply waiting for us to come home. It seems silly perhaps, but the sight of her made me happy. It gave me peace of mind that she was okay.

But it took a turn for the weird when one day, when I was in Las Vegas for work, I received a notification that the camera had detected something. I instinctively launched the app and saw that it was actually my husband who triggered it. He had just come home and appeared to be at his computer. It seems that I had forgotten to turn the camera off when I left for the airport.

I could’ve just shut off the app right then and there. But I didn’t. I was away in a different city, and I was missing him so much that seeing him even on a security cam brought me a strange sort of joy. So, I lingered. Thanks to the microphone on the camera, I knew he was watching YouTube videos. Then, a few minutes later, I heard him switch over from watching YouTube to playing Overwatch. Without really meaning to do so, I was spying on him.

If that sounds kind of creepy, well, it is.

Despite a twinge of guilt, I brushed it off as a one-time occurrence. It was just for a few minutes after all, and it wasn’t like I meant to do so. But as the week wore on, I found myself checking in on the camera every so often, just to see what he was up to. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then internet-connected spy cameras apparently fill it with guilt-tinged longing.

If that sounds kind of creepy, well, it is. I’ll admit it. I’m not even the jealous sort of spouse, and it’s not like me at all to be checking up on what my husband is doing in his spare time. I would never do this at all if I were back home. But there was just something about being away from home for an extended period that made me give into voyeurism despite a guilty conscience.

This made me realize just how voyeuristic I’ve become since that initial Dropcam purchase. Thanks to the Nest Hello video doorbell, for example, I know the comings and goings of not just my husband (he’s well aware of that, of course; he uses it, too), but also the people in the neighborhood. I know that every week, an old stranger comes by to root through our recycling bin. I know the time of day the neighbor’s kids like to skateboard down the sidewalk. Once, I even inadvertently overheard an entire conversation some strangers had by our front steps.

That’s perhaps not quite as egregious as peeking in on my own family as they’re at least out in the open, but at the same time, they also don’t know they’re being watched. It struck me that these cameras, which are ostensibly meant for security purposes, have also inadvertently helped me create my own little surveillance state. Sure, I got them just to catch package thieves and keep an eye on the cats, but it then led to me knowing a little too much about the lives of neighbors, passers-by and, yes, my own family.

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Fortnite Chapter 2’s next season will start on February 20th

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In November, Epic revealed it was pushing back the second season of Chapter 2 to early February to focus on holiday updates, but now says the season won’t start until even later. The developer didn’t offer much insight on what Season 2 has in store, but noted there’ll be more overtime challenges and a two-week event before it kicks off.

Meanwhile, a major update is on the way early next month that will overhaul the physics engine (perhaps another reason why it pushed back Season 2). Epic expects that there’ll be some hiccups as it transitions to Unreal Engine’s Chaos system, so it’s running tests with a small group of players and will refine everything in due course. The Chaos engine could make environmental damage much more detailed and interactive.



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Craig Kaths’ intricate synth sculptures look real enough to play

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In 2015, while managing projects at an art gallery in New York (i.e., mainly working at a computer all day), he started itching to do something with his hands again. That was right around the time famed artist Roxy Paine premiered Carcass, his fast-food restaurant made entirely of birch wood, including all the fryers, computers and everything else you’d find in a McDonalds or Burger King. Then there’s Paine’s Checkpoint piece: a life-size, wooden diorama of a TSA checkpoint.

Inspired by Paine’s installations, Kaths decided to try woodworking himself, combining it with music for a unique take. The first one was a wooden version of a guitar pedal connected to cords, which looked like they were coming straight from the wall. From there, Kaths let his imagination take over, creating fantastical machines only loosely based on real-life models. “The pieces I make reference real things,” he explained, like pianos and keyboards, but with a twist. For example, one keyboard looks like a Fender Rhodes or Wurlitzer — until you notice a few important details, namely that the sharp and flat keys aren’t in the right places. Kaths said he wants musicians, carpenters and other experts as well as laypeople to notice the differences.

So what kind of machines does one use to make wooden machines?

Kaths said he originally tried to chisel the wood to look like plugs and other electronics, then realized his work about work didn’t need to be that laborious. Now he’s hacked together a less painful process. He creates the plugs, knobs and other detail work using a router on a micro lathe he built after watching a YouTube video. He uses an XY plotter from Makeblock fitted with a laser engraver to design and burn knob-level markings, design indicator marks and other patterns on to his sculptures to make them look more like real-life music equipment and other types of machines. Kaths also experiments with the XY plotter as more of an instrument of artistic expression, using the laser to create “paintings” by strategically burning paper and gesso (a white paint mixture designed to prep a surface).

Craig Kaths sculpture

Makeblock sells the plotter as if it were a children’s toy, but he had to put it together himself and learn G-code to use it. “You can put a pencil, a pen, anything, and the thing will hold it like a paintbrush,” he said. Meanwhile, to create the cords for his wooden sculptures, he soaks about 100 wooden dowels at a time in water for two weeks, then steaming them for a couple hours until they’re “like a spaghetti noodle.” Finally, he bends and shapes them until they look convincingly like the cords tangled behind my TV, though with less dust and dog fur. (He said this method has a 70 percent success rate.)

A decade ago, Kaths would have been able to bend the dowels and use the lathe easily, but laser cutting? Forget about it. The technology has only been around since the 1960s, and Kaths would have had to seek out an expert to use an expensive laser-cutting machine. “Over the past 20 years or so, the technology has significantly become more affordable as patents have expired,” said Scott Van Campen, the executive director of Makerspace NYC. He estimates that the tools cost as little as one-fourth of their former price. That’s “allowed people to literally have high-tech machines on their kitchen tables. Three-dimensional printers, laser cutters, plotters and CNC routers all basically use the same technology to control the movements of the ‘tool’ of choice.”

Using these machines, Kaths estimated that one wooden artwork takes approximately one month to make (he has always worked a day job, but nights and weekends are devoted to his art practice).

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‘Rocket League’ loses online multiplayer on Linux and Mac

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After the update, online multiplayer and access to the store will be blocked, although local multiplayer and split screen will still work. You’ll also be able to see your existing garage and inventory, and your career stats won’t be lost. Psyonix has said that affected users will be able to download the Windows version of the game in compensation, should you have the rig to play it on.

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My quest to fix my terrible home WiFi

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Ever since I moved into a Brooklyn duplex, I’ve struggled to blanket my space in consistent, speedy signal. Alright, fine, “struggled” might not be the right word — I’ve mostly just muddled along with the far-from-great router provided by my ISP, lamenting that the furthest-flung corners of my home weren’t much more than WiFi deserts. Maybe that sounds familiar. If it does, I feel you, but don’t worry: We can do better. Even relatively modest investments will get your home network running better than it would with some of the stuff your ISP can offer you, and with a lot less fuss than you might think.

The goal: To cover every inch of my duplex with solid WiFi signal and improve my download speeds whenever possible. Throughout my testing, I ran speed tests in three locations:

  • The kitchen, which bleeds directly into my living room. Where I probably spend the most time. Approximately 15 feet from the existing router’s location.
  • My bedroom. Approximately 15 to 20 feet from the existing router, but with more walls (and obviously a door) in the way.
  • The basement. I’ve long dreamed of turning this into an office or a photo studio or something, but my existing router can’t even hope to reach the furthest corners. There’s also quite a lot of flooring and pipes between the router and the basement’s open space.

When I started all this, my Optimum-provided router was set to generate separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. Take a look at these baseline speeds (average of three trials, expressed in download speed/upload speed):

Kitchen Bedroom Basement
JerseyShore_2.4GHz 54.9/26 21.3/27 8.1/1.93
JerseyShore_5G 318.41/38.79 274/40 56/14

Brute force

At first, I thought splurging on a single super-powerful router might be enough to blast WiFi signal all over the place. For my initial tests, I turned to the venerable Netgear Nighthawk X10, a $390 inverted plastic spider that promised insane speeds thanks to its support for the 802.11ad standard. The problem is, hardly anything on the market right now also supports that standard, so its utility is mostly limited to future-proofing.

Since this is a Netgear router we’re talking about, it’s probably not much of a surprise to hear the setup process feels positively old-school. Once you’ve connected the Nighthawk to power and your modem, the rest of the config happens in a web browser, and it was around this point that my faith began to falter. The interface just chugs, to the point where I wondered if Netgear sent me a bum router. Nope: That’s just how it works. Once my setup was (finally) complete, I indeed found it made for better upload and download speeds than my ISP’s router. Then again, for nearly $400, anything less would’ve been a huge disappointment.

Kitchen Bedroom Basement
JerseyShore_2.4GHz 131.3/38 126.81/35 27.2/6.89
JerseyShore_5G 325.27/39 308.11/36 88.2/23.1

It does pack a few interesting extras, like built-in support for backups to Amazon Drive and Plex, though the latter thing is notoriously flaky. All told, the Nighthawk does work well, but I really just want to make sure I have a fast wireless network that doesn’t crumble under the load of multiple machines thrumming away at once. We can do better.

A colleague also suggested I look at some of Ubiquiti’s networking gear, and I’ll be honest: I was a bit intimidated at first. This is a company that largely deals in enterprise-grade networking, which is extremely not my thing. Even more daunting was the fact that the company sent over a UniFi Dream Machine to test instead of one of its more accessible AmpliFi router setups. Turns out, they knew exactly what they were doing, because the Dream Machine quickly became one of my favorite options.

Ubiquiti Dream Machine

The first thing you notice upon plugging in the Dream Machine is the noise — it’s not unlike the sound of a small PC booting up, because that’s basically what it is. More reasonably priced routers usually pack the minimum specs required to get the job done, but with its 1.7GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, the Dream Machine can handle some seriously granular feats of network management, nearly all of which were overkill for the task at hand.

Despite that, actually setting up the UDM was pretty painless. Rather than direct me to a web interface to create a network and manage settings, nearly all of the heavy lifting happens in an iOS or Android app, which got me up and running in less than 20 minutes. (At least five minutes were eaten up by a software update immediately post-install.) Curiously, it was set to output just a single WiFi network, but that wound up working just fine.

Once all that was done, the app provides an overall connection score to measure the network’s quality, and I never saw it dip below 96 percent. Beyond that, the slew of statistics and tools available from the app proved pretty astonishing — I could see how many devices were tapping into the network at once, but also inspect which apps were chewing up the most bandwidth. Hell, I could even set up a Starbucks-esque captive portal asking guests to agree to buy me a bottle of wine in exchange for internet access. Sounds pretty fair to me.

Turns out, the Dream Machine had one more surprise in store: Even by itself, the router yielded noticeable improvements in network range and download speeds through my home.

Kitchen Bedroom Basement
JerseyShore 358/42 296/41.2 98/41

Now we’re getting somewhere. At this point, we’re starting to get close to the 400 Mbps down speed cap I’m working with, but there’s still room for improvement when it comes to blanketing that basement. A single router wasn’t going to do the job, so it was time to try something different.

Embracing the mesh

Mesh networking gear no longer requires arcane knowledge of networking equipment, and the benefits are clear. Instead of relying on a single network source that has to do all the heavy lifting, mesh networks split that work up across multiple router nodes that ensure you get solid coverage exactly where you need it. And lucky me, the first mesh system I tested actually just piggy-backed on to the Dream Machine I had already set up. It took just minutes to plug the BeaconHD into an outlet and add it to my existing network through the UniFi app, and just like that, I had excellent speeds even in corners of my home where WiFi dared not venture before.

Kitchen Bedroom Basement
JerseyShore 360/42 285/42 212/41

When I coupled the performance improvements in my basement with the elegance, nuanced controls, I found myself falling for the Ubiquiti’s hardware, well, hard. Still, I couldn’t help but feel the sheer number of management options on offer here was total overkill for someone like me. (If you’re a real network buff or have even a passing interest in becoming one, I highly recommend this thing.) Still, this is a lot of money to drop on networking gear — what about something a bit more reasonable?

Enter Google’s Nest WiFi, an updated version of the company’s existing mesh router system. A single router module costs just $129, but what made more sense for my strange, split-level situation was the next tier up on the Nest WiFi hierarchy, a $269 package that includes the router and a single additional WiFi point.

Google Nest WiFi

Setting up the Nest WiFi and its range extender was easier than I’d expected; if you’ve ever breezed through a Google Home or Home mini installation, you know exactly what to expect. All told, it took less than twenty minutes from the moment I unboxed everything to plug in the new router, run downstairs, set up the range extender and install a software update. The connection between the basement-dwelling WiFi point and the host router happened in moments and was surprisingly palatable thanks to all the bouncy animations and reassuring messages the Google Home app fed me. And the speeds? Well, they’re more than enough to satisfy.

This new WiFi network isn’t as downright fast as the one I built using my original router, but it offered more consistent speeds through my home — speed tests in my bedroom were just about as fast as ones I conducted in my kitchen, which sits in line of sight of the Nest router. The real show was going on in the basement, though. What was once a WiFi wasteland was now flush with signal; download speeds in even the furthest corners of the basement were three times faster than on my old router’s 5GHz network, and upload speeds were just as solid as they were upstairs.

Kitchen Bedroom Basement
JerseyShore 248/42 253/42 175/39

Even better, the range extender doubles as a Google Home speaker, which helps take some of the sting out of the additional $120 it costs. I was going to have to put some kind of smart speaker down there at some point, and having one bit of hardware doing multiple jobs is more convenient than I saw coming.

I will say, though, that embracing Google’s vision of WiFi does take some getting used to, especially if you’ve spent any serious time poking around in your router’s settings. There are no options to create separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, or for port-forwarding or even for viewing router settings in a web browser. Instead, everything goes through the Google Home app, which has a handful of features, like the ability to set up nuanced parental controls and create networks specifically for guests.

If you’re setting up a WiFi network from scratch, Google’s opacity means the process is refreshingly simple. Ditto if you’re replacing an existing router that you only ever used to generate one wireless network. My problem was, over the two years I’ve lived here, I set devices that needed the most speed to connect to a 5GHz network and relegated the rest to a 2.4GHz network. Because the Nest WiFi doesn’t separate those bands, I had to go back to those 5GHz devices and set them to run on the Nest’s single network instead. Once that was done though — and it really didn’t take that long — all of my gadgets thrived on that improved network.

Eero Mesh

Google isn’t the only massive web company branching out into home networking, either. Amazon announced the second-generation Eero routers at a splashy press event earlier this year, and they have two big things going for them: At $99 a pop (currently on sale at $69), they’re fairly affordable by mesh standards, and they’re supposedly very easy to setup.

I can vouch for the latter — Amazon and Eero claim it’ll take no more than 10 minutes to get up and running, and that was certainly true of the first Eero node I installed. (Since I added more nodes in my bedroom and basement, the total setup time was closer to 20 minutes, which still isn’t bad.) Even better, the Eero app you need to complete the setup process walks through a few crucial steps that other mesh systems I tested didn’t.

Ideally, you don’t want one of your mesh nodes sitting on a windowsill or pressed up against a wall — that can impede your signal strength dramatically. Eero is smart enough to remind you of that and run brief performance tests as you’re setting up nodes in different rooms to make sure it’s able to communicate clearly with other nodes and forge strong connections with the rest of your hardware. When it comes to simple, thoughtful setup, Eero is well ahead of the pack.

Kitchen Bedroom Basement
JerseyShore 270/41 256/39 96/21

Unfortunately, that simplistic setup is easily the best thing about using an Eero network. As I write this, I’m sitting in my basement directly in front of my third Eero node — you’d think that the computer I’m typing on would connect to the access point next to it, right? Yeah, no — for whatever reason, this PC would much rather connect to an access point in the hallway directly above me. I’m not the only one to have trouble getting certain devices to connect to the Eero point, either. There’s a pretty long discussion to be had about whether this is because of a shortcoming on Amazon/Eero’s part, or if Windows 10 is making a bad call about what router it should be connecting to, but it almost doesn’t matter since I can’t — for example — force a device to connect to a specific Eero.

Because of that, my download speeds in my basement were less than half of what they were while using either the Nest WiFi or the Dream Machine. No thanks.

Wrap-up

Chances are, you’re not going to face the exact same WiFi woes I did, but the lessons I picked up along the way are pretty broadly applicable. Ditch your ISP’s router. Lean on a mesh network system if you’re trying to network something bigger than a small apartment. Trust me, it’s worth it.

With all that said, there’s one last question to tackle: Which of these WiFi systems would I actually drop a couple hundred bucks on? As I started putting this story together, my heart belonged to the Nest WiFi — at the time, it offered what felt like the best blend of simplicity, network performance and utility. (Mine is already a Google Assistant-heavy home, so not having to buy an extra Nest Hub or something for my basement was a nifty bonus.) Even now, the Nest WiFi is still my pick for anyone looking to lay a great foundation for a smart home — it’s excellent at what it does and gives you access to a reliable voice assistant, too.

At the end of it all, though, I have to go with Ubiquiti’s Dream Machine. It’s pricey and lacks some of the creature comforts that the Nest WiFi does, but it’s noticeably faster and offers plenty of networking meat to dig into. I didn’t even realize I wanted to get more acquainted with that stuff before I started this project, and while I don’t harbor any ambitions of playing home sysadmin, the Dream Machine is fantastic for people who want to create rock-solid WiFi networks and learn a few new tricks along the way.

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Sega’s new app lets you remotely win prizes from a real claw machine in Japan

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Prizes include plushies, pillows, towels and other anime-based collectables, and a go on the machine costs between 100 and 200 Sega Points — 130 points will cost you two bucks, although you can buy more at a discount (you can practice for free). You can also earn points for other activities, such as logging in regularly, linking your phone and so on. According to Sega, it’ll take around a week for your hard-won bounty (because let’s be honest, it’s never as easy as it looks) to be delivered to the US. You can get one delivery for free each week, or pay for extra deliveries with in-game currency.

It’s not a completely novel idea — the very similar Akiba Catcher has been around for a while, for example. But with Sega’s branding, and the fact it’s available to play outside Japan, it’s an idea that could become a bit more mainstream. The freemium title came to PC and Mac last year, but launches on iOS and Android devices in the US today.

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