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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Respectable 1080p performance Excellent OLED display Fans aren’t very loud Not wildly heavy Cons Lenovo’s pricing is all over the place Short battery life Our Verdict The Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 pairs an excellent display with solid internals for a great gaming experience. With a $1,199 price tag on a configuration close to our test unit, the value looks good. Just avoid Lenovo’s unnavigable first-party pricing. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo Legion 5i Retailer Price $1,599.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Lenovo has a new generation of gaming laptops out, and Legion 5i 15IRX10 sits at the affordable end of the stack without cutting down too much. It features powerful processor options and a few RTX 50-series GPUs to power your games. Though Lenovo makes finding a good value hard with a chaotic pricing system, this Walmart configuration comes closest to our test unit and pegs the system at a solid bargain of $1,199. At that price, things look real peachy for the potent Legion 5i 15IRX10. Lenovo Legion 5i: Specs and features Model number: 15IRX10 CPU: Intel Core i7-14700HX Memory: 32GB DDR5 Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5060 (40-watt TGP) Display: 15.1-inch 1600p OLED,165Hz, Dolby Vision, VESA Trueblack 600 Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 5MP Connectivity: 1x USB-C 10Gbps with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 2.1, 1x USB-C 10Gbps with DisplayPort 1.4, 3x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x RJ45, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows facial recognition Battery capacity: 80 watt-hours Dimensions: 13.58 x 10.05 x 0.85 inches Weight: 4.3 pounds MSRP: Approximately $1,199 as-tested ($1,299 base) Though our test unit has the above configuration, Lenovo does not appear to offer this exact setup to consumers. There is plenty of customization available though. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 can come with 13th or 14th Gen Intel Core processors in this configurator, or even bump up to 2nd Gen Intel Core Ultra processors in a separate configurator. At the low end, you can get an Intel Core i7-13650HX with 16GB of memory, 512GB of storage, and an RTX 5050 for an “Est Value” of $1,634 (but an actual price of $1,299 at the time of writing) using the custom configuration tool. Bumping up to a Core i7-14700HX or Core i9-14900HX is also possible, but entails a swap to the RTX 5070 as well. Arrow Lake configurations have the same memory and storage options, but they start out with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX and RTX 5060 for an “Est Value” of $1,704 and actual pricing at $1,309. This can be upgraded to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, which also comes with an RTX 5070 instead, and brings the price to $1,559 (though the “Est Value” shows as $1,954). One notable difference of the Core Ultra models is that they upgrade one of the USB-C ports to Thunderbolt 4.  Using Lenovo’s custom configurations, there’s not a huge delta between the Raptor Lake and Arrow Lake options, and the Core Ultra models are likely to have superior single-core performance and battery life. That said, the configurator tends to have significantly higher prices than pre-configured models and therefore doesn’t offer a great value.  For those seeking the best price, Walmart offers the closest configuration to what we’re testing here. It’s available for $1,199 at the time of writing, and includes all of the above specifications except only 16GB of memory. Thankfully, that DDR5 is user-upgradeable, so you can cheaply bump it up to this system’s 32GB if needed. The Lenovo Legion 5i has an excellent display for gaming and entertainment, a sturdy build, solid performance, and surprisingly quiet fans. Lenovo Legion 5i: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp The Legion 5i 15IRX10 isn’t remarkable in its design, but it’s not disappointing either. The system is completely blacked out aside from its Legion logo power button, the white keyboard legend and their RGB lighting, and a little gray Lenovo branding on the rear thermal shelf. All that black looks fine briefly, but it starts to show finger oils quickly.  The looks are largely clean with rounded corners and chamfered edges around the base that may not be super ergonomic but are at least more comfortable than sharp 90-degree angles. The base is all plastic with a smooth polycarbonate upper and rougher ABS plastic bottom. The base is fairly sturdy, not exhibiting much flex. The display is surrounded by modest plastic bezels. The back of the display gets the one premium aspect: an aluminum lid with Lenovo’s Legion branding embossed with a smoky mirror finish. The construction is similar to many of Lenovo’s other Legion laptops. The top of the display has an extra-large section to both house the camera and provide a lip for opening the lid easily. The display attaches to the base with two hinges slightly shifted forward from the back edge of the laptop. This creates a little butt (thermal shelf) at the back with extra room for heat sinks. That back edge is largely occupied by exhaust vents. No exhaust goes out the sides.  Underneath, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 sits on three large rubber feet that hold it firmly in place and lift it up a good ways to provide airflow into the two bottom fans. There’s a large grille underneath, though only a small percentage of this is actually grille — mostly right under the fans. In this case, this at least allows sufficient air intake and doesn’t provide any extra opportunity for dust to get in.  All told, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 isn’t particularly inspired or exciting, but it feels decent and is a sturdily built laptop. The choice of a 15.1-inch display provides decent screen space while keeping the laptop small enough to fit into even some tight laptop sleeves. It’s not so heavy either at just 4.3 pounds. And thanks to the very thin display and modest base, the build isn’t very thick for a gaming laptop.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp My experience with the Legion 5i 15IRX10’s keyboard has been somewhat mixed. On one hand, the keys are surprisingly well stabilized, and they have a decent dish to help feel out the center and edges. But their travel is kind of rubbery, giving them a somewhat odd feel, like they also push my fingers back when resetting. With some adjustment, I could see this actually turning into a positive, as a quick-resetting key is ready to press that much sooner, but as it stands, it sort of throws my fingers into a funk. I was ultimately able to get up to a typing speed of 114 words-per-minute with a decent 97 percent accuracy, but this still isn’t quite exceptional.  I still love that Lenovo accommodates a full-size set of arrow keys on many of its gaming laptops. This makes navigation so much easier. There’s also a full number pad on the right side of the keyboard, though this has slim keys that end up feeling a little cramped.  Lenovo packed in 24 RGB lighting zones, which ultimately kind of feels like overkill for any system that’s not just going to buckle down and give you per-key lighting. The 24 zones do allow for a slightly smoother wave or lighting that responds to audio playing from the computer. But the zones are all vertical columns, not functionally useful zones. Customization options are rather limited. And the edges of zones blend together when displaying different colors, so you won’t get an impactful and precise customization no matter how you shake it. The keyboard will let you cycle through backlighting presets by pressing Fn+Space, but there’s no key for adjusting backlighting brightness. That must be done through Lenovo’s Legion Space software. On the bright side, the lighting effectively illuminates the key legends.  The trackpad is nothing special. It’s fairly small for a laptop this size, but still spacious enough for four-finger gestures and general navigation. It’s far over to the left side of the computer, though, which can make it awkward to use for right-handed users. It’s mylar surface is also not as smooth as it could be. Lenovo Legion 5i: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp The Legion 5i 15IRX10 offers an excellent display. Just about every aspect of it delivers quality, and that’s great to see from a gaming laptop that skews toward the budget side of things. The 2560×1600 panel is plenty sharp at the size. It has the perfect contrast of OLED, not to mention the ultra-fast pixel response times. And with a 165Hz refresh rate, you’ll get smooth visuals both in and out of games. OLEDs weren’t always very bright, but this panel happily hits 523 nits. And to top it off, the panel is accurate. I measured its color accuracy at an average dE1976 of 0.51 with a max dE1976 of just 1.33. If you’ve got to do serious color work or just want to see your games the way they’re meant to look, this screen is up to the task. The audio isn’t quite as impressive, but it’s not bad. The speakers rely on the Nahimic app to provide sufficient sound, and it thankfully helps deliver on that. Playing games and watching movies, it provides plenty of audio generally, though I did find some spoken videos surprisingly quiet while listening with the app set to its default Music mode. There’s not much stereo separation from the little bottom-firing speakers even though they sit at the outer edges of the laptop, so they don’t make for the most engrossing game audio.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Mark Knapp You’ll get a decent camera from the Legion 5i 15IRX10. Even though it’s sharp, it will appear a bit soft in modestly lit spaces. Even with several lights on in my small office, footage appeared soft and grainy. That said, it managed a very natural exposure. Though the camera offers a high resolution, it doesn’t have the infrared tech to enable facial recognition. The laptop also lacks a fingerprint scanner, so you’re out of luck for biometrics. The mic array on the Legion 5i 15IRX10 fails to impress. In a busy environment, it struggles thoroughly to capture my voice clearly. It does successfully eliminate background noise to a degree, but fully at the expense of its ability to pick me up. As soon as I talk in that loud environment, the background noise merges with my voice and makes anything I say unintelligible. Even in a quiet environment, my voice sounds rather distant with some room echo noticeable.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp There’s little to get excited about from the Legion 5i 15IRX10’s various connections. It’s not making the most of its size, offering just two USB-C ports on the left side along with a USB-A port and Ethernet. The right side includes two USB-A ports, a 3.5mm jack, and a camera kill switch. The laptop’s charging port is located on the rear along with an HDMI port. The ports on the sides are rather awkwardly spaced with gaps of varying sizes between them. For instance, the USB-A ports on the right have the entire height of the keyboard dividing them. None of the ports are terribly fast either, with the USB-A ports topping out at 5Gbps and the USB-C ports hitting just 10Gbps — no 20 or 40Gbps ports. At least the HDMI port is up to the 2.1 spec. Both USB-C ports can also handle video output with one offering DisplayPort 2.1 and the other DisplayPort 1.4. The wireless connections are managed by a MediaTek card that offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. It’s been fast and reliable in my testing, though as with many MediaTek cards I’ve used over the years, there is often a small delay when waking up the laptop from sleep before it will reconnect to known networks.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Performance The Legion 5i 15IRX10 is built with high-performance in mind, even if it isn’t aiming for the highest levels possible on modern hardware. This kind of horsepower generally makes everyday operation and even light creative workloads a breeze. We can see that quite clearly in PCMark 10, which measures holistic performance of the system. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 performs wonderfully. It’s not exceptional in this category, though. Most gaming laptops have plenty to offer in this area, and the Legion 5i 15IRX10 actually ends up looking less impressive next to even older machines. The Dell G15 and Gigabyte G6X both ran on a lower-tier CPU and a prior-gen RTX 4060 GPU, and yet they came out ahead in this test. The previous generation Lenovo Legion 5i also came out well ahead thanks in part to a more potent CPU and faster storage.   IDG / Mark Knapp On the bright side, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 lagging behind those systems in PCMark isn’t the biggest deal, since all of the systems are offering smooth and responsive operation. And when it comes to raw horsepower, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 claws back some ground. Its processor offered substantially higher performance in Cinebench’s multi-core testing, dramatically outstripping all but the earlier Legion 5i’s Core i9-14900HX. This also helps us see why Lenovo opted for an older CPU. The newer Intel Core 7 240H falls well shy of the Core i7-14700HX’s performance, even failing to match its single-core speeds. It means little that the Core 7 240H is newer, though, as it’s actually a Raptor Lake CPU in disguise and not one of the newer Lunar Lake or Arrow Lake architectures.  IDG / Mark Knapp The combination of a potent CPU and newer RTX 5060 GPU works in the Legion 5i 15IRX10’s favor when it comes to graphics performance. Where it had fallen behind the prior-gen Legion in some cases, it turned the tides back into its favor in 3DMark’s Port Royal test, where it pulled well ahead of the Legion 5i. It also demonstrates how a strong CPU can avoid bottlenecks by thoroughly outpacing the Alienware 16 Aurora despite this machine running the same GPU. IDG / Mark Knapp Its performance in synthetic benchmarks translated well to actual games, too. It churned out an average of 153 fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Here again, it shows the difference a CPU can make, as the RTX 5060-powered Alienware fell behind all the RTX 4060-powered machines because its CPU was holding the GPU back. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 doesn’t have the same issue, and that lets its RTX 5060 show the generational uptick in performance it’s capable of.  IDG / Mark Knapp This performance checks out in Metro Exodus as well, where the Legion 5i 15IRX10 again leads the pack by a decent margin. The balance of a strong CPU and GPU help it stay ahead of these other systems, which appear largely held back by the limitations of the RTX 4060 (or Intel Core 7 240H in Alienware’s case). Of course, this does also highlight the limitations of the Legion 5i 15IRX10. In very demanding games, like Metro Exodus, it can struggle to meet the 60 fps threshold. That said, the system could hit an 82 fps average in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra.  IDG / Mark Knapp Performance is consistent, too. Running a string of Steel Nomad benchmarks, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 maintained nearly the same average framerate between runs. CPU and GPU temps also settled in and stopped increasing after just a couple minutes. The fans aren’t even terribly loud to manage the thermals.  Since the Legion 5i 15IRX10 has a 2560×1600 display, you might be tempted to play games at this resolution. In some lighter games, that will be readily doable. The Legion 5i 15IRX10 managed a 98 fps average in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at its native resolution. But in Cyberpunk 2077, it only hit 48 fps. For native resolution gaming, you’ll likely want to tap into DLSS and potentially frame generation technology.  Lenovo Legion 5i: Battery life As we see all too often, performance advantages tend to come at the peril of battery life. And sure enough, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 struggles to offer much longevity where runtime is concerned. In our local video playback test, it fell a little bit shy of four hours. That’s not only a bad result for a gaming PC, but it’s bad among this group, especially compared to the Alienware 16 Aurora’s surprisingly strong 10-hour runtime IDG / Mark Knapp In normal use, the battery life isn’t any better. I was able to stream a two-hour movie with the display at about 50 percent brightness and still have an hour of battery left. Web browsing, research, and writing consumed the battery at a similar rate, with it just scraping by at over three hours. Lenovo Legion 5i: Conclusion The Legion 5i 15IRX10 has plenty going for it as an affordable gaming laptop, assuming you steer clear of Lenovo’s inscrutable pricing and just go with the Walmart model closest to our test configuration. For $1,199, the Legion 5i 15IRX10 is offering a lot. It has an excellent display for gaming and entertainment, a sturdy build, solid performance, and surprisingly quiet fans. Though the design is decently portable, the battery doesn’t last long. So you’ll want to bring the charger if you plan to do much on the go. A lot of the value here hinges on the low price though. With upgraded internals, the price of different configurations can truly soar, and the quality of this laptop doesn’t quite feel like it stacks up against $2,000 systems. But as a low-cost option, it’s great. Read...

For many months, AMD offered a special treat to enthusiasts wishing to run AI chatbot LLMs on their PCs: configurable VRAM that significantly improved performance. Now Intel can say the same. Bob Duffy, who oversees Intel’s AI Playground application for running AI art and local chatbots on your PC, tweeted that the company’s latest Arc driver for its integrated GPUs now offers a “shared GPU memory override” that offers the ability to adjust your PC’s VRAM, provided that you have a supported processor. This is a big deal for AI and even some games, though not an obvious one. Until now, laptops with an Intel Core processor split the available memory down the middle, assigning half to the PC’s operating system and half to VRAM. If you owned an Intel Core laptop with 32GB of memory, 16GB of it would be assigned to AI and games. AMD took a different route: Although a Ryzen laptop would generally do the same by default, users could either use AMD’s Adrenalin software or the laptop’s BIOS to manually adjust the VRAM. In day-to-day office work, the split means little. But to an AI model, more VRAM theoretically means more performance. In my tests with AMD’s Ryzen AI Max in March, for example, simply reallocating 24GB of the Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet’s available system memory to VRAM boosted performance by as much as 64 percent in some AI benchmarks. A similar test with 64GB of memory inside the Framework Desktop significantly boosted performance in AI art, chatbots, and some games. To an AI model, VRAM is basically system memory. More VRAM means that you can run a larger AI chatbot with a greater number of parameters. In general, the AI with the largest number of parameters gives you the most insightful responses; more VRAM also allows for a greater number of tokens to be processed, both as input and as the response the AI chatbot provides. Bigger numbers are better, basically. Placing the Shared GPU Memory Override feature inside the Intel Graphics Software package means that you’ll be able to reassign free RAM to serve as VRAM before you load up an AI chatbot. Although I haven’t tested the new software myself, I would assume that the default behavior is to leave a minimal amount of RAM (8GB is typical) for Windows, and assign the rest to VRAM. For now, this is a manual procedure, although it seems likely that Intel’s AI Playground and Intel’s Graphics Software package would work together to reassign memory when the latter package is booted. The only problem is that reallocating memory typically requires you to reboot your PC. Note that this only works with laptops with an integrated Arc GPU, not discrete cards. You’ll still need to buy a laptop with a substantial amount of memory to be able to take advantage of the new capabilities, and users are reporting (via VideoCardz) that it only works with Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 processors, not the “Meteor Lake” chips inside the Intel Core Ultra Series 1 lineup. However, this is a big boost for Intel laptops that’s long overdue. Read...

I’m a creature of habit, and nothing gets my endorphins flowing like daily smart home routines that run like clockwork.   Over the years, I’ve set up an elaborate array of smart automations that control my lights, switch fans on and off, take charge of my robot vacuums, and warn me about rogue water leaks (the latter of which has yet to happen, thankfully). Indeed, I depend on these eight smart routines for keeping our household perfectly lit, clean, and protected from water damage and backyard threats.   Here’s a rundown on the smart automations that I absolutely, positively depend on. While they’re probably not perfect for you, they might spark some ideas for automating your own household.  Wake-up routine When it‘s triggered: Weekdays at 6:10 a.m., weekends at 7:45 a.m.  What it does: Gradually ramps up the brightness of the smart lights in our two bedrooms  Why it’s important: It ensures our household sleepyheads don’t binge-snooze their alarm clocks  I’m an early riser, but my wife and teenage daughter will snooze their alarms to infinity if you let them—and that’s a problem, given that they need to be wheels-up for work and school by roughly 7:30 in the morning. That’s why the wake-up routines for our smart lights (Philips Hue, in our case) are so critical. On weekdays, the bedroom lights switch on automatically at 6:10 a.m.–not all the way, mind you, but at the very lowest brightness setting, almost like a nightlight.  Ever so gradually, those bedroom lights ramp up their brightness, and within five minutes, they’re glowing in a sunrise-like warm glow at a full 100-percent power.  As soon as the bedroom lights are all the way up, our other upstairs lights gradually start turning on, too, and within five minutes they’re also shining at full brightness.  Those wake-up automations make a huge difference when it comes to getting our tushies out of bed in the morning. It’s one thing to snooze your alarm when it’s almost completely dark inside; it’s quite another when you can sense the bright lights even through your closed eyelids.  Backyard floodlight routine When it‘s triggered: Sunrise and sunset  What it does: Keeps the glass door to our backyard illuminated at night  Why it’s important: I like keeping would-be intruders on their toes  We’re lucky enough to live in a Brooklyn apartment with a (small) backyard, but it gets awfully dark out there at night—pitch black, actually. The way into the backyard is through a glass door through our kitchen, and initially, I found the complete darkness out there to be pretty unnerving.   That’s why an outdoor floodlight that covers the path leading to our backyard was one of our very first smart home purchases in our current apartment, and I quickly set up an automation that turns the floodlight on at dusk and off again at dawn.  This smart floodlight gradually comes on at dusk and fades out at sunrise thanks to a smart routine. Ben Patterson/Foundry Like our wake-up lights, the automation for our backyard floodlight ramps up and down gradually. So if we’re sitting in the backyard having dinner, we might not even notice the light coming on as the sun begins to set, while the fading light blends nicely with the sunrise.  Mid-morning dining room and bedroom routine When it’s triggered: At 8 a.m. every day  What it does: Tunes lights to a daylight hue  Why it’s important: Makes it feel like daylight is streaming through a window  Our Brooklyn brownstone has a classic New York railroad-style layout, with bedrooms on either end and the kitchen and dining room in the middle. That means the bedrooms and kitchen (thanks to that glass door to the backyard) get natural light, but the dining room doesn’t have any windows at all, save for a murky skylight (the landlord has yet to clean it, and I doubt they ever will).  So while our wake-up light routines do a great job of getting us out of bed in the morning, their warm color temperature tends to give our rooms a golden daybreak or cozy nighttime feel. Personally, I prefer the cooler look of daylight when dawn gives way to late morning or afternoon, and that’s where our daylight routines come into play.  I like the look of natural light in our windowless dining room (our kitchen is in the foreground), and a smart lighting routine makes it happen.Ben Patterson/Foundry Every day at 8 a.m., the lights in our bedrooms and the dining room turn to a cooler daylight temperate, roughly 5,000 Kelvin. (A warm-white bulb shines at about 2,400K, while hospital lighting is usually tuned to 6,500K.) The beauty of the cooler daylight look is that when I sit in the kitchen looking into our dining room, it almost looks as though there’s light shining through a window, and that makes our railroad apartment feel a tad more open.  (Note: Many smart lighting ecosystems have circadian rhythm-style light modes that automatically tune the white-light color temperature according to the time of day; the Apple Home app, for example, calls it “Adaptive Lighting.” I prefer setting my own custom daylight temperature routines, but I suggest giving the circadian rhythm modes a try if they’re available to you.)  Robot vacuum routines When they’re triggered: At 7:05 a.m. and 9:05 a.m. on weekdays  What they do: Sweep our basement floors and mop upstairs  Why they’re important: We get clean floors with practically zero effort  There was a time when I dreaded spotting the crumbs under our kitchen table and despaired at the dust bunnies accumulating near our washer-dryer combo in our finished basement. But now that our robot vacuums are on the case, our kitchen floors are almost always spotless, and those dust bunnies downstairs are history.  I have elaborate routines set up for pair of robot vacuums (one upstairs, the other downstairs). First thing in the morning on weekdays, the basement Roomba does its business, tackling different areas depending on the day; our laundry room on Mondays, the pantry area on Tuesday, the office on Wednesdays, and so on. A little later, after we’ve finished breakfast, the upstairs vac goes to work, mopping up the kitchen on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays (it gets dirty in there) while scrubbing the bedroom floors on Tuesdays and the hallways twice a week.  With our robot vacuums following their daily routines, I can look under our kitchen and dining tables with pride rather than shame.Ben Patterson/Foundry All that meticulous work happens without any of us lifting a finger; the bots just do their business, often when no one is even around. (OK, the vacuums do require some maintenance, especially the mop.) And with our vacuums following their daily routines, I can look under our kitchen table with pride rather than shame.  Fan routines  When they’re triggered: At 5 a.m. in the morning and 11:30 p.m. at night  What they do: Control our kitchen, downstairs, and office fans  Why it’s important: They help keep our home cool without running up our electrical bills  We don’t have central air in our Brooklyn apartment; instead, we have A/C units in the front and back bedrooms, and that’s it. We don’t even have overhead fans, and the one tiny office window in our basement means there’s hardly any air circulation down there at all.  That’s why we depend on a trio of floor-standing Vornado fans to keep us cool during the summer months and to keep the air flowing even when it cools off. We used to leave the fans running day in and day out, but that began to feel wasteful and expensive from a power bill standpoint.   Vornado fans are efficient, powerful, and relatively quiet, but they’re not smart—or at least, they weren’t until we connected them to smart plugs and wove them into some automations. Now, our fans run only from 5:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. That’s probably not good for a huge cost savings, mind you, but every little bit helps.   The routines for our smart plug-connected fans help to keep us cool without running up energy bills.Ben Patterson/Foundry Office routines  When they’re triggered: 7 a.m., 7:30 p.m., and 9 p.m. daily  What they do: Control the smart lights in the office  Why they’re important: They set the mood for day and night  Like my dining room lights in the mid-morning, I like the lights in my office (three light strips and a Hue Iris) to shine in a daylight color temperature when I’m working during the day—they just make me a little more energetic and cheerful. That office daylight routine kicks off at 7 in the morning each day.  In the evening, though, it’s time to dial things down a bit, and since my office is visible from the basement home theater where we unwind after dinner, I want those office lights dimmed but not totally dark. So at 7:30 p.m., the office lighting scene switches to a groovy purple mode that keeps it from being distracting while we’re streaming Netflix, yet bright enough to see what you’re doing.  Then when it’s later still, I set the office lights to fade to a night mode, with the Hue Iris set to a nightlight mode (so you can find your way to the office bathroom if you need to) but otherwise completely dark, perfect for an evening movie.  Nighttime kitchen routine  When it’s triggered: 11 p.m. each night  What it does: Turns off all lights except the over-counter light strip, which fades to a deep blue Why it’s important: Keeps the kitchen lights almost completely dark at bedtime  We’re all pretty good about turning off the kitchen lights after dinner, but the main “off” smart switch near the kitchen door still keeps the over-counter light strip on at about 50-percent brightness and a warm color temperature.   When it’s really time for lights-out, there’s another light scene I prefer—one where the light strip fades to blue, allowing for a bare minimum of counter illumination but otherwise keeping the kitchen almost completely dark (aside from the glow of the aforementioned floodlight outside).  It’s easy to forget to turn that particular light scene on (I call it “Kitchen Cool”) before going to bed (it requires either using an app or pressing a middle button on the light switch), so I created an automation that triggers the mode each night at 11 p.m., typically just after we’ve all gone to bed.   Water leak sensor routine  When it’s triggered: If there’s ever a water leak in the basement  What it does: Sounds an alarm and turns our bedroom light all the way up  Why it’s important: I hate waking up to a pool of water in the office.  Here’s a household smart routine that’s actually never been triggered, or at least not unless I was testing it. We used to have a flooding problem in our basement—not catastrophic flooding, mind you, but we would sometimes get about a half an inch of water or so after a heavy thunderstorm, and the water typically flowed into the office first. Not fun.  This water leak sensor will warn me if water ever seeps into my office again.Ben Patterson/Foundry We did eventually convince our landlord to shore up the backyard water drainage (so no flooding since then, thankfully), but as an extra precaution, I installed a smart water leak detector in the office. If the sensor detects any water seeping in, it will not only sound a built-in alarm, but also turn our bedroom lights all the way up, perfect for alerting us to a leak even in the dead of night. Read...

It looks like nature is healing. Slowly, ever so slowly, OLED gaming monitors are starting to go back down to their 2024 prices. I wouldn’t call $450 “cheap,” but it’s at least more affordable than it was a little while ago. Today, you can pick up an AOC 27-inch 1440p OLED gaming monitor from Amazon for $120 off its standard price. We’ve featured AOC’s Agon Pro AG276QZD2 before, it’s one of the more affordable options in this space and it goes on sale frequently, but I haven’t seen it go this low since well before Prime Day. As a 27-inch 1440p option with 240Hz of refresh, it’s hitting just about the baseline for current OLED upgrades. That speed should make your gaming PC sweat if you turn all the settings up on a recent triple-A game, especially if you turn on Nvidia G-Sync. Sadly, a lack of USB-C options (there are two USB-A ports) means this OLED is best suited for desktop PCs, not laptops. But with double HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, it’s a welcome companion for any game consoles that happen to be on your desk, too. Oh, and the VESA mount means it’s perfect for adding on a monitor arm. Amazon says this is a “limited time deal,” but there’s no countdown so I assume it’s allocated a specific amount of monitors to sell at this price. But if you’re not fast enough to grab one, don’t fret—I’ll bet there’ll be something in this same range coming down the pipe before too long. If it’s not precisely what you’re looking for, check out PCWorld’s picks for the best monitors on the market. Get an AOC 27-inch 1440p OLED gaming monitor for just $450Buy now at Amazon Read...

Logitech’s MX Master series of mice are some of the most beloved on the market, but they don’t come cheap. If you’re willing to settle for an older model, today you can get one for just $50. Lenovo’s online store is selling the MX Master 2S for just $49.99 with a coupon code. The MX Master 2S came out in 2018, a gentle refresh of the iconic design with compatibility for Logitech’s multi-device Flow software. It’s got all the big features of the series, including that big, comfy shape, a secondary scroll wheel for your thumb, tons of programming options for the many buttons, and compatibility with 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth. While 4,000 DPI on the sensor isn’t exactly gaming-grade these days, the Darkfield tech is good enough to track on glass. It should last up to 70 days on a charge, too. You can read PCWorld’s full review here. All that being said, you might want to pass on the Master 2S if you’ve gone all-in on USB-C since this one recharges with a Micro USB cable that can be harder to find these days. Newer MX Master designs have USB-C charging, quieter clicks, and scroll wheels that can dynamically switch between clicky and fast scrolling. I’m not a fan of the Master 2S’s stacked thumb buttons, and there’s an unofficial MX Master 4 mouse that’ll probably arrive sometime later this year. It has three thumb buttons in what looks like a more comfy arrangement. But that’ll be well over the $100 mark when it comes out, as are the current models. If you’re deal hunting, then you can thank the forum posters over at SlickDeals. They found that if you use the coupon code MX2S at checkout, you can cut the price in half. Even for an older design (still a brand-new unit), it’s a great deal. Use coupon code MX2S to get the MX Master 2S for 50% offBuy now from Lenovo Read...

Not all PC gamers are obsessed with hardware and performance… which is kind of like saying not all Porsches are fast. If you’ve dropped four figures into a machine specifically to play games, you probably want to quantify at least some of that performance. The latest Steam beta has improved its in-game overlay performance monitor, and according to Valve, it’s even better than the one in Windows. Well, the part that monitors your graphics card, anyway. In the notes for the latest Steam beta release, Valve says it uses a new method to compute GPU utilization—one that’s been optimized to more accurately reflect changes when other processes beyond the game you’re playing utilize the GPU. (More common now as browsers and apps are optimized for more powerful graphics cards, including integrated graphics.) As PC Gamer notes, the tool will sometimes report higher GPU utilization than the built-in monitor in Windows Task Manager, which Valve claims “appears to also under report in similar situations to our prior implementation.” Granted, unless you really know your computer science, you’ll have to take Valve’s word and trust that its implementation is interested in showing you data that’s fully optimized for gamers. Other changes in the beta include various bug fixes and wider format Steam game store pages that should look better on bigger monitors. Exactly when these changes will make it to the wider Steam release wasn’t shared, so presumably they need a bit more testing. Read...

According to an internal Meta policy document, leaked to Reuters, the company’s AI guidelines allowed provocative and controversial behaviors, including “sensual” conversations with minors. Reuter’s review of the policy document revealed that the governing standards for Meta AI (and other chatbots across the company’s social media platforms) permitted the tool to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” generate false medical information, and help users argue that Black people are “dumber than white people.” The policy document reportedly distinguished between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” language, drawing the line at explicit sexualization or dehumanization but still allowing derogatory statements. Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, but claims that it “removed portions which stated it is permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children.” One spokesperson also said that Meta is revising the policy document, clarifying that the company has policies that “prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors.” Nevertheless, the authenticated document was reportedly “approved by Meta’s legal, public policy, and engineering staff, including its chief ethicist, according to the document.” Read...

If you’re still using only your laptop’s single screen when you’re on the go, you’re missing out! It’s time to finally get a portable monitor so you can be more efficient with work, streaming, browsing, what have you. Once you start using one, you’ll never want to go back. Now’s a great time to get one, by the way, because Arzopa’s S1 Table portable monitor is just $70 on Amazon, down from its original $110. You’ll need Prime for this exclusive price, but don’t worry if you aren’t a member. Start a free 30-day Prime trial and score this deal while you can! This travel-friendly portable monitor features a 15.6-inch IPS screen with a standard 1080p resolution and a 178-degree viewing angle, delivering the vibrant colors and sharp details you need for Netflix, spreadsheets, social media, and whatever else you’re doing on your laptop. With full-featured USB-C video ports and a Mini HDMI port, it’s easy to connect and widely compatible with laptops, tablets, phones, and even your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. The Arzopa S1 Table is uber portable, too, measuring just 0.3 inches thick and weighing only 1.7 pounds. It slips neatly into any bag right beside your laptop, so you can take it anywhere hassle-free. It also comes with a smart cover that serves a dual purrpose: it protects the screen during travel and acts as a kickstand to prop up the display. This is a must-have accessory for any laptop user, especially now that it’s on sale. Snap up this Arzopa S1 Table portable monitor for $70 before this awesome price expires! And remember, if you don’t have Prime, you can still score this deal with a free 30-day Prime trial. Save 36% on this portable 1080p laptop monitor with smart coverBuy now at Amazon Read...