Acer just unveiled the new Swift 16 Air laptop at IFA 2025. The biggest selling point here is likely the weight. The 16-inch laptop clocks in at just over two pounds, which is lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air.

The Swift 16 Air is available with two display options. There’s a standard IPS panel and an AMOLED. The AMOLED does tick the weight up a bit to 2.4 pounds, which is worth considering.

Acer

The overall specs here are solid. These computers are powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processors, with options up to the AI 7 350. They also come with AMD Radeon GPUs. The battery life is pretty decent, allowing for up to 13 hours of use per charge.

There’s a webcam with a privacy shutter and plenty of connectivity options. These include a pair of USB-C ports, two USB-A ports and an HDMI port. Finally, each laptop ships with two speakers and two microphones.

The Acer Swift 16 Air will be available this November in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We don’t have pricing or availability information for the US yet, but the starting cost in Europe translates to around $1,160.

Acer

The company also used IFA to introduce the TravelMate X4 AI. This is a lightweight Copilot+ PC with Intel Core Ultra Processors. It weighs less than three pounds and meets MIL-STD810H durability standards. It ships later this month, with a starting price of $1,400.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/acers-swift-16-air-laptop-weighs-less-than-22-pounds-090029625.html?src=rss

JBL just announced the PartyBox 720, which is an extremely chonky party speaker. As a matter of fact, it’s the company’s largest-ever battery-powered party speaker. The thing is bigger than many human children.

It boasts 800W of power with up to 15 hours of playtime via a replaceable battery. There are two 9-inch woofers and a pair of 30mm dome tweeters, which should provide for robust audio. The company has included its proprietary AI Sound Boost technology, which increases audio without distortion.

JBL

The PartyBox offers multi-speaker connectivity via Auracast and USB-C connectivity for streaming audio directly from a device. The speaker also creates a “futuristic lightshow” that syncs to the music, which is always fun.

This being a device intended for soirees, it also boasts a pair of XLR ports for connecting microphones, guitars or DJ consoles. The company says the speaker will “bring karaoke sessions to life.”

However, modern party speakers are expensive. This one costs $1,099. That’s cheaper than Marshall’s recently-announced $1,300 model, but still pricey. Pre-orders are open right now, with shipments going out on September 21.

JBL

JBL also announced the Boombox 4, which is an iterative update of the Boombox 3. We liked the previous model and it almost made our list of the best portable Bluetooth speakers. This one features the same AI Sound Boost tech as the PartyBox, for louder audio without distortion.

It’s nearly two pounds lighter than the predecessor, so it should be easy to carry out to the front lawn like that one scene in Say Anything. It’s IP68 water and dustproof and integrates with Auracast for linking to other speakers. It includes a replaceable battery that can go up to 28 hours before requiring a trip to the outlet.

Pre-orders for the Boombox 4 are open right now. It costs $550 and is available in three colorways. The speaker ships on September 28.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/jbl-just-announced-its-largest-ever-battery-powered-party-speaker-090024747.html?src=rss

In the last few years, I’ve felt like Chromebooks have hit a plateau. ChromeOS is a quirky but mature platform at this point, and Google has continued to add smart and useful features on a regular basis. But the hardware has felt pretty stagnant, with a few exceptions. Most Chromebooks at this point are utilitarian devices that get the job done but inspire little excitement, and I’ve found most Intel-based Chromebooks don’t get me through a day of work before the battery dies.

But earlier this summer, Lenovo released a new Chromebook with the ARM-based MediaTek’s Kompanio Ultra 910 chip, rather than the usual Intel fare. And now Acer is doing the same with the latest Chromebook Plus Spin 514, a laptop that Acer says should get up to 17 hours of battery life — a figure that only this model and the aforementioned Lenovo can hit. Previously, the MediaTek-powered Chromebooks available ran on weaker mobile chips that didn’t have nearly enough power, but the Kompanio Ultra 910 is a completely different beast. The combo of performance and efficiency the Spin 514 offers makes it one of the best Chromebooks I’ve used in a while.

Hardware design

The Chromebook Spin 514 feels like many Acer laptops I’ve tried over the years (CP514-5HN is the identifier for this particular model, but we’re just going to call it the Spin 514 from here on out). It’s solid and well-built while still also feeling fairly utilitarian. It doesn’t quite hit “premium” laptop standards, but it’s on the nicer end of the Chromebook spectrum. I’m a fan of the silver color scheme as opposed to the rather dull grey most Chromebooks come in, and the laptop’s lid has a nicely chamfered and polished edge, giving it some visual flair.

It’s also a relatively slim (0.61 inches) and light (3 pounds) laptop. It’s not pushing the envelope, but it’s also more svelte and portable than a lot of cheaper Chromebooks. “Almost premium” isn’t a bad place to be. The same goes for the keyboard and trackpad — they’re both spacious and comfortable, and the keys have plenty of clicky travel. It’s not the best keyboard I’ve ever used, but one that I’m happy to tap away on for hours at a time. The 1,920 x 1,200 touchscreen is bright, sharp and colorful, quite pleasant to look at for long sessions. However, it also has pretty large bezels above and below the display. Again, almost premium.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

The Spin 514 has solid connectivity options, as well. On one side you’ll find two USB-C 3.2 ports and a headphone jack, while the other side goes old-school with two USB-A 3.2 ports. I wish that there was one of each on each side so that you could plug in a charger on the left or the right, but alas. My only real quibble is that if you’re using a monitor with the laptop plugged into power, both USB-C jacks are taken up. An HDMI connection would have been helpful for that common scenario.

As the name implies, the Spin 514 has a 360-degree hinge that lets you use it in a tablet mode, with the touchscreen as the main input. I’ve long believed these convertible laptops aren’t really offering any useful solution for the vast majority of people, and I still feel the same way. But the hinge feels great; Acer has a ton of experience in this department. And the USI 2.0 stylus I had on hand worked without any need for pairing or setup, which was convenient. If you’re the kind of person who would take advantage of that, the Spin 514 does the trick.

Overall, the Spin 514 lands just about where I’d expect for a $700 laptop in terms of hardware quality. It’s utilitarian in a good way — there were no major letdowns in my testing aside from the speakers, which have very little bass and sound rather harsh when listening to music.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Configurations and performance

Before diving into how the Spin 514 worked for me, a quick word about configurations. The version I tested retails for $700 and will be sold through Best Buy. This setup has the aforementioned MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 alongside 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space. Acer itself will sell a $750 model with a 2,880 x 1,800 display and 16GB of RAM, but it should be otherwise identical to the model I’m testing.

ChromeOS runs well enough on the various Intel chips that are commonly used. One of my longstanding favorite Chromebooks, the Lenovo Ideapad 5i, still uses a Core i3 from early 2023, and it gets the job done. But the move to MediaTek’s ARM-based Kompanio Ultra 910 has raised the performance bar, as the Spin 514 is probably the most responsive Chromebook I’ve tried. There’s nary a hint of slowdown or hiccups that still happen on Intel-based models if you have too many windows or apps open. Tabs rarely need to be reloaded and pop back up quickly on the rare occasion that they do. Music or video playback never skipped regardless of what else I was doing, and Android apps like Lightroom worked swiftly and smoothly as well.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Perhaps more importantly than how it performs today is the fact that the Kompanio Ultra 910 should keep the Flip 514 feeling snappy and powerful for years to come. There’s just more room for this chip to handle increasing performance demands over the years. Benchmarks from the Android version of Geekbench 6 help illustrate this: the Spin 514 scored 2,526 on the single-core CPU test, 7,687 on multi-core and 18,020 on the GPU test. For comparison, Acer’s recently-released Chromebook Plus 514 with an Intel Core 3 chip scored 1,150, 4,407 and 5,932 respectively. I don’t think that benchmarks like Geekbench are a be-all end-all of anything, but it’s at least one metric to illustrate the benefits of moving away from Intel.

I’ve long groused about the relatively mediocre battery life on Intel-powered Chromebooks, and this is another place where the MediaTek chip helps out tremendously. The Spin 514 looped video playback in my test for just over 14 hours before running out of battery. My daily workflow of tons of Chrome tabs, various chat apps, YouTube Music, Todoist and a handful of Android apps definitely used more resources, but I could still get through a full work day with battery to spare. That’s not something I’ve said about many Chromebooks recently. The only caveat is that battery life will almost surely take a hit if you opt for the model with the higher-resolution display.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

ChromeOS and Gemini

I wrote a lot about the ChromeOS and Gemini experience last year when I reviewed Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus, and basically everything I said then applies here. But to recap: ChromeOS is quite mature and stable at this point, and Google has built in a lot of smart features over the years to make it more than “just a web browser” as it was referred to previously. Of course, ChromeOS is still a primarily web-based system, with Android applications giving you access to things you might not find in the browser. There are also plenty of web apps that are well optimized for ChromeOS, and Google Docs has a comprehensive offline mode at this point. ChromeOS also pairs nicely with Android phones and adds features like shared notifications and streaming of some apps directly to your laptop.

Of course, Gemini is also a big part of the equation — but if you’re not a big fan of AI tools, it’s also quite easy to ignore. There are little prompts around the OS, but nothing that really drags your attention away from what you’re working on. And if you do want to dive into what Gemini is all about, a Chromebook like the Spin 514 is a good option because you get 12 months of Google’s AI Pro plan for free. That usually costs $20/month and provides 2TB of Drive storage along with Gemini 2.5 Pro in search and the Gemini app, Gemini in Gmail and Google Docs, access to the Veo image- and video-generation tool and more. Given that 2TB of Google Drive storage costs $10/month on its own, this is a solid perk. But it’s also worth remembering that once that year ends, you’re on the hook to pay for that plan yourself.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Pricing and final thoughts

My only real quibble with the Spin 514 is its price. At $700, we’re pushing the top of what anyone should spend on a Chromebook. While the more powerful chip and long battery life will be worth it for some people, Acer itself is providing some strong competition with its standard Chromebook Plus 514 which came out this summer. It has an Intel chip, so battery life and performance aren’t at the same level as the Spin 514, but it’s also literally half the price at $350. If you’re only going to be away from a charger for a few hours at a time, it’s hard not to recommend that device instead. I’ll be publishing more details about that laptop in our guide to the best Chromebooks very soon if you want to know more.

So while this might not be the Chromebook I’d recommend to everyone, it is a strong contender for the best premium Chromebook you can buy. If you’re looking to use this laptop all day, every day, it may be worth shelling out the extra cash for the improved performance, battery life and longevity you’ll get from the Spin 514.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/acer-chromebook-plus-spin-514-review-the-new-chromeos-sweet-spot-090014823.html?src=rss

Acer maintains two different gaming product lines and it’s updating both of them at IFA 2025. Among the new gear is a gigantic new 18-inch Predator laptop, an ultra high-refresh rate monitor and multiple entry-level Nitro laptops and monitors.

The updated Predator Helios 18P AI is an even more powerful version of the Predator Helio 18 the company showed off at CES 2024, offering “desktop-level AI” in what’s still technically a portable body. Inside, you can get up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU and 6TB of SSD storage. For the display of the panel, you’ll get a Mini LED 4K panel, which should work well for creative workflows and gaming. Acer also says the new Helios uses its “proprietary thermal solution” to keep cool, which is a combination of thin metal fans, “liquid metal thermal grease” and vector heat pipes.

Acer has new gaming desktop PCs, the Predator Orion 7000 and Orion 5000, which can use GeForce RTX 5090 or 5080 GPUs, respectively. The more exciting announcement, though, is the new Predator monitor. The Predator X27U F8 Monitor is a 26.5-inch OLED, with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and a ridiculous 720Hz refresh rate. Acer says the monitor can move between resolutions and refresh rates to maximize performance. The X27U F8 monitor also supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering.

Acer

On the Nitro side of the house, Acer has two new gaming laptops on offer. The Acer Nitro V 16 can be built with up to an Intel Core 9 processor and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU. With NVIDIA inside, the laptop supports NVIDIA DLSS 4 for improved graphics performance. The laptop also comes with a 2,560 x 1,600 display that has up to an 180Hz refresh rate for fluid motion during fast-paced games. The Acer Nitro V 16S, while similar, is more focused on portability. The laptop has up to an Intel Core 9 processor, but only a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU, the same 180Hz display, in a metal body that’s 19.9mm thin. That’s not quite MacBook Air dimensions, but it’s better than nothing.

Acer is pairing those new laptops with a collection of new Nitro monitors. The largest option is the 39.7-inch curved Nitro XZ403CKR monitor, which uses a 5K panel, has built-in 5W speakers and supports AMD FreeSync Premium for fluid gameplay. If you like 5K but don’t want a curved screen, there’s the 27-inch Nitro XV270X, which includes two built-in 2W speakers. You can get similar speakers on the 27-inch Nitro XV273U W1 monitor, which has a 27-inch 1440p display that reaches 500 nits of peak brightness. Finally, there’s also the Nitro XV275K V6, which features a 27-inch 4K display, AMD FreeSync Premium and dual HDMI 2.1 ports.

Acer hasn’t announced a final price or release for the Predator Helios 18P AI laptop, but did confirm it will be available in North America at launch. The Predator X27U F8 monitor, meanwhile, will go on sale in Q1 2026 for $1,300.

For the Nitro laptops, Acer says the Nitro V 16 will be available in the US in October starting at $1,000, with the Acer Nitro V 16S arriving a month later in November for $1,100. For the Nitro monitors, all three will be available in Q1 2026. The Acer Nitro XV25K V6 starts at $700, the Acer Nitro XV273U W1 starts at $300, the Acer Nitro XV270X starts at $900 and the Acer Nitro XZ403CKR starts at $1,000.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/acers-new-gaming-lineup-includes-an-18-inch-ai-laptop-and-a-720hz-monitor-090009032.html?src=rss

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that US Space Command will be relocated from Colorado to Alabama, returning to the Pentagon’s plans for the command’s headquarters from the final days of Trump’s first term in the White House.

The headquarters will move to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office, flanked by Republican members of the Alabama congressional delegation.

The move will “help America defend and dominate the high frontier,” Trump said. It also marks another twist on a contentious issue that has pitted Colorado and Alabama against one another in a fight for the right to be home to the permanent headquarters of Space Command (SPACECOM), a unified combatant command responsible for carrying out military operations in space.

Read full article

Comments

A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science. NPR: The group of climate scientists found several examples where the DOE authors cherry-picked or misrepresented climate science in the agency’s report. For instance, in the DOE report the authors claim that rising carbon dioxide can be a “net benefit” to U.S. agriculture, neglecting to mention the negative impacts of more heat and climate-change fueled extreme weather events on crops.

The DOE report also states that there is no evidence of more intense “meteorological” drought in the U.S. or globally, referring to droughts that involve low rainfall. But the dozens of climate scientists point out that this is misleading, because higher temperatures and more evaporation — not just low rainfall — can lead to and exacerbate droughts. They say that there are, in fact, many studies showing how climate change has exacerbated droughts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo is expanding its U.S. robotaxi footprint by bringing its Jaguar I-Pace SUVs and Zeekr vans to Denver and Seattle. Testing is set to begin this week, with commercial rides expected as early as 2026. TechCrunch reports: The vehicles will be manually driven to start, before the company starts testing its autonomous tech in both cities. Waymo told TechCrunch that it hopes to start offering robotaxi trips in Denver next year and the Seattle metropolitan area “as soon as we’re permitted to do so.” Denver and Seattle will be two of the most extreme-weather cities that Waymo is feeling out, giving it a chance to test out its tech in snow, wind, and rain that is harder to come by in places like Phoenix. The report notes that Waymo currently operates more than 2,000 robotaxis in the U.S., concentrated in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. The self-driving car company is expanding to Dallas, Miami, Washington D.C., and New York, while also “dipping its toes” in additional markets such as Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and Houston.

Further reading: ‘Why Do Waymos Keep Loitering in Front of My House?’

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paramount and Activision are teaming up to produce a live-action Call of Duty movie, with Paramount promising the same blockbuster treatment it gave Top Gun: Maverick.

David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount, said in a statement: “As a lifelong fan of Call of Duty this is truly a dream come true. From the first Allied campaigns in the original Call of Duty, through Modern Warfare and Black Ops, I’ve spent countless hours playing this franchise that I absolutely love. Being entrusted by Activision and players worldwide to bring this extraordinary storytelling universe to the big screen is both an honor and a responsibility that we don’t take lightly. We’re approaching this film with the same disciplined, uncompromising commitment to excellence that guided our work on Top Gun: Maverick, ensuring it meets the exceptionally high standards this franchise and its fans deserve. I can promise that we are resolute in our mission to deliver a cinematic experience that honors the legacy of this one-in-a-million brand — thrilling longtime fans of Call of Duty while captivating a whole new generation.”

Rob Kostich, President of Activision, also commented: “Throughout its history, Call of Duty has captured our imagination with incredible action and intense stories that have brought millions of people together from around the world, and that focus on making incredible Call of Duty games remains unwavering. With Paramount, we have found a fantastic partner who we will work with to take that visceral, breathtaking action to the big screen in a defining cinematic moment. The film will honor and expand upon what has made this franchise great in the first place, and we cannot wait to get started. Our shared goal is quite simple — to create an unforgettable blockbuster movie experience that our community loves, and one that also excites and inspires new fans of the franchise.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ten vulnerabilities in Copeland controllers, which are found in thousands of devices used by the world’s largest supermarket chains and cold storage companies, could have allowed miscreants to manipulate temperatures and spoil food and medicine, leading to massive supply-chain disruptions. The flaws, collectively called Frostbyte10, affect Copeland E2 and E3 controllers, used to manage critical building and refrigeration systems, such as compressor groups, condensers, walk-in units, HVAC, and lighting systems. Three received critical-severity ratings. Operational technology security firm Armis found and reported the 10 bugs to Copeland, which has since issued firmware updates that fix the flaws in both the E3 and the E2 controllers. The E2s reached their official end-of-life in October, and affected customers are encouraged to move to the newer E3 platform. Upgrading to Copeland firmware version 2.31F01 mitigates all the security issues detailed here, and the vendor recommends patching promptly.

In addition to the Copeland updates, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is also scheduled to release advisories today, urging any organization that uses vulnerable controllers to patch immediately. Prior to these publications, Copeland and Armis execs spoke exclusively to The Register about Frostbyte10, and allowed us to preview an Armis report about the security issues. “When combined and exploited, these vulnerabilities can result in unauthenticated remote code execution with root privileges,” it noted.
[…] To be clear: there is no indication that any of these vulnerabilities were found and exploited in the wild before Copeland issued fixes. However, the manufacturer’s ubiquitous reach across retail and cold storage makes it a prime target for all manner of miscreants, from nation-state attackers looking to disrupt the food supply chain to ransomware gangs looking for victims who will quickly pay extortion demands to avoid operational downtime and food spoilage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google will not have to divest its Chrome browser but will have to change some of its business practices, a federal judge has ruled. The ruling comes more than a year after the same judge ruled that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in internet search.

Following the ruling last year, the Department of Justice had proposed that Google should be forced to sell Chrome. But in a 230-page decision, Judge Amit Mehta said the government had “overreached” in its request. “Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” Mehta wrote. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

Google will, however, no longer be permitted to strike exclusive deals around the distribution of search, Google Assistant, Gemini or Chrome, Mehta ruled. For example, Google can’t require device makers to pre-load its apps in order to get access to the Play Store. It also can’t condition revenue-sharing arrangements on the placement of its apps. But Google will be able to continue to pay partners — like Apple — for pre-loading search and other apps into their products. Mehta said that ending these arrangements could cause “downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers.”

Mehta also ruled that Google will need to share some of its search data with competitors going forward. “Making data available to competitors would narrow the scale gap created by Google’s exclusive distribution agreements and, in turn, the quality gap that followed,” he wrote. The company is not required to hand over data related to its ads. 

Mehta’s ruling is largely a win for the search giant, which had argued that divesting Chrome or Android “would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.” In a statement Tuesday, Google said it had “concerns” about some aspects of the ruling. 

“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” the company said. “Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely.”

The company previously indicated it plans to appeal Mehta’s original decision, but said in June it would wait for a final decision in the case.

Update, September 2, 2025, 4:28PM PT: This post has been updated to add a statement from Google on the ruling.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-doesnt-have-to-sell-chrome-judge-in-monopoly-case-rules-211032326.html?src=rss