The latest lineup of MSI’s Prestige laptops is now available to buy. The company unveiled its next-generation business laptop at CES earlier this month, all of them powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors.

Available in configurations that include up to the Intel Core Ultra 9, the updated Prestige series are equipped with chunky 91Wh batteries and, depending on the model, offer over 30 hours of 1080p video playback. In more real-world terms, if you’re on a work trip and know you won’t always have a power supply to hand, you can trust one of these to get you through a day of heavy multi-tasking.

The new Prestige models are encased in full aluminum and are slimmer than their predecessors. They feature vapor chamber cooling and dual-fan architecture to ensure they stay cool and quiet while you work. If you pick up one of the convertible 2-in-1 Flip models, you can work with a stylus too.

There’s a 2.8K OLED display option for the Prestige 16 and 16 Flip, with support for VRR and DisplayHDR True Black 1000. The Flip 14 keeps the OLED, but the resolution drops to FHD+ and you lose the VRR.

The full lineup is now available in the US, with prices starting at $1,299. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/msis-refreshed-prestige-series-laptops-are-now-available-to-buy-165234479.html?src=rss

An analysis of film and music release patterns has found that summer and late fall are the optimal windows for movie premieres, while the music industry has no clear “best” month — only a worst one, December, which the report’s author dubbed “Dump-cember.”

For films, the calendar splits into distinct strategic zones. Summer months and holidays see elevated box office because audiences have more free time, and studios chase mega-billion-dollar hits during these windows. October and November see a surge of prestige releases as studios cluster their Oscar hopefuls to keep them fresh in voters’ minds when awards season begins in January.

The Silence of the Lambs, which swept the Academy Awards’ Big Four categories in 1992, remains the only Best Picture winner in seven decades to have been released in January — the industry’s infamous “Dump-uary.” The music industry operates differently. Most months are interchangeable for album releases, but December is uniquely bad. Artists avoid it because they would compete against Christmas classics from Bing Crosby and Andy Williams, both dead for decades. Albums released in December also receive weaker critical reception as measured by Pitchfork scores, and labels quietly slot their least promising projects into this low-attention window.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD has released three distinct generations of its 3D V-Cache technology, which initially appeared in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in 2022. The kernel of the idea has remained the same throughout AMD’s efforts: take an existing desktop processor design and graft 64MB of additional L3 cache onto it.

This approach disproportionately helps apps that benefit from more cache, particularly games, and the size of the boost that 3D V-Cache gives to game performance has always been enough to offset any downsides these chips have come with. And in the four years since the 5800X3D was released, AMD has steadily chipped away at those disadvantages, adding more CPU cores, improving power consumption and temperatures, and re-adding the typical Ryzen range of overclocking controls.

AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which launches for $499 starting tomorrow, is the very definition of a mild upgrade. It’s the year-old Ryzen 7 9800X3D but with an extra 400 MHz of turbo boost speed. That’s it. That’s the chip.

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The GoPro Hero12 Black might not be the newest model in the lineup, but it still checks all the right boxes for action camera buyers—and at $215.99 on Woot, it’s down to its lowest price yet. That’s a steep cut from Amazon’s current $369 listing, and you’re still getting a full one-year manufacturer warranty. Shipping is free for Prime members, and the deal is live for three more days (or until it sells out). PCMag gave it an “outstanding” rating in its review, highlighting how stable and clean the footage looks. Lifehacker’s Stephen Johnson also called it one of his favorite products, largely because it works without much effort.

In use, the Hero12 Black sticks closely to what GoPro has always done well. It’s compact, tough, and easy to mount almost anywhere. Video tops out at 5.3K at 60 frames per second, which gives you noticeably more detail than 4K and extra room to crop without wrecking the quality. The stabilization, thanks to GoPro’s HyperSmooth stabilization, is strong enough that handheld clips often look like they were shot on a gimbal. And there are front and rear screens for easy framing—helpful whether you’re vlogging or filming the view ahead. The 8:7 shooting mode of the Hero12 Black is especially useful if you’re creating content for multiple platforms. You can shoot once and crop for vertical reels or horizontal YouTube clips without needing separate takes.

It is also waterproof to 33 feet without a case, which covers swimming, snorkeling, rain, and most casual water use. That said, GoPro removed the built-in GPS on this model. That means no automatic speed or route overlays out of the box. The upside is slightly better battery life, though it still won’t last a full day of continuous recording. Carrying a spare battery will be the smarter move if you’re filming long sessions. Storage is via microSD, and you get Bluetooth, wifi, and USB-C for easy transfers. This isn’t the right camera for someone looking for automatic tracking or cinematic depth of field, but if your priorities are portability, versatility, and durability, it still holds up well. It’s a great tool for creators, travelers, and anyone who wants to capture fast-moving moments without worrying about breaking the gear.

Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. From a report: The evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden tools found in southern Greece — the earliest wooden tools on record.

The findings suggest that early humans possessed sophisticated technological skills, the researchers said. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany and a lead author of the wooden-tool paper, which was published on Monday in the journal PNAS, said the discoveries provided insight into the prehistoric origins of human intelligence. Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum and an author on the elephant-bone study, which was published last week in Science Advances, concurred.

The artifacts in both studies, recovered from coal-mine sites, were probably produced by early Neanderthals or a preceding species, Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, and the oldest evidence of them in Europe is a 210,000-year-old fossil unearthed in Greece. By the time Homo sapiens established themselves in Britain 40,000 years ago, other hominins had already lived there for nearly a million years.

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Fans of co-op beat-‘em-ups and fictional bass players who kind of suck as human beings might want to mark March 3 on their calendars. That’s when Scott Pilgrim EX is set to hit PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Steam. 

Developer and publisher Tribute Games announced the release date in a new trailer, which also revealed two more playable characters: Matthew Patel (a member of the League of Evil Exes) and Robot-01, a creation of the Katayanagi Twins. One more fighter will be unveiled in the coming weeks. 

Tribute worked with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley on an original storyline for the game. After Scott’s bandmates in Sex Bob-omb are kidnapped and demons descend on Toronto, Scott and Ramona Flowers set out to save the day with some unexpected allies. Anamanaguchi are making new music for the game, after providing the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game way back when. 

I’m a fan of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and I dug Tribute’s last two games, Marvel Cosmic Invasion and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. So it’s safe to say I’ll be trying out Scott Pilgrim EX in a few weeks. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/scott-pilgrim-ex-will-hit-pc-and-consoles-on-march-3-160427832.html?src=rss

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At $249.99 for a three-pack, the TP-Link Deco XE75 Pro Tri-Band Mesh System is sitting $150 below its usual $399.99 price, and price-trackers show this is the lowest it has gone so far. That discount matters because this is not an entry-level mesh kit. It’s built around Wi-Fi 6E, which adds access to the cleaner 6GHz band alongside the familiar 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. In practice, that means less congestion if you have newer devices that support 6E, and more consistent speeds across a larger home. The three cylindrical nodes are understated and easy to place, each covering a chunk of space so the full kit can handle homes up to roughly 7,200 square feet. Setup happens through the Deco app and is largely painless, even if you are not used to managing network gear.

TP-Link Deco XE75 Pro AXE5400 Tri-Band WiFi 6E Mesh System (3-Pack)

$249.99
at Amazon

$399.99
Save $150.00

$249.99
at Amazon

$399.99
Save $150.00

Each node includes a 2.5GbE WAN port, which is useful if your internet plan is already pushing past standard gigabit speeds. You also get two additional 1GbE LAN ports per node, plus support for wired backhaul if you want to connect the units with Ethernet instead of relying on wireless links. Internally, TP-Link uses a 1.7GHz quad-core processor and multiple internal antennas to keep traffic moving smoothly. What you do not get are USB ports, so there’s no option to plug in a drive or printer directly. That omission may not matter for most people, but it is worth noting at this price.

As for its performance, PCMag’s testing showed reliable throughput across bands, and the publication gave the system an “excellent” rating in its review, calling it easy to manage and a solid value for large spaces. Management leans heavily on the mobile app, which is simpler than the web interface and good enough for everyday use. TP-Link includes its HomeShield tools for basic parental controls and security scanning, but some of the more detailed features sit behind a paid subscription. That may be a drawback if you want everything included upfront. Still, for homes with many devices, fast internet, and a need for wide coverage, this deal makes the Deco XE75 Pro a much more reasonable buy than it is at full price.

The big game is one of the few instances now in the US where most people gather around the TV to watch the live event together. While the teams playing in Super Bowl 2026 are the true stars of the show (and Bad Bunny, of course), your TV is a pretty important part of the puzzle of putting together an excellent Super Bowl party. Maybe you’ve been thinking about replacing an aging set, or you’re itching for a full refresh of your home theater setup — either way, you’ll want to try to get a good deal on a new TV. Thankfully, the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl can be a great time to shop for a new TV.

Generally, TV prices steadily decrease after a new model comes out. Some 2026 TV models were announced at CES and are forthcoming things year, making now a good time to look for discounts on 2025 sets. Aside from the holiday shopping season, now is one of the best times of the year to save on a TV. Here, we’ve curated the best Super Bowl TV deals we could find this year, from already affordable sets discounted even further to high-end OLEDs that are hundreds of dollars off.

Super Bowl 2026 TV deals for less than $500

You can easily find solid 1080p and 4K TV sets within this budget-friendly price range. What you’ll be more limited in is size — most TV deals under $500 we’re seeing right now are on sets up to 55 inches. There are a few 65- and 75-inch models in there, but the pickings are slim.

Hisense 32-inch Class A4 1080 FHD smart TV for $98 (18 percent off)

Roku 24-inch 720p smart TV for $100 (18 percent off)

Roku 55-inch 4K smart TV for $248 (29 percent off)

Roku 55-inch Mini LED 4K smart TV for $348 (30 percent off)

TCL 75-inch Class S5 4K smart TV for $480 (26 percent off)

OLED TV deals

This is where you want to look if you want your new TV to have the richest colors, deepest blacks and excellent contrast performance. Of course, that all comes at steeper prices — it can be difficult to find a good OLED set for less than $1,000, even on sale.

LG 55-inch B5 OLED 4K smart TV for $847 ($50 off)

Samsung 65-inch Class OLED S95F 4K smart TV for $2,298 (23 percent off)

Sony 77-inch Bravia XR A95L OLED 4K smart TV for $3,498 (30 percent off)

Super Bowl 2026 TV deals for $500 and up

This will likely be the sweet spot for many people when it comes to TV features, performance and price. Good 4K sets are common in this price range, and you’ll also find some Mini LED sets available here as well.

TCL 65-inch Class T7 4K smart TV for $500 (29 percent off)

Hisense 65-inch Class U6 Mini LED 4K smart TV for $550 (35 percent off)

Amazon 65-inch Fire TV Omni Mini LED 4K smart TV for $920 (16 percent off)

TCL 65-inch Class QM8K Mini LED 4K smart TV for $998 (33 percent off)

Streaming and home entertainment deals

A good TV is key, but having the right peripherals and accessories to go along with it will complete your home theater setup. Deals we’re tracking right now include discounts on streaming devices, soundbars and projectors.

Roku Ultra streamer for $78 (22 percent off)

Vizio 2.0 SV200M-08 soundbar for $78 (22 percent off)

Samsung HW B400F soundbar with built-in subwoofer for $100 (29 percent off)

Anker Nebula Capsule 3 projector for $540 (28 percent off)

Valerion VisionMaster Max 4K projector for $3,999 (20 percent off)

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/super-bowl-2026-tv-deals-the-best-sales-ahead-of-kickoff-160000725.html?src=rss