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2026-01-15 00:48:26

The first-generation Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones are on sale right now for $280, marked down from $430. That 35 percent savings is an even steeper discount than we saw last year Black Friday.

In our review of the first-generation Ultras, we gave them a score of 86 out of 100, noting their best-in-class active noise cancellation (ANC) and comfort. Bose improved its stock tuning for these headphones, which we could immediately tell sounded warmer and clearer. Bose has typically lagged behind the likes of Sony and Sennheiser in raw sound quality, but the first-generation QuietComfort Ultra was a big step toward catching up.

Bose added "Immersive Audio" to this model, which is the company's take on spatial audio. The company claims this feature effectively puts you in the acoustic sweet spot of a set of stereo speakers. In our testing, we felt this didn't always make songs sound better, but it did make them louder and in some cases made certain details more noticeable.

The Ultras offer up to 24 hours of battery life with ANC turned on and about 18 hours with both ANC and Immersive Audio enabled. In our testing, however, we were actually able to beat Bose's estimates for battery life.

The second generation of these headphones are currently our top pick for best noise-canceling headphones, but when this older model is heavily on sale, the differences between them are less dramatic. If you're in the market for a pair of great noise-canceling cans, consider checking these out.

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2026-01-15 00:07:39

For a number of very obvious reasons, we don’t want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands.

The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, which has arrived a day earlier than planned. As spotted by Eurogamer, the free Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update is available to download now and, as previously announced, brings a host of new features to the cozy life sim, including a brand new resort hotel on the pier that you can help decorate.

There are new items and quality-of-life additions too, as well as the ability to build fresh islands with your friends and family in the “Slumber Island” dream world. All you need to do is go to the New Horizons game icon on your Switch’s home screen and download the software update.

Nintendo also announced last year that New Horizons would be coming to Switch 2 on January 15, improving the visuals, unlocking mouse controls and GameChat functionality, and expanding the online multiplayer capacity from eight players to 12. As of now, the Switch 2 edition of the game remains locked, so you’ll be stuck with the standard Switch version until tomorrow. Upgrading costs $5, while first-time players can purchase the Switch 2 version of Animal Crossing: New Horizons for $65.

2026-01-15 00:06:26

The holiday season may be behind us, but that doesn't mean you can't still find good deals on some of our favorite tech. Take the Apple Mac mini M4, which is on sale for $100 off. The 17 percent discount gives you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD for $499, which is only about $20 more than its Black Friday sale price. Its beefier models are also on sale: opting for 512GB of SSD will cost you $689, down from $799, while also upping your RAM to 24GB is available for $890, dropping from $999. 

We gave the Apple Mac mini M4 a 90 in our review thanks in large part to its powerful chip. The M4 works very fast despite being in such a small device. It also offers front-facing headphone and USB-C ports. You can further upgrade to the Apple M4 Pro chip for $1,270, down from $1,399 — a nine percent discount. The Pro model also has Thunderbolt 5 support. 

Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

2026-01-15 00:00:39

Gemini is adding a feature that’s designed to feel more tailored to individual users. Once enabled, "Personal Intelligence" can pull context from across your Google ecosystem, including Gmail, Google Photos, Search and YouTube History, to gain specific insight that will shape its answers and recommendations. Personal Intelligence is available starting today in the US for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. The feature is opt-in only and is off by default.

Google

Google says users will have the ability to control what apps Gemini pulls from and, in the future, which chats it uses Personal Intelligence for. The company says this new feature might still make some mistakes, such as “over-personalization” where it draws connections between unrelated things.

According to Google, Gemini will not train directly on the data it pulls for personalization like your photos and emails, but will instead train on your prompts and its responses. Users can also prompt Gemini to "try again" without personalization and will have the option to delete chat histories.

For now, Personal Intelligence works in the Gemini app across web, Android and iOS for personal Google accounts. Google says it’s coming to Search’s AI Mode soon, with plans to expand to more countries and the free tier down the line.

Google has been on a tear integrating Gemini into everything, including Gmail, TVs and Chrome on mobile. This week, Apple announced that Siri AI will be powered by Gemini as part of a multi-year collaboration. AI remains an imperfect tool, and Google's AI has a long history of malfunctions like explaining made-up idioms, calling itself a "failure" in a depressing doom loop and generating images of the Founding Fathers as people of color.

2026-01-14 23:13:29

YouTube is rolling out some additional parental controls, including a way to set time limits for viewing Shorts on teen accounts. In the near future, parents and guardians will be able to set the Shorts timer to zero on supervised accounts. "This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch," Jennifer Flannery O'Connor, YouTube's vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post. Along with that, take-a-break and bedtime reminders are now enabled by default for users aged 13-17. 

The platform is also bringing in new principles, under which it will recommend more age-appropriate and "enriching" videos to teens. For instance, YouTube will suggest videos from the likes of Khan Academy, CrashCourse and TED-Ed to them more often. It said it developed these principles (and a guide for creators to make teen-friendly videos) with help from its youth advisory committee, the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA, the American Psychological Association, the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and other organizations.

Moreover, an updated sign-up process for kid accounts will be available in the coming weeks. Kid accounts are tied to parental ones, and don't have their own associated email address or a password. YouTube says users will be able to switch between accounts in the mobile app with just a few taps. "This makes it easier to ensure that everyone in the family is in the right viewing experience with the content settings and recommendations of age-appropriate content they actually want to watch," O'Connor wrote.

2026-01-14 23:06:26

You can easily spruce up your nightstand or desk by decluttering a bit, replacing some of those annoying charging cables with a good wireless charging setup. One of our favorites that can handle three devices at once is the UGREEN MagFlow Qi2 3-in-1 Charger Station 25W. Normally $140, it's on sale right now for $95; that's 32 percent off and only about $5 more than its record-low price.

This is our top pick for a 3-in-1 charging pad thanks to its versatility. The UGREEN can work equally well as a permanent fixture in your home or act as a portable charging station. It boasts a foldable design and has smart little design details to keep it feeling like a premium product.

The Qi2 25W charging works across a range of iPhone models and accessories, such as AirPods. There's also a dedicated part of the pad's design for an Apple Watch, which uses a proprietary charging standard, to power up too. Just note that you'll need a newer model of phone and the latest iOS 26 in order to take full advantage of the 25W charging capability. The wireless pad also comes with both a charging plug and a cable. We felt this UGREEN model was a great value at $140, so being able to snag one for a third of the usual price is an even better deal.

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