The ongoing pandemic has thrown yet another wrench in our return-to-office plans, leaving more room for manufacturers to up the ante when it comes to remote work gear. And China-based accessory maker Anker’s new Video Bar might just be all you need to look and sound your best in virtual meetings.
At CES this year, Anker unveiled the B600 Video Bar, an all-in-one videoconferencing accessory that combines a speaker, light, microphone, and webcam in a single device. It sells for a comparatively steep price — ($220 — but Anker hasn’t cut any corners in specifications, and the Video Bar features a laundry list of high-end components.
Like any other webcam, the Video Bar’s rig rests on top of your monitor or TV. It comes equipped with a 2K camera sensor maxing out at 30 frames per second, an array of built-in speakers, and a total of four microphones that can intelligently cut any background noise and boost your own voice.
The highlight of Anker’s B600 Video Bar is arguably the light bar sitting on top of the webcam for people whose room lighting makes them look like they’re reporting from a military bunker. The Video Bar’s lighting setup also takes advantage of a range of sensors to automatically adjust the brightness and white balance. There’s even a physical slider upfront that you can tweak to manually tune the brightness.
The webcam also houses a handful of clever software tricks. Most notably, it can zoom on its own to always keep the focus on your face, and an image enhancement tool works in the background to sharpen the feed as much as possible — even on slow connections. The Anker B600 Video Bar plugs into computers through a USB Type-C cable and offers a companion app for you to further tweak the color temperature and picture quality.
The Anker B600 Video Bar will go on sale in the United States for $220 starting January 25 and pre-orders open today. It’s priced at 220 British pounds in the U.K. and 230 euros in other European Union countries.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.