Aiming to get in on the smart Wi-Fi market, Samsung announced its own home router system complete with mesh network support, and a host of unique features — including support for your smart home devices.
The Samsung Connect Home Smart Wi-Fi System launches in competition with the Google Wifi, and Eero mesh networks, and shares a few important features. Namely, it will be available as a three-pack, so you can blanket your home with powerful Wi-Fi connectivity, and it boasts a slim, attractive profile.
In addition to all of that, Samsung took one step further and built in a SmartThings hub, through which you can control many of your smart home devices. Using the Samsung Connect app, you will be able to control a wide variety of compatible smart home products from your Connect Home system, including Phillips Hue Lights and the Ring Video Doorbell.
There will be two versions available at launch, the Home version and the Home Pro version. The standard Home model which will feature a single or three pack of the Samsung Connect Home router nodes sporting 2×2 MU-MIMO antennae with support for 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. While the Home Pro version will sport 4×4 MU-MIMO antennae and a much faster processor coming in at 1.7GHz compared to the standard Home version’s 710MHz processor.
Each node in either version will reportedly cover about 1,500 square feet with a powerful Wi-Fi signal, but that range will vary significantly depending on the layout of your home or apartment.
We don’t have a release date or pricing just yet, but it’s likely we’ll see them sometime in 2017, possibly after the launch of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.