ViewSonic XG275D-4K Monitor Review
The gaming monitor market is getting very interesting, with brands pushing the limits of display technology and introducing new options for high frame rates and 4K resolution. But the ViewSonic XG275D-4K monitor is doing something a bit different, and it's rather astounding.
This 27-inch monitor allows users to switch between 4K resolution at 160Hz and Full HD at 320Hz with a single button press, addressing the common dilemma gamers face when choosing between visual fidelity and competitive performance. At $499.99, it positions itself as a cost-effective alternative to purchasing two separate displays for different gaming scenarios, and honestly, it is one of my favourite monitors of the year so far.
Out of the box, the monitor is relatively unassuming but carries forward the ViewSonic style we've come to appreciate at CGM. The ViewSonic XG275D-4K monitor features a standard matte black chassis with minimal bezels, giving it a clean, modern appearance. ViewSonic has implemented a pragmatic stand design with a reduced footprint, creating more desk space for keyboard and mouse placement—a practical consideration for competitive gamers who need room to manoeuvre.
The stand offers comprehensive adjustment options, including height adjustment up to 130 mm, bidirectional pivot, ±45 degrees of swivel, and -3 to 20 degrees of tilt. These movement ranges accommodate various sitting positions and desk setups. For those preferring alternative mounting options, the monitor includes 75×75 mm VESA compatibility, so you can wall mount the monitor or use a monitor arm to get it off your desk should you wish.
The screen comes with an anti-glare hard coating (3H) that effectively minimizes reflections in bright environments. RGB lighting on the rear panel adds visual flair, similar to what we've seen on other ViewSonic gaming monitors. Thankfully, the lighting is subtle enough that it doesn't overwhelm the setup, allowing users to customize the appearance to match their gaming environment.
The monitor features a 27-inch Fast IPS panel with a native 4K UHD resolution (3840 x 2160). But as I teased earlier, there's something special about the XG275D-4K—this display has the ability to operate in two distinct modes, which ViewSonic refers to as 'Dual Mode.'
Users can select between native 4K resolution at 160Hz or Full HD (1080p) at an impressive 320Hz refresh rate. This means you can push visuals to their limit on your new GPU at 4K, then swap to 1080p to maximize frame rate in an esports title like League of Legends—something very useful for any kind of competitive play.
The panel delivers a peak brightness of 300 to 350 nits (specifications vary slightly between sources), a static contrast ratio of 1,000:1, and support for HDR10. While these specifications won't match those of high-end HDR displays, they provide acceptable dynamic range for most gaming applications. I found it performed well when displaying deep blacks and bright colours in games like Doom Eternal. However, since it's an IPS display, you won't get the rich, inky blacks that OLED panels can deliver. That said, what the XG275D-4K does deliver is solid for most people's needs.
Colour performance is respectable, with the panel covering 94 percent of DCI-P3, 91 percent of NTSC, and 99 percent of the sRGB colour spaces. However, I didn't find it as accurate as some of the professional screens we use at CGM. For gaming, it was more than enough, but for colour-dependent work, it wasn't quite as precise as I would personally prefer. The 10-bit colour depth—achieved via 8-bit + FRC technology—helps create smooth gradients with minimal banding, making the monitor suitable for both gaming and light creative work.
The ViewSonic XG275D-4K boasts a 0.5 ms MPRT (Moving Picture Response Time) and a 2 ms grey-to-grey (GtG) response time, promising minimal motion blur during fast-action sequences. The monitor supports both AMD FreeSync Premium and NVIDIA G-Sync technologies, ensuring tear-free gaming experiences regardless of graphics card preference.
The monitor also includes a 24.5-inch esports setting, which scales down the usable display area to provide a more focused field of view. This allows competitive gamers to keep all on-screen action within their immediate vision, potentially improving reaction times in fast-paced games. I was surprised by how interesting I found this mode. While it's not a feature I think most average gamers will take advantage of, it's a great addition, and I have to commend ViewSonic for the foresight to include it.
I have to say, there are plenty of reasons to consider this monitor—and they go well beyond just gaming. The central selling point of the ViewSonic XG275D-4K monitor is its switchable refresh rate technology, but how you use that flexibility is what makes it so exciting.
With a dedicated button press, users can toggle between 4K at 160Hz or Full HD at 320Hz. This functionality eliminates the previous need for gamers to purchase separate monitors for different types of games. Even content creators can jump between the modes without requiring additional displays. And because it's so easy to activate, it's a feature that can actually be used whenever you need it.
In 320Hz mode, the display becomes particularly suitable for competitive gaming genres like first-person shooters, where fluid motion and reduced input lag can provide a competitive edge. Switching to 4K mode at 160Hz offers the sharp, detailed image quality that enhances visually rich single-player games and content creation.
A DisplayPort 1.4 input provides similar capabilities for PC connections. One particularly useful addition is the USB-C port with 65-watt power delivery and DisplayPort Alt Mode support. This allows users to connect and charge laptops or other compatible devices while using the monitor, reducing cable clutter for those who switch between work and gaming on different devices.
Audio capabilities include dual 2W stereo speakers and a 3.5 mm audio jack for headphone connection. While the built-in speakers won't replace dedicated audio equipment, they offer a convenient option for casual use. For those who prefer a clean desk setup with minimal cables, the built-in speakers will work in a pinch. However, they are a bit quiet and lack the depth to deliver a nuanced audio experience. For anyone serious about gaming or PC audio, I would always recommend treating the monitor's speakers as a last resort.
As with most ViewSonic monitors, the on-screen display is navigated via a joystick control with directional inputs (up, right, down, left, centre/power), which is typically more intuitive than the multi-button configurations found on some competing models. Physical controls also include a dedicated dual-mode button for quickly switching between refresh rate and resolution presets. It worked as expected—nothing to write home about. That said, when it came to changing settings, I have to say it delivered where it needed to. It felt responsive and didn't cause any frustration when I needed to make quick adjustments.
At $499.99, the ViewSonic XG275D-4K occupies the mid-range of gaming monitors. This pricing is particularly competitive, considering users effectively receive two display configurations in one unit—a 4K panel for content consumption and detail-oriented games, and a high-refresh Full HD monitor for competitive gaming.
You'd be hard-pressed to find another monitor at this price point that delivers the same range of features. And while I would have liked to see a slightly higher peak brightness, the XG275D-4K delivers where it counts most for its intended purpose.
For gamers who enjoy a variety of titles—from fast-paced competitive shooters to visually rich single-player adventures—the ViewSonic XG275D-4K offers a flexible solution without requiring multiple specialized displays. At $499.99, the ViewSonic XG275D-4K provides fantastic value for anyone looking to upgrade their setup while staying budget-conscious. The feature set on offer makes it one of the best monitors you can buy for the price, hands down.
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Motorola Razr 2025 Smartphone Review
I have been in the foldable game for a long time, but the Motorola Razr 2025 smartphone is my first 'flip'—at least in this decade. CGM had the opportunity to compare the Motorola Razr Ultra and base model side by side, and I thought it would be an excellent idea for real-world testing if I took one on, and CGM EIC Brendan Frye took the other, as we traveled to Taiwan and Japan. What better camera test, right? First impressions of the Motorola Razr 2025 were mixed. I love the vibrant colour I received, the PANTONE Spring Bud. It also comes in PANTONE Gibraltar Sea, PANTONE Parfait Pink, and PANTONE Lightest Sky. Personally, the material the back of the device is made of is slightly rubbery, which means any small piece of fluff, lint, or dust sticks to it and drives me insane. I purchased a clear case separately to show off the vibrant colour and keep out the dirt. The device also comes with a screen protector pre-installed, and comes with warnings that if it is removed or tampered with, or a different protector is used, the warranty is void. Personally, I don't love the protector on it. I find it is very susceptible to fingerprints and lint catches around the edges. That being said, with a folding screen, I can understand the need to be extra diligent, and I trust that Motorola knows what's best for their device. The inner display on the Motorola Razr 2025 is a 6.9' foldable AMOLED FHD screen. It features 413 ppi, an adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz, and a peak brightness of 3000 nits. This puts it just above the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6, but below the Razr Ultra, which makes sense given its $699 price range. The screen was never an issue for me, though I can't say it blew me away. There were never issues seeing it in various conditions. I never witnessed any stuttering in movies or games. It was all around pleasant, and I have zero complaints. Onto what everyone always wonders about a foldable, the crease. Yes, the crease is visible on the Motorola Razr 2025, and no, it doesn't affect anything in any way. You can feel it when you run your finger over it, and you can see it on white or black screens. When watching media or playing a game, it doesn't affect you in any way, and anyone who complains is just looking for issues. We have foldable screens, how can we be complaining about that? The outer screen is a 3.6' pOLED display, with 413ppi, a 90Hz adaptive refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 1700 nits. My issue with this screen was more with its functions than its performance. Changing the various screens was easy, but switching to other hotkeys on the front wasn't something I could ever figure out. Gemini was able to hold a place there permanently, even though I never use it. I actually did use this screen for texting, which I was shocked that I didn't hate, considering the thinner main screen on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 made me crazy. I didn't think I could adapt to this, but it was shockingly easy. You need to approve each app to open here, and I was even able to get TikTok to work, though it was slightly cut off. My biggest issue was Spotify constantly showing, even if I haven't used it in days. It always defaulted to showing me what I was listening to, whenever that happened to be. I love that when you flip the Motorola Razr 2025 open or closed, the buttons on the right know which mode you are in. I assumed that the volume buttons would be backwards, but they flip when you close the device, so they are in the right spot. It's small quality of life things that I really appreciate! They also allow you to switch the button order, so I wasn't frustrated because my past phone was different. I was able to set up the Motorola Razr 2025 like any device I use, making the switch so easy. I even thought I was going to dread losing an on-screen fingerprint reader, but this one on the power button is extremely responsive. Some nitpicks in terms of quality of life, though, include that when you go to search for something in your apps, it holds whatever you searched last instead of starting with a clear search box. Also, though wireless charging works, if you want to use any magnetic charging with a case, the device usually sticks out dramatically, though that is the cost of a phone that sits 73.99 x 88.08 x 15.85mm when closed. And here is my most shallow note about the smartphone. Something about snapping the Motorola Razr 2025 shut after a phone call is just so satisfying. I came from the days of the original Razr, and even had the weirdest mini flip phone I can't even find the name of today. So I come from a world where we loved our flip phones. The nostalgia alone makes the Razr worth having. I honestly like the form factor when closed in my bag or pocket as well, but that pop closed when you're done just can't be beat. Also, you can do this: As for the insides, this is where you start to lose me on the Motorola Razr 2025. During testing, my editor and I were convinced I was going crazy. I found the Razr constantly stuttering when switching apps. If I wanted to snap a quick photo, I usually missed it because it took too long to open, and even when I did get the pic, if I opened an app to send it, I would have to close it and open it again before the picture appeared. We thought the Razr Ultra had similar specs, much like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra he reviewed and the 15 I reviewed; we were very wrong. The Motorola Razr 2025 features a MediaTek Dimensity 7400X chipset, a Mali-G615 MC2 GPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage. This differs from the Razr Ultra, which uses the Qualcomm SM8750-AB Snapdragon 8 Elite, paired with an Adreno 830 GPU and 16 GB of RAM, or the Razr+, which includes the Qualcomm SM8635 Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, Adreno 735, and 12 GB of RAM. This explains the performance difference between the Razr and the Ultra. However, with the Ultra priced at $1,299 and the Razr coming in at nearly half that, it's easy to recommend the Razr as a budget-friendly option. For someone used to flagship-tier performance, though, it may fall short. The Motorola Razr 2025 runs Android 15 and includes three years of software updates. Personally, I'd like to see longer support. Motorola also leans heavily into Moto AI on this device, but I'll be honest—I wasn't a fan. That said, I'm not sure whether my frustration stemmed from Moto AI itself or the Razr's hardware. My biggest complaint was the delay in answering simple queries, like checking the weather. Often, it would fail to respond at all. By contrast, Google Assistant delivered an answer in under three seconds. For me, Moto AI just didn't land. The camera array on the Motorola Razr 2025 sits slightly above average, which is impressive for a budget-friendly device. Its front-facing camera outperforms Samsung's selfie cameras and matches the OnePlus 13 at 32 megapixels. On the back, it features a 50 MP main sensor and a 13 MP ultrawide. I rarely use the ultrawide, and while 200 MP lenses in flagships are impressive, a 50 MP sensor at $699 is more than respectable. Photo colour reproduction is outstanding. Taking pictures at my son's soccer game, I don't think I've ever seen a field look so green. That said, capturing fast-moving subjects on the go lacked the sharpness I'd hoped for. Even when I didn't rush the shot, images sometimes appeared overly digitized—likely due to Moto AI's Photo Enhancement Engine. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Low-light photos were surprisingly bright and clear. Even at 10x zoom, image quality was decent—unless you were photographing people, in which case they often turned into unrecognizable blobs. I also noticed prominent lens flares, especially during sunrise in Taiwan. Ultimately, I just needed the device to keep up with how quickly I wanted to shoot. If it had, I'd have had some great shots to share. The last thing I want to touch on is the battery. Battery life on the Motorola Razr 2025 is much better than I would have expected. Running two screens and sitting sub $700, I didn't have a lot of hope. The Razr 2025 features a 4500mAh battery and offers 30W TurboPower charging and 15W wireless charging. That's about 500 mAh lower than the S25 Ultra, and 200 mAh lower than the Razr Ultra, and only 185 mAh lower than the iPhone 16 Pro Max. No, it's not the fastest charging in the world, nor is it the biggest battery. It did, however, last me from 7 am to 11 pm, with plenty of photo-taking and heavy scrolling. This phone won't last you days on end, but it will make it to bedtime when it's time to plug it in or pop it on your wireless charger without issue. I know I've raised some strong criticisms. The device stutters between apps, the camera lags, and you can—gasp—see the crease. But that's coming from someone who regularly tests flagship devices in premium price ranges. At $699 US, this phone is a bargain—and at that price for a foldable, it's almost unheard of. For context, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 launched in July 2024 at $1,099 US. The reality is, the Motorola Razr 2025 is making flip phones and foldables accessible at a more digestible price point. While there are compromises, it's still a surprisingly capable smartphone all around.
Vox
2 days ago
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I covered my body in health trackers for 6 months. It ruined my life.
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. It's never good when an alarm surprises you in the middle of the night. I was recently on vacation with my family, and a weird beeping woke everyone up around 2 am. My wife thought it was a carbon monoxide detector. I thought it might be the baby monitor. It was actually a signal from a little sensor on the back of my arm prompting an app on my phone to go berserk. My blood sugar was low, and my fitness program was in jeopardy. A few months ago, I started tracking everything I could about my health. In the dark bedroom of that vacation house, I was wearing smart rings on both hands and a smartwatch on my wrist. On my other wrist was a band that basically does the same thing as the smartwatch but without a screen. I'd been weighing myself with a body scanner and taking my blood pressure with a wireless cuff for weeks. All this tech promised to tell me how well my body was working, but as I immersed myself in the alluring, sometimes dystopian future of health tracking, things got weird. Health trackers started as a way to keep a record of straightforward metrics, like the number of steps you take in a day; the industry has since matured into gadgets that promise to glean deeper insights into the essential functioning of your biological systems. Many of these new trackers take the data they collect and churn out a variety of scores — recovery scores, sleep scores, attention scores — to understand your body's performance and give you benchmarks to chase. My sharpening sense of mortality ultimately led me to explore the frontiers of health tracking to investigate my aches and strains — and maybe help me live healthier and longer. The sensor on my arm was a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, which is a wearable device that measures blood sugar. This kind of biosensor has long been a lifesaving tool for diabetic patients, but tech companies are increasingly marketing them to everyone in the name of 'metabolic health.' One such company, Levels, was co-founded by Casey Means, a wellness influencer who is a central figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement and now the United States surgeon general nominee. I am not diabetic. I'm also not an athlete, although I once was. I'm a tech journalist who, at the beginning of this year, started to feel quite old. Things that used to not hurt started hurting, and I felt tired constantly. Diabetes and heart disease, among the most prevalent chronic diseases in the United States, also run in my family, which made it seem wise to keep a closer eye on risk factors like my blood pressure and cholesterol. My sharpening sense of mortality ultimately led me to explore the frontiers of health tracking to investigate my aches and strains — and maybe help me live healthier and longer. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. What I can tell you is that over the course of my months-long experiment, covering my body with sensors and drowning my attention with fitness scores did occasionally make me feel better — when it didn't make me feel worse. Fitness trackers, as we understand them, have been around since the 1960s, when a Japanese company hoped to capitalize on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by selling a pedometer called the Manpo-Kei — 'manpo' means 10,000 steps in Japanese. The science behind that number has always been iffy, but the figure went mainstream in 2009, when the original Fitbit hit the market in the form of a thumb-size accelerometer that clipped onto your clothing. Step-counting was only the beginning. In the early 2010s, tech companies flooded the market with fitness trackers. Apple released its health app in 2014 and then released the first Apple Watch the following year. That device used LED lights to measure your pulse, and eventually, Apple added sensors for your body temperature and electrodes to record electrocardiograms and track blood oxygen levels. Fitness-tracking became health tracking. The tracking devices themselves still performed the same basic measurements, but in the coming years, all of that data would get pumped through various algorithms to draw conclusions about your overall health. In theory, health-tracking software could spot — or even prevent — disease. The amount of data that all of these devices collect is massive and extremely personal. 'For that to work, you have to have the largest data set on a person possible,' said Victoria Song, who covers wearables for The Verge. 'But it's pretty invasive, if you really think about it.' The amount of data all of these devices collect is massive and extremely personal. Many devices need to know your age, height, and weight, not to mention where you are and how you're moving at all times — which leads to heart rate, temperature, and blood oxygen readings. If you add a glucose monitor in the mix, health trackers can now get moment-to-moment updates about what's happening in the fluid between your cells. Safeguarding the sensitive health information these devices collect is a whole other challenge. The data is typically stored in the cloud. The privacy policies for these companies vary, but suffice it to say, it's possible that data from your health tracker, probably anonymized, ends up in the hands of an advertiser. There have also been major data breaches involving health-tracking companies, including Fitbit. Nonetheless, about 30 percent of Americans in one survey said they wear these kinds of health trackers, and there's evidence that the tech can be good for you. In 2022, The Lancet published a systematic review that looked at dozens of studies involving over 160,000 participants of all ages and found that those wearing fitness trackers walked 40 more minutes per day — or about 1,800 steps — on average. A review into the mental health benefits of wearables published in 2024 found some research showing that wearables have a positive effect on well-being, but overall determined that the issue was understudied. Health trackers give us the sense that we might just be able to exert control over the uncontrollable — our very mortality — or to at least momentarily allay our fears about it. People must think wearables are helpful because they keep buying them. Perhaps that's no surprise given levels of chronic illness remain stubbornly high in the United States and a wellness industry has primed consumers to buy their way to better physical and mental health. The market for these devices includes everyone from fitness obsessives looking to optimize their performance in the gym to tech bros toying with the idea of living forever to anxious dads, like me. Health trackers give us the sense that we might just be able to exert control over the uncontrollable — our very mortality — or to at least momentarily allay our fears about it. And the industry keeps coming up with new things to sell us. 'We have so much information about everything all the time,' Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist at NYU Langone Health, told me recently. 'So many of us, probably all of us, feel like this is going to be an iterative process for the rest of our life: navigating our relationship with the tech.' The most popular wearable has been the Apple Watch since its release, but in our screen-saturated world, many people are turning to devices that lack displays and buzzing notifications. That includes the Oura ring, which discreetly measures your heart rate, body temperature, and movement from a single finger, and the Whoop band, which does the same thing from your wrist. Although their lack of screens makes these devices theoretically easier to ignore, the Oura and Whoop apps are essentially endless feeds of your health data. When you log on in the morning, Oura produces a 'Readiness Score,' which it says is a 'holistic picture of your health' that combines several signals, including resting heart rate and body temperature, into what feels like a grade for the day. Whoop gives you a similarly confusing 'Recovery' percentage. If I want to improve those scores, Oura, Whoop, and a growing number of their competitors now have AI-powered coaches built into their apps to nudge your behavior. But it's not always clear what exactly those nudges hope to accomplish. 'There's not a lot of time and effort spent on figuring out what is the actual question,' said Gary Wolf, founder of Quantified Self, a community of people who have been tracking their health metrics since the mid-2000s, and also a tech journalist. 'It's kind of obvious why people come through these tools without learning anything.' In theory, your doctor could look at a readout of all your wearable data to get a clearer picture of your health. But in reality, few patients even share this data with their doctors, and many physicians have said it isn't very helpful. Heart-rate variability, a measure of the change in time between your heartbeats, is one of the most critical metrics used in the scoring algorithms, but there's some debate over how accurately wearables can measure it. There's also just too much data, and it's hard to isolate the signal from the noise. 'Just seeing the data can be anxiety-inducing,' said Tanzeem Choudhury, a professor of integrated health and technology at Cornell Tech. 'You have all this information that you don't know what to do with.' In other words, if you think of your overall health as an equation (which, to be clear, it is not), the types of variables a watch or a ring can collect are limited to the right side of the equal sign. You're doing your thing, and then things like breathing patterns, heart rate, and body temperature are all the end result. What happens on the left side of that equation — what's causing all of these fluctuations — is much harder to figure out. Health trackers ultimately put the onus on the user to decide what changes to make to get their desired results. And when it comes to smartwatches, smart rings, and smart bands, the recommendations tend to be pretty simple: Move more or sleep more. These devices know the rhythms of your body, but they can't really know what's happening internally. The first time I installed a continuous glucose monitor into my arm, I expected it to hurt. The coin-size biosensors use a spring-loaded plunger of sorts that dips a needle into your skin and leaves a tiny piece of filament behind that measures your blood glucose. The process is surprisingly painless. Once installed, the biosensor syncs to an app that shows you a real-time visualization of your blood sugar. It looks a little bit like a roller-coaster with spikes for high-glucose periods after eating and stable stretches. This helps people with diabetes manage their condition, but a growing number of companies and influencers say these biosensors can help anyone gain insight into their metabolic health. Metabolic health is the latest buzz phrase not only in the health-tracking industry but among adherents of the Make America Healthy Again movement. What I didn't know when I started receiving real-time and sometimes alarming updates about my own blood sugar was that metabolic health is the latest buzz phrase not only in the health-tracking industry but among adherents of the Make America Healthy Again movement. While the concept of metabolic disorders, which include conditions like diabetes or heart disease, has evolved over the past century, 'metabolic health' only started showing up in medical literature in the last decade or so. Someone is considered metabolically healthy if a certain set of their biomarkers — namely blood glucose levels, cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure — are within the desired range. Related How America went MAHA Historically, your doctor checked these levels when you got your annual bloodwork done and that was enough to give most people peace of mind about their health — particularly their risk for heart disease and diabetes. But in recent years, pharmaceutical companies like Abbott and Dexcom have begun to market over-the-counter continuous glucose monitors to everyone. Oura recently launched a glucose-tracking program of its own that uses Dexcom's Stelo biosensors. Abbott has its own app. Then there's Levels, the metabolic health company co-founded by Means, President Donald Trump's pick for US surgeon general, with the mission to 'bring biowearables into the mainstream.' Means, a Stanford-trained physician and wellness influencer, is also the co-author of Good Energy, a bestselling book that bills itself as 'the simple answer to achieving incredible health,' which she wrote with her brother, Calley Means, a former lobbyist and current White House adviser on health policy. The book operates on the claim that every chronic disease stems from metabolic dysfunction, or 'bad energy,' and the American health care system, which Calley Means calls a 'sick-care system,' is profiting from treating the symptoms. 'You are the primary person in charge of understanding your body,' Casey Means says on her website. 'You may have been indoctrinated to think you're not capable of understanding your body or your lab tests, but this stops here.' That philosophy — and the philosophy undergirding health tracking in general — fits into MAHA's ethos — that good health is your personal responsibility and can be engineered by doing all the right things. Other prominent figures in the MAHA movement have been raising the alarm about metabolic health, too, and touting high-tech health tracking as a solution. Robert Lustig, professor emeritus of pediatric endocrinology at UCSF who is an adviser and early investor in Levels, signed an open letter endorsing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. So did Mark Hyman, the co-founder of the membership-based concierge lab test provider Function Health who's pushed Levels to his followers. Perhaps the most influential of the health-tracking evangelists, however, is Marty Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. In his Senate confirmation hearing in March, Makary, a pancreatic surgeon from Johns Hopkins, talked quite a bit about the promise of health trackers in the midst of America's chronic disease epidemic. Makary said we have a 'generational opportunity to usher in radical transparency' and to 'help people take care of their own health.' 'We don't just want to limit continuous glucose monitoring to people with diabetes. We want to prevent diabetes,' Makary told senators. 'Why are we holding these tools to help people empower them with knowledge about their health until after they're sick?' Regardless of the recent buzz around metabolic health in the wellness community, the medical community does not seem convinced that glucose monitors are useful for people without diabetes. Because there's not much research into tracking blood sugar in healthy people, 'we won't know whether the cost and time it takes to implant one of these systems is accomplishing anything or is just the latest health monitoring fad wasting effort and money,' according to Harvard Medical School associate professor Robert Shmerling. I'd shovel nuts into my mouth before breakfast, skip lunch to avoid stressful push alerts, and once I ate a mixing bowl full of romaine lettuce to feel better about a single slice of pizza. I tested several glucose-monitoring apps — including Levels, Lingo, Oura — over the course of a few months, and the negative effects of watching my blood sugar levels were almost immediately obvious to me. Within a week of wearing a glucose monitor, I started to notice some borderline disordered behavior. The Levels app sent me push alerts when my blood sugar spiked, which happened about five times a day, and each notification felt like a zap of anxiety. My morning bowl of cereal sent my blood glucose off the charts. My tuna sandwich at lunch did it again. A beer at happy hour? Forget it, the app made me think I was dying. So I started eating weird. I'd shovel nuts into my mouth before breakfast, skip lunch to avoid stressful push alerts, and once I ate a mixing bowl full of romaine lettuce to feel better about a single slice of pizza. My wife drew the line when I started taking pictures of my meals, so that some app's AI could analyze the nutrients in them. Glucose spikes after a meal are extremely normal. This is your body converting food into energy, or sugar, and then releasing insulin to instruct your cells to consume that energy. Over time, a pattern of large, prolonged spikes can lower your insulin resistance and raise your risk for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Some research indicates that continuous glucose monitors could be a helpful tool for the early detection of prediabetes in high risk patients, but again, there is little evidence that healthy people benefit from using the technology. At a certain point, I wasn't thinking about my long-term health or sanity. I definitely wasn't thinking about the future of the American health care system. I was just trying to get a good score in the app and reduce the number of anxiety zaps. I spend a lot of time thinking about how technology makes our lives better — and worse. I've wondered the same about the American health care system, as I've gotten older and more involved in the health care decisions of my parents, kids, and myself. It's not a great comparison. After all, there is no Hippocratic oath for tech companies. In the six months I spent hooked up to every health tracker I could find, feeding my morbid curiosity, I drove myself slightly crazy. Each hit of dopamine I enjoyed by getting good scores on a health-tracking app was offset by long periods of self-doubt that came from not fully understanding how to make sense of the torrent of data without my doctor's help. I also became obsessive — checking the apps was the first thing I did in the morning and started occupying hours of my day. That's the contradiction embedded in this cutting-edge technology: It can often lead to panic rather than peace of mind. 'There's something called orthorexia, where being perfectionistically healthy can just take over your life,' Gallagher, the NYU psychologist, explained. 'You can get really rigid, maybe with what you eat and how you do things, when we typically find rigidity is not sustainable for most people.' That's the contradiction embedded in this cutting-edge technology: It can often lead to panic rather than peace of mind. I decided to take off my last biosensor as spring was turning to summer and felt a weight lifted. I put away the Whoop band, which is explicitly designed to be worn 24/7, so much so that the newest model comes with a wearable charger so that you don't have to take it off. The only thing that I kept wearing was the Oura ring when I slept. As a tired young parent, getting to see a breakdown of my sleep data somehow made me feel more in control. There was, it appeared, the right amount of data to make me feel better. But what if, instead of too much data about my body, I had almost nothing. That's the case for many people in the United States. If you're lucky enough to have regular access to health care — over 100 million Americans do not — you might get one annual visit with a primary care doctor. That might include one check of your vitals, including your blood pressure and resting heart rate. Basic bloodwork would tell me about my blood sugar and cholesterol. Your doctor might prescribe medication, like a statin, if those numbers are out of whack. This is an optimistic estimate of what health care currently looks like in America, where primary care is in crisis and many patients feel lucky to get 15 minutes of face time once a year or pay high prices to see someone right away at an urgent care center. This must be a factor in the rising popularity of wearables, such as the Oura ring and Apple Watch, as well as new health-tracking services, like Levels and Lingo. That and the simple fact that Americans love independence and immediacy. Perhaps in the absence of available professional medical advice and guidance, we're turning to these gadgets for quick and constant reassurance. Combined with googling symptoms or closely following wellness influencers, it almost feels like we're better off taking our health into our own hands. But health tracking in its current form is not a science or even an art. It's certainly not the near future of the American health care system, as some MAHA followers might make you believe. Health tracking, at its core, is a self-driven experiment in better living for those who can afford these products and have the time to spare to comb through their own data. In some ways, it's just an expensive hobby. Like running or perfecting your smoothie recipes, it can be good for you. Wearing a smart ring or a glucose monitor alone won't make you feel better.
Engadget
4 days ago
- Engadget
Twitch is adding 1440p and vertical streaming
Twitch is getting more TikTok-ified with vertical game streaming. Also, "2K" (1440p) video will let you watch that League of Legends stream in a higher resolution. The ability to rewind streams is coming, too. CEO Dan Clancy made the announcements on Saturday at TwitchCon Europe. Portrait-mode streaming makes it a little easier to watch gameplay on your phone. Until now, Twitch only supported the orientation for clips and IRL streams. Clips are short highlights that creators can share after a stream ends. And "In Real Life" content shows everyday activities rather than gameplay. But some screens work much better in a landscape view. Fortunately, Twitch is also rolling out a dual-format mode. Creators can go live in vertical and horizontal orientations at once. You can watch the version that works best for your device. The company will begin testing "with a small number of channels" this summer. It will expand access later this year. Twitch's 1440p streams should be a welcome addition. (Who doesn't like a sharper-looking video?) On the back end, it uses a newer HEVC codec that produces a better picture with a lower bitrate. And the platform's Enhanced Broadcasting tech automatically tweaks the viewer's resolution. The 1440p streaming begins rolling out today to all partners and affiliates. But it's in an open beta, so creators may need to wait for access. Finally, Twitch is rolling out a rewind feature. If you miss part of a stream, you can scrub back to catch up on what you missed. That feature isn't quite here yet, either. Twitch will test it with "a small number of viewers" this summer.
