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New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
I Never Thought I'd Buy a CD Player Again — Until I Found This One
The Syitren R300 has a key feature that sets it apart from the portable CD players I remember from my 30s: a Bluetooth transmitter. Due to this added twist, I can easily play my CDs through any Bluetooth-equipped speaker, headphones, soundbar, or car audio system. The R300 also has a headphone jack and an optical digital audio output, so you can connect it directly to an audio system and get subtly better sound by bypassing Bluetooth (though I've never bothered). Another convenient feature is the R300's internal battery, which charges through a USB-C jack. It ran for about nine hours, and that meant I could use the R300 anywhere I wanted without connecting a power supply and without having to buy AA batteries by the dozen. The R300 has its own volume-control dial on the top panel; this makes it more convenient to use. Brent Butterworth/NYT Wirecutter The top of the player has a comfortably chunky roller knob to control volume, plus the usual play/pause and track-skip buttons. I loved being able to control the volume right from the player, rather than having to get up to adjust the volume on the speaker. A display under the translucent cover gives you info, such as the number of the track that's playing, the playing time for each track, the battery charge level, and the Bluetooth connection status. The player has a built-in battery, charged via USB-C. Brent Butterworth/NYT Wirecutter Some might worry that an under-$100 CD player doesn't deliver all the sound quality that the format is capable of. But over decades of following the scientific literature on audio, I've seen scant evidence that listeners can reliably detect differences among digital source devices, and all the brand-concealed listening tests we've done at Wirecutter support this statement. Such differences, if they exist, would vanish when heard through the inexpensive gear that R300 buyers are likely to use.
New York Times
09-05-2025
- New York Times
The Speakerphone That Makes My Zoom Meetings Tolerable
Let's back up. For more than a decade, I've hosted a monthly writers group for friends (no, you can't join us). At first, we met at local restaurants — until each place banned us. In the end, we settled on a welcoming art gallery for our workshop sessions. All was good until the pandemic blew in and relegated us to Zoom for more than a year. In that time, some members of our group moved farther away or had other good reasons not to return to in-person meetings, even after vaccines and the CDC gave us the green light to be in one another's faces again. We then decided to try a hybrid approach, and with our meager budget, that just meant borrowing someone's laptop and broadcasting the meeting via Zoom for people who couldn't be present in the flesh. But our laptop's terrible speakers and even worse microphone, combined with Zoom's audio wonkiness, turned our fiber-optic conversations into shouting matches. Around that time, Wirecutter writer Brent Butterworth reviewed several Bluetooth speakerphones, and they seemed like they might solve my group's audio problems. The two main benefits of a speakerphone over a laptop are the improved sound quality and — even more importantly — higher-quality microphones. Many speakerphones, including the Emeet M3, the model I ended up buying, feature steering technology coupled with multiple microphones that focus the device's attention in the direction of the person talking. The end result, for our group, was a drastic reduction of 'What'd she say?' and 'I can't hear you.' The Emeet M3 is small enough to fit in a backpack and weighs just under a pound. It connects to a laptop or smartphone via Bluetooth just like any Bluetooth speaker. Its four built-in microphones sense where the voice is coming from, and then it focuses on that person, switching pretty intelligently as different people speak.
New York Times
21-02-2025
- New York Times
Would You Shave Your Face, Trim Your Nose Hair, Buff Your Feet, and Brush Your Teeth With the Same Tool? Panasonic Seems to Think So.
What's in your bathroom cabinet? Way too much, I bet. Lotions of all sorts. Cologne that someone gave you a decade ago. Travel-size soaps and shampoos acquired through years of business trips and barely remembered vacations. Panasonic has a plan to tidy up everyone's vanity: the MultiShape grooming system. It's a rechargeable battery housed in a handle, to which you can attach a huge variety of optional accessories: a beard/hair/body trimmer, a shaver, a nose- and ear-hair trimmer, a detail trimmer, a spinning facial brush, a dedicated hair clipper, a callus buffer, and even (cue the mildly disgusted look on the face of everyone I told about this) a toothbrush. The idea is that you buy the handle (with the battery inside) and then add only the attachments you need. By eliminating two, three, or four dedicated devices, numerous unneeded attachments, and multiple chargers, you save cabinet space and, possibly, some money. This versatile system performs most personal-grooming tasks—but rarely as well as dedicated devices can. And it's bulky. Because I write Wirecutter's beard trimmer guide and have participated in testing panels for our shaving reviews, I felt qualified to test most of the MultiShape accessories. However, as legions of oral hygienists have pointed out, I'm no expert in dental care, so to test the toothbrush, I passed the MultiShape system on to senior staff writer Nancy Redd, our resident toothbrush reviewer. We tried the MultiShape Ultimate All-in-One Travel Grooming Kit + Toiletry Bag, which, for less than $200, includes a large beard/hair/body trimmer, a nose- and ear-hair trimmer, a three-blade foil shaver, and an electric toothbrush—along with a lithium-ion battery handle rated for 90 minutes of run time on a one-hour charge. (An NiMH battery handle is available at a lower price, but it's rated for only 50 minutes of run time.) Four different trimmer comb attachments are included with this kit: one for close trimming of body hair and three for beard/hair trimming. The beard- and hair-trimming combs confused me at first, because they're labeled only A, B, and C. But then I noticed the number scales on the trimmer head, which show the depth settings for each comb: 1 mm to 10 mm for A, 11 mm to 20 mm for B, and 21 mm to 30 mm for C. Just select the comb you need and twist the ring around the trimmer to get the precise depth you want. This arrangement is much faster and more convenient than beard/hair trimmer systems that include 10 to 15 different sizes of combs. Front center: the MultiShape battery handle. Middle, left to right: the nose- and ear-hair trimmer, shaver, toothbrush, and beard/hair trimmer attachment. Back: the four combs that accompany the beard/hair trimmer. Brent Butterworth/NYT Wirecutter Panasonic offers many additional attachments for the system, but we didn't try them. Options include a detail trimmer head, a facial brush head, and a foot-care head meant for buffing calluses. As a beard trimmer, the MultiShape works pretty well; I'd say it's roughly comparable in cutting power to the Philips Norelco Multigroom 7000 MG7750, the top pick in our guide to beard trimmers. I prefer the MultiShape's adjustable trimmer comb setup to the MG7750's set of 14 single-depth combs. However, the 1.9-inch-wide trimmer head included in the MultiShape Ultimate All-in-One Travel Grooming Kit is rather large for precise trimming of goatees and mustaches. The MG7750 includes a large cutter head for hair trimming and a smaller one for detail trimming; with the MultiShape system, the detail trimmer is a $35 add-on. The MultiShape trimmer pulled at my beard hairs a little on occasion, something that almost never happens with our beard trimmer picks. But what little suffering I experienced wasn't a dealbreaker for me. The handle, the beard/hair trimmer attachment, and its included guide combs have more combined bulk than a typical beard/hair trimmer. Brent Butterworth/NYT Wirecutter A flaw—and, for some people, a possible dealbreaker—is the MultiShape's geometry. It's bulky: The combination of the battery handle, the trimmer head, and the medium-size comb brings the MultiShape's combined length to about 8.5 inches, whereas the MG7750 trimmer we recommend is 7 inches long. However, at 0.42 pound, it is a little lighter than the 0.48-pound MG7750. Using such a large tool to trim my ear and nose hair felt especially weird, kind of like trying to cut my nails with garden clippers. But the trimmer itself worked great, cutting those elusive little hairs without painful pulling. The MultiShape's large trimmer head is also too big to do a decent job of shaving closely around a goatee, something that all the picks in our beard trimmer guide can do. Of course, you can just switch to the MultiShape shaver head, but the shaver didn't impress me. Getting a reasonably close shave took a lot of passes, and I never got it as close as I could have with any of our electric razor picks—although, to be fair, most of those razors cost more than the entire MultiShape Ultimate All-in-One Travel Grooming Kit. I hadn't cut my own hair in decades, so I originally shirked my duty to test the MultiShape's hair trimming capabilities. But while packing at the last minute for a Wirecutter staff meeting, I realized I was looking pretty shaggy, so I thought I'd see what the MultiShape could do with my unruly mop. I was shocked and delighted to find that the MultiShape's convenient adjustability made it easy for me to gradually reduce the cutting depth until I got the result I wanted. I was able to clean up the sides around my ears, take a little off the top, and within five minutes, give off the impression that I actually care about my appearance. I didn't catch anyone at the meeting side-eyeing my homegrown haircut, so mission accomplished, I guess. (Note that for roughly $30, Wirecutter's budget-pick hair clippers offer similar length options, across a set of 10 guide combs.) The MultiShape's toothbrush attachment lacks the two-minute timer—and tooth-scrubbing power—of our electric toothbrush picks. Brent Butterworth/NYT Wirecutter The Panasonic MultiShape with toothbrush attachment (center) is a vibrating electric toothbrush. It has a wider handle but is otherwise similar in size to our runner-up electric toothbrush pick, the Philips Sonicare 4100 (right). Nancy Redd/NYT Wirecutter The MultiShape's toothbrush attachment lacks the two-minute timer—and tooth-scrubbing power—of our electric toothbrush picks. Brent Butterworth/NYT Wirecutter The MultiShape's toothbrush head attachments are available in two varieties, both of which deliver sonic vibrations like Wirecutter's runner-up electric toothbrush pick, the Philips Sonicare 4100. We tested the Philips Sonicare 4100 and the MultiShape head-to-head, finding that the latter fell short, producing weaker-feeling vibrations. Further, the MultiShape lacks a key feature: an automated two-minute timer to help ensure that you brush for long enough. Replacement brush heads for the MultiShape cost a staggering $18 each (roughly $72 per year, if you change the brush head quarterly, as dentists recommend). In contrast, refills on the same schedule for the Sonicare 4100 cost around $35 to $50 per year, depending on which brush heads you choose. You might say the MultiShape system is like the Swiss Army knife of personal grooming. It gets the job done, and on some tasks, it works fine. But as we found in our multi-tool guide, a Swiss Army knife doesn't perform any task exceptionally well. Personally, I'd rather live with a cluttered bathroom cabinet and start my day experiencing the joy of using grooming tools that are each built to excel at specific tasks. Nancy Redd contributed reporting. This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson. What I Cover I test and write about a wide variety of audio devices, such as speakers, soundbars, amplifiers, and subwoofers. I also test musical instruments and recording gear, including USB interfaces and microphones, and I perform audio measurements for many other guides, such as our headphone and earplug guides.
