Latest news with #LoriGrunin
CNET
8 hours ago
- CNET
The Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 Headphones Are Fantastic for Gaming, With One Big Compromise
Turtle Beach is no stranger to good gaming headsets. As far as my friends were concerned, they were essential if you wanted to be considered a "serious" gamer. The company's Stealth 700 Gen 3 sits just below its Stealth Pro line and offers an impressive range of features for $200. For starters the headphones has big, 60mm drivers, plus multiple wireless transmitters as well as Bluetooth. The PC version even includes the option for 24-bit audio, sadly at the cost of Xbox compatibility. Speaking of compatibility, the non-24-bit version will work with PC, Xbox, PlayStation and any Bluetooth device like a phone or Nintendo Switch. The CrossPlay button on the right earcup lets you instantly switch between the wireless transmitters. You can even stream audio from a Bluetooth-connected device and the wireless transmitter simultaneously so you can listen to an epic playlist from your phone while dominating on the battlefield. What I like about the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 Lori Grunin/CNET The ear cups are quite comfortable. The cushions are memory foam and covered in a leatherette material that never got uncomfortable or hot for me while wearing them for long periods. Turtle Beach also has what they call "ProSpecs" technology, which is supposedly glasses-friendly. As a spectacle-clad gamer, I appreciated how comfortable they were while wearing my glasses. Other headsets I've worn were not as accommodating. The mic is cleverly hidden away in the left ear cup, and when you pull it down, it automatically unmutes. For the Gen 3, Turtle Beach has added AI-assisted noise reduction to the microphone, which worked very well for me during video calls. I don't play many multiplayer games, so I wasn't able to test it out during gameplay. Judging by my experience on several video calls I'd say it works well. I wouldn't say it's significantly better than what any other company is doing, but it's good at what it does. The left earcup also houses the power button, USB-C charging port, two control wheels - one of which is remappable. There's also a remappable Mode button which by default toggles Turtle Beach's Superhuman hearing mode which increases the sounds of gunshots and footsteps. On the right earcup is the Bluetooth pairing button, Bluetooth volume control wheel and CrossPlay button for switching between sources. What I don't like about the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 Lori Grunin/CNET As my colleague Lori Grunin pointed out in her Stealth Pro review, having a single Bluetooth button can be a double-edged sword. Since Bluetooth headphones automatically connect to the most recently connected device the headphones are always jumping back and forth between devices. So this might take a moment to remedy at the start of a play session. To be honest, with all the buttons and controls on the Stealth 700, it took me a while to learn them all. At times it became annoying. I'd have to remember which wheel controlled volume for which device. Sometimes I'd hit one when trying to readjust the headset. What I'd really have liked was a master volume wheel that decreased everything at once. CNET Oddly, I noticed that the power indicator light around the power button would blink rapidly while it was on instead of remaining solid green. It wasn't a deal-breaker for me since I couldn't see it, but it seemed the opposite of what a blinking light means on other gear. There's a bit of a downside to those big drivers and extra cushiony ear cups: the Stealth 700 is a bit heavy. It never became uncomfortable or painful, but I would instantly feel them with even the slightest head movement. I was always conscious that they were on my head and I always had to be careful of never moving my head too quickly. What might be a bigger dealbreaker for some, and became more of an issue for me the longer I used them, is the lack of any sort of active noise cancellation. With lots of far cheaper headphones offering noise canceling, albeit not gaming headsets, that seems a drawback for the price of the Stealth 700s. I also liked these headphones enough to use them as my daily headphones, but trying to work in a coffee shop without any noise cancellation can be tough. Lori Grunin/CNET The lack of noise cancellation likely helps Turtle Beach's claim that the Stealth 700 gets up to 80 hours of battery life. That's pretty impressive for a gaming headset like this. While 80 hours may be technically achievable, you'll likely never see battery life that high. For me, while gaming an average of 2 to 3 hours a day, a charge lasted about two weeks. Turtle Beach also claims it can fast charge to give you 3 hours of gaming time in about 15 minutes. Customization of the buttons and EQs takes place in the Turtle Beach Swarm II app, which also lets you adjust mic levels, chat settings and most other typical gaming adjustments. The software can be a bit confusing, even glitchy, at times though. It had trouble recognizing the 700 headset a few times, especially when connected via Bluetooth. Should you buy the Stealth 700 Gen 3? The third generation of the Stealth 700 headset is a significant upgrade from the Gen 2 and it offers quite a few more substantial features than other headsets at this price. If you're in the market for a new gaming headset, the Stealth 700 will give you just about everything you could ask for and then some... except noise canceling. Lastly, there are three versions of the Stealth 700 Gen 3. The Xbox version is compatible with every platform. The Playstation is compatible with PC and the PC versions is capable of 24-bit audio as well as being compatible with PlayStation. All versions can also connect to Bluetooth devices.
CNET
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
I Love GeForce Now on My Steam Deck -- Until It Starts 'Waiting for the Next Available Rig'
I started chair dancing when Nvidia told me about its GeForce Now cloud-gaming app for the Steam Deck. My Deck OLED is my most frequently used nonessential device, so I was stoked that GFN provided a way to play Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games on it. And it was great, even on my pretty uneven Wi-Fi connection, until it started tossing me into queues with up to 40 people ahead of me. And that was on Ultimate, the priciest tier with the shortest wait times and longest sessions. It was a blip in my otherwise great experience during the past week -- relatively glitch-free, low-latency gameplay, including when attached to a monitor with a hub for keyboard and mouse -- and it cleared up later in the day, but it was a frustrating blip nonetheless. (I contacted Nvidia, but the company didn't have an explanation like "East Coast servers down for maintenance!" at the ready.) It's something people on the Premium and free plans might experience, though, so it merits discussion. And yet, it's still less glitchy and frustrating than Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sigh. To me, the Game Pass support is the most important feature because a lot of Xbox Cloud gameplay is really erratic for me on my mobile devices. To Nvidia, battery life is most important, I suspect partly because it's critical and quantifiable. There aren't a lot of hardware settings specific to the app. Lori Grunin/CNET And yes, the Deck can last much longer -- I'd say I get a couple more hours out of it -- because it takes a lot less power to run the game in the cloud and stream to you than it does to run locally, which requires a lot more processing to run and render the games. That said, I also tested the app on the Lenovo Go S SteamOS model (which I'm working on a review of and otherwise really like), and that, thus far, seems to have poorer battery life than the Deck, so it may become an important factor for me as well. In general, even weighty games such as Doom: The Dark Ages and Clair Obscur Expedition 33 (the first from Game Pass, the second Steam) played zippily (60-plus fps) on a monitor at Epic/Ultra/whatever quality presets, although I didn't get a chance to test HDR. Platformers like Have a Nice Death (Steam) seemed equally responsive and relatively latency-free compared with running locally. The app provides extensive, or more compact, statistics if you want, but even shrunk down, they take up a relatively large amount of (sometimes critical) real estate on the Deck's small screen. On the flip side, the icon indicating a Wi-Fi bandwidth issue is tiny and easy to miss. While GFN occasionally gave me network warnings, which I'm used to, it never seemed to result in more than the occasional stutter. The extended statistics view takes up a lot of the screen's real estate on the Steam Deck. Lori Grunin/CNET I do find that after about an hour in most games -- especially my current addiction, The Blue Prince (see above re: Game Pass) -- my connection gets wonky enough that some games become bogged down until they become pretty unresponsive and unplayable. GFN seems to provide the most consistency, although I did get dizzy once from buffered camera rotations racing around the screen to catch up with my stick movement. I have a few nitpicks about the implementation that aren't really Nvidia's fault. Installation requires switching to desktop mode, which I always forget to customize, so I can actually hit what I want in the touch interface. I have to look up how to switch every time. Installing only happens once, though, so it's not really a big deal. More long-term annoying is the app's relegation to the Non-Steam Games section of your library, combined with the absence of any content on its screen. GFN also has its own overlay and doesn't provide any statistics, such as how many hours you played a given game for, in its interface, even aggregated for GeForce Now use. All the info is in there, but not always where you expect or want it. As a whole, these make the GFN experience feel disconnected. Note that for free or even Premium plans, your mileage may vary because they run on lower-end GPUs rather than the GeForce RTX 4080-class versions. And you're still restricted to games GFN supports, which is a fraction of the games universe. But it's still a great way to play games on the Deck, especially non-Steam games, if you have one.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Yahoo
Microsoft Lets Free Copilot AI Users Use Voice Conversation and Complex Query Tools
If you're a Copilot user, you now have more artificial intelligence tools at your fingertips: Microsoft is giving unlimited free access to Voice and Think Deeper on its free tier. Voice lets you have a conversation with the AI tool using verbal commands, while Think Deeper allows for more complex questions than regular Copilot, as it has more advanced reasoning powered by OpenAI's o1 model. Copilot, launched in 2022, is Microsoft's entry in the increasingly competitive world of AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. As tech companies compete against each other and new Chinese entrant DeepSeek for a foothold, they continue releasing new AI-powered features and tools -- and are now providing more for free after DeepSeek launched an entirely free service. These Voice and Think Deeper features are variations on interface, giving users different ways to engage with Microsoft's AI offerings. CNET Senior Editor and computing expert Lori Grunin tested Think Deeper out on Tuesday, confirming that while it's free, "at one point it stopped providing new answers to refined queries and a 'Get the full Copilot experience' popup and tried to get me to sign in." Grunin added that it didn't obey specific parameters during her test, either. I gave Voice a go without signing into a Copilot account, and it greeted me like a voice assistant, letting me know I can chat to it "just like with a mate" (it had a male, British accent, though it noted I could change how it sounded in the settings) and asking me my name. Its follow-up question, after mispronouncing my name, was the ever-generic: "What's on your mind?" I asked it the weather in my city, and it gave me up-to-date information as well as a recommendation to get "out and about" in the unseasonably sunny, warm weather. But it then told me I only had 2 minutes remaining of Voice time. So you really do have to create an account and sign in to get that unlimited access announced today. (When I closed the voice chat, Copilot gave me a transcript of our call.) You can become a Copilot user for free -- just sign up using a Microsoft email address. The free version limits what features you have access to, slows down your responses after 15 "boosts" per day and only gives you access to the latest models during non-peak times. There's a paid tier called Copilot Pro ($20/month) and an enterprise version that starts at $30 per user per month. Some of Microsoft's suggestions include using Voice for practicing a new language, asking it to help you practice for a job interview or asking it out loud for cooking advice or recipe steps while your hands are busy in the kitchen -- kind of like a voice assistant. For Think Deeper, Microsoft says some of the more complex issues it can help you with are comparing electric vehicles, asking it for home renovation advice and checking for the pros and cons of buying a generator for outages. As with all AI tools, you should be wary of what it advises you to do, however, and CNET recommends double checking everything it comes back with -- whether it's on-the-fly cooking advice that may lead you astray thanks to a hallucination, or coming up with a savings plan that makes no financial sense. You also shouldn't ever tell an AI chatbot any of your personal details, including financial information, lest a data breach leak it to malefactors. That said, our CNET review found Copilot to be one of the better AI tools, giving it a 7/10 as it generally provides accurate and relevant information. Senior writer Imad Khan does recommend Anthropic's Claude as the best AI chatbot, however, saying it "does a consistent job and goes further than what's coming out of Google, Microsoft, Perplexity and OpenAI at the free tier."
