The M4 MacBook Air and Mobile World Congress 2025

Devindra: What’s up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I’m Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

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Cherlynn: I’m Managing Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: This week, we’re also joined by Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham. Hey, Nate. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Full house this morning, so it’s good to see everybody. We’re going to be talking about the Basically all the new Apple hardware that just dropped by press release this week the M4 MacBook Air, the new iPad Air and the base iPad, which is kind of interesting too.

There’s a new Mac studio out there with a really intriguing chip selection and some stuff from Mobile World Congress. And I’ve been crazy reviewing the AMD and NVIDIA GPU. So I’ve got thoughts on that as always folks. If you’re enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice.

Drop us an email at podcast@engadget.Com and join us Thursday mornings around 11 a. m. Eastern on our YouTube channel for our live stream. I think we’re good. I think we’re good to keep doing these as long as like I’m around and not sick or something. So join us then, folks. And hello. Hello, everybody.

Sherilyn, how are you doing with the news with everything happening right now?

Cherlynn: Surprisingly, I’m doing okay. Thanks. Because I have gotten most of the work out of the way, I’m having a chill Thursday, but definitely not an easy start to the week for us, right? I mean, I don’t know if you know Devon Jivey, obviously you know, but you were working on a couple of super high priority reviews for us.

And then we had Sam and like other people on the team filing a lot of embargo hands on pieces over the weekend. And then to start the week, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had all kinds of Apple news that Nate. Who’s joining us today is all on top of Nate. How was this week for you?

Nathan: It’s been a little crazy.

Especially cause I have to carve out a couple hours to talk to everyone today, but that’s cool. No, it’s useful time. But yeah, Tuesday morning was, we had stuff prepped or at least we knew like it was going to come probably. So I had some posts ready to go and just to throw those up and fill out the details and.

Devindra: It was about what we expected. Let’s well, let’s go down the list. I think from priority and the one everybody was excited about is the new MacBook Air. We’ve been waiting for them to throw an M four chip in there. Apple reduced didn’t in last, in the fall, they made 16, 16 gigabytes of ram, the base level of ram.

I ended up buying my wife an M three MacBook Air because of that, and it totally worth it for that price. And we’ve been waiting for the new chip. It is here. No Hardaware changes beyond that, except they reduced price by 100. And now it starts at nine 99. I, this is such a no brainer computer. If anybody, if you’re familiar with max, right, this is just a one to recommend to most people.

Right. Did it

Nathan: also not

Devindra: get the

Nathan: webcam upgrade? I think,

Devindra: Oh yeah, it got the center stage webcam. Yeah. Yeah. 12 megapixel.

Nathan: So that’s something that’ll be nice. I think. But yeah, like they, you know, previously 999 got you an M2. Now it gets you an M4. So that’s kind of a, yeah, no brainer when it is now easy to recommend the base model for most people, I think.

Devindra: Yeah. I mean, I could have seen Apple just keeping 1, 100, right. And not giving us a discount or anything. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Everyone in the chat’s like excited, right? I mean, we have people going, This is the GOAT! And I’m like, okay. I don’t know if I would call it a GOAT, but there’s setting aside my personal struggles with macOS.

It is the GOAT ultra

Nathan: portable. Yeah, so, I don’t know. Sherilyn and I have been, like, going back and forth about Mac stuff lately because our corporate overlords are forcing us to use our work issued Macs, so all of our Windows fans are struggling with the transition. It’s it’s struggling.

Devindra: You know what?

I’m not, nobody from corporate is listening to this, but I’m still okay on my window. Some people have been on our

Cherlynn: team. I don’t want to, I don’t want to give it all of it away. Cause I don’t want to affect all of you, but when it does happen, cause it’s a when, not an if y’all are, I’m sorry.

I’m a PC girl having to switch has been. Theory infuriating,

Devindra: I know this, but you know what, Sherilyn, like when you started doing more iPhone stuff, I remember you’re an Android, you were an Android girl mainly too, and you’re like, you slowly got it, you slowly got the appeal of

Cherlynn: I wouldn’t say I got it because I still long for Androids cameras, but that’s a topic for another day.

I’m sure. MacBook Air. Okay. So, I mean, I, look I, setting aside my issues with the Mac OS, I can respect that it is a very good laptop, frequently just has like longest lasting batteries in the industry, at least does all of the ARM emulation, well, not emulation anymore, just supports ARM natively now, if I’m not wrong, and just does it really well.

Good job, Apple. Good for you, but okay.

Devindra: Doesn’t have a fan, which is both a blessing and a curse. It depends there’s no fan noise, but also don’t take that sucker outside in the sun because it will just sit there and roast and never eject any hot air, as I learned one time. But yeah, it’s, this is the good computer for everybody.

I don’t know what else to say beyond that. The Max Studio also got an upgrade, and I know the the more power hungry folks were waiting for this, and this one’s coming with the M4 Max, same price starting in 1999, but also the N3 Ultra, which is a chip people were waiting for a long time. Really weird to see a last generation like chip design being pushed in a new product, but I’m hearing from some people that apparently these ultra chips just take forever for to like design and test and implement because they’re essentially two max chips like squished together, you know, connected by some sort of bridge.

So it took a while to test. And from what I hear, the M3 Ultra is twice as fast as the M4 Max in like really heavy duty data processing work. So the number

Nathan: doesn’t ultimately matter at the end of the day. It is

Devindra: confusing though. Yeah, it is.

Nathan: It’s definitely weird, but I think for the people who are going to spend that much money and

Devindra: need

Nathan: that kind of power, they know.

Right? What they’re getting into. They’re not going to get confused by like marketing semantics.

Devindra: Is anybody excited about the iPad air with an M3 chip? So

Nathan: it’s good. Fine. Yeah. So it’s very much like the MacBook update, but I think, you know, after mowing this over a bit, I think what has happened, all these releases concurrently is basically them getting off of, I think, five nanometer.

Processors. Sure.

Devindra: Sure.

Nathan: So like they no longer have to support them to on the air or on the iPad. So I think that’s a sense of they were doing is like them three is like way into production. They probably like we have so many of these, like there’s no reason not to put them into the new, they’re swimming in them three chips at this.

Right. So let’s just do it. Right. And that’s fine. I think for both the air, the MacBook air and the iPad, they’re both like such mature products at this point that like, yeah. You’re going to get just spec bumps and like I’m writing, I’m working on, or thinking about like how I’m going to review the iPad.

It’s basically like everything I said a year ago. It’s good. It still applies. Plus one.

Devindra: Yeah.

Nathan: Plus one. Right. So if you were going to buy one, you should still buy one. And same token goes for the air. Like we said, like for the same price, you’re now getting an M4 instead of an M2. That’s a big win.

Devindra: I think when, especially these products that are so mature, it’s is the decision, should you buy the new one or should you like.

If the old one was so good, like it’s probably a couple of hundred dollars less now. Maybe you should just look for that. And that is something I always kind of think about in my reviews, but then they drop the price. So it’s I don’t think you’re going to find an M3 MacBook Air for a lot less, maybe 800 again, as they like clear out some of the, some stuff, maybe you’ll find some M2s below 800 and that’ll be an insanely good deal.

Cause that’s still a very good computer, right?

Nathan: I would agree. Yeah. That’s like a. Like, if you need a budget Mac there you go. You just gotta keep an eye on Amazon and whatnot and see what they’ve got. The other thing that’s kind of funny about the Air Is that I was thinking about like right now, the way I’m thinking about it is what’s the differences between the pro and the air and they always have to have things to differentiate and you know, every so often you kind of say well, what does it make sense?

What are you giving up for this money? And the pros still is like crazy expensive, but with the air, this is the generation where I’m starting to feel like, okay, like it’s had the same screen for five years. It’s had, you know, I mean, that’s the big one for me is the same screen. And no face ID. And I understand that five years ago, those were smart ways to differentiate the product lineups, but now it’s starting to feel a little, you know, miserly and you really want face

Devindra: IDs, the thing you’re waiting for,

Nathan: I’m not waiting for it, but having used an iPad pro, I Way prefer it than having to keep on reaching up to authenticate sign in to things etc.

I feel that for

Devindra: me But that’s I think again, it depends on how

Nathan: you use it Yeah, it’s like I’m using it literally to do my whole job today except for this podcast You could have done a podcast on it. I think I could have tried but I don’t want to cause problems Yeah, but I think that if you’re like a more slightly more casual using it.

It’s not gonna bother you as much I was thinking about the fact that you could go out there and probably find a refurbished M2 iPad Pro from a couple years ago and get a better screen and get, you know, the same, essentially the same performance that sort of thing.

Devindra: It’s mainly the screen I don’t know if they’ll ever bring a fast refresh rate screen down to the iPad Air.

We’re also still waiting for that on the base level iPhone. To me, that is such a qualitative leap in quality because all we do all day is scroll folks. If you just make the scrolling better, that’s all I need and cheap Android phones and tablets are doing that. So why can’t Apple? To me, that seems like the big annoyance, even 90 Hertz, give me 90 Hertz.

And even that will reduce eye strain a little bit. That’s just a shame, but Hey, I’ve had air.

Nathan: Yeah. As I’m looking at the screen or you know, when I’ve looked, I’m thinking about the The M2 model, which I reviewed less than a year ago, like the screen itself looks very lovely. It’s just a basic LEDs or LCD, but it looks still, it’s very nice, but yeah, you definitely notice the stuttering compared to the higher refresh rate.

And then the other thing that I think about a lot is at one point, Apple had the mini LED screens, the iPad pro. So they’ve got the tech, you know, they could have this middle ground where the basic iPad is just like an LCD. This one’s got The mini LED and then they’ve got the OLED for the pro.

So I’m like, that feels like it would be a good update.

Devindra: It’s a, it’s yeah, I guess they know who will buy their products, right? The techies who really want this stuff. We’ll just bump up to the pro and then the people who want not just the base iPad. We’ll go for the air. I feel like the air is just like in a weird space.

Cause it doesn’t look that much different. It doesn’t feel that much different. And I’m, I have always been a fan of the base model iPad because you get so much bang for your buck. And this year you’re getting still once again, a pretty decent. amount of bang for your buck, right? This is coming in at the reduced price that the last base iPad was brought down to last year.

349. That thing launched originally over for at over 400. And we were really annoyed about that.

Nathan: So I think it was 430 or 450 even possibly.

Devindra: So I love this like price range because it’s such a, it’s just such a throwaway thing, right? Like, why not? Just get another base iPad. Your kid needs like a thing to do stuff on.

That is such a decent price. And if they destroy it, you know, it’ll run for a couple of years. I’ll crack the screen, but in a couple of years you may replace it or something. Like to me, that is, that’s just like a really good, useful thing. My daughter started messing around with like art stuff on the the last.

The 10th gen iPad air or iPad base iPad. And now she’s playing Minecraft on it and she’s playing in big worlds with lots of textures and stuff like it’s running really well. So that is such a good computer basically to scale with people. So shout out to the base iPad, which is better now too. Yeah, they added the

Nathan: A16, which is smart.

Interesting that it doesn’t run Apple intelligence because my assumption was it was going to, because you know, they’ve tried to get that on almost every product they sell, but not this one. I mean,

Cherlynn: That, to me, was the most interesting thing out of all the news we’ve been talking so far. Yeah,

Speaker 4: yeah.

Cherlynn: I mean, iPad Air, cool.

MacBook Air, great value. Cool also, but incremental. No huge change to chassis design. I do want to point out Wes Jackson in the chat has been talking about the colors should be nicer on the MacBook Air. I don’t know about the iPads. I mean, that led me to think I haven’t really seen a very colorful laptop in a while.

There

Devindra: is a blue MacBook Air now, which is pretty Right. Right. But that but what, but West

Cherlynn: Jackson was saying is he wants it to be very saturated.

Nathan: If it’s anything like the iPads, it’s like the suggestion of blue it, it’s like it’s gonna look silver’s, like sky

Devindra: blue. I remember, remember like the Surfaces had it’s blue. You want blue. This is the bluest blue your eyes have ever seen. You know, you look at it too hard and all you see is blue for a second. That’s how basic

Nathan: iPads also have great colors. Bright

Devindra: yellow. Bright. Yeah,

Cherlynn: they

Devindra: do. So I can’t go ahead. Go ahead.

Cherlynn: I mean, Wes Jackson also pointed out and I wanted to ask the two of you what you thought on this really is that like, why is Apple so behind with screen refresh rates, right?

We understand they are behind. We’ve known this for a while. Why? What is holding them up?

Devindra: I think, well, they tend to value other things, right? They do put good screens in their devices. Like the base I’ve had is excellent. Yeah. The quality is excellent. Like this is the problem I have with the the Apple.

What’s the, like the display, the monitor, that’s 1, 500. Is it the studio display now? Studio display, but I know you’re talking about, it doesn’t have. High refresh rates either, right? That is, you have to go up to the pro monitor for that. But it looks good and people keep those things for years and years.

So it’s they value other things in addition to refresh rate. But I’m just saying like where the market is now, like refresh rate, like it makes such a huge difference. I was thinking the base iPad is this thing where they’re like. We can’t make this too good. We’re Apple, actually. And if we allow ourselves, this will be too good.

So the last time they’re like, it has to be more expensive because we put a better chip in there. So that’s kind of how you’re doing it. And now it’s well, it doesn’t have Apple intelligence. So if you really want that, you need an iPad Air. Sorry. It just

Cherlynn: seems so ridiculous to me. I’m like, you just went all in.

It does because it’s ridiculous

Nathan: because you get the sense that they want to be able to tell adoption numbers like this. Many people are using Apple intelligence. It’s a win for us. And they’ve also said in the past that the best. I’m selling iPad is no surprise the cheap one. So you’d think there’d be a natural way to be like, okay, like we can, you know, again, like juice our Apple intelligence adoption here.

It’s really telling, right? So surprising

Devindra: the cheapest chip that can run Apple intelligence is the a 17 pro, which was in the iPhone 15 pro series. So that would have cost more money to jump back up to that chip. The A16 is probably something they can put out cheaply, but I do think it ultimately comes down to sort of like the iPhone SE.

Does Apple want more people to buy the base iPad? I kind of don’t think so. Actually, I think they want people to buy the thing with a higher per average, you know, price, so they’ll get a higher return from it. It is this weird balance. Apple never wants people to just go straight to the cheap device, even though that is the one I think most consumers will consider first, you know.

Nathan: Well, and to your point about how much you like the base iPad, like everything you said is absolutely true. But then I think about somebody like myself. Where I, so last year when I reviewed the Air, I was like, this is the one to get because it has enough improvements, better screen better multitasking, you know, Apple intelligence now is a thing if you care about it, better processor, obviously I believe it’s the only one, or I don’t think the base I’ve had supports the Apple pencil pro.

So if you’re really into visual arts, that’s a win for you also. So they do all that without making it too expensive. Like it’s not cheap. It’s not cheap, but the price is, I think, reasonably fair for what you get, as is the price for the basic iPad. But, you know, like I, when I reviewed the basic one, I was like, I, it would feel like too constraining for me compared to what I want to do with it.

So I’m an air guy, but like other publications, I remember said the same thing about the air being in kind of a weird place. Like you could either just have this, like cheap basic iPad or. You could go the other way, but they’ve bumped up the price on the pro last year when they redesigned it. So now the cheapest one is a grand, which is bonkers.

The

Devindra: only smart decision for an expensive iPad is a used iPad pro. I think that’s kind of the only way to go yes, you could buy the air and then you have this year’s chip, but last year’s M2 chip or whatever would still be. Yeah. Pretty freaking powerful. Yeah. And

Nathan: they’ve got good, you know, Apple is really good about having like quality refurbished stuff on their store pretty often.

Yeah. You’d save some cash get the one from a couple of years ago. That’s a good call off to consider that. It’s

Devindra: iSmart folks. Yeah.

Cherlynn: If you think about it, we’ve just been talking about how incremental everything has been like over the last few years. So definitely let the last two year models, the Hardaware wise, they basically feel the same, I think, and the processors.

Even if there have been like leaps in performance, it also wouldn’t translate to much real world difference. I don’t think you can tell me that the A17 is so much different than the A18, other than supporting Apple Intelligence a bit more natively slash better.

Nathan: I could see why they have updated the, you know, the base one, like A14 is probably starting to get old.

And again, I think it’s also a matter of them moving away from Like producing things at like the certain you know, I’m not a huge chip guy, but I was talking to Aaron about this yesterday and it’s okay, this they’ve cut their, they’ve removed all the products using, I think, five nanometer chips from their lineup at this point.

And that was probably like a weird strategic part of the decision that consumers aren’t really privy to. Right.

Devindra: I see a comment here. Moe Esquire says from the chat, Apple stays asking for 2025 money for 2011 screen technology. It’s wild. I wouldn’t say that. Like the numbers are the same, but the actual technology behind the screens are, they do get better.

It’s a better LCD. It’s brighter than before, you know, in many respects, like It is getting incrementally better. Nate, like, how do you feel about the iPad air screen at this point? Is it a decent value?

Nathan: Yeah, so again, I haven’t reviewed the new one, but it’s the same as last year’s And you know, if I sit there, like I said, if I look at the screen i’m like it’s reasonably bright.

The colors are nice. It’s great to watch movies on play games. Like it’s a very quality display, but the thing where you start to feel it not being as good is when you compare it to the iPad pro and specifically again, as you’re saying, the refresh rate, right? Like it feels. You know, I can feel the stuttering of the screen more and that makes it feel like it’s on as fast, even if that’s not the case, right?

It’s how our eyes perceive speed, basically, yeah.

Cherlynn: I will say that at 350, the base iPad is a really decent purchase, like people in the chat, Declan, Deepro are saying that it’s used in schools and hospitals, for example. Battery strength appears to be something you will notice in an older model, you know, falter faster, I guess.

And then I want to point out, we had this chat in our team Slack yesterday. But Paradise and Wes Jackson are both like we love the iPad mini. And I’m like, me too. I would adore the iPad mini seven myself. But we seem to notice a bit of like loss of love for many things from Apple’s end, right Nate?

We were like, I mean, I was like, should we write about the iPad mini graveyard? What happened to all the minis? The phones are getting

Devindra: too big. I think that’s something like. When I get a Pro Max phone, I’m like, it’s just a couple more inches to the mini. At that point, I should probably, I gotta differentiate more.

I gotta get like a full iPad, basically, you know?

Cherlynn: Yeah, I guess the pricing would also be confusing. I mean, if you’re going to stuff like proper power into a mini device, then would you charge more or charge less? I, hard to say. Yeah,

Nathan: no. So yeah, the mini is definitely a step up over the basic one in almost every regard.

It’s smaller, but then again, that’s not like a. A downside the people buying it. I don’t think you buy it because you want it to be small. And like I reviewed the latest mini last fall, I guess it was. And I hadn’t used one for an extended amount of time in a long time. And I was like, this thing is so much fun.

It’s just like a cute little iPad. You can like almost put in your pocket and you can use the stylus to take notes. And again, I wish I had some visual art skill. I don’t, but it would be a great little drawing canvas. It’s a perfect size to read things on. It was my Bellatro machine perfect size for just playing that game relentlessly.

Devindra: What if you could have something that size and then you unfold it? Make it fold,

Cherlynn: Apple!

Devindra: Make it fold, but fold it to be bigger, not to be smaller, is what I’m saying. Give me an iPad mini that, then you just get a phone! I don’t know. Just get to me the big thing, giving you something that you could slip into your pocket, like the iPad mini, but also Bang that out to the full 10 inch iPad or something, that would be really cool.

Cherlynn: So are you saying, DaVinder, are you saying you’re for foldables?

Devindra: I’m for that idea of a foldable. To me that is more interesting than than the smaller phone things. But hey, we’ll see. I kind of, I do want to buy a foldable at some point to just get that, you know, experience. Live the life, yeah.

Live the life just a bit. Okay. Anything else we want to say about these Apple devices? Cause we’ve got a lot to go through here. I feel like that kind of

Nathan: covers it. I mean, we made the joke yesterday, like this could have been an email. I’m like, I guess it was an email, right? It was

Cherlynn: an email.

Devindra: The iPad stuff was, didn’t that just drop?

I don’t know. It just dropped it. I can’t reveal it or whatever. There was a

Cherlynn: video for iPhone 16e last time last couple of weeks ago, but yeah.

Devindra: I can reveal that, you know, Apple talked to me and a few journalists about the air and stuff like, so that was more important to them than I think the iPad.

So, oh, whatever.

Cherlynn: Well, no Nate did chat with people too, I think. So they didn’t do the little briefing thing. They just didn’t make a big deal of it. I think.

Nathan: It’s primarily focused on the air. Like the base iPad is really just we put a new chip in it. Oh, I will say one other thing about the Air before we move on is that they improved the keyboard accessory, which I like it does both.

It’s a little thinner and lighter. It has the function row, which is great and it’s shockingly cheaper. It’s still super expensive. Don’t get me wrong, but you know, they cut 30 bucks. It starts at two 70. That’s so

Devindra: that’s almost a full

Nathan: base iPad. It’s bonkers. I know, but it’s cheaper. ’cause it used to be, it’s cheaper.

2 99 and 3 49.

Cherlynn: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I have a question. Can I use the magic, this is a dumb question coming from someone who’s never tried this before. Okay. Can I use magic keyboard with an iPhone? Dang it. So I’ve been the tool before. You get, get the little log

Nathan: text. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. I know. I’m gonna get one of those, but I’ve been a

Nathan: little mini Bluetooth.

Yeah.

Cherlynn: There’s this threads account that’s been posting these renders of a keyboard case for iPhones that they’re making iPhones and other phones. And it just looks super good. So I, this is my workaround for my IT problems. I think,

Devindra: I don’t know. I think it’s actually all around. I’m looking at Tik TOK.

I keep getting ads for this, trifold pocket phone, like pocketable keyboard that actually it’s pretty good. I’ve seen that one. They exist. They exist.

Cherlynn: No, I’m talking about another one. I’ll send you a link. I’m talking about this thing called Amber from a company that is right. Like they make AI writing tools.

Anyway.

Devindra: Okay. Let’s move on to Mobile World Congress 2025. And I remember when people used to be really excited about this thing. And now it’s I don’t know. Do general chat. Do you guys care when we see Mobile World Congress? Do you

Cherlynn: care about NWC? As much as

Devindra: you care, maybe about CES or something. I don’t know.

I feel like that era has passed.

Nathan: I think Covid really kind of killed it. That was the final blow. Although

Devindra: it seems like it’s hopping this year. There’s a lot of news and a lot of people went,

Cherlynn: I, I don’t know if it’s necessarily hopping or popping this year. I mean, look. I’m friends with a lot of people in the industry, not to flex or anything,

Speaker 4: but

Cherlynn: I don’t know about y’all, but I got friends in the real world.

CFI 42 and was Jackson in our chat, by the way, echo this sort of sentiment, CFI 42, MWC was Jackson’s. I used to care, but then everyone has their own conferences now. And that is the thing, right? That is the thing we’ve seen, the trend we’ve seen in the last few years of these sort of grouped events don’t.

happen as much anymore because companies do their own things more frequently. I think that was a result of COVID, like Nate said, and it both like made MWC less important, but still somewhat important as well as it made our lives harder in this space because we now have to cover everything every week instead of like once a month we cover one conference or something.

So the cadence has changed. And I mentioned my friends as mostly because. you know, there’s a few of them that went to Barcelona and I’ve been like, what is the point? I, first of all,

Nathan: think about

Cherlynn: it. I mean, they, I think I, I hate to throw shade on people, but I’m like, I think people enjoy traveling to Europe.

Sure. When they don’t have to pay. Yeah. Yeah. When they

Nathan: don’t

Cherlynn: have to pay for it. I would

Nathan: have loved to have gone to MWC. I think the great escape to go to Barcelona that

Cherlynn: y’all are not picking up that I might be throwing is that it I’m, I don’t want to suggest that they didn’t have professional reasons to be there, but it, when I say that they want to travel to Europe, it is a side benefit, a pretty major one that makes it more alluring to go to a show that maybe you didn’t need to go to.

I think that for us at Engadget at least, we definitely didn’t send a team. Not because none of us wanted to go to Europe. All of us wanted to go to Europe, but,

Devindra: but we even have people closer to there. Yeah. A,

Cherlynn: have people closer. We have people based in the UK and Europe, but B, like we would need to justify the expenses.

And it’s super expensive to go. Like our team covers our own travel and accommodation. So like we would have to pay the flight. We would have to pay for the hotels to go. It’s not and also we all, we tend to get briefed ahead of time and see all the interesting things, even in America. So we’re.

And I don’t think that the amount of news that came out of it this time from what I’m seeing really would have justified traveling there from America as well. So

Devindra: it’s more of a nice to have thing. And also like folks, if you’re seeing influencers and other folks out there, a lot of folks. A lot of folks get sent out there by companies who want them.

Yeah, there’s a lot of sponsored travel,

Cherlynn: which by the way, as a rule, Engadget doesn’t do. Like we just don’t accept sponsored travel in case it was never clear before. Now it is clear. We just don’t. So is there actually

Devindra: news from this thing? I know, right? After all that

Cherlynn: crapping on shitting on it.

Nathan: Lenovo did a bunch.

Cherlynn: Yeah, but it’s mostly

Nathan: weird concept stuff, right?

Cherlynn: Yeah, I mean, I really got a hats off to Lenovo always coming with this sort of like weird experimental energy and I love it. We, they were the ones that we were able to see ahead of time in New York. So Sam went and Sam saw a few things.

There was a codename flip foldable laptop that like is an another take on it’s like rollable laptop that we saw at CES. We, this thing like it flips out the screen, like kind of like trifolds flips. It’s very weird. I don’t even know how to describe it. So I’ll use Sam’s words.

Nathan: It

Cherlynn: is, sorry, that was your, those were your words, right?

Nathan: Oh,

Cherlynn: it’s him. Lanky lad. This thing, basically imagine your laptop and you open it up and then you open it up twice more on top of his screen. That’s kind of what we’re talking about. This. It can, it’s a normally a 13 inch panel and then it can unfold vertically to 18. 1 inches. And I guess the benefit of this is, I mean, yeah, I know the quote benefit of this is that like you can.

Get that extra space. And you don’t have to wait around as long as you’d have to wait for Lenovo’s like rollable you know, that one we saw at CES, if y’all haven’t seen it yet, for everybody who really wanted the rollable

Devindra: 18. Yeah, the rollable. This will get to it. First of all, that

Cherlynn: screen’s definitely not going to be as good.

Cause it’s rolling into the hinge, but it’s going to come up. Super slow. I got to tell you, I was shooting the video for this and I was like, God damn, how long do I had to hold this?

Devindra: This feels like a typical thing. Like actually, I remember going back to some MWC, like a quote unquote innovations. No, nobody needs this.

It’s cool. You can do it, bro, but nobody needs this. Like you look at this and be like are you overcompensating much? And also it looks ridiculous. It looks ridiculous. Yeah, it’s just really awkward. It’ll never, you can’t use this anywhere, really. You can use this in a cafe in an airplane.

Something I’ve noticed and people don’t think about a lot is that if you’re working outside and it’s windy, your laptop is in danger. And this has happened to me several times. Like I was once at a bar in I don’t know, San Francisco doing some work and. Group of people needed a picture. I was like, okay, I’ll help you take a picture.

My Mac book air was just sitting there doing nothing. Augusta wind came and flew it off the table.

Cherlynn: Oh, it

Devindra: goes with the air because it was also so light. But like the having a laptop open is an error like pocket. So air hits that it can go flying. And I never, I don’t know if y’all look.

Cherlynn: I don’t know if I want to show for the live stream what we’re talking about.

And I know it’s tricky for us to do a screen share right now, but basically it is to Sam’s point in his hands on. He also says that it’s hinge wasn’t fully up to the task of keeping everything stable as even a light tap would cause the whole panel to sway back and forth in a disconcerting

Nathan: way.

Let’s be clear. This is a concept, right? It’s a concept. I

Cherlynn: was going to get. Oh, thank you. But yeah, I was like no one’s gonna sell this thing because it clearly isn’t ready for prime time. I do want to add to if we scroll slightly down that article, you’ll see a picture of the touch pad. Lenovo also included in this thing, what it’s calling a smart force pad.

There’s a three layer illuminated dashboard. Cause those are great words. Someone in our chat dropped a not safe for work comment. So I’m not going to say a thing, but

Devindra: Your screen does not need to extend so much. At some point you’re overcompensating for something. I will say that for

Nathan: our conversation about Apple, we’re like, this is the most incremental of incremental.

And then we go to the other side of the equation here, which is these like ridiculous concepts like We can’t be like, Oh, this is too Borg and incremental make, Oh, this is too weird. Like I’m not that way. I know. But it’s just fun to be like, I like seeing companies. I

Cherlynn: like seeing the experimental and again, to be like you said, Nate, like Lenovo is not doing anything with this yet.

Right. The rollable is going to be available for sale at some point, but not this one. So, okay, we, I don’t want to spend too long on this because Lenovo had a few other things that we should talk about. Another one being a external display concept which I’m actually very intrigued by.

And then I’ll get to the last one, which is this actually seems

Devindra: useful. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Yeah. So this I don’t know if there’s a name, but basically it’s a set of accessories or a family or ecosystem of accessories that can attach to a 16 inch think book, the think book 16 P and I mean, the base machine itself is pretty standard.

It’s a 16 inch machine with Intel Core PC CPU NVIDIA GPU the 5070, in fact good displays and whatever. But then when you get to the attachment or the attachable accessories, you start with Lenovo’s so called Magic Bay docking system. That allows you to add either the second display concept, which is a small 8 inch screen that you can Snap on magnetically as an external monitor or whatever, or you can use the second What is it called?

The second display, like basically a dual screen so you can snap it onto the back of your lid And then you get wings, right? Two screens that seem like wings, so you have a triple display set up

Nathan: Lenovo gives you wings

Cherlynn: Lenovo gives you, oh boy. And no, this is the Tico Pro, I believe. No, the Tico Pro.

I’m so confused with all these names, by the way, because there’s. This name is Tico out of nowhere from Lenovo. Basically this is a much slimmer thin display that you snap on top of the lid of the laptop and it adds like a, like an eight inch tall sort of extra row to the top of your. to function as like a spare screen where you can see all your like, it’s like a running ticker, I guess, of yeah, like a touch bar, but on top of your laptop screen.

And then finally I think there was just the Tico, which I told like, Sam, when I saw it, I was like, I want this. It’s a circular screen that can again, snap on top of the laptop lid. And it’s like an AI companion and can react with emoji to like throughout the day. So it’s kind of like a Tamagotchi just sitting on top of your screen.

I think that’s cute as heck. So. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of this article, by the way, Devinder, you can see this Tico Tamagotchi staring at you,

Devindra: it’s kind of weird. Is it in it’s in the roundup? I don’t see it in the doc here, so drop me a link. Oh,

Cherlynn: I’m sorry, it’s at the bottom of this thing that you’re sharing your screen on right now.

Let

Devindra: me find that. Do you see it? Oh yeah, that whole

Cherlynn: thing. Yeah just for the, oh, look at that thing.

Devindra: Ben, please you can share the entire, all the things cause I’m sharing. We’ll share

Cherlynn: the links to the show notes in the episode wherever it goes up on the audio podcast. But please go to Engadget.

com and look at our MWC coverage. So yeah, a lot of really wild ideas from Lenovo and not all of them dumb.

Devindra: I think here’s the thing. Like they’re kind of cool. You’d be like, huh, kind of interesting concept. So many things here. The external display wings looks really annoying to put together.

To be honest, like it looks super annoying. You know, what’s great. Just have another little external display, have a tablet. This is unfortunately have an iPad. I have an iPad. If you have a Mac, your iPad is an external display. Sorry, Cherlynn. But then it’s you’re walking with a screen and a laptop.

Anyway, you know, that’s how. That makes sense. Also, I must say, in this economy,

Cherlynn: yeah in this economy,

Nathan: becoming the running joke. But yeah, it

Cherlynn: is this economy as well. But the, some of these screen attachment type things, I believe I read that Sam wrote some of them have kickstands built in to improve the stability, which we said was a problem with the previous one.

Look, I, we can talk. ad nauseum about these accessories, but I believe not all of them are actually coming to market. In fact, it’s a start the magic bay. Yeah. The most, they’re probably all concepts at this point. And I think Lenovo needs to spend more time testing it out, but they’re also doing this as to as a way to gauge our reactions, right?

They’re like, Oh, do people like this? So if you like it, you know, I guess. Tell us, you

Devindra: know, what’s useful though. They did have a solar PC concept with just like solar panels on the back. That’s cool. This is my

Cherlynn: favorite one as much as I like that. Silly little AI companion. This is the Lenovo. Yeah.

Solar PC concept. Basically it’s a, the so called it’s a laptop with a built in solar panel into the lid and you can use it to charge the laptop. Basically. I mean, it’s going to take a while to do, but the technology has improved so much lately that it doesn’t take as long as you would think.

So, 20 minutes in the sun gets

Devindra: you an hour worth of video watching. That’s pretty good. Actually, that’s not bad at all.

Cherlynn: It’s used is using a back contact cell technology on the back of the laptop lid. So you can get that amount of power conversion that you just said. So I think this is the neatest idea I’ve seen.

I’m here for anything that improves sustainability. But of course, I am no expert on solar technology or solar power. So anyone out there listening or watching, tell me if this sounds like a good or a bad idea.

Devindra: We kind of need solar stuff everywhere is the thing. Like not everyone’s going to get solar panels on their roofs to make their entire house solary, but you could get like little external solar batteries.

I have one one of my house cameras that’s upfront, has a separate solar thing. And I just never have to touch that camera. I never have to change the batteries. I never have to do anything. So these little, like It’s like when Samsung

Cherlynn: did it for the remote control.

Devindra: Yeah, sort of, sort of.

I mean, we’ve had solar remote controls for a while or like solar calculators. Like we’ve had that stuff forever, but that was cool. But this is like a whole laptop and we, you work outside, keep your laptop charged. That is, this is a cool concept or maybe give me like a little. Give me like a little solar tent that I plug into USB C and that is just trickling energy into whatever device I have plugged in.

I think I just made a new startup, folks, and nobody steal that idea. There

Cherlynn: you go. Yeah, that’s your backup career plan. Wes, people in the chat are like, Wes Jackson’s would that be in danger of overheating? CF540 is a two bit, you can’t charge it well with the lid open. So those are good questions.

I will ask Lenovo. I know Lenovo sometimes listens. It’s

Devindra: the angle. If you have a laptop open, it’s still getting some on the back. And trust me when I learned from that MacBook Air, your laptop will still get cooked, even if you have it open, like this is actually good to use for that heat, maybe.

Cherlynn: Yeah. There you go. And Sam saw

Devindra: this,

Nathan: right? We can ask him like what the,

Cherlynn: yeah, Sam did see it. I mean, I would have loved for Sam to be able to join us today but our team is so, it’s just, we can’t have so many people on the podcast at once.

Devindra: Do we care about the Xiaomi 15 Ultra?

Cherlynn: So, I mean, I will point out that Xiaomi 15 Ultra, I mean, it’s not probably coming to the U.

S., but it is one of those phones that, We have, we see elsewhere that like people lost after, yeah. Is it 6. 7 inch phone with a really bright screen gets up to 120 Hertz, but the, yeah, it got, it has that like a camera built in, but there is this little attachment that adds a grip and some, I believe lens cappy things or lens cap.

Devindra: I see. So you can add like maybe filters and stuff. Like UV filters? Exactly.

Cherlynn: And Sammy collaborated with Leica to make this, so, I mean, check out Sam’s hands on. One of his 17 hands ons that he filed late Friday, basically.

Devindra: Poor Sam. Poor Sam. Poor one out for Sam. I saw something wasn’t there one with a big lens or something that was like attachable?

To a phone.

Cherlynn: Yeah, that’s the Xiaomi. I believe that’s the Xiaomi 15 Ultra or are you talking about something else?

Devindra: It looked like the Xiaomi but this one is not quite it. I don’t know. Maybe it was that I was thinking of. Yeah

Cherlynn: If you’re remembering it from this week It was probably the Xiaomi unless you might be thinking the HMD had some other attachment that was not a camera

Devindra: But anyway anything else i’ll do.

Yeah, let’s look at the rest of the news from

Cherlynn: yeah I there’s some other stuff. I mean, the nothing phone 3a and 3a pro were released or unveiled as well and they look really cool. I mean, I was just talking to someone who doesn’t know tech at all. So, you know, real life friends and the You remember like 10 or 6 years ago, there was this obsession with the transparent iPhone?

Yeah, people are obsessed with devices that are transparent and nothing continues to feed on that obsession. They look cool! Yep.

Nathan: Yeah,

Cherlynn: it Bring us back to 1999. It looks so good. These are a pair of I think mid range phones. They’re going to cost around 379 and 459 for the 3a and 3m pro respectively.

Matt Smith on our team wrote a pretty in depth hands on with these devices. He’s come away pretty impressed. We’re going to have a review up shortly. They’re going to be available in the U S through the nothing beta program. So I think it’s worth. Checking out. It’s not like you can’t get this phone at all.

In america The

Nathan: first thing we’ve talked about that anybody can buy right or all the lenovo stuff with concept, right?

Cherlynn: Yeah, the lenovo stuff other than the thinkbook 16p which attaches to those accessories Which you do we are able to buy but yes exactly to your point. This is something you can actually buy Hey speaking of something you can actually buy samsung.

Yes Yeah, launched this week, a pair of galaxy or trio of galaxy a series devices, which by the way, I’m so glad they don’t do that awesome squad event anymore for the a series Nate, this is back when Christopher Lasko was with us and we used to like, I think right during the pandemic or right after we used to live stream alongside these live events that companies would have and Samsung had an event for a Galaxy A70 something or something like that?

80, 90? I don’t know. And it would not stop with the cringe millennial slash Gen Z speak. It was very much a take your squad and viva! Yeah,

Nathan: it’s coming back to me a little bit.

Cherlynn: I will force you to re watch it later today.

Nathan: Please do.

Cherlynn: Anyway, so this is the main news, the Galaxy A series basically the A56, 36, and 26 were released this week or announced this week.

And if you’re in the UK, you’ll be able to buy, or in Europe, you’ll be able to buy any of them. The A56 in particular is a very interesting one. However, the A56 doesn’t seem to be coming to the US just yet. I mean, Samsung says later this year. No actual other date. And they also don’t want to give us a pre order like link or whatever.

Like where can we find more info? There is

Devindra: some sort of A50 already available in the U. S. Right? Is it the 55? Yes,

Cherlynn: A55.

Devindra: Yeah.

Cherlynn: But I believe it was also kind of touch and go in terms of the availability there. I believe when it comes to the U. S. and A series, Samsung’s more focused on the 70 something series than it is the A and also the FE, the fan edition.

I wonder what that says of, you know, Right. I wonder what y’all are thinking about those other regions that you sell the Zay series in, huh? But you know, but Samsung didn’t just bring devices that you can buy. They also brought devices you cannot buy. And this is one of those things we didn’t get to see in person because we never went to Barcelona, but the Samsung display department slash section of the company came through with a few concepts as well.

You’ll see at our, like everything announced at MWC sort of roundup piece while I’m talking about, it’s a bunch of folding display concept devices, including a, Briefcase display, which is so silly to me. It’s like this metal briefcase you see in movies and TVs, like very silver and whatever. And then you can unfold it into like this, I don’t know, like 27 inch TV type of thing.

Then you can, you will also see they brought a flex gaming concept. That’s kind of a switch that can fold in half, right, basically. It’s a 7. 2 inch OLED screen, folds horizontally in half. And then they have kind of like controllers along the sides of the screen. Very interesting, we saw that from Android Police.

And then Allison Johnson at The Verge posted some videos on social media of this thing that basically looks like a Galaxy Z Flip. However, instead of folding in half, It has two hinges along the top and bottom, so it folds inwards two ways. So it’s like a tri fold, but covers most of the screen.

It’s like when you’re wrapping a gift and you don’t want to fold it in half. You wrap and you just can’t finish wrapping it. And you have to stick one more span of

Nathan: wrapping paper. I take back what I said earlier. I’m really happy about Apple’s iterative updates

Cherlynn: because

Nathan: this crap

Devindra: makes no sense.

This is definitely yeah, what you need more in a device that can break with movable parts, like a device with hinges is more hinges. That’s, that makes sense. So that’s

Cherlynn: why it’s a concept, right? So, so this is what we missed by not going to Barcelona and spending a ton of money to see these concept folding phones or gaming handhelds.

And to be clear, like Samsung did show some of the other concepts they brought to Barcelona at. CES this year too. So we’ve seen some of these things. I do want to point out Mike Jones in our chat reminds us that the A55 actually was not sold in the U. S. So that’s a good point. Like I said, I think I saw it at some retailers,

Devindra: but okay.

Okay. It was something. It might be like, maybe it’s a 54. I don’t know. Someone personally, privately imported it. There’s no, I hate the A series phones because yes, you can, you can’t really keep up with anything. It’s a super pain. And then to be

Cherlynn: clear, Yeah, I mean, I think in the U. S. you still have other options, like the Fan Edition S whatever, S24FE the A70 something, whatever.

And also, the Pixel, maybe, just dominates in the U. S.? Maybe that’s why it’s not I mean, in that space I think

Nathan: just the basic S24 S series their flagships are the ones that I don’t know. I will say that this conversation has made it really feel like I went to Barcelona though. So, aside

Devindra: from other things.

No. Aside from the tapas? Yeah, aside from the tapas and the beer and the nice paella I don’t know, we’re missing a little bit. No, we don’t talk about the microwaves. I got to keep you away from microwaves. Apparently

Cherlynn: we will talk about that in another episode, but I mean, look, there’s other stuff.

I mean, Meadow was there, Google was there, but we’ve seen their Android updates. We reported it. We didn’t need to be there to cover like Android updates, that sort of stuff. So if you want all the full details again, like I said, just check out Our roundup on Engadget. com or check out our individual pieces there as well.

And yeah, I mean, maybe today you just go get yourself some tapas to feel like you went to MWC, you know?

Devindra: Get some tapas, get some good food, folks. Or

Cherlynn: paella.

Or

Devindra: Good paella.

Cherlynn: Kimi, I mean, pintos, I don’t know, man. I am hungry.

Devindra: Alright, let’s move on to some other news and hey, I’ve been heads down reviewing video cards for the past two weeks, actually for several weeks cause Nvidia threw all their new cards at me and then AMD announced the new RTX 50 what was it? Not the RTX, the RX 9070 cards. And I have just been fully on those things and I’ll tell you, I was I was most excited about it.

About doing the 5070 because that thing was 550. I’m looking at the 9070 right now But that thing was 550 is supposed to have the power of you know Nvidia supposedly said of the you know, was it the 4090 or something like AMD

Cherlynn: said right?

Devindra: Nvidia said like that one was supposed to have a power of a much older card and

Cherlynn: videos.

Devindra: Yeah That thing was supposed to be And I found the, you know, 5070 to be just kind of mid, that’s ultimately where it was. Like I found it to be not as fast as some of the other ones. It wasn’t much of an upgrade over the 4070. It was practically the same as the 4070 TI, which is, I think that one came out last year or two years ago.

There just wasn’t. Much going on there. And yeah, I just, I feel like all of Nvidia’s marketing claims around the 50, 70, just really made it clear. Like they’re leaning so much on AI and frame generation to get you higher frame rates. Not cool. Then an AMD comes out and they announced the Radeon RX 9070 and the 9070 XT.

And these things are 549 and 599 and the 599 card, the 9070 XT is actually meant to compete with the 750 5070 TI. So that is, that was like gauntlet throw down by AMD. We have this card that is much cheaper. Almost as comparable and in my review like I think they’re both really good cards. I really like the 9070 XT because it comes in a hundred fifty dollars less than the 4070 Ti it is in many respects many benchmarks many games like just as fast and AMD is also doing a better job of getting into their AI upscaling stuff.

So they’ve announced FSR for Fidelity FX super resolution for Which will do some of the stuff that DLSS has been doing with NVIDIA’s cards. So AMD is catching up. These aren’t perfect cards, but I think they’re like, they’re really compelling, especially for that price. The other thing is you can’t find the AMD, the NVIDIA cards anywhere.

All the 50s, all the 50 series cards have been jacked up in price. If you do find them at all, they’re out of stock everywhere. And from what I’m seeing, people are finding the Radeon cards. They’re in stock at a lot of stores. Easy to get easy to buy at the base price. Some are, some manufacturers are putting more tech in there to like.

Make them price higher, but hey, this seems like a pretty clear win for AMD in the mid range arena. So if you’ve been waiting for a new video card, now’s the time to probably jump in, or just wait a little bit and see how these prices go. We have not really talked about like the crazy tariff stuff that the Trump administration has been talking about and they’re like, they’re trying to go gung ho with it.

That will lead to a lot of things being more expensive. And that includes video cards, everything food. So many things are going to be more expensive. So we’re not even like talking to that level of it. But if you find, I think if you find a 90, 70 or 90, 70 XT, you’re in the market for mid range card, you’ve got a card that’s four or five years old.

These are going to be good upgrades for most people. So, Hey, check it out now, grab it now. If you can, yeah. Before the prices get up and good luck out there. Happy hunting folks.

Nathan: DaVindra, what’s your like workflow for

Devindra: reviewing a graphics card like? Crying. I mean, it’s mainly

Cherlynn: crying. The fans are crying.

The fans are

Devindra: crying because, you know, I got to rip out the old car. I have to uninstall all the driver stuff of my current car. I have to rip out the old car to plug in the new car, reinstall this set of drivers and hope windows plays nicely. And then weird shit just happens. Sometimes like my video, my webcams just start getting wonky.

And I don’t windows like. Something got corrupted. I don’t know somewhere along the line, but that’s basically it. I do that and then I start benchmarking. I start playing games. I see how they feel. I see, I run some stress tests because 3DMark has some of those and if the system crashes, that’s like Hardaware issue, driver issue, something’s not up to snuff.

I will say these Radeon cards are the best AMD cards I’ve had for a while when it comes to stability. I’ve Had so much trouble with a MD drivers in the past a MD Hardaware in general. When I did the R nine Fury X, which was like many years ago, that was like pre covid. That thing wouldn’t even boot in my computer.

Like my computer just was just incompatible with it for no reason, even though it was running high end in video cards at the time. So a MD has come a long way and they’re definitely the underdog in this scenario because Nvidia is now this big titan. Their power, like all the AI stuff has made them one of the most valuable companies in the world.

And I think AMD deserves, you know, some of that love and they’re treating the GPU market a little better, I think. So that’s my main thing.

Cherlynn: I do want to point out to people listening and watching that like port of Indra, you had to like that workflow you just described. You had to switch over in two days, like this week, because Nvidia.

The NVIDIA 5070 review was like, what, Tuesday that it went up and then Wednesday was the next one or something like that. Wednesday was

Devindra: the two AMD cards. So I had to benchmark those two cards and have thoughts. At least we were able to combine them into one review. But, you know, that’s a lot of stuff.

And also I don’t have a test system. You were

Cherlynn: also dealing with Apple’s MacBook News and like M4 and M3 Ultra, I guess. But it was not easy. Thankfully, other people were able to write those.

Devindra: Yeah. Other people were able to write those and that helped out. But yeah, I had to talk to Apple. I have to do a lot of stuff.

It’s a busy time for all of us. Sam did all those MWC embargoes. It’s crazy out there, folks. It’s crazy. Anyway, that is the AMD and video war. Go check out our reviews and you know, and

Nathan: check out Igor wrote about why the GPU market is kind of such a mess right now in terms of there’s like systemic problems that have led to this point where it’s impossible to find these things.

They cost too much. Yeah, it’s a great piece. I think it’s really hit a chord with people who’ve read it. The timing of it couldn’t be better, right? Coming alongside these new reviews you put together. The

Devindra: title is the GP Mark is built on a broken foundation by Igor Bonaparte. And I think yeah good points. If I had time to sit and breathe and get these out there outside of all the reviews, like this, yours pretty much saying everything I’m thinking. So I love

Cherlynn: that. I mean, you agree. Yeah,

Devindra: I agree. Our recommendation for video cards for the longest time has been do not buy because the prices got crazy.

Stock is wild. Don’t pay scalper prices. You don’t. Unless you are like some sort of like massive influencer or a streamer or something, you don’t need a 1590. I see people out there convincing themselves. They need 2, 000 GPUs. And I’m like, that’s, you could get a whole ass, like really good gaming computer for 1, 500 for less.

That I’m seeing on sale like I’m such a deal hound like I cannot stomach that whole thing So the 1590s it is and it flexed by nvidia, but it’s not for anybody. It’s these mid range card It’s going to be the cheaper cards coming in that are going to be really good We review the intel arc b. What is it the 580 570 and those like those are Budget cards that are actually pretty decent too.

So to me, that’s where the market is and where it’s more interesting. You’re a

Nathan: capital D dad though. So of course you’re searching for budgets.

Devindra: I mean, I, that’s just how I roll. Like I listen I’m from an immigrant family coming to the U S like everything was so like, that is how I had one video game per year.

Growing up, like it was so hard to be surrounded by all the stuff, all of this pop culture and abundance and whatever. Anyway, that’s my mentality, but also i’m pro consumer, right? I’m consumer first and i’m not going to make excuses for nvidia and how they’re pricing these cards or how things are getting expensive Enough of that folks.

Let’s have a little fun. Let’s move on to our pop culture picks for the week date Go ahead. What do you got? All right. I have two things. One is

Nathan: The pit on max. So good is basically A sequel to ER, but it’s not, and I the

Devindra: Michael Crichton estate would do not want you to call it the ER, but I think

Nathan: that was the, yeah, that sounds like for sure.

It’s been reported that was the plane was to literally do it as if no, a while as John Carter again, which I would have been absolutely all for. But what they came up with is still also really good. And I like that they’re doing the 24 trick of doing it an hour at a time. Like every episode I watch when it’s over, I’m like, wait, it’s over.

It’s an hour of real time. So you’re there for a day every time you’re there for an eight hour

Devindra: shift. I believe that’s a

Nathan: 15. Okay. Yeah. I think it’s a 15 episode. Yes.

Devindra: Yes. You’re right. Yeah.

Nathan: But like the actors are great. The stories are compelling. It feels, it definitely feels like a little bit of a throwback.

But also with enough like modern, you know, storytelling sensibility, it doesn’t feel too like overly dramatic or soapy. Right? It’s just like a good, solid, normal TV drama. The

Devindra: mid season episode, I think it was like number 7 or 8, was like, it was one of those where a lot of things come to pass all at the same time.

It was like, devastating. That is just a devastating hour of television for Good reasons and like sad things happen. And it’s just like all over the place, but that was incredible. It sets up

Nathan: what the back half of the season will have to do. Yeah. But yeah, it’s just like enjoyable.

And then the other thing I’m keeping an eye on obviously is Last of Us season two comes out on April 13th. There’s a South by Southwest panel this weekend with the showrunners and a bunch of the actors that I’m looking forward to. And Variety also had a great. Interview with some photos from the sets and one of them is great.

It was a shot of Joel his workshop and his house in Jackson from a time when he was like, happy for a few years and relatively peaceful and it was a picture of Pedro Pascal with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. I was just thinking how cool it must be to be Neil Druckmann I made this game.

Or, you know, we, his huge team made this game and you see it on your screen and then you get to walk into it like it’s wild, like the amount of detail they’ve put into these sets and making it feel authentic is great. I’m excited about seeing the new cast members. It’s going to be so devastating for people who’ve played the second game.

I don’t know how the reactions online are gonna

Devindra: be something. It’s gonna be crazy. Shely, did you ever end up watching that first season?

Cherlynn: I finished Last of Us. I loved it. Yeah. Okay. But you don’t know what happened in the last of us

Devindra: too. Game. Avoid spoilers. I cannot remember it. Okay. Avoid spoilers because they’re, I will the entire plot it that has been out there, so it’s gonna be interesting to see if they do like original episodes or like dive into search.

They are characters from that game. That I’m more variety. They

Nathan: mentioned that they’re working on an episode that’s similar to the Bill and Frank episode from season one, where it takes a character who you don’t meet and it’s just mentioned off screen and you get, I don’t know, I’m already starting to see how it can fill in.

I will, I won’t say who it is for spoilers and people who are going

Devindra: fresh, but the characters in the it’s after he goes through the skyscraper thing, but the characters who are like the bow and arrow folks, like it was the Sarah fights, like they’ll be in the, they may have some good backstory.

Like I would love to spend some time there.

Nathan: I think it might come next season, just based on like how they’re going to, I actually guess I have no idea how they’re going to plot this thing out. Oh yeah, it’s going to be two seasons,

Devindra: right? For Last of Us 2? Yep,

Nathan: for sure.

Devindra: Oh boy. Okay.

Nathan: All right. So we’re entering the hype cycle for this.

I’m really interested in seeing what the what the panel’s like on Sunday afternoon.

Devindra: Awesome. Well, Nate, I know you have a hard out, so let’s wrap you and then we will continue with the rest of this. All right. So where can people find you online, Nate?

Nathan: Yeah, I am occasionally online on threads and blue sky at Nate Ingraham.

And then obviously you can find all my

Devindra: stuff on Engadget. Check out Nate’s iPad reviews. Like I’m sure things will be coming up and yeah, feel free to shout at him about how you feel about iPads on socials. Yes.

Nathan: Yell at me about iPads. I love it. All right. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Nate.

Thanks everyone. What do you got, Shirlen?

Cherlynn: Okay, I’ve been excited all week to share my pick this week. Kind of wish Nate was here for it, but I’ll just tell him directly afterwards. So I, I was watching this show on Netflix and it’s got me gripped. I’ve been like rewatching it again cause I’m like, Whoa, I really love the world they built.

Kind of, kind of, it’s bodies on Netflix. Have you heard of it?

Devindra: I’ve heard of it. Yeah. It’s based on a,

Cherlynn: you’ve seen it. Okay, good. It’s based on this graphic novel loosely of the same name by Cy Spencer, I believe. I don’t know if it’s, I look at that name and I go C cause it’s S I. I’m like C.

But it’s, I think Cy, like short for Simon, maybe. And it’s about time travel. It’s about you’re

Devindra: talking about the show. I watched this entire show and my memory of it is just because it’s such a Netflix show, but I love it. I loved

Cherlynn: it. I’ve, okay. So what happens is basically, I think we start in more modern times, 2023, and a naked corpse appears in an alleyway, just out of nowhere.

It just appears. And what happens is we find out the same corpse appears across. four total different time zones, the time eras. So in 1890, in 1941, and then in 2053 as well. So there’s all of the usual time travel tropes of you know, lubes and Conflicts and whatever but like this. I don’t know.

I just really enjoyed this story I don’t know why I think it deals with a lot of very interesting themes as well There’s some hint at like racial sort of conflict in the 2023 timeline then there’s some hint at like homosexuality being a scene in the 1890 timeline and then there’s like World War two in the 1941 timeline 2053 is just And then the combination of a whole bunch of different things.

Devindra: I was, I remember, the one thing I remember about this show is that, Oh man, you had no money for 2053. You had, you have really crummy, like you have Sort of future looking cars, but you’re just, It’s just like neighborhoods in London, man. Like you’re not doing anything. They ran out of budget for the CGI.

They have no money to make it look like the future. It’s kind of hilarious. Yeah.

Cherlynn: I really enjoyed it. I mean, so, so I’ve been seeing. watching some other stuff. I’m trying to not give all of my recommendations away at once, just in case I run out of things to recommend eventually. But this one was really gripping.

It’s a limited series. There’s only one season so far. And I really enjoy it. Of course, I’ve been catching up on White Lotus and Severance as well. I almost said White Severance. I would love, I

Devindra: mean. I would actually love to know, do you have initial thoughts on White Lotus this season? Because I’m like, I’m tired.

I’m a little tired of the the drama of what White Lotus does. But it’s more, it’s set in, you know, Southeast Asia now. So

Cherlynn: a little closer for you. It’s set in Thailand and obviously like it resonates a bit more. With me than the previous seasons have just because of the setting but then in another way there’s like different sets of people always in every season of white lotus this season We’ve got a trio of girlfriends in their like I want to say 40s I’m, not sure but like they’re later in life than a an average 20 something year old, right?

This one has michelle monaghan money I don’t know how to pronounce her last name. Monahan. Leslie Bibb, I believe is also one of the people in this little scenario. And they’re just three friends who like backstab each other whenever they can, but then they also are very nice to each other in front of each other.

So it’s like a really interesting study of that dynamic. I really like it because it’s. So it’s actually super realistic. I can’t, I have to ask Mike Wyatt for understanding this dynamic so well. There’s this family.

Devindra: Friends and she is one of the greatest living actresses right now. So I hope this shows her more.

Cherlynn: I hope it does for her. What like this show has done for Jennifer.

Devindra: I mean, she’s she has been a big. Actors for a while. She’s been doing a lot of stuff. I feel this show is actually a step down for Carrie Coon, to be honest.

Cherlynn: But anyway I another group that this season of white lotus looks at is this family.

With parker posey as the mom Three kids patrick schrodinger is one of them I can’t remember all the actor names right now But I know the dad’s played by the same actor that played lucius malfoy in the harry potter series and I think what people are talking about in the subreddits is how realistic or not this portrayal of a family from North Carolina is.

It is a rich,

Devindra: white family from North Carolina. Let me tell ya, down here in Georgia, I am surrounded by a lot of those folks. That does feel real. That does feel real. I

Cherlynn: keep, it feels very accurate, especially from my only person I know that’s from North Carolina, which is our Billy Steele. And he, I’ve been asking him to watch it.

He hasn’t seen it yet, but he does. He reminded me that he really wanted to watch it because his favorite, one of his favorite actors is in it. Walter Goggins.

Devindra: Walton

Cherlynn: Goggins. Walton Goggins might be is also in this and just. does his usual thing of playing these characters extremely well because I viscerally react whenever he’s on screen.

Well, he’s

Devindra: as an actor. He’s great because he can be silly. If you watch The Righteous Gemstones, like he can be silly as hell, like in a comedy, he can also be. Like what we know him mainly for is being kind of a scoundrel, kind of a badass guy at times to you especially from the shield.

But yeah, so you’re liking this, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: I am enjoying it. Lucky Dog Podcast adds that as someone from NC, it’s too relatable. So yeah, so, so basically I like it. It feels very real. It feels very relatable because these vignettes of people we’re seeing seem really realistic. So that’s what I’m really enjoying so far.

There’s some mystery some connection to the previous season. I’ll

Devindra: So I, I like Mike White a lot. I’ve loved his movies. He’s done TV shows before too, as a creator. I think he’s a really empathetic guy and he’s really smart about relationships and stuff. White Lotus season one and two. Really good stuff.

This one. I’m just getting really tired of the shtick because a lot of the shtick is basically White people problems man. Yeah, like that’s kind of what I’m like, man we could do more we could do more. I understand. He’s writing what he knows and everything So I would love for this show to get A better, like a bigger writing crew and more people involved to like

Cherlynn: a bit more diversity in it.

Devindra: We’ll just have like different perspectives. That’s all like I

Cherlynn: diversity. The whole

Devindra: thing about White Lotus is what is it like for white people to come in basically into these exotic environments? And the second one was in Italy, right? Or Sicily, I think. So like it was, yeah, it was like a very specific thing to where it’s still people coming in being outsiders in this environment.

And if you just feel like they’re saying the same things over again. But I hope I like these actors. I hope Walton Goggins gets his chance to shine. And I love that he kind of messes around with the HBO slash max formula of well, we’ve got to start this show with a murder or something to like really keep people hooked.

And HBO was doing that for a while, for years. So that’s cool. Glad you’re digging it, Cherlynn.

Cherlynn: What’s yours? What’s your tip for or recommendation for everyone?

Devindra: My tip. And actually I think it’s, yeah, it starts somebody who was in bodies. It’s star Steven Graham, who played Mannix in bodies.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Devindra: Now take that guy, the older Mannix, I think, but take that guy and imagine if he was buff as hell. Had rippling biceps. Like no way. Yes. Go look at the trailer for a thousand blows, which is the new show on Hulu right now. That guy is so

Cherlynn: out of shape in body. Well, he’s

Devindra: big, right? He’s just a big dude.

But in this show, I didn’t mean to body

Cherlynn: shame anybody.

Devindra: In this one, he’s well, also, you know, he’s one of those guys is he’s post 50 now, like your chance to do like big action. Rules. Now’s your chance. Like your body can take some of it. Now, once you hit 60, it gets much tougher. This is a new show from the guy who did Peaky Blinders.

It is a period piece. It a really cool period too, because it’s set in I don’t know if it’s like technically Victorian London, but it follows, it’s essentially about. Several different characters. One character is a Jamaican immigrant who’s new to the country and thinks he’s going to go work at a zombie lion tamer doesn’t really work out that way.

Other characters who are in the underground, including a woman played by, I think Aaron Doherty, who was in the crown and she is like the head of this group of lady thieves. That’s super cool. And Steven Graham plays this guy. Who’s basically the head of a boxing ring, the head of this, I don’t know, like criminal underworld thing too.

And it’s cool. It’s fun. Like it’s all those characters coming in. It is the character, you know, the perspective of an immigrant trying to survive in London in a not very welcoming time for them, but also women fighting for their own to make money and have their own place in a society that doesn’t want them there.

And Steven Graham, like it’s really just about Steven Graham being buff as hell. In a boxing ring, and you don’t believe me, Shillen, go look at the trailer for this thing. I linked it in our show notes.

Cherlynn: I will. It is

Devindra: Wild 2C. I think he’s also been one of my favorite actors for a while. He’s been a character actor.

He was really

Cherlynn: good in bodies. He was good in bodies.

Devindra: He’s been a lot of, in a lot of Guy Ritchie stuff. I think originally Snatch and his, or Lockstock too, maybe. I’ve always loved him. This show’s a lot of fun. People in chat

Cherlynn: love him too. If

Devindra: you like Peaky Blinders, and you will not believe. The idea of Stephen Graham as Superbuff as a boxer man if you do not think that sounds real, go just go look, go watch A Thousand Blows.

It’s on Hulu right now.

Cherlynn: Well, that’s it for the episode this week, everyone. Thank you, as always, for listening. Our theme music is by game composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O’Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find Davindra online at

Devindra: at Davindra on Blue Sky and Masked Dawn, a podcast about movies and TV at the Filmcast.

Cherlynn: If you want to tell me how you would use an iPad mini that folds, you can tell me on, I guess, threads at Cherlynn T H E R A M or bluesky, Cherlynn at dot b sky dot social. Email us your thoughts at podcast at engadget. com. Leave us a review wherever you’re listening or consuming this podcast and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.