Google spent much of the past year hustling to build its Gemini chatbot to counter ChatGPT, pitching it as a multifunctional AI assistant that can help with work tasks or the digital chores of personal life. More quietly, the company has been working to enhance a more specialized artificial intelligence tool that is already a…
The best baby gates should also be easy to install and easy for adults to open. We also looked for baby gates that aren’t likely to be kept open accidentally. They also stay put even as a child pushes or pulls on them. “Those will stand up best to inquisitive children,” says Bernie Deitrick, who…
More screen real estate can make you more productive as well. “When I want to sit and do my bills, I use my desktop,” says Richard Fisco, who oversees electronics testing at Consumer Reports. “I don’t have to—I have a laptop sitting at my kitchen table—but my wife and I will go through a big…
Indiegogo-backed Ceretone is yet another hearing aid company aimed at people looking for a low-cost, low-complexity way to give their hearing a boost. At $349 for a pair—or $229 for a single ear’s aid—the tiny hearing aids are designed to have only a modest impact on hearing. Fortunately, they also make an equally modest impact…
But psychedelic compounds are tricky to test in this way because their psychedelic effects are so recognizable to those who take them. In the Lykos trials, around 90 percent of the participants were able to correctly guess whether they received MDMA or a placebo, effectively “unblinding” the study. If participants knew they received MDMA, they…
All solar outdoor lights draw power from the sun during daylight hours and store that power in a battery, or batteries, housed inside the lights. When the sun sets, the lights use that stored power to produce light. Some models come on automatically at dusk, and some can or must be turned on manually. Unlike…
The French press is a humble piece of coffee-making equipment. It doesn’t require electricity, yet experts agree that it can brew a richer and more full-bodied cup of joe in comparison to its more technologically advanced peers. For example, natural oils that would otherwise be filtered out in a drip coffee maker remain fully intact,…
Main theme: In this podcast episode, we share our first impressions of one of the most popular models on ConsumerReports.org, the Subaru Forester. This small SUV has been redesigned for 2025, and we just purchased a Premium model for our test program. Now in its sixth generation, the new Forester gets updated styling, highlighted by…
To find out, our experts blind-tasted seven store-brand vanilla ice creams as well as two famous brand-name ones: Breyers and Häagen-Dazs. Some of the ice creams we tested are billed as “premium,” like the Häagen-Dazs, Aldi, and Trader Joe’s products shown below. This means they usually contain less air and have a richer, denser texture…
Silicon Valley tech types love their edgy new social media startups. The latest is Airchat, an audio-first social app that lets its users express their every thought by posting short snippets of audio. All of these snippets are served in a never-ending feed, a la Twitter. There are replies, there are DMs, but there’s no…
