March Madness is over. No, not college basketball. I’m talking, of course Apple’s own March titled The $600 MacBook Neo. The cheap and colorful laptop was easily the center of attention this month.
The rest of Apple’s March releases were mostly niche knockoffs, but they all — M5 MacBook Air, M5 Max MacBook Pro, Studio Display XDR, M4 iPad Air, AirPods Max 2and iPhone 17e— earned high marks in our reviews. Haters will call us Apple fanboys, but these are the second, fourth, and fifth generations of previous products, so it’s no surprise that they’re more polished than before.
It wasn’t all Apple releases though. There were many notable gadget launches from other brands. Sonos is back with two new speakers – the play wirelessly and wired It was 100 SL. Nothing literally skipped the flagship to focus on the bright midrange Phone 4a and Phone 4a Pro. We were among the first to review the new Ikea Varmblixt donut lamp that now changes colors. We also have to confuse everyone in the office with things that are admirably annoying Nintendo Talking Flower.
It’s a bit bananas to think that the first quarter of the year is already behind us. We honestly just pray RAM apocalypse does not deteriorate and causes the prices of gadgets to increase. But even with such a large company, it is difficult to be optimistic Sony is forced to increase the price of PS5 Pro for the second time in less than a year.
The MacBook Neo It can start at $600 ($500 with an education discount), but the 13-inch laptop is cheap or lackluster in quality. It’s everything that makes a MacBook a MacBook. It’s sturdy thanks to its unibody aluminum construction, the keyboard and trackpad are great, and the Retina display is sharp. Sure, it comes with perks like two USB-C ports (no MagSafe for charging), keyboard backlighting, and just 8GB of internal storage, but at $600, it’s hard to really complain about them. More than anything, the A18 Pro chip proves to be quite capable. The MacBook Neo is bigger than a Chromebook or a mid-range Windows 11 laptop. Plus, it comes in lots of fun, eye-catching colors.
Check out the MacBook Neo on Amazon
It starts with Sonos’ hardware comeback Play the wireless speaker– and that’s great. It’s smaller and cheaper Movement 2The Play speaker is proof that Sonos still knows how to make great hardware. No gimmicks here, just a great-sounding portable speaker with solid battery life (up to 24 hours) and easy pairing with other Sonos speakers for extended sound. Diehard Sonos fans can still find things to nitpill The Sonos apphowever, the company’s CEO, Tom Conrad, has repeatedly emphasized the need to rebuild the software experience until it becomes exceptional. So far so good.
Check out Sonos Play on Amazon
The viral Ikea Varmblixt donut lamp is back in LED form with two things that make it even more versatile: adjustable lighting colors and smart home compatibility (Substance and Thread). Compared to the original, caramel and glossy donut bulb, this new 12-inch version is white and matte. Our smart home reviewer, Wes Davis, found it a bit dim, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker, especially if you plan to use it as an accent light. The best part? The new Heat flash it costs the same $100 as the non-smart version. How is this possible? Don’t ask questions!
In March, nothing released two mid-range phones: Phone 4a and Phone 4a Pro. The former sticks to the tech startup’s transparent and industrial aesthetic and swaps out the Glyph Interface lights for the Glyph Bar, while the latter goes for a new metal body and transparent camera bump that matches its premium. Headset 1 and Ear 3 wireless headphones. as Phone 3The Phone 4a Pro has a circular Glyph Matrix display, albeit with larger and less square LEDs. Still, the basic principle of Glyph Matrix is the same: to display custom notifications. It’s not a flagship phone, but its stunning design earns it a spot on this month’s best gadgets list.
There’s a good reason open-ear wireless headphones are becoming increasingly popular: they don’t clog your ears and still allow you to hear your surroundings. Asus’s ROG Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Headset it is the first of its kind designed specifically for gaming. Do they pass the sniff test? According to Gizmodo’s own James Perot, they definitely do. They sound good, the mic quality is solid, and they come with a 2.4GHz USB-C dongle for low-latency audio transfer, which is something you want when you’re gaming. If the headset is too big and conventional wireless gaming headsets are too stuffy, these outdoor wireless headsets might be just the right pair.
Nintendo’s Talking Flower It is a very simple gadget. It screams the time at the clock and every 30 minutes it randomly pulls something from a library of pre-programmed phrases. It has no sensors or microphones and doesn’t connect to the internet, so it doesn’t listen to you, meaning your privacy is safe. Could it be annoying AF? Absolutely! One of our staff reporters is having “quiet time” in the office to avoid over-indulgence. But come on, for $35 it’s a little joy that doesn’t try to sell you on anything other than being cute and fun. Thank goodness it doesn’t try to include any AI features.
We didn’t have it AirPods Max 2 on our March bingo card. Five years after the original pair of wireless earbuds took over the heads of millions of teenagers worldwide, Apple’s second-generation version offers enough improvements to make the boxes worth considering. Apple threw in the H2 chip first AirPods Pro 2and with it comes 1.5x better active noise cancellation and new features like Adaptive Audio, Conversation awareness and Live Translation (to name a few). The downside is that they look and feel exactly the same previous AirPods Max modelsto heavy weight and same color options. Oh, and they still cost $550, which is on the more expensive end of the wireless ANC headphone spectrum.
Check out AirPods Max 2 on Amazon
compared to Insta360’s Antigravity A1 360 droneDJIs Open 360 cheaper: about $530 versus $1,600. Both drones have dual fisheye lenses on the top and bottom to capture 360, spherical videos while zooming around in the sky. The 360 drone can shoot 8K images at 60 frames per second. We haven’t tried DJI’s 360 drone for ourselves, but we want to. Whether we’ll get that chance is TBD, as the US government has effectively banned DJI products from being sold, at least directly from the company.
On the opposite side of the MacBook Neo MacBook Pro with M5 Max chip. Available in 14- and 16-inch screen sizes, the designs are unchanged from the last four generations of MacBook Pros since the M1 Pro/M1 Max redesign. But that’s their beauty: they’re the most powerful laptops Apple has ever made, and they’re fully differentiated, offering GPU performance that rivals larger gaming laptops with discrete Nvidia GPUs. If you’re knee-deep in the world of artificial intelligence and agent computing, the M5 Max MacBook Pros have all the capabilities you need and then some. Be prepared to pay through the nose just to tick all the configuration boxes.
Check out the M5 Max MacBook Pro at Amazon
Smart locks are a dime a dozen. If all you want is something that doesn’t look “smart” and looks classy and works well, this is it Level Lock Pro may be what you are looking for. In his review, Wes found Lock Pro to be responsive, work well with the Apple Home Key, and very easy to set up. Look elsewhere for more bells and whistles. But it does the job for simplicity.
Check out Level Lock Pro on Amazon
The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM Gen 3 (oof) is a giant, gamer-y gaming monitor designed for gamers. That’s all I got. In all seriousness, this large 32-inch monitor promises superior black levels compared to conventional OLED monitors, thanks to its “BlackShield” screen film. Our reporter Kyle Barr found its reflective film to be impressive and the image quality to be high, but you have to accept the gaming aesthetic as this thing is heavy on the gaming glare, as evidenced by the projected ROG logo.
View ASUS ROG Swift 32” Monitor at Amazon
Different Google Pixel 10awas completely phoned in (no pun intended) for its horrendous recycling of last year’s product. Pixel 9a partsthe iPhone 17e addresses almost every complaint about iPhone 16e. For the same $600, Apple doubled the base memory to 256 GB, introduced the A19 chip. iPhone 17It accelerated the speed of 5G with the C1X chip and increased the scratch resistance of the screen with Ceramic Shield 2. The biggest addition, of course, is MagSafe support — for charging and accessories. Everyone has been complaining about the lack of MagSafe on the iPhone 16e, and now it’s crickets.
