You can get a great device for less than $500 these days if you know how to pick your priorities. | Image: The Verge You can’t have absolutely everything at this price, but you can get a great smartphone. Whether you want an iPhone, a 120Hz screen, or water resistance, you’ve got options. You can’t set foot in a wireless retail store without being bombarded by “free phone” offers. And while there’s certainly nothing wrong with taking a free phone deal, there are almost always lots of strings attached. Paying out of pocket means you’ll have much more freedom, but the sky-high prices on flagship phones mean that’s not an option for everyone. Budget phones to the rescue. These devices…

Photo illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Between the Apple Watch Series 8, the Ultra, and the second-gen SE, there are more options than ever. We’ll help you sort through them. It used to be easy to pick an Apple Watch. All you had to do was choose whether you wanted the larger model or the smaller one. Then the Series 3 introduced cellular connectivity, which adds another choice. And then, in 2020, Apple introduced the more affordable Apple Watch SE. Last year, Apple premiered the rugged Apple Watch Ultra alongside the Series 8 and a second-generation SE. So, if you’re looking to buy an Apple Watch right now, what do you do? Not to worry. I’ve tested every…

AMD announced a new chip for thin-and-light notebooks that it specifically claims beats Apple's year-old M2. Did the company cherry-pick results and hide the compromises, or is this a genuine triumph?A couple of months ago, Intel came out with a "notebook" processor — the Intel Core i9 13980HX — that it claimed with a healthy dose of deception it could beat Apple's M2 Max, currently Apple's fastest processor. While the specific claims of benchmark triumphs in certain areas were technically true, those advances came with truckload of caveats.In the case of the Intel chip, it completely lost all of its speed advantage the moment it went on battery, and drained the battery like a starving vampire at a blood bank…

Apple has a problem that most of us would love: It has too much cash. For AAPL investors, that means massive buybacks and healthy dividends for years to come. Apple’s operating cash flow totaled $28.6 billion in its latest fiscal second quarter (ended April 1, 2023) during which the company spent $19.1 billion buying back 129 million AAPL shares and paid out $3.7 billion in dividends to investors. Sandy Ward for Morningstar: On the one hand, it’s good to be cash-rich because it gives a company plenty of flexibility to manage its businesses in the best of times by investing in innovation and staying competitive… On the other hand, having an ever-growing pile of cash on a company’s balance sheet,…

AMD announced a new chip for thin-and-light notebooks that it specifically claims beats Apple's year-old M2. Did the company cherry-pick results and hide the compromises, or is this a genuine triumph?A couple of months ago, Intel came out with a "notebook" processor — the Intel Core i9 13980HX — that it claimed a healthy dose of deception and acould beat Apple's M2 Max, currently Apple's fastest processor. While the specific claims of benchmark triumphs in certain areas were technically true, those advances came with truckload of caveats.In the case of the Intel chip, it completely lost all of its speed advantage the moment it went on battery, and drained the battery like a starving vampire at a blood bank —…

AMD announced a new chip for thin-and-light notebooks that it specifically claims beats Apple's year-old M2. Did the company cherry-pick results and hide the compromises, or is this a genuine triumph?A couple of months ago, Intel came out with a "notebook" processor — the Intel Core i9 13980HX — that it claimed with a healthy dose of deception it could beat Apple's M2 Max, currently Apple's fastest processor. While the specific claims of benchmark triumphs in certain areas were technically true, those advances came with truckload of caveats.In the case of the Intel chip, it completely lost all of its speed advantage the moment it went on battery, and drained the battery like a starving vampire at a blood bank…