Virtual Reality

Season 2 of The Mandalorian kept rolling Friday with episode 7 of the Disney Pluslive-action Star Wars show. After the Imperial Remnant recaptured Grogu, Mando (Pedro Pascal) knew he’d need help from a former Imperial to track down Moff Gideon’s cruiser so they could rescue the little guy.

With backup from New Republic marshal Cara Dune (Gina Carano), bounty hunter Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and assassin Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), they go to spring one-time Imperial sharpshooter Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) out of prison. He’s serving a 50-year sentence after he betrayed Mando and ended up trapped on a New Republic prison ship.

Chapter 15, titled The Believer, was directed and written by Rick Famuyiwa (who directed two episodes of season 1, including the one Mayfeld appeared in). 

Be warned, SPOILERS are about to break out. This show is set around five years after Return of the Jedi.

A pretty chill prison breakout

When Mando mentioned getting Mayfeld out of prison, we all assumed this whole episode would be one big breakout operation, right? I know I did. Turns out it’s a whole lot simpler than that — Cara just uses her authority as a New Republic official to take him out of there.

Maybe she had to fill out a bunch of boring paperwork too, but we don’t see that. Maybe that’s what the upcoming Rangers of the New Republic spinoff will be all about? Boring bureaucracy?

It turns out that Mayfeld has to get the location of Gideon’s cruiser from an Imperial terminal, and suggests they use the one at the Imperial refinery on Morak (it’s secret, but Mayfeld knows secrets).

Armor swap

To get into the refinery, Mayfeld and Mando have to swipe an armored vehicle transporting unstable rydonium, and Mando has to swap his sweet beskar armor for an icky trooper’s outfit. Mayfeld points out that Mando is clearly bending his “no taking off his helmet” rule (which he’ll later break completely), and they have to very carefully drive the rydonium to the facility. 

This part of the episode feels like a Grand Theft Auto transport mission, with a gauge warning them to slow down if the rydonium gets too shaken up and with the pirates trying to blow them up. Mando has to defend them from the pirate goons, and cheapy Imperial armor doesn’t hold like his beskar, but he’s such a badass that he manages to hold off long enough.

Just as they’re about to be overwhelmed, TIE fighters and stormtroopers swoop in to save the day. It’s pretty weird to be relieved at the sign of Imperials, and even stranger when they applaud the disguised Mayfeld and Mando for completing their mission. Especially since our heroes are about to kill a whole bunch of them.

Facetime with Mando

To access the Imperial terminal, Mando has to remove his helmet, giving us our second ever look at his handsome Pedro Pascal face. This is a huge moment for him: He previously mentioned that no living person has seen him without his helmet since he swore the creed — now Mayfeld and a bunch of (soon to be dead) Imperials have seen him.

However, Mando is probably beginning to doubt that rule, since fellow Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze revealed that he’s part of a group of religious Mandalorian zealots, and she and her team were fine with taking off their helmets. Pascal is pretty excellent here too, with his portrayal giving us the right mix of discomfort and hesitancy. 

Mayfeld nicknames him “Brown Eyes” upon seeing his face, in a nice callback to his request that Mando take off his helmet so they could see his eyes (back in season 1).

Operation Cinder

We learn that Mayfeld was traumatized by his role in Operation Cinder, a nasty Imperial attack carried out in the aftermath of Emperor Palpatine’s “death” in Return of the Jedi. He left orders that satellites orbiting various Imperial planets cause electrical storms and other wild weather events to wreck those worlds — like immediate, catastrophic climate change.

The reasoning was that the Empire and its enemies couldn’t be allowed to outlive Palpatine, the big ol’ narcissist.The real objective was to sow chaos and disrupt the formation of a replacement government, in addition to radicalizing the remaining Imperials before they were reformed into the First Order (paving the way for Palpatine’s return). Much of this event took place in Battlefront 2’s excellent story mode and Marvel’s Shattered Empire comics.

Greasy Imperial officer Valin Hess (Richard Brake, whom you might remember shooting Bruce Wayne’s parents in Batman Begins) was Mayfeld’s commanding officer during Operation Cinder, and was seemingly in full support of the atrocities on the planet Burnin Konn — which left Mayfeld’s squad and thousands of civilians dead.

“You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order,” says an unbearably smug Hess. “And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms.”

Mayfeld wasn’t about that — presumably Cinder was the reason he left the Empire — nor did he want to see the Imperials use the rydonium to continue the chaos, so he shoots Hess dead in the middle of the mess hall. Nice work. He and Mando have the location of Gideon’s cruiser at that point, so all is well once they escape to the roof (where Boba picks them up in Slave I).

Attack of the Clone

Boba mostly provides backup in this episode, but looks absolutely badass in his repainted armor. It’s the cleanest we’ve ever seen the paintwork, and it’s fitting much better than it did in the last episode.

Upon rescuing Mando and Mayfeld, he uses Slave I’s seismic charges to blow up some pursuing TIE fighters. These charges make one of the coolest sounds in Star Wars — you might remember Boba’s father Jango trying to blow up Obi-Wan Kenobi with them in Attack of the Clones. 

Back on Gideon’s trail

Mayfeld also blows up the Imperial facility by shooting the rydonium, cementing his character development. This clearly resonates with Cara, who decides to let him skip away to freedom instead going back to New Republic incarceration. 

With the coordinates for Gideon’s cruiser, Mando decides to send the Imperial (Giancarlo Esposito) an epic warning message that mirrors Gideon’s threat from his first appearance.

“Moff Gideon. You have something I want. You may think you have some idea what you are in possession of, but you do not. Soon, he will be back with me. He means more to me than you will ever know,” Mando says via holo.

Baby Yoda cuteness

None at all. This is the first episode of the show without so much as a glimpse of Grogu, who’s presumably still in a cell on Gideon’s ship. It’s a little weird not to see the little guy, but we’ll presumably see a whole lot of him in next week’s season 2 finale.

Easter eggs and observations

• Mayfeld’s incarceration sees him breaking down old TIE fighters and Imperial tech for the New Republic. It’s cool to see that prisoners’ hard labor consists of sweeping away the old regime. 
• It’s a little odd that Mayfeld doesn’t recognize Boba, given his infamy as a bounty hunter and work with the Empire. I guess it’s a big galaxy.
• Where are Mayfeld’s allies? The Twi’lek Xi-an and the Devaronian Burg were left in the same New Republic cell he was, though they were presumably imprisoned elsewhere after getting caught. Hopefully we’ll see them again sometime.
• Mayfeld implies that Mandalore was destroyed like Alderaan, but that isn’t the case as far as we know. Alderaan was literally blown up by the Death Star, while the people of Mandalore were nearly wiped out by the Empire in the Great Purge. But the planet still exists, and we’ll probably go there in this show (maybe in season 3).

Join us for more Easter eggs and observations next Friday, after the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian season 2 hits Disney Plus.

A long-awaited rocket-powered flight over the southern New Mexico desert on Saturday was much shorter than Virgin Galactic and its founder, Richard Branson, had hoped for.

The company’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft took off from the Spaceport America spaceport at 7:24 a.m. PT (8:24 a.m. MT), carrying the passenger spacecraft SpaceShipTwo Unity. The pair then spent about 45 minutes climbing to release altitude at more than 40,000 feet (12,192 meters).

About 50 minutes after takeoff, a livestream from NASASpaceflight.com appeared to show Unity separating and its rocket engine firing for just about a second before shutting down early.

“After being released from its mothership, SpaceShipTwo Unity’s onboard computer that monitors the rocket motor lost connection,” the company reported later on Twitter. “As designed, this triggered a fail-safe scenario that intentionally halted ignition of the rocket motor.” 

After being released from its mothership, SpaceShipTwo Unity’s onboard computer that monitors the rocket motor lost connection. As designed, this triggered a fail-safe scenario that intentionally halted ignition of the rocket motor.

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) December 12, 2020

Unity glided back for a landing at Spaceport America, and the company confirmed that all pilots and vehicles are safe and secure.

“As we do with every test flight, we are evaluating all the data, including the root cause assessment of the computer communication loss,” the company added. “We look forward to sharing information on our next flight window in the near future.”

After years of development and delays due to a fatal accident and now the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s hope to send Branson and then paying customers to space by 2020 had already been dashed even before this aborted test flight.

Virgin has completed powered test flights from California. But it aims to perform two test flights from its commercial home base in New Mexico before Branson finally gets to take the joyride he’s been waiting (and paying) for since the company’s founding in 2004.

Saturday’s flight was also carrying some small payloads for NASA. It’s not yet clear when the company will try again.

This is a happening time of year for video games. It’s the holiday shopping season, which means lots of gift-giving involving consoles, games and accessories — including, if you can snag one, the big next-gen systems: the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S.

As for games, a hot new arrival is Cyberpunk 2077, an epic adventure seven years in the making. Our Dan Van Boom says it “delivers a playground so expansive you could play until actual 2077 and still probably not see everything” — and he offers a list of 9 things he wished he knew before he started in. Meanwhile, Scott Stein considers the new VR version of the classic game Myst; playing on the Oculus Quest 2, he says, “makes Myst feel more like a living world.”

And Jackson Ryan has done a deep, deep dive into how much energy you’ll burn for every hour you play, and what that means for climate change. Hint: “Sony and Microsoft have built the most energy-intensive game consoles to date.”

Those are among the in-depth features and thought-provoking commentaries that appeared on Bioreports this week. So here you go, these are the stories you don’t want to miss:

Xbox Series X, PS5 and the climate crisis: The carbon cost of next-gen

Sony’s and Microsoft’s monolithic new consoles are designed to power a decade of play — but are they sustainable?

Cyberpunk 2077: An enormous game that lives up to enormous hype

Commentary: After more than seven years of anticipation, Cyberpunk 2077 launches Thursday. It’s everything fans hoped it would be.

Japan’s asteroid sample returns home, poised to reveal solar system’s secrets

Hayabusa2 delivers ancient samples to Earth, ending a historic, six-year mission to asteroid Ryugu.

Facebook chased lie after lie after lie in 2020

The pandemic, US elections and outrage over racial injustice created a perfect storm for social media misinformation.

Google’s 2020: Search giant clashes with DC over antitrust, misinformation

After feuding with its employees, Google is now crossing swords with lawmakers and regulators.

Myst has arrived in VR, and it’s a perfect fit

The classic game comes to Oculus Quest, and it’s great. But I really want a new sequel.

AirPods Max hands-on: Apple’s $549 headphones raise the noise-canceling bar

They cost a small fortune, but so far, we’re impressed.

How World of Warcraft keeps its story straight

A “signature story” across games, books and comics. A team of in-house historians. A corkboard and lots of string. Herein lies a tale of lore and order.

Facial recognition’s fate could be decided in 2021

A number of lawsuits and legislative measures mean the debate over the use of facial recognition is poised to ramp up. 

Apple’s latest smart speaker, the HomePod Mini, has a $100 price to match the flagship models from Google and Amazon. The Google Nest Audio and the fourth-gen Amazon Echo also hit stores within the past couple of months and all three have improved sound quality to go along with the voice activated help you’d expect from a smart speaker. 

Obviously, then, the HomePod Mini feels ripe for comparison with those two models, but beyond the price, its size and sound quality are more in line with the entry-level models from those companies. We tested the HomePod Mini’s sound quality against the Nest Audio and the Amazon Echo to see if it could outclass its size. The test didn’t go well for Apple’s smaller smart speaker, so price aside, it’s an entry-level model.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The other entry-level smart speakers — the Nest Mini and the Echo Dot — are two of our favorite smart speakers. They offer the same smarts as their bigger siblings for less and are great entry points into the smart home. The HomePod Mini does a better job of keeping up with this competition, and all three models are competent and could be the best one for you depending on your preferences. 

As one of the final major events of 2020, the sun will go dark. Fortunately, this is expected to be only temporary and due to the lone total solar eclipse of the year.

Unlike the major eclipse that was at least partially visible for many Americans in 2017, the 2020 eclipse on Dec .14 will only be visible in totality from the southern end of South America and parts of the Atlantic and Pacific. Though it will be possible to watch from anywhere via livestream. 

Although a total solar eclipse only lasts a few minutes, the rare phenomenon has a long history of eliciting all sorts of odd reactions from the beings it briefly blankets with daytime darkness.

The Vikings made loud noises to scare off Skoll and Hati, the two wolves of Norse mythology who chased the sun and moon and occasionally caught them, causing an eclipse. Centuries later, a woman anxiety-ridden over the doomsaying associated with a 1748 solar eclipse “locked herself up in a room and cut her arm in such a manner that she bled to death,” according to the London Evening Post at the time.

Some of the strangest responses came in previous centuries when understanding of what causes these stellar abductions was less widespread. But we enlightened, modern folk are not immune.

In her 1982 essay Total Eclipse, Annie Dillard recalls hearing screams of terror and/or elation at the sight of a solar eclipse that swept across Washington state in 1979. 

Steve Ruskin, a historian of astronomy and author of America’s First Great Eclipse, discovered a commonality too. 

“What I find most amazing, having studied eclipses throughout history, is that no matter the time period or the scientific knowledge (or lack thereof), human responses to an eclipse are consistently, universally, expressions of awe and wonder, and even fear and terror,” Ruskin told me. 

He says Norse wolves weren’t the only creatures, according to ancient myth and legend, causing eclipses by devouring the sun. The Maya, who learned to predict eclipses, sometimes depicted them as a giant snake. The Inca seemed to believe a jaguar swallowed the moon to cause a lunar eclipse. 

“One rather unique and largely unknown response to an eclipse is found in an 1886 account of Australian aborigines,” Ruskin says. They “reportedly believed that the eclipse was caused by another tribe up on the moon itself, a people who were sick and angry, and were taking their ‘bad frame of mind’ out on the Australian aborigines below.”

Royal concerns

Ancient Babylonians had an understanding of mathematics advanced enough to predict eclipses, but still saw them as bad omens for their royalty. They often put a commoner on the throne during an eclipse so that if some actual dark doings befell the king they would fall upon the fake king instead. After the eclipse, the regal stand-in was rewarded for his service by being killed, just to be sure any bad eclipse cooties died along with him.

Court astronomers in ancient China met a similar fate when they failed to predict an eclipse, allegedly because they were drunk. The 4,000-year-old anecdote later inspired a poem that has been passed down for centuries:

“Here lie the bodies of Ho and Hi, Whose fate though sad was visible, Being hanged because they could not spy Th’eclipse which was invisible.”

Arguably the most famous solar eclipse was the one that coincided with the death of England’s King Henry I in 1133. Chaos and civil war followed. 

An eclipse in Turkey in 585 B.C. had the opposite effect. Warring armies took it as a sign from the gods that perhaps they should try to get along. Just like that, the story goes, 15 years of fighting came to a sudden end.

Minds, blown

After the eclipse of 647 B.C., the Greek poet Archilochus found himself considering what other tricks the gods might have in store for the mortals below: 

“After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don’t any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains.” 

According to Ruskin, an eclipse had even darker implications for native Jamaicans when seafaring super-jerk Christopher Columbus used the event to convince locals that they had best feed his crew or risk angering his god. The arrival of the eclipse helped Columbus subjugate the natives.

Perhaps history’s strangest response to a total solar eclipse was the least hysterical one. When the sun vanished shortly after rising early in the morning over Europe in the year 1230, local workers apparently thought little of it. They just went back to bed, according to historian Roger of Wendover, only to be astonished when the sun had regained its normal brightness within an hour. 

Still shocked to see the sun slip away

“More often than not, (eclipses) were a source of fear and anxiety,” Ruskin says. “Not until the period known as the European Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries do scientific explanations of the motion of the Earth, sun and moon tend to alleviate such anxieties, at least among Europeans.”  

This scientific enlightenment allowed us to take a deep breath and a look around during eclipses. Turns out the event has an odd effect on animals too. 

“A crow was the only animal near me; it seemed quite bewildered, croaking and flying backwards and forwards near the ground in an uncertain manner,” wrote John Couch Adams about one 19th century eclipse. 

Scientific curiosity around eclipses also prompted some presumably anxiety-inducing endeavors, like Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev’s use of a balloon to watch an 1887 eclipse from over 2 miles high in the air. 

So as we look back now on some of the irrational, illogical and downright bizarre reactions to this trick of trigonometry, try not to judge. Even today, the myth that an eclipse is somehow a danger to pregnant women persists. When the thing that sustains all life suddenly vanishes from the sky, who’s to say it might not trigger some deep primal instinct that supersedes the more rational responses of the conscious mind?

You’ll have a chance to find out first-hand if you can get to a spot somewhere in the path of totality on Dec. 14. 

Pulse oximeters are still hot commodities these days, months after they became associated with detecting COVID-19 and started appearing in smartwatches and fitness bands like the Apple Watch Series 6 and the Amazfit Band 5. They’re sensors that use infrared light to measure how well oxygen is binding to your red blood cells and report something called the peripheral capillary oxygen saturation, or SpO2. If you’re looking for one of these gadgets, the good news is that they’ve dropped to a reasonable $20 or so from a summertime high of about $50. But right now, I’ve got a deal for you: Here’s a pulse oximeter fingertip sensor for just $13 when you use promo code BioreportsPLOX at checkout, down from its regular price of about $25. 

This unit slides over a fingertip and generates a result in about 8 seconds, displaying your SpO2 on the 1.5-inch LED display. 

Of course, not everyone needs one of these things. Some people with specific medical conditions may be advised by their physician to use a pulse oximeter regularly at home to monitor their SpO2 level. Otherwise, you should not use an SpO2 sensor for medical purposes — these devices are not approved for medical use, and can, at best, help you decide if you should follow up with your physician. I recommend checking out Dale Smith’s Bioreports article called “Can pulse oximeters detect coronavirus? How they work and more.” It’s written with the Apple Watch Series 6 in mind, but applies to devices like this one just as well. 

This article was first published earlier in the week. 

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Bioreports’s deal team scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. Find more great buys on the Bioreports Deals page and check out our Bioreports Coupons page for the latest promo codes from Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon and more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Activbody describes the Activ5 as “a tiny gym in your pocket,” and it’s a fist-size strength-training device in the shape of a puck. The Activ5 measures compressive force when you press the two sides together with some part of your body, such as the palms of your hands, or your hand and thigh, or even by pressing down with your foot. It’s designed to be used in short workouts throughout the day, and it’s pocket-size, so you can use it anywhere. Usually $140, you can get Activ5 for $99 right now, no code or coupon required. It’s listed for a discounted $109 on the product page, but you get an exclusive additional $10 off when you get to checkout. (If the price isn’t $99, add promo code Bioreports manually.)

I’ve been using the Activ5 for a while now and it’s become a standard part of my daily fitness routine. It pairs with your phone and reacts to the hundred or so workouts you can choose in categories like Office & Travel, Full Body, Upper Body, Lower Body and Core. You can do an entire workout — it ranges from about 4 to 7 minutes, depending on the one you choose — or just jump into specific exercises, each of which is generally about 30 seconds long.

Performing the exercises is easy and, inasmuch as any exercise can be fun, this one sort of is. The app tells you exactly what you need to do and shows you some photos to eliminate any ambiguity. A typical exercise might include holding the puck between your hands while extending your arms straight out in front of you, alternately pressing your hands together and resting, based on a follow-the-bouncing-ball style visual. You’re not just exerting your muscles, you’re trying to do it precisely so the virtual ball stays on a specific course, with just the right amount of power. It’s like working out to Flappy Bird. 

Does this really deliver a meaningful workout? I’m neither a doctor nor a physical trainer, but the Activ5 really does induce an invigorating burn when I power through a 5-minute workout, and it does give me the impression that I’m doing some meaningful weight-training without needing weights. It feels like the missing ingredient in my own workout that already includes 20 minutes of the virtual reality Supernatural app and 20 minutes on the elliptical. 

If you want to try it out for yourself, you might want to grab it soon, since this deal expires Dec. 14. 

This article was published earlier in the year and has been updated to reflect the latest deal. 

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Bioreports’s deal team scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. Find more great buys on the Bioreports Deals page and check out our Bioreports Coupons page for the latest promo codes from Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon and more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn’t believe companies need to choose between success and helping the environment. And he plans to challenge other companies to take that to heart.

“The choice between the bottom line and the future of our planet is a false one, and each new green innovation offers the proof,” Cook is expected to say at the UN Climate Ambition Summit on Saturday, according to prepared remarks.

As part of his speech, Cook touts that Apple has added 25 suppliers to the 70 it’s already helping transition to 100% renewable energy. He also notes Apple’s other efforts, including that it’s become carbon neutral for its worldwide corporate emissions. 

Ultimately, Cook says, Apple wants its entire supply chain and product usage to be carbon neutral within a decade.

Cook’s remarks follow a long history of Apple’s public efforts to reduce its impacts on the environment. It instituted environmental report cards for its devices in 2008. Since then, Apple has slimmed its device packaging, reduced reliance on plastic in its devices, and started integrating recycled materials into its devices. The company has also created advanced robots to pull apart iPhones that it can no longer refurbish, sending rare minerals, batteries, and aluminum cases to be recycled and reused.

One of the gadget maker’s biggest green initiatives this year was Apple’s decision not to include a power adapter brick with its newest Apple Watches and iPhone 12 headsets. 

“Sometimes, it’s not what we make, but what we don’t make that counts,” Lisa P. Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, said at one of Apple’s product announcements in September. She added that Apple knows its customers are accumulating USB adapters and that making millions of them “consumes resources and adds to our carbon footprint.”

The change also let the company shrink the box its devices come in, saving space in shipping containers and on store shelves. Apple estimates the change will be the equivalent of taking tens of thousands of cars off the road.

Environmental and sustainability experts commend Apple’s efforts. Critics noted that the effort will likely increase Apple’s adapter sales to people who don’t already have one at home.

Though Apple has made progress producing key products in more environmentally friendly ways, it struggles with some of its other devices. Apple’s AirPods headphones, for example, are sealed shut, meaning users can’t replace their batteries as they degrade over the years. Apple could sell 90 million AirPods this year, and up to 115 million next year, according to estimates.

Cook, in his prepared remarks, says companies need to dramatically step up their environmental efforts. “This is no time for changes at the margins,” he says. “We call on companies and governments around the world to do all we can to make 2021 the year we turn the corner for good.”

Since its launch a year ago, Apple’s subscription mobile gaming service Apple Arcade has released more than 140 games to play across the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. Some of the breakout games on the $5-a-month service include The Enchanted World, Where Cards Fall and Shinsekai: Into the Depths. One of the most anticipated games, The Pathless from Annapurna Interactive and Giant Squid, launched earlier this month.

Apple Arcade has been steadily releasing new games every week or so, as well as updating others. Even though the gaming service has amassed an impressive catalog of games, we’re still waiting on some of the biggest titles promised at launch. Here are the games we can’t wait to play once they’re available.

Read more: Apple Arcade offers 3-month free trial with new Apple device purchase

The Artful Escape 

Developer: Annapurna Interactive

The Artful Escape tells the story of teenage guitar prodigy Francis Vendetti. On the night of his first performance, Francis finds himself on a psychedelic quest of self discovery. Along the way, he battles dead folk legends and, at times, his own imagination. 

The Artful Escape was first announced at E3 2017 and was listed in the Apple Arcade lineup last year. The X019 trailer promises a colorful, neon, musical side-scroller.

Enter the Construct

Developer: Directive Games

Not many details were available about Enter the Construct last year, except that it was expected to be available at Apple Arcade’s launch. At that time, the images and videos showed the game as a first-person sci-fi shooter. Since then, there has been little to no information about Enter the Construct, so it’s possible it’s taken on a new name or has been canceled. Directive Games didn’t respond to a request for comment, but we’ll update if we hear anything. 

Fantasian

Developer: Mistwalker

Fantasian’s creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, a mastermind behind multiple RPGs including Final Fantasy, posts updates about the upcoming JRPG game fairly regularly on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you’re excited about Fantasian, you can scroll through Sakaguchi’s social media and get a look at the game’s concept art and its handcrafted dioramas as they’re being built. Mistwalker has posted designs of New Town En, Magitech Factory in Machine City, Secret Base and the Water City of Vence from the game.

HitchHiker

Developers: Mad About Pandas

HitchHiker is a mystery puzzle game where you play as the hitchhiker who doesn’t remember anything about their identity, their past or their destination. You’ll travel with five different drivers and make choices in the conversations that can help you remember your dark secrets. Solve environmental puzzles, keep an eye out for clues everywhere and make alliances — but remember that nothing is what it seems. 

Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon

Developer: Cornfox & Bros.

Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon, launching soon on Apple Arcade as part of the first chapter in the Oceanhorn Expanded Universe. The new game will play as a 16-bit style dungeon-crawler and include a local co-op mode for up to four players. Chronos Dungeon takes place 200 years after the events of Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm. 

Proxi

Developers: Will Wright and Gallium Artists

Proxi is an AI simulation game from The Sims creator Will Wright. The game is built out of the player’s memories, using them as building blocks in the 3D world. Instead of creating a city or a house, as the player would do in The Sims, Proxi models the brain. You can store memories and millions of interconnected concepts, according to the website. 

Ultimate Rivals: The Court

Developer: Bit Fry

This is a basketball-based follow-up to last year’s Ultimate Rivals: The Rink, which was a hyped-up three-on-three ice hockey game where you played as real stars from all kinds of sports — with added superpowers. Future iterations of the game could bring football, baseball or soccer to Apple Arcade.

Wonderbox

Developer: Aquiris

When Wonderbox, formerly Box Project, was announced for Apple Arcade, there weren’t many details available aside from a photo of a cardboard box. Now, the action adventure game is due out soon, has an official name, and looks like fun for the whole family. 

Just over a year ago, Apple tossed its hat into the gaming ring with its mobile game subscription service, Apple Arcade. The service costs $5 (£5, AU$8) a month and lets you play over 140 new and exclusive games across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod Touch and Apple TV. It’s available in more than 150 countries. 

Read more: Apple Arcade one year later: Still delivering for casual gamers

To try out Apple Arcade, open the App Store on almost any Apple device and tap the little joystick icon at the bottom of the screen. With the announcement of Apple’s new iPhone 12 lineup, the tech giant is offering a three-month free trial when you buy a new device.

Some of the breakout games on the service include The Enchanted World, Where Cards Fall and Shinsekai: Into the Depths. 

Here are all the games announced for Apple Arcade, updated as new games are released. They’re available to play now unless otherwise noted. You can also check out our list of the Apple Arcade games that we’re still waiting to arrive, such as Proxi and Fantasian. The highly anticipated game The Pathless made its debut earlier this month and Sneaky Sasquatch recently claimed the title of Apple Arcade’s Game of the Year. 

Read more: All the hardware you need to play Apple Arcade games

Agent Intercept

Developer: PikPok Games

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

Developer: Ustwo Games

All of You

Developer: Alike Studio

Assemble With Care

Developers: UsTwo Games

Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree

Developer: Wildboy Studios

Ballistic Baseball

Developer: Gameloft

Read more: Apple Arcade just released Pac-Man Party Royale, Ballistic Baseball and more

Battle Sky Brigade: Harpooner

Developers: BattleBrew

Beyond a Steel Sky

Developer: Revolution Software

Read more: You can finally play Beyond a Steel Sky on Apple Arcade

Beyond Blue

Developer: E-Line Media 

Read more: Beyond Blue game from Apple Arcade takes a deep dive into the mysteries of the ocean

Big Time Sports

Developer: Frosty Pop

Bleak Sword

Developers: Devolver and Luis Moreno Jimenez

The Bradwell Conspiracy

Developers: Bossa Studios and A Brave Plan

Butter Royale 

Developer: Mighty Bear Games

Read more: Apple Arcade’s Butter Royale is the Fortnite of food fights

Card of Darkness

Developer: Zach Gage

Cardpocalypse

Developers: Versus Evil and Gambrinos

Cat Quest II 

Developer: Gentlebros Games

Charrua Soccer

Developer: Batovi Games Studio

Read more: Apple Arcade scores a goal with new Charrua Soccer game

ChuChu Rocket! Universe

Developers: Universe and Sega

The Collage Atlas

Developer: John Evelyn

Creaks

Developer: Amanita Design

Read more: Creaks game creeps into Apple Arcade’s neighborhood

Cricket Through the Ages

Developers: Devolver and Free Lives

Crossy Road Castle

Developer: Hipster Whale

Read more: Crossy Road Castle reimagines Super Mario Bros. as a multiplayer extravaganza on Apple Arcade

Dead End Job

Developer: Headup Games

Dear Reader

Developer: Local No. 12

Decoherence

Developer: Efecto Studios

Discolored

Publisher: Shifty Eye

Dodo Peak

Developer: Moving Pieces Interactive 

Don’t Bug Me

Developer: Frosty Pop

Doomsday Vault

Developer: Flightless

Down in Bermuda

Developer: Yak & Co

Dread Nautical 

Developer: Zen Studios

EarthNight

Developers: Shifty Eye Games and Cleaversoft

The Enchanted World 

Developer: Noodlecake

Read more: The Enchanted World transforms personal tragedy into a ‘magical’ Apple Arcade game

Exit the Gungeon

Developer: Devolver

Explottens

Developer: weRplay

Fallen Knight

Publisher: Fair Play Studios

Read more: Apple Arcade gets new games: Lifelike, Yaga and more

Fledgling Heroes

Developers: Subtle Boom

A Fold Apart

Developer: Lightning Rod Games 

Read more: Apple Arcade’s newest game tackles the emotions that come with long-distance relationships

Frogger in Toy Town

Developer: Konami

Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows

Developer: Devolver Digital

The Get Out Kids

Developer: Frosty Pop

Grindstone

Developer: Capybara Games

Guildlings

Publisher: Sirvo Studios

Hexaflip: The Action Puzzler

Developers: Rogue Games

Hogwash

Developer: Bossa Studios

Hot Lava

Developer: Klei Entertainment

HyperBrawl Tournament

Developers: Milky Tea Limited

Inmost

Developers: Hidden Layer Games and Chucklefish Games

Jenny LeClue

Developers: Joe Russ and Ben Tillett

Jumper Jon

Publisher: Ogre Pixel

Read more: Apple Arcade has 5 new games to play: Monomals, Mosaic, Star Fetched and more

King’s League II

Developer: Kurechii

Kings of the Castle

Developer: Frosty Pop

Read more: Kings of the Castle gives Apple Arcade the royal treatment

The Last Campfire

Developer: Hello Games

Read more: Apple Arcade’s The Last Campfire game carries a message of light and hope during the pandemic

Legend of the Skyfish 2

Developers: Crescent Moon Games and Mother Gaia Studio

Read more: Apple Arcade launches new RPG Legend of the Skyfish 2

Lego Builder’s Journey

Developer: Light Brick

Read more: Lego Builder’s Journey now available exclusively on Apple Arcade

Lego Brawls

Developers: Lego and Red Games

Lifelike

Developer: Kunabi Brother

Lifeslide

Developer: Dreamteck

Little Orpheus

Developer: The Chinese Room

Read more: Apple Arcade’s Little Orpheus game is a new take on the space race

Loud House: Outta Control

Developer: Nickelodeon

Read more: Apple Arcade’s Loud House: Outta Control game is chaotic family fun

Marble It Up: Mayhem!

Publisher: Marble It Up

Marble Knights

Developer: WayForward

Mind Symphony 

Developer: Rogue Games

Mini Motorways

Developer: Dinosaur Polo Club

Monomals

Developer: Picomy

Manifold Garden

Developer: William Chyr

A Monster’s Expedition

Developer: Draknek Limited 

The Mosaic

Developer: Krillbite Studio

Murder Mystery Machine

Developers: Blazing Griffin

Mutazione

Developer: Die Gute Fabrik

Necrobarista

Developer: Route 59

Read more: Necrobarista serves up coffee, death and feelings on Apple Arcade

Neo Cab

Developer: Chance Agency

Neversong

Developer: Serenity Forge

Read more: Apple Arcade’s new Neversong game was inspired by developer’s near death experience

Next Stop Nowhere

Developer: Night School Studio

Nightmare Farm

Developers: Hit-point Co.

No Way Home

Developer: SMG Studio

Read more: No Way Home brings space exploration to Apple Arcade

Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm

Developer: Cornfox & Bros.

Read more: Oceanhorn 2 new Golden Edition update launches on Apple Arcade

Operator 41

Developer: Shifty Eye Games

The Otherside

Developers: Barbacube

Read more: Apple Arcade’s new action survival game makes all the best parts of board games digital

Outlanders

Developers: Pomelo Games

Over the Alps

Developer: Stave Studios

Overland

Developer: Finji

Pac-Man Party Royale 

Developer: Bandai Namco

Painty Mob

Developers: Devolver

The Pathless

Developer: Annapurna Interactive and Giant Squid

Patterned

Developer: Borderleap

Pilgrims

Developers: Amanita Design

Possessions

Developers: Noodlecake and Lucid Labs

Pinball Wizard

Developer: Frosty Pop

Projection: First Light

Developers: Blowfish Studios and Shadowplay Studios

Bioreports News Planet

Developer: Block Zero

Rayman Mini

Developer: Ubisoft

Red Reign

Developer: Ninja Kiwi Games

Redout: Space Assault

Developer: 34 Big Things

Reigns: Beyond

Developer: Devolver Digital

Rosie’s Reality

Developer: RosieReality

Read more: Apple Arcade adds Rosie’s Reality, a kids’ puzzle game featuring robots

Roundguard

Developers: Wonderbelly Games

Read more: Do you miss Peggle? Try Roundguard on Apple Arcade

Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time

Developer: Adult Swim

Read more: Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time releases on Apple Arcade

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Developers: Annapurna Interactive and Simogo

Read more: Sayonara Wild Hearts named Apple Arcade Game of the Year

Scrappers 

Developer: Q-Games

Read more: Apple Arcade’s Scrappers game has futuristic trash collectors, robots and turf wars

Secret Oops!

Developer: MixedBag

Read more: Apple Arcade’s ‘Secret Oops!’ is a new AR game for silly spies

Shantae and the Seven Sirens

Developer: WayForward

Shinsekai Into the Depths

Developer: Capcom

Read more: Shinsekai Into the Depths delivers Apple Arcade’s most console-like game

ShockRods

Developer: Stainless Games

Skate City

Developers: Snowman and Agens

Slash Quest!

Developer: Noodlecake

Sneaky Sasquatch

Developer: RAC7

Sociable Soccer 2020

Publisher: Rogue Games

Sonic Racing

Developers: Sega and HardLight

South of the Circle

Developer: State of Play

Spaceland

Developer: Tortuga Team

Speed Demons

Developer: Radian Games

Spek

Developer: RAC7 Games

Spelldrifter

Developer: Free Range Games

Spidersaurs

Developer: WayForward

Spongebob: Patty Pursuit

Developer: Nickelodeon

Read more: SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit is the ultimate new Apple Arcade game for fans

Spyder

Developer: Sumo Digital

Read more: Save the world as a tech-savvy spider in Apple Arcade’s new game

Star Fetched

Publisher: Crescent Moon Games

Stela

Publisher: Skybox Labs

Stellar Commanders

Developer: Blindflug Studios

Steven Universe: Unleash the Light

Developers: Cartoon Network and Rebecca Sugar

Read more: Steven Universe: Unleash the Light game comes to Apple Arcade

Stranded Sails

Developers: Shift Eye Games

Super Impossible Road

Developer: Rogue Games

Super Mega Mini Party

Publisher: Red Mini Games

The Survivalists

Developers: Team17

Read more: The Survivalists on Apple Arcade lets you test your skills on a deserted island

Takeshi & Hiroshi

Publisher: Oink Games

Tales of Memo

Publisher: Ten Days

Tangle Tower

Developer: SFB Games

Things That Go Bump

Developers: Tinybop

Tint

Developer: Lykke Studios

Towaga: Among Shadows

Developers: Noodlecake and Sunnyside Games

Towers of Everland

Developers: Cobra Mobile

Read more: Apple Arcade’s new Towers of Everland game is a big medieval adventure in a small package

Ultimate Rivals: The Rink

Developer: Bit Fry

Read more: Hands-on with Ultimate Rivals: The Rink, Apple Arcade’s new retro-style mash-up sports game

UFO on Tape: First Contact

Developer: Revolutionary Concepts

Read more: Apple Arcade hits 100 games with UFO on Tape: First Contact and more

Various Daylife

Developer: Square Enix

Warp Drive

Developer: Supergonk

Way of the Turtle

Developer: Illusion Labs 

What the Golf?

Developer: Triband

Where Cards Fall

Developers: Snowman and The Game Band

Read more: Where Cards Fall lets you rethink your life path in a unique Apple Arcade game

Winding Worlds

Developer: Ko_op

Read more: Apple Arcade’s new Winding Worlds game seeks to ease pandemic stress for all ages

Word Laces

Developer: Minimega

World’s End Club

Developer: IzanagiGames

Read more: Apple Arcade’s World’s End Club is a dark, underwater anime fight for survival

Yaga

Developers: Versus Evil and Breadcrumbs Interactive

Zombie Rollerz: Pinball Heroes

Developers: Firefly Games

More Apple recommendations

• Best kids’ tablets for 2020
• The 30 best iPad games you need to play  
  
  
• iPhone 12 vs. iPhone 11: All the differences and whether you should upgrade
  
  
• iOS 14: These everyday tips will take your iPhone to the next level
  
  
• iPhone SE vs. iPhone 8: What’s best for budget-minded Apple fans?
  
  

If you’re still hoping to get a PS5 in time for the holidays, this might be a good moment to steel yourself for disappointment. Yes, it’s possible, but the console has been extremely tough to get since it launched a month ago. The PS5 is sold out everywhere, though a number of retailers have briefly had inventory a few times over the last few weeks, including most recently Sony’s own website. But in every case, the PS5 has sold out quickly. 

At this very moment, the only consoles you can buy are marked up to ludicrous levels on sites like eBay and StockX, often multiple times their retail value of $400 or $500 for the different models. The console has been otherwise virtually impossible to find, with at least one person waiting in line for 36 hours to snag one at a California GameStop. 

Understandably, gamers are anxious for any news about retailers restocking the console and Twitter has been serving as a hub for rumors and speculation. But how trustworthy are the tweets? Just this week, Twitter account @ps5_walmart (which, to be clear, has no affiliation with Walmart) tweeted that the “PS5 is more common in Walmart’s now, you should be able to get one within a couple weeks. Good luck.” 

To everybody that has messaged me, I’m not looking at anymore zip codes. The PS5 is more common in Walmart’s now, you should be able to get one within a couple weeks. Good luck

— PS5 Restock walmart (@ps5_walmart) December 11, 2020

That’s encouraging, but is it credible? I’d guess it’s not especially reliable — the only tweets that I’d trust are ones from the retailers themselves; Walmart and Antonline, for example, have used Twitter in recent weeks to keep customers informed about inventory drops, so we’re keeping our eyes on their accounts. In fact, Antonline tweeted about a fresh inventory drop on Wednesday, but the site immediately went down in a flood of traffic. After the tweet, we were unable to even make a connection. 

So what’s a gamer to do? Follow the news on Twitter if you’re so inclined. It’s a good source for instant updates and you might get lucky. But we’re also keeping you up to date on what retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, GameStop and Target are planning right here. 

Just a reminder: The PS5 is available in two versions: a $500 model with Blu-ray, and an otherwise identical $400 digital-only version without a disc slot. At this point, people are happy to get their hands on either one, but if you don’t have a library of optical discs — for Blu-ray movies, used games or old PS4 games — we recommend you go with the $400 version.

• PS5 review: Sony built a space-age game console for your next-gen dreams
• The best PS5 games you’ll need to play
• PS5 vs. Xbox Series X: The next-gen consoles we’re buying and why

Read more at GameSpot: Latest PS5 news and complete coverage

PS5 restock possibilities

You can check out Amazon’s page for the $400 Digital Edition via the button below, or, if you’d rather, get in line for the PS5 with Blu-ray for $500.

Best Buy is offering the PS5 with Blu-ray for $500 as well as the $400 Digital Edition (which you can find by clicking the button below). The retailer is also offering a slew of accessories on its PS5 landing page.

You can check inventory on the $400 Digital Edition at Walmart by clicking the button below, or you can try to snag the pricier PS5 with Blu-ray for $500.

Target will be offering the PS5 with Blu-ray for $500 in addition to the PS5 Digital Edition, which you can find by clicking the button below. 

OK, you’ve exhausted all of the online and brick-and-mortar retailers, and you’ve decided you’re willing to pay upwards of a $300 markup to get this puppy by Christmas. As your friend, we have to tell you: Don’t do it. But if you don’t want to listen to us, you might want to check out StockX, an eBay alternative that made its name in the secondary market for sneakers and designer clothing. Last time we checked, prices for the PS5 were hovering around $970. 

First published earlier in the year. Updated with the latest news about the PS5. 

More PS5 coverage

• Why you should save $100 and get the all-digital version of the PS5
• PS5 price, preorder, release date, games, Xbox Series X comparison and more
• PS5 games are $10 more expensive. Is that fair?

Now playing:
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PS5 review: full breakdown of all the new features

17:44

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Bioreports’s Cheapskate scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. For the latest deals and updates, follow the Cheapskate on Facebook and Twitter. Find more great buys on the Bioreports Deals page and check out our Bioreports Coupons page for the latest promo codes from Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon and more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page.

This story is part of Holiday Gift Guide 2020, Bioreports’s gift picks with expert advice, reviews and recommendations for the latest tech gifts for you and your family.

Here we are at the end of a (very long) 2020. But, it’s the holiday season, which hopefully puts a smile on many faces. To round out our detailing holiday gift guides, we decided to look at the best car detailing products of 2020. These aren’t chemicals or cheap brushes, though. They are the coolest gadgets, gizmos and tools we think make excellent gifts for any car lover in your life.

Gifts any car care lover will enjoy

The products above are the best of the best to us here at Roadshow, and their prices reflect that. However, we didn’t just think about these kinds of gifts. We took a look at the best affordable gifts for detailers as well, and whatever ends up wrapped will be a winner for the car care lover in your life.

Apple Music finally started rolling out to Google Assistant-enabled devices, Google announced in a blog post last week. That includes speakers and displays such as the Nest Audio, Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max and Nest Mini. 

Apple Music subscribers can link their Apple Music account in the Google Home app, where Google also offers integration with Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora and Deezer. 

Once your account is linked and selected as the default music streaming service, you can play music by saying, for example, “Hey Google, play Holiday playlist.”

You can also ask for any specific song or artists on Apple Music, as well as music by genre, mood or activity. If you own more than one Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker or display, you can use Google’s multiroom audio to add speakers and move music around your home. 

Read more: Apple Music vs. Spotify: The best music streaming service for you 

Adding Apple Music makes life easier for Google Assistant-centered smart home owners who also own iPhones. This isn’t the first time Apple has come to a third-party smart speaker: Apple Music is already available as a linked service on Amazon Alexa speakers, such as the new Echo and Echo Dot.

Now that Apple is onboard Google Assistant devices, iPhone and Apple Music users will have more options than ever for streaming their favorite songs at home.

Apple Music already began rolling out on Nest and other Assistant-enabled smart speakers and displays in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan.

Read more: Best smart speakers of 2020: Amazon Echo, Google Nest Mini and Apple HomePod compared

Greetings, Roadshow readers. We’re here to take you on a look back on the week that was, in another episode of Roadshow’s week in review. We drove some great cars and covered some big news, so read on below for all the good stuff that happened in the week ending Dec. 12.

Top reviews

Reviews Editor Andrew Krok slid behind the wheel of the 2021 Tahoe with the brand’s new 3.0-liter inline-six Duramax diesel engine. Krok found the Tahoe’s diesel engine is seriously impressive in the big SUV.

Click here to read our 2021 Chevy Tahoe Diesel first drive review.

Managing Editor Steve Ewing drove something a little different this week: the Honda Civiv Type R TC. It’s a Touring Car meant to tear up the track, but not as aggressively as the TCR version that also exists. It’s not something everyone will buy, but Ewing believes it made going fast pretty easy.

Click here to read our 2020 Honda Civic Type R TC quick drive review.

Krok also drove the 2021 Mercedes-Benz E450 and believes it cements itself at the top of its class.

Click here to read our 2021 Mercedes-Benz E450 review.

Top news

• The 2022 Acura MDX is here: Acura’s new flagship bowed this week, and yes, it’s getting a Type S model.
• 2021 Nissan Armada hauls itself in: Nissan gave its big, hulking SUV a refresh inside and out.
• And the 2021 Nissan Kicks showed up, too: Revealed alongside the Armada, the much smaller Kicks boasts some much better style.
• Elon Musk moves out of California: The Tesla CEO said goodbye to Cali and hello to Texas.
• Super Cruise will soon grace the GMC Sierra: The Denali trim will pack GM’s Level 2 highway-driving assistant, marking the first car outside of a Cadillac to receive the system.
• 2021 Polaris Slingshot nabs needed updates: Polaris dropped updates into its funky Slingshot and it also happens to cost less, too.

Top videos

2022 Acura MDX first look

Reviews Editor Emme Hall goes over the new MDX, which looks really great, especially inside. Watch her video above.

If you know someone who could use a new reusable bottle (whether they’re stuck on single-use or they simply need one for outdoor adventures), a high-quality water bottle makes a great gift. By now, everyone knows single-use plastic bottles are bad for the environment and can be harmful to your health. Staying hydrated with a reusable water bottle is one of the easiest ways to start phasing plastic out of your everyday life. 

There’s no shortage of water bottle options on the market. Some offer filtration, vacuum insulation, a straw, spout or a flip top; others are completely collapsible or can tote hot or cold beverages. So encourage your friends to recycle their disposable plastic bottles and replace them with one of these reusable, stylish and durable water vessels.

How to pick a reusable water bottle

Water bottles are mainly made from three different materials: plastic, glass and metal (typically aluminum or stainless steel). Any reusable bottle will have its own hydration pros and cons.

Plastic is lightweight and durable, but plastic can transfer a taste or odor to your beverage when you drink. Glass bottles are safer to drink from than plastic and don’t impart a taste, but they’re fragile and not ideal for rough outdoor activities like backpacking. Many glass bottles come in a protective silicone sleeve to prevent breakage. Metal water bottles, like those made from stainless steel, are usually insulated around the body of the bottle and are the best at keeping your hot drink hot and your cold drink cold, but they can be heavy and subject to dents and scratches.

After you decide what material you want your reusable drinking water bottle to be made of, consider the lid type. Do you want a straw lid, a flip cap with a spout (like on a travel mug) or a screw top? Maybe you need a lid that can attach to a backpack with a carabiner or a lid that won’t unscrew in your work bag.

Read more: 7 ways drinking more water can make you healthier

Also, consider size and design when picking your perfect water bottle. Most companies make their bottles available in a variety of sizes, usually ranging from 12 to 40 ounces. Smaller sizes often have thinner, sleeker designs with a narrow mouth, while larger sizes usually mean a wide mouth bottle or a jug-like design good for drinking from at all-day events like a day at the beach. Some have added features like being self-cleaning or filtered.

I scoured the web for the most functional and fashionable reusable water bottle options. I began my search with brands I already knew created good products, like S’well, though I ended up finding a couple that aren’t as widely evangelized, but still create cool products to help you stay hydrated.

From basic bottles to portable pouches to all-day canteens, I tested more than 25 bottles, and the best ones made it to this list. All of the bottles on this list have mostly favorable customer reviews on Amazon in the four-star range (no product can please everyone). In the end, it’s up to you to decide which is the best reusable water bottle — and to stay hydrated. 

Camping? Read more: Best air mattress for 2020: SoundAsleep, REI and more compared  

More for readers seeking health and hydration

• Go greener with these cool eco-friendly products 
• The best self-cleaning water bottles for tastier tap water in 2020
  
  
• Best filtered water bottles in 2020 to remove bacteria, sediment and more  
  
  
• 7 best yoga mats for 2020
• Best travel coffee mugs for 2020
• Best meal prep containers for 2020
• Best fitness trackers for 2020
• The 10 best health and wellness podcasts you should listen to
• The best water filter pitchers to buy for 2020

Originally published earlier and updated periodically.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

How about an early Christmas gift? A Charlie Brown Christmas will air for free on broadcast TV after all. Back in October, many fans were unhappy to learn that the trio of popular Peanuts holiday specials was moving to the pay streaming service Apple TV Plus. Even though each show would offer a few days of free viewing on the platform, fans expressed their dismay about not being able to watch on broadcast TV, as they’d been able to do for decades. But thankfully, Apple later announced a deal with PBS to air ad-free broadcasts of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on both PBS and the PBS Kids website.

Here’s how to tune in to the 1965 Christmas special that reminded viewers about the true meaning of Christmas, and that a simple, spindly Christmas tree can be just as special as a giant pricey evergreen.

When to watch the show

Got Apple TV Plus?

Apple TV Plus subscribers can watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on that streaming service as part of their paid-for plan beginning Dec. 4.

Don’t have Apple TV Plus and want to watch on broadcast TV?

If you don’t subscribe to Apple TV Plus, you can watch the Christmas special on PBS and the PBS Kids website on Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m. local time/6:30 p.m. CT.

Don’t have Apple TV Plus and want to watch online?

A Charlie Brown Christmas will also be available for free on Apple TV Plus from Dec. 11 through Dec. 13.  You don’t have to subscribe to watch.

You can either watch in your browser or on the Apple TV app. To watch in your browser, go to tv.apple.com. Otherwise, download the Apple TV app and watch on your choice of screen, including iPhone, Amazon Fire, Roku and more. Again, it’s only free during that brief period from Dec. 11 through Dec. 13.

Give the gift of DVDs

If watching in your browser or on the app isn’t for you, there’s still another solution: Buy the DVD or Blu-ray version. A Charlie Brown Christmas is sold by itself ($10 at Target and available plenty of other places as well) or as part of The Peanuts Holiday Collection ($30 at Best Buy, again, also sold elsewhere). Then you’ll have the special — or all the holiday specials — for as long as your DVD player holds out.

Why it’s so beloved

A Charlie Brown Christmas was the first Peanuts holiday special, and back in 1965, the bioreports wrote that lifting the popular characters from the newspaper comics section to the small screen was “a big gamble.” For one thing, fans who were accustomed to hearing the characters’ voices in their own heads now would have to adjust to actors’ voices. And the special was breaking boundaries in other ways. The kids were voiced by kids, not trained adult actors. There was no laugh track. The jazz soundtrack wasn’t for everyone. And Linus delivers a biblical passage from the book of Luke about the birth of Jesus, which creator Charles Schulz insisted upon, but which unnerved some TV bosses.

Programming executives didn’t expect much, but as Smithsonian magazine reports, over half of US TVs tuned in, and the very elements that scared the industry suits endeared the show to regular Americans. Now, it’s hard to imagine December without the show airing — which is why so many strongly objected to the show moving off regular broadcast TV and on to Apple TV Plus only. The change offering a PBS showing didn’t come in time for Halloween’s It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but did make it in time for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and now for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

What’s next?

Even after the holidays, Apple TV Plus will continue as the home for new Peanuts shows, including the second season of the Snoopy in Space series, plus new specials that will mark Mother’s Day, Earth Day, New Year’s Eve and going back to school.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any food that’s as tasty as fried food. Alas, food that’s fried is typically loaded with tons of oil too. But I have good news for fried food lovers: There is a workaround. Air fryers can cook food that tastes deep-fried without the need to add oil or grease. That also means that if you use one to prepare a meal, cleanup is a snap.

Here we explore what to look for in a quality air fryer if you’re itching to try that air-fried recipe you found on Pinterest. We’ve also taken into consideration things like counter real estate and whether or not you’re feeding an army. This list will help you find the best air fryer, so grab some frozen french fries and chicken nuggets and prepare to fry up a storm.

In recent years, the number of air fryer brands has exploded, since demand for the products is at an all-time high. You can choose from personal fryers, large family-size models and every size in between. There are air fryers with basic mechanical dials and controls, while others have fancy cooking options and presets — some even have smarts and app connections.

Unlike previous air fryers we liked from from DeLonghi, Krups, T-Fal and Black & Decker, today’s modern fryers are more powerful, meaning quicker access to crispy fries, onion rings, chicken nuggets or anything else that you might typically make in a deep fryer that you can fit in its cooking basket. They also have higher capacity to cook more food, are lighter, quieter and easier to clean.

No matter how simple or complex though, what truly counts is how well they deliver the fried goodies. When it comes to air fryers, that can vary widely. Here’s what I learned after putting several top-rated models through their paces to find the best air fryer out there. I update this periodically.

Others we tested

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Instant Vortex

One popular option is the Instant Vortex. It’s priced in line with the other air fryers in this group. The Vortex is made by the same company that created the groundbreaking Instant Pot electric pressure cooker. Despite that though, I wasn’t blown away by the food I fried in this air fry machine.

Using the recommended settings, mozzarella sticks came out a tad soggy with exteriors not quite crispy enough. Chicken wings and fried chicken were acceptable, not incredible, and less juicy than what other fryers served. My Brussels sprouts ended up overdone too. And frozen fries were done but cooked unevenly.

Target review average: 4.5 out of 5 stars (347 ratings)

Dash Compact Airfryer

The Dash Compact Airfryer is everything its bigger sibling isn’t. Specifically the small air fryer is underpowered and comes with a rock-bottom price tag. While the Dash Deluxe is a powerhouse, the Dash Compact struggled while air frying almost everything I put inside it. Both french fries and Brussels sprouts were underdone and unevenly cooked.

Mozzarella sticks emerged from the air fryer basket hot, but weren’t all that crispy. The only bright spot was chicken wings. They took 30 minutes but I was treated to skin with some crunch. 

Amazon review average: 4.5 out of 5 stars (8,439 ratings)

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GoWise USA 8-in-1 Digital Air Fryer

You may not have heard of this brand, but this offering from GoWise is a solid choice. It didn’t cook the skin of my chicken wings evenly. That said, french fries came out crispy, crunchy, with creamy interiors. The fryer also roasted Brussels sprouts well, no mean feat for this group of appliances. 

Amazon review average: 4.6 out of 5 stars (560 ratings)

Walmart review average: 4.1 out 5 stars (276 ratings) 

Home Depot review average: 4.5 out of 5 stars (706 ratings)

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Chefman 2.1 qt. Analog Air Fryer

Another relatively affordable choice is the Chefman Analog Air Fryer. It’s tiny too, offering just 2.1 quarts of food frying capacity. The appliance did deliver tasty mozzarella sticks and decent chicken wings. However, it undercooked my test Brussels sprouts and frozen french fries. I also found the Chefman’s timer control confusing. This dial is labelled in numerical increases of 10. The numbers though are mysteriously separated by groups of four dots, not nine as you would expect.

Target review average:4.5 out of 5 stars (410 ratings)

---

PowerXL Vortex Air Fryer

You might consider purchasing the PowerXL Vortex. I recommend against it though due to its steep price and mediocre frying ability. I had satisfactory results cooking chicken wings in it. However, the machine exploded my mozzarella sticks when I fried them as directed by the product manual. It also overcooked Brussels sprouts and the french fries it prepared were merely OK, not outstanding. 

Amazon review average: 4.6 out of 5 stars (218 ratings)

Target review average: 4.3 out of 5 stars (415 ratings)

Philips Avance Airfryer with TurboStar

Even with a significant drop in price, the Philips Avance Airfryer isn’t worth your money. Sure, this kitchen appliance does a decent job of heating frozen convenience food like mozzarella sticks and pizza rolls. But when it comes to fresh food like chicken wings, the results from the Philips air fryer were on par with what you’d expect from a conventional oven.

Amazon review average: 4.6 stars out of 5 (1,112 ratings)

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How we evaluated them

It’s certainly a surreal feeling to test multiple air fryers while a pandemic silently rages around the globe. Just like my colleague Ry Crist found with waffle makers, I found the busy work of cooking quite soothing. Perhaps that’s why so many people have embraced bread-making and baking during this time of uncertainty. 

At four runs per machine and eight air fryers in all, I performed a minimum of 32 separate test fries. I also washed each appliance thoroughly between each batch of food. That’s a lot of hand washing too, which is a good thing.

Ease of use

When frying items with each appliance, I made sure to record how my experience went. I paid attention to things like the labels, controls and displays or buttons if these machines had them. I also took note of how loud, or not, the air fryers were while they operated.

How they cook

To get a sense for how each air fryer in this test group handles, I ran a battery of four anecdotal tests on each product. Each test centered around one food ingredient. These were mozzarella sticks, chicken wings, Brussels sprouts and frozen french fries. 

Before I began, I consulted each model’s manual and supplied documentation for relevant cooking directions. If the manual didn’t provide specific instructions, I applied uniform procedures to each air fryer depending on the type of food I was preparing. For fries, I set the fryer for 380 F. After a five minute preheat, I cooked them for 12 minutes. I also give the fries a shake every 5 minutes.

For chicken wings, I preheat to 400 F then fry them for 30 minutes. I also make sure to flip them with tongs every ten minutes. For mozzarella sticks, I preheat to 350 F and cook for 6 minutes. For Brussels sprouts, I preheat to 375 F and cook for 15 minutes. Before cooking, however,I rinse and cut the sprouts in half, then toss them with 1 tbsp of olive oil.

At the end of each test I looked for several criteria. These included how evenly each item was cooked, how well (or not) they were in terms of doneness and, of course, whether they had a sufficient level of crispy, crunchy, fried deliciousness comparable to deep frying.

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Business software and services company Oracle is changing its corporate headquarters from the Silicon Valley area to Austin, Texas, to provide its workers “with more flexibility about where and how they work,” the company said Friday.

“Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all the time,” Oracle said in a statement. The company opened a large corporate campus in Austin in 2018, but it reportedly doesn’t have any plans to move staff from its existing headquarters in Redwood City, California, to Austin.

The company said it will continue to maintain facilities around the US, including those in Redwood City, as well as in Denver; Seattle; Burlington, Vermont; Orlando, Florida; and Santa Monica, California; among others. It expects to establish new locations too, it said.

“By implementing a more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees’ quality of life and quality of output,” the company said in its statement.

Oracle isn’t the only tech company that’s thinking about flexibility for employees, after months of people working from home because of coronavirus lockdowns. Facebook and Twitter have both said they’ll let some employees work from home permanently. But as Oracle suggests, offices may not yet be a thing of the past. Google, for one, has said it’ll adopt a wait-and-see approach to remote working beyond the pandemic.

Oracle also isn’t the only tech powerhouse with a thing for Texas. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed this week that he’d personally moved there. In May, Musk also tweeted that he’d be moving Tesla’s headquarters to Texas or Nevada. Tesla is currently building a new factory outside Austin, and SpaceX has been operating in Texas almost since its beginnings. But both firms are still based and maintain operations in California.

And Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, a descendant of the pioneering Silicon Valley company, said earlier this month that it’s moving its headquarters from San Jose, California, to Houston.

Bioreports’s Antuan Goodwin contributed to this report.

Charcoal grills aren’t complex and often lack the luxury looks of gas grills, but the best charcoal grills absolutely compete when it comes to flavor. Charcoal grills are easier to set up than gas grills. All you need is a bag of charcoal, a lighter and your favorite ingredients in order to achieve a quick meal with true smoky flavor. They’re often more affordable, too, making charcoal grills a good option for tight budgets and beginner grillers.

From kettle-style to cart-style, feature-filled to bare minimum, we tested eight charcoal grills with steak, chicken, and ribs to find out which are the best bet for your next cookout. 

How we test

Testing charcoal grills means a lot of hands-on cooking experience. Depending on the season, and how your charcoal grill is set up, your experience cooking and grilling will likely be very different from ours. For example, a kettle-style charcoal grill left in the July sun all day will run a lot hotter than a grill in the cooler spring months. 

First, a note about grill thermometers. None of the hood thermometers built into these grills mirrored the temperatures recorded by our own thermocouples and data software. It’s not uncommon for grill thermometers to read high, so we recommend keeping an oven thermometer or Bluetooth thermometer handy while you’re grilling, either for your meat or for the grill’s temperature itself. 

High-heat searing with steak

To test high heat, we seared two steaks on each grill. Charcoal was measured in a chimney by grams, and in a ratio for that grill’s specific surface area. We lit the charcoal inside the chimney, letting it burn until the smoke dissipated and the coals began to turn grayish white, then put the charcoal into the grill. Let the grill heat up for 10 minutes, and the steaks are ready to hit the grates. 

We placed two steaks on each charcoal grill near the center and seared for five minutes before flipping them over and searing five more minutes. In a good, reliable grill this will give you a steak with a seared outside and medium rare to medium center. Of course, if your taste is meat that’s more done, you can extend the cooking time or sear and finish cooking in an oven. 

The best charcoal grill for steak-searing in our lineup was the Weber Classic Kettle. The steak had nice grill marks while keeping a medium doneness on the inside. The worst was our Tacklife review unit, which didn’t hold much heat and didn’t sear while cooking. The steak on that grill needed an additional 5 minutes to get to a temperature of 135, the minimum for medium rare. 

Chicken and indirect, medium heat

Next, we tested each grill’s medium heat cooking capability by roasting whole chickens. The trick here is to keep the grills at a hot enough temperature to cook a chicken for upwards of two hours. Each grill got a full chimney of charcoal, and we placed one six-pound chicken on each grill, opposite the coals for indirect heat. 

Cooking over charcoal took longer than cooking with a gas grill, and we did have to add more fuel to keep our grills above 300 degrees. Our favorite bird from this batch was the one cooked on the Weber, though it was a tough call. The Nexgrill cart-style grill came in right behind, a close second in terms of flavor and texture.

The difference between the two was largely in the crispiness of the skin, with Weber being superior. Meat from the Nexgrill was delicious, with just a bit more flavor than the Weber. Between the two, I’d say it largely depends on your budget and what style of grill you prefer for other meats like burgers or steak. Weber certainly had the superior sear in that category. 

Low and slow ribs

Our last test centers around barbecue ribs, specifically baby back pork ribs. This style of cooking requires strict temperature control over a period of multiple hours. Ideally, a quality charcoal grill (or any smoker) will keep its fire humming along as close to 225 degrees F (107.2 C), for as long as possible. 

To that end, we set up each grill for a low and slow burn, using the charcoal snake method. In the case of kettle models, we arrange coals in a semicircle around the grill’s inner wall. The charcoal briquettes (Kingsford Blue) form a line two coals wide and two coals deep. We also drop a few chunks of smokewood on top of the snake (aka fuse). On cart-style grills, we modify the snake to run in right angles to match their rectangular-shaped fireboxes. 

Next, we light each grill’s snake, at one end of the chain, with five lit briquettes (tumbleweed fire starters work, too). We set all air vents on each grill (top and bottom) to the halfway open position. Lastly, we place one rack of ribs on each grill, for indirect cooking (not directly above the coals)

The Weber was the undisputed king on this test. No other grill in this group could match the rock-solid temperature control of this iconic cooker. Readings from our own thermocouples, plus a digital pit thermometer, confirmed this. Throughout the Weber’s 6 hour, 32 minute cook time, the grill’s internal heat levels never wandered beyond 25 degrees of the our target (225 F). In fact, most of the time the temperature hovered between 220 and 230 degrees (F). As a result, ribs cooked in the Weber came out tender, juicy and full of smoke flavor.

The Napoleon grill was the second best on this test. Interior temperatures had a greater swing, jumping up to 300 degrees (F) during periods of the cook. Its rack of ribs was ready in a short 4 hours, 30 minutes too. And while its ribs came tender and juicy overall, the exterior bark had a few burnt spots. 

We noted similar temperature performance from the NexGrill, along with similar rib results. Cooking ribs low and slow on the NexGrill required just 4 hours, 30 minutes. Its rack came out well too, though like the Napoleon, its bark was more pronounced than what the Weber produced. 

Our rib experience with a few of the other grills was far from ideal. The TackLife was particularly bad. At times the inside of this grill hit temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit. And sadly, the ribs it produced came out burned, charred and overdone.

Other grills we’ve tested

The Bioreports Smart Home editors have been serving up grill data for a few years now. In addition to the models we recommend above, here are the other charcoal grills we’ve tested: 

• KitchenAid Cart-Style Charcoal Grill: KitchenAid’s $199 cart-style charcoal grill has heavy-duty cast iron grates as well as two foldable side trays for extra workspace. It didn’t wow us in any of our tests, but wasn’t noticeably bad either.
• Char-Griller Super Pro: This $147 cart-style charcoal grill was average in our tests, but it is compatible with a side smoker sold separately, if you’re looking for a charcoal grill with great versatility. 
• Cuisinart Kettle Charcoal Grill: This 18-inch kettle style grill costs $90 and includes all the basic features you’d expect. It couldn’t beat the Weber for classic kettle cooking, but it’s a solid second choice for an affordable kettle style grill. 
• Tacklife Oversize Grill (22.5-inch): Tacklife fared the worst in our testing. It costs just $77, and while price doesn’t always reflect performance or quality, in this case it did. 
• Dyna-Glo Heavy Duty Charcoal Grill: This cart-style model from Dyna-Glo is pricier at $200, and has killer looks but only fair performance.
• Masterbuilt Gravity Series 560: This $500 card-style model from Masterbuilt is pricey but unique. It burns charcoal but controls its fire and heat levels electronically like a pellet smoker. It performs well too, though it could be more fuel efficient. The Masterbuilt’s hardware isn’t weatherized against rain either. Read out full review.   
  
  

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For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO website.

If your futuristic fantasies have ever included a mask that protects you from germs while fully protecting your identity, say hello to Blanc, a full-face modular mask that lets you walk around looking like a faceless robot or a member of Daft Punk. 

The wild mask protects your eyes, nose and mouth from the outside world while ensuring the outside world can’t see a single millimeter of your mien. 

“Keep your identity secure behind its opaque changeable front panels,” says the Kickstarter campaign for the project, which has blown past its $20,000 goal on the crowdfunding platform, exceeding $245,000 with 37 days to go. 

Blanc filters air through two reusable and replaceable FDA-approved HEPA filters. But Blanc’s international team, which includes product designers, engineers, scientists and marketing specialists, says it wants to offer users more than just safety in these COVID-19 times. (Read more about the best and worst mask materials for protecting against coronavirus.) 

The headgear, which calls itself a “thousand masks in one,” has swappable panels, clipped to the frame and held by magnets, that let you adjust the look to channel your mood and match your outfit. You could opt to encase your head in stripes, a leopard print or a camouflage pattern, for example, or go with classic silver for a more Mandalorian vibe. The black-and-white combo gives the mask a distinctly PlayStation 5 je ne sais quoi. 

“Express your creativity whether you are taking a walk in the park, sitting in front of your computer at the office, or enjoying your evening with friends at a club,” the Kickstarter project says.

The mask is available for preorder on Kickstarter now at reward levels starting at $79 (about £60, AU$105). The product is expected to ship to anywhere in the world in March of 2021, though co-founder Philipp Egorov, an IT expert based in Moscow, told me the team is pushing for a mid-February rollout. 

The response to Blanc has been overwhelming, Egorov says, with particularly high levels of interest out of Japan.  

“We’re getting tons of controversial feedback though,” Egorov added. “I personally love the recent ‘Can I both love and hate it?’ commentary from the Australia-based backer who ended up buying three masks.” 

Do keep in mind, of course, that not all crowdfunding projects deliver on time and as promised. And that in some situations, it’s helpful for people to be able to see your eyes. 

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

A long-awaited rocket-powered flight over the southern New Mexico desert on Saturday was much shorter than Virgin Galactic and its founder, Richard Branson, were hoping for.

The company’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft took off from Spaceport America at 7:24 a.m. PT (8:24 a.m. MT), carrying the passenger spacecraft SpaceShipTwo Unity. The pair then spent about 45 minutes climbing to release altitude at more than 40,000 feet (12,192 meters).

About 50 minutes after takeoff, a livestream from NASASpaceflight.com appeared to show Unity separating and its rocket engine firing for just about a second before shutting down early.

“The ignition sequence for the rocket motor did not complete,” the company reported later on Twitter. “Vehicle and crew are in great shape. We have several motors ready at Spaceport America. We will check the vehicle and be back to flight soon.”

Early update on flight: The ignition sequence for the rocket motor did not complete. Vehicle and crew are in great shape. We have several motors ready at Spaceport America. We will check the vehicle and be back to flight soon.

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) December 12, 2020

Unity glided back for a landing at Spaceport America, and the company confirmed that all pilots and vehicles are safe and secure.

After years of development and delays due to a fatal accident and now the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s hope to send Branson and then paying customers to space by 2020 had already been dashed even before this aborted test flight.

Virgin has completed powered test flights from California. But it aims to perform two test flights from its commercial home base in New Mexico before Branson finally gets to take the joyride he’s been waiting (and paying) for since the company’s founding in 2004.

Saturday’s flight was also carrying some small payloads for NASA. It’s not yet clear when the company will try again.

The Mandalorian season 2 kept rolling on Disney Plus Friday with episode 7 of the live-action Star Wars show. After Grogu was recaptured by the Imperial Remnant, Mando (Pedro Pascal) knew he’d need help from a former Imperial to track down Moff Gideon’s cruiser so they could rescue the little guy.

With backup from New Republic marshal Cara Dune (Gina Carano), bounty hunter Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and assassin Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), they go to spring one-time Imperial sharpshooter Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) out of prison. He’s serving a 50-year sentence after he betrayed Mando and ended up trapped on a New Republic prison ship.

Chapter 15, titled The Believer, was directed and written by Rick Famuyiwa (who directed two episodes of season 1, including the one Mayfeld appeared in). 

Be warned, SPOILERS are about to break out. This show is set around five years after Return of the Jedi.

A pretty chill prison breakout

When Mando mentioned getting Mayfeld out of prison, we all assumed this whole episode would be one big breakout operation, right? I know I did. Turns out it’s a whole lot simpler than that — Cara just uses her authority as a New Republic official to take him out of there.

Maybe she had to fill out a bunch of boring paperwork too, but we don’t see that. Maybe that’s what the upcoming Rangers of the New Republic spinoff will be all about? Boring bureaucracy?

It turns out that Mayfeld has to get the location of Gideon’s cruiser from an Imperial terminal, and suggests they use the one at the Imperial refinery on Morak (it’s secret, but Mayfeld knows secrets).

Armor swap

To get into the refinery, Mayfeld and Mando have to swipe an armored vehicle transporting unstable rydonium, and Mando has to swap his sweet beskar armor for an icky trooper’s outfit. Mayfeld points out that Mando is clearly bending his “no taking off his helmet” rule (which he’ll later break completely), and they have to very carefully drive the rydonium to the facility. 

This part of the episode feels like a Grand Theft Auto transport mission, with a gauge warning them to slow down if the rydonium gets too shaken up and with the pirates trying to blow them up. Mando has to defend them from the pirate goons, and cheapy Imperial armor doesn’t hold like his beskar, but he’s such a badass that he manages to hold off long enough.

Just as they’re about to be overwhelmed, TIE fighters and stormtroopers swoop in to save the day. It’s pretty weird to be relieved at the sign of Imperials, and even stranger when they applaud the disguised Mayfeld and Mando for completing their mission. Especially since our heroes are about to kill a whole bunch of them.

Facetime with Mando

To access the Imperial terminal, Mando has to remove his helmet, giving us our second ever look at his handsome Pedro Pascal face. This is a huge moment for him: He previously mentioned that no living person has seen him without his helmet since he swore the creed — now Mayfeld and a bunch of (soon to be dead) Imperials have seen him.

However, Mando is probably beginning to doubt that rule, since fellow Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze revealed that he’s part of a group of religious Mandalorian zealots, and she and her team were fine with taking off their helmets. Pascal is pretty excellent here too, with his portrayal giving us the right mix of discomfort and hesitancy. 

Mayfeld nicknames him “Brown Eyes” upon seeing his face, in a nice callback to his request that Mando take off his helmet so they could see his eyes (back in season 1).

Operation Cinder

We learn that Mayfeld was traumatized by his role in Operation Cinder, a nasty Imperial attack carried out in the aftermath of Emperor Palpatine’s “death” in Return of the Jedi. He left orders that satellites orbiting various Imperial planets cause electrical storms and other wild weather events to wreck those worlds — like immediate, catastrophic climate change.

The reasoning was that the Empire and its enemies couldn’t be allowed to outlive Palpatine, the big ol’ narcissist.The real objective was to sow chaos and disrupt the formation of a replacement government, in addition to radicalizing the remaining Imperials before they were reformed into the First Order (paving the way for Palpatine’s return). Much of this event took place in Battlefront 2’s excellent story mode and Marvel’s Shattered Empire comics.

Greasy Imperial officer Valin Hess (Richard Brake, whom you might remember shooting Bruce Wayne’s parents in Batman Begins) was Mayfeld’s commanding officer during Operation Cinder, and was seemingly in full support of the atrocities on the planet Burnin Konn — which left Mayfeld’s squad and thousands of civilians dead.

“You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want is order,” says an unbearably smug Hess. “And when they realize that, they’re gonna welcome us back with open arms.”

Mayfeld wasn’t about that — presumably Cinder was the reason he left the Empire — nor did he want to see the Imperials use the rydonium to continue the chaos, so he shoots Hess dead in the middle of the mess hall. Nice work. He and Mando have the location of Gideon’s cruiser at that point, so all is well once they escape to the roof (where Boba picks them up in Slave I).

Attack of the Clone

Boba mostly provides backup in this episode, but looks absolutely badass in his repainted armor. It’s the cleanest we’ve ever seen the paintwork, and it’s fitting much better than it did in the last episode.

Upon rescuing Mando and Mayfeld, he uses Slave I’s seismic charges to blow up some pursuing TIE fighters. These charges make one of the coolest sounds in Star Wars — you might remember Boba’s father Jango trying to blow up Obi-Wan Kenobi with them in Attack of the Clones. 

Back on Gideon’s trail

Mayfeld also blows up the Imperial facility by shooting the rydonium, cementing his character development. This clearly resonates with Cara, who decides to let him skip away to freedom instead going back to New Republic incarceration. 

With the coordinates for Gideon’s cruiser, Mando decides to send the Imperial (Giancarlo Esposito) an epic warning message that mirrors Gideon’s threat from his first appearance.

“Moff Gideon. You have something I want. You may think you have some idea what you are in possession of, but you do not. Soon, he will be back with me. He means more to me than you will ever know,” Mando says via holo.

Baby Yoda cuteness

None at all. This is the first episode of the show without so much as a glimpse of Grogu, who’s presumably still in a cell on Gideon’s ship. It’s a little weird not to see the little guy, but we’ll presumably see a whole lot of him in next week’s season 2 finale.

Easter eggs and observations

• Mayfeld’s incarceration sees him breaking down old TIE fighters and Imperial tech for the New Republic. It’s cool to see that prisoners’ hard labor consists of sweeping away the old regime. 
• It’s a little odd that Mayfeld doesn’t recognize Boba, given his infamy as a bounty hunter and work with the Empire. I guess it’s a big galaxy.
• Where are Mayfeld’s allies? The Twi’lek Xi-an and the Devaronian Burg were left in the same New Republic cell he was, though they were presumably imprisoned elsewhere after getting caught. Hopefully we’ll see them again sometime.
• Mayfeld implies that Mandalore was destroyed like Alderaan, but that isn’t the case as far as we know. Alderaan was literally blown up by the Death Star, while the people of Mandalore were nearly wiped out by the Empire in the Great Purge. But the planet still exists, and we’ll probably go there in this show (maybe in season 3).

Join us for more Easter eggs and observations next Friday, after the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian season 2 hits Disney Plus.

Discuss: Production-intent Bollinger B1 and B2 look a little less edgy

Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to read. Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion.

There was a time when 70-inch TVs were outliers in a world of 50-inch models, but even that giant screen size is starting to normalize. If you have a wall that can accommodate such an enormous display, Best Buy is having a one-day flash sale to persuade you to fill in that space. This Sharp AQUOS 70-inch LED 4K TV is now $480, marked down from the regular price of $650. That looks like the best price ever for this set, which previously never broke the $500 mark.

Sharp’s Full Array LED panel is new for 2020. It includes HDR10 support, Wi-Fi 5, four HDMI ports and a pair of USB inputs. Though we prefer the Roku operating system, Android TV is excellent, and supports virtually all the streaming channels you might want, with the obvious exception of Apple TV. You’ll probably want to add a soundbar, but it does feature a pair of 20-watt speakers. 

TV deals like this are relatively rare now that Black Friday is over, so here’s a chance to get a lot of screen for a small price tag. 

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Bioreports’s deal team scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. Find more great buys on the Bioreports Deals page and check out our Bioreports Coupons page for the latest promo codes from Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon and more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page.

Even if you’ve never seen a James Bond movie, it’s likely you have something from the 007 franchise, a pop culture powerhouse, stuck in your trivia brain. A man in a tuxedo holding a pistol. Sean Connery’s accent. Roger Moore’s arched eyebrow. The GoldenEye video game. That catchphrase: shaken, not stirred.

And you’re thinking, maybe you should finally watch one of the movies, or go on a Bond binge. For that, you can head to YouTube: Right now the streaming service is offering almost all the Bond movies for free (with ads), except for the fourth of Pierce Brosnan’s four outings, and — sorry — none of Daniel Craig’s turns.

To help you get started, this is your beginner’s guide to Bond, who’s long defined a certain type of style and swagger. Or if you’re already a confirmed 007 fan, it’s a chance to weigh in on Connery’s quips, Moore’s merits, Brosnan’s best or the one-hit wonder that was George Lazenby. Movie fans have strong feelings about who played Bond best (and worst).

The big-screen Bond franchise certainly has staying power. Over the years, six actors have stepped into the role. The movie series got going way back in 1962 with Dr. No, starring the late Sean Connery, who’s indelibly associated with Bond. That’s well before the Star Wars saga (1977) and even the launch of the Star Trek ecosystem (1966). Bond-themed video games got a later start, and there’s a new one in the works, IO Interactive’s “Project 007.” 

Now there’s a new James Bond film on the way: No Time to Die, due to arrive in theaters in April 2021. (That is, if it doesn’t land on a streaming service first.) For those of you keeping count, it’s Bond 25 in the canon. It’s also expected to be the fifth and final Bond film for Daniel Craig, the latest embodiment of secret agent 007.

That means we’re in for renewed debate about who should be the next James Bond. Idris Elba? Lashana Lynch? If you watch even just a few of the Bond movies from the last six decades, you’ll be in good shape to weigh in on that moviemaking moment.

Here are two places for you to get started with the iconic spy from MI6. Take your pick: the modern Bond or the original.

Read more: The 32 best movies to watch on Netflix  

Start with: Casino Royale

Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond is a terrific spy/action movie, period. It’s that heart-poundingly good. But Casino Royale (2006) also did what no previous Bond movie could do: It completely rebooted the franchise, blowing up a formula that many saw as played out, with far-fetched gimmicks and belabored puns, even as it remained a steady box office draw. It’s based on Ian Fleming’s very first Bond novel and gives us Bond very much as he was introduced to the world. It stays true to that original story in many essential ways (not a hallmark of Bond movies in general) while at the same time updating it for modern audiences.

Craig himself delivers all the muscle and menace the character deserves, in keeping with Fleming’s depictions and as measured against Connery, still the standard by which all other Bonds are invariably judged. There’s nothing glib about this Bond, and if he does look good in a tuxedo, you always know there’s a brute inside ready to battle the baddies. You learn right off the bat how he earned his double-0 (license to kill) rating, then it’s off to a spectacular chase and gunfight. That’s just in the first 18 minutes.

High points, too, for a nasty villain in Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre, Judi Dench as Bond’s no-nonsense boss M and Eva Green as Bond’s female foil.

Casino Royale also opens the door to the strong series of movies that follow — Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), with No Time to Die waiting in the wings. There’s more than just action here: There’s an arc that leads us deeper into Bond’s past and how it drives him in the here and now.

Start with: From Russia With Love / Goldfinger

This whole franchise got going with Connery, so you can’t go wrong starting there. But for now let’s skip the very first movie, Dr. No. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but the two movies that followed are more definitive — they’re often the top two in lists of the best Bond movies. Pick either of these and you’re getting absolutely top-shelf Connery, the man who defined Bond and who was the heart of the franchise when it exploded into a phenomenon.

From Russia With Love (1963) gives you an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned spy story, with no tech wizardry to speak of and no evil plan to destroy the world. It’s Bond on an intimate scale, a character-driven tale of our spy, the woman sent to seduce him and the assassin (a buff and square-jawed Robert Shaw) assigned to take him down. (It also gives us our first glimpse of Blofeld, the recurring uber-villain.) In the finest Bondian tradition of exotic locales, this one cozies up to Istanbul and takes a memorable ride on the Orient Express. The fight scene in the train compartment is rightfully a classic.

Then along came Goldfinger (1964), the third movie. This one ratcheted things up and pretty much set the splashy tone for all the movies up till Craig arrived — the outlandish plot (set off a nuke to irradiate the gold at Fort Knox), the over-the-top villain and henchman, the Aston Martin DB-5 sports car tricked out with machine guns and ejector seat, the laser with which Goldfinger memorably threatens 007 (“No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die”). Plus: One of the greatest theme songs of the series.

Connery is dashing, virile, devilish, supremely confident — everything you’d expect from a modern action hero, in part because he was the template.

Next steps

I’d recommend getting a handful of Craig and/or Connery movies under your belt before venturing out more widely. Best to watch the Craig installments in sequence, but the Connerys (like the Moores, Daltons and Brosnans) you can watch in any order. Stick with the five Connery films from the 1960s before looking toward his two comeback efforts. The early movies are very much of their time, of course, so while you might chuckle at the quaintness of the tech and the fashions and the cinematography, you may cringe a bit at some of the ethnic depictions and sexual mores.

The other Bonds

Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan are the two horses besides Connery and Craig. Moore brought a lighter touch to Bond over the course of seven films throughout the 1970s and halfway into the 1980s. They’re mostly romps, really, never too dark and often veering into the downright silly, with ever more outlandish stunts and situations — he even makes it into space, in 1979’s Moonraker, at the start of the space shuttle era. A good Moore vehicle to start with is For Your Eyes Only (1981), which is one of the more grounded stories from his run.

Brosnan picked up the baton in the mid-1990s and starred in four films. More muscular than the Moore movies, they continued the tradition of ultra-spectacular stunts and groaner puns. It was steady work and enduring box office appeal, if not quite at peak levels. Your best bet: Goldeneye (1995), Brosnan’s first outing.

More in the footnote category are Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby. Dalton made two movies in the late 1980s, and it was a bit of a grim turn. Flip a coin, but hope that it turns up The Living Daylights. For a more intriguing entry, try Lazenby’s one go at it, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the producers’ first stab at casting a different actor as 007. It’s the one in which Bond gets married — to Diana Rigg, no less.

The full rundown of the James Bond movies

In the official Bond canon — the films made by Eon Productions, starting with Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli, and continuing with others in the Broccoli clan — there are 25 films, including the upcoming No Time to Die. Because of licensing issues, there were two other, non-canonical movies, including (confusingly) one starring Connery, for a grand total of 27.

Sean Connery

• Dr. No (1962)
• From Russian With Love (1963)
• Goldfinger (1964)
• Thunderball (1965)
• You Only Live Twice (1967)
• Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
• Never Say Never Again (1983) — noncanonical

David Niven, et al.

• Casino Royale (1967) — noncanonical (see below)

George Lazenby

• On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Roger Moore

• Live and Let Die (1973)
• The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
• Moonraker (1979)
• For Your Eyes Only (1981)
• Octopussy (1983)
• A View to a Kill (1985)

Timothy Dalton

• The Living Daylights (1987)
• Licence to Kill (1989)

Pierce Brosnan

• GoldenEye (1995)
• Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
• The World Is Not Enough (1999)
• Die Another Day (2002)

Daniel Craig

• Casino Royale (2006)
• Quantum of Solace (2008)
• Skyfall (2012)
• Spectre (2015)
• No Time to Die (2021)

The other Casino Royales

There have been three versions of Casino Royale, all radically different. We’ve already gone over the Daniel Craig version, a strong contender for best and most definitive Bond movie ever. 

Don’t confuse it with the 1967 version of Casino Royale that’s both a spoof and a god-awful big-budget mess of a movie. It’s an odd blend of Bondian motifs, old-time Hollywood stars and then-trendy psychedelia. The plot, such as it is, involves trying to fool the bad guys with a number of different people claiming to be James Bond, including David Niven (the real Bond), Peter Sellers, Woody Allen and former “Bond Girl” Ursula Andress.

Then there’s the true footnote, and totally not a Bond movie, the 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale for an American TV anthology series called Climax! It’s a roughly 52-minute episode in which American actor Barry Nelson plays the hero as “Card Sense Jimmy Bond,” an agent for the “Combined Intelligence Agency” whose delivery tends toward watered-down Sam Spade. The highlight: Peter Lorre plays the villain, a sad-eyed and shopworn Le Chiffre.

Branching out: The spoofs

Once you’ve seen a few Bonds, especially the ones from the Connery and Moore eras, you’ll have a rich lode of references for the many, many Bond spoofs over the decades. 

How powerful a hold has Bond had on the Hollywood imagination? It brought Mike Myers to the peak of his fame with the Austin Powers movies, which got started in 1997 but drew heavily on the ’60s and ’70s Bonds. The first Johnny English movie, with a comically inept Rowan Atkinson, didn’t come till 2003. You’ll find homages to Bond in everything from the Kingsman franchise to the Despicable Me movies (especially the first one) to 2019’s Spies in Disguise, an animated comedy with Will Smith as a tuxedo-wearing, gadget-equipped secret agent (who gets turned into a pigeon).

For a deeper album cut, look out for a pair of movies from the 1960s — Our Man Flint and In Like Flint — in which James Coburn gives a goofy-brilliant turn as a very Bond-like secret agent. That era brought a whole host of TV shows that very entertainingly mined the same soil — The Man From UNCLE, Get Smart, I Spy, The Wild Wild West — and then served as fodder for movie reboots in more recent years.

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger got into the game, in the James Cameron-directed True Lies (1994).

Branching out: The books

James Bond got his start in a series of novels by Ian Fleming — 12 of them, plus a smattering of short stories. The first novel, Casino Royale, came out in 1953, less than a decade after the end of World War II, during which Fleming gained first-hand knowledge of spies and spying. It’s worth picking up one or two of the books if only for the comparison with the movies — which diverge anywhere between a little and “lose everything but the title.” 

Try Casino Royale for sure, or maybe From Russia With Love (President Kennedy famously was a fan) or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Note: The books are all a lot less flashy than the films, and they’re of a very different era, the last ones having been written by about the time Goldfinger (movie No. 3) was hitting the screen.

There have also been Bond books written by other authors. Kingsley Amis kicked things off in 1968 with Colonel Sun, and was followed by writers including John Gardner and Sebastian Faulks.

Little did you suspect, but Fleming also wrote the children’s novel Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

Ian Fleming’s Bond books, in order of publication:

• Casino Royale (1953)
• Live and Let Die (1954)
• Moonraker (1955)
• Diamonds Are Forever (1956)
• From Russia, With Love (1957)
• Dr. No (1958)
• Goldfinger (1959)
• For Your Eyes Only (1960) — collection of short stories including the title story, Quantum of Solace and From a View to a Kill
• Thunderball (1961)
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) 
• On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963)
• You Only Live Twice (1964)
• The Man With the Golden Gun (1965)
• Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966) — those two short stories and, in later editions, two others

Branching out: The documentary

The Hulu original documentary Becoming Bond is a quirky and absolutely fascinating biopic about George Lazenby, who came out of nowhere to become the man who took over for Sean Connery. You get a good look at how On Her Majesty’s Secret Service fits into the franchise, but more than that, a riveting picture of Lazenby himself — through sometimes truly moving reminiscences of a 70-something Lazenby and through re-enactments of his early years that have something of a Drunk History vibe.

Google’s home state of California on Friday filed to join a landmark antitrust lawsuit brought against the tech giant in October by the US Department of Justice. 

California’s addition to the complaint makes it the first Democratic state to sign on to the case, joining a group of 11 states with Republican attorneys general that are already supporting the DOJ’s suit. California isn’t making any “substantive changes” to the complaint or seeking to add any new facts, according to the filing.

“Google’s market dominance leaves consumers and small businesses with little choice when it comes to internet search engines,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “By using exclusionary agreements to dominate the market, Google has stifled competition and rigged the advertising market. We look forward to litigating this case to restore competition and innovation for California consumers.”

The Justice Department lawsuit alleges Google broke antitrust law by cutting deals with phone makers, such as Apple and Samsung, to be the default search engine on their devices, a move that boxed out competitors. The agency also accuses Google of taking advantage of the dominance of its Android operating system to pressure device makers into preloading its search app and other services on phones powered by the software.

Google has called the lawsuit “deeply flawed.” On Friday, the company didn’t address California’s addition to the lawsuit but said, “We’re confident in our position and we’ll continue to make our case in court.”

Becerra is President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services. He was one of the few holdouts when a coalition of 50 states and territories announced an antitrust investigation into Google last year, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton. California, however, had reportedly launched its own probe. 

Way back in 1995, my favorite CD-ROM game was You Don’t Know Jack, a party game that I played endlessly with friends and family. It was charming, funny and irreverent. Fast-forward 25 years, and YDKJ can still be enjoyed in the form of various Jackbox Party Packs. If you don’t know Jack, you owe it to yourself to grab one or more Jackbox games, especially now that Jackbox is having a sale across the site with games marked down from 25% to 45%. And now through the end of the month, you can take another 5% off when you use promo code ELF at checkout. 

That means a few games are discounted up to 50%. There are few better “party” games to play over the upcoming holidays, and thanks to some internet magic, you can play Jackbox games remotely as well, so you can play with far-off friends and familly too. 

First published earlier this year. Updated with new deal details. 

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When a piece of cookware this exquisite goes on sale we are simply obligated to share the news and, truth be told, this just might be the best kitchen deal to score for a home chef on your list. Plus, it’s guaranteed to arrive before Christmas. Right now a cherry-red Staub 4-quart enameled cast iron cocotte is down to $99 at Food52. That’s more than 65% off the normal price and matches the lowest price we’ve seen for it. 

If you’re wondering what a cocotte is, it’s essentially a small Dutch oven with a fancier name and one of the most versatile pots you can own. Cast iron retains heat as well as anything and distributes it evenly, making this a perfect vessel for slow and low braising or smaller roasts in the oven. The tough enameled coating is designed for easy release so cleanup is a breeze. The 4-quart cocotte will also come in handy for a slow Sunday sauce or simmering stew, and Staub’s time-tested, quality construction will last for decades, if not longer. 

The Staub cast-iron cocotte is available in a slew of colors but only the cherry red is in stock and guaranteed to arrive before Christmas — Dec. 22 to be exact. There’s a flat $9 shipping fee for domestic orders.

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The 2021 Subaru WRX and WRX STI models soldier on for another model year ahead of anticipated next-generation cars, likely next year. Even though they remain identical to the outgoing model year, Subaru hasn’t raised the price on the WRX a single penny. We need affordable sports cars in our lives, so this is good news indeed.

As for the 2021 Subaru WRX STI, it only costs $250 more than last year, which isn’t much of anything in the grand scheme of car payments. Subaru issued prices for the latest models on Thursday and we’ll see 2021 WRX sedans hit dealers with the same starting price of $28,420 after a $925 destination charge. The WRX STI that bundles more power and way more performance rings in at a justifiable $38,170, also after the same destination fee. 

Go home with a WRX and you’ll feel a 2.0-liter turbo-four boxer engine ahead of you mated to a standard six-speed manual transmission with 268 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque on tap. Yes, Subaru sells a CVT with the engine, but please don’t. The WRX STI kicks things up with a 2.5-liter turbo-four boxer engine that makes 310 hp and 290 lb-ft of torque. The CVT is not available here, so you’re stuck with a stick, which is as it should be in this kind of vehicle.

Admittedly, these cars are in a sense very old at this point. The cabins and tech look and feel mighty dated in comparison with rivals, but that doesn’t make them poor choices. We continue to test, and enjoy, our fair share of WRX and WRX STI sedans. It’s not like there’s a lack of decent technology, it just runs in a clunkier fashion than in fresher cars on sale. There’s a 6.5-inch touchscreen unit in both vehicles that runs Subaru’s rather meh Starlink system, but thankfully, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard. And, guys, you still get a CD player, too.

Subaru still offers plenty of options if you want to take your 2021 WRX or WRX STI to fancy-town, too. If you want one of this generation of WRX or WRX STI, this might be your last shot.

If you’re stumped on what to give a home chef this year, a handy meal kit subscription just may be the ideal gift in 2020. For one, meal kits can be sent from afar with no need to be handled, wrapped or exchanged in person. Also, given that closures are swinging back into effect in much of the country, we’re all doing more home cooking. Now, that’s all well and good, but as Helen Rosner so honestly put it in her recent New Yorker admission The Joylessness of Cooking, the ritual of incessant recipe planning and grocery shopping during the pandemic has grown wearisome for many. Or it has for her, anyhow.

Enter the meal kit as a gift: a simple, practical ready-to-go dinner project to bestow upon a food lover or lighten the burden for a burnt-out home cook. Meal kits aren’t just great gifts for tired chefs, either: They’ve proven to be a great way for newbies to hone their kitchen skills or even help those starting from scratch to learn the basics of cooking. With preportioned ingredients all bundled together, and easy-to-follow recipes with helpful tips you might not find in advanced recipes, some meal kits are like interactive Cliffs Notes for beginner chefs. Plus, they eliminate trips to the store, which is a gift unto itself in 2020.

Read more: The best foodie gift boxes and subscriptions to send this year

As someone who has tested just about every meal kit service under the sun, I can tell you that not all of them are right for every type of home cook and thus some meal kits make perfect gifts while others may miss the mark. Blue Apron is the original meal kit and still the best meal kit to gift an experienced chef, but the category has ballooned in recent years. That just means there are meal kits designed specifically for new chefs, more adventurous eaters, vegan and vegetarian chefs too. Meal kits also run the gamut, price-wise, to fit most budgets. 

If you’re looking to send a meal kit gift card or meal kit subscription for someone on your list, check out my favorite meal kits to gift someone on your list this year. 

Note: Most meal kits allow you to purchase gift cards online, which is the easiest way to give the gift of meal kits. The recipient can use their gift card to sign up and choose their own recipes. Most meal kits allow for no-hassle cancellations so they can decide to continue their subscription or cancel anytime. 

Blue Apron

Blue Apron has been doing it longer than anyone, which might explain why its meal kits are of a particular quality and refinement decades later. Blue Apron recipes span from very easy to slightly more complicated meals such as Togarashi steamed duck buns. In my experience, Blue Apron has some of the most interesting recipes along with the highest quality ingredients which they take care sourcing from respected producers. All this amounts to a slightly higher price per serving than some other meal kits, but a more experienced chef will appreciate the variety in recipes and attention to detail. 

You can purchase Blue Apron gift cards online in any amount. A gift of $60 covers one week of two-serving meals. 

Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot has carved out a niche in the space as the best meal kits for vegans and vegetarians. With satisfying plant-based recipes like vegan sausage jambalaya and crispy quinoa cakes, Purple Carrot is a great meal kit to gift a vegetarian chef, but also a meat-eater looking to add more plant-based meals to their current rotation. For $72, you can gift three Purple Carrot meal kits, each with two servings per meal. 

HelloFresh

Perhaps you suspect someone on your list would like to learn to cook but you’re not quite sure. HelloFresh is the most affordable meal kit, with tons of easy recipes that don’t require loads of cooking skills or experience, making it the best meal kit to gift a beginner chef. HelloFresh recipes may be easy to execute, but that doesn’t mean they’re boring, with recipes for things like country beef and mushroom pot pie and coconut chicken curry. HelloFresh also has the most weekly menu options of any meal kit company — sometimes as many as 25 — so your giftee is bound to find something they like. 

HelloFresh gift cards start at $65, which covers a week of meals (3) for two people and then goes up from there.

Read more: Our full review of HelloFresh meal kits

Gobble

Whereas some meal kit companies stick to the familiar when it comes to recipes, Gobble isn’t afraid to incorporate bold flavors. On any given Gobble weekly menu you’ll find lots of curries, latin-spiced dishes and a healthy selection of plant-based entrees too. The recipes also vary greatly in skill level, so the person who receives it can stick to super simple 15-minute recipes or try their hand at more complex culinary endeavors like chicken katsu with pineapple fried rice. 

Gobble gift cards come in any denomination and subscriptions can be paused or canceled at any time. 

Daily Harvest

If someone on your list schedules with getting food on the table do to an overactive schedule or wok life but strives to eat well, Daily Harvest would make the perfect gift. With mostly ready-to-eat vegan smoothies, harvest bowls, breakfast bowls, soups and flatbreads that require little more than to be heated or blended, Daily Harvest is as simple as it gets. Easy doesn’t mean bland, either. Daily Harvest integrates lots of spice and some very trendy superfoods and other ingredients into its ever-changing lineup such as in the pineapple, kale and matcha smoothies or the red lentil, cumin and coconut harvest bowl. 

Daily Harvest is priced per item, with snacks and breakfast bowls starting at $6, soups and smoothies for $8 and harvest bowls and flatbreads for $9. You can order and send a box of nine meals you’ve selected ($75) or simply send a gift card from $50 up to $200 and let them choose.

Read more: Our full review of Daily Harvest

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