If Putin does go to Budapest to meet Trump in the next two weeks, he would need to clear a few hurdles first. Read...

It has laid out how a four-person taxi drone flying at up to 250km/h could travel 60-80 percent faster than driving as well as cut down on traffic jams. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Attractive and luxurious design Built-in kickstand and magnetic display cover Extremely slim and light Very wide color gamut and great color accuracy Excellent sharpness from 14-inch 2560×1600 display Cons IPS Black display panel can’t match OLED’s contrast Only offers USB-C input; no HDMI No Adaptive Sync Our Verdict The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn is a portable monitor that places its focus on attractive yet functional design. That gives it an edge over most competitors, though the image quality of its IPS-LCD display can’t match OLED alternatives. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: HP Series 5 Pro 514pn Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The most inexpensive portable monitors can be had for less than $100, and while they have limitations, they more or less do the job. That can make more expensive portable monitors, like the HP Series 5 Pro 514pn, feel hard to justify. But HP makes a convincing argument for the higher price tag with the monitor’s attractive, lightweight design and superior image quality. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best portable monitors for comparison. HP Series 5 Pro 514pn specs and features The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn’s technical specifications are a bit unusual for a portable monitor. It has a 14-inch display (technically 14.3 inches), but the resolution is 2560×1600 rather than 1080p. And the display panel is IPS Black with Neo:LED rather than standard IPS or (more rarely) VA, a pair of older technologies. This will become important when I test the portable monitor’s image quality. Display size: 14.3-inch 16:10 aspect ratio Native resolution: 2560×1600 Panel type: IPS Black with Neo:LED Refresh rate: 75Hz Adaptive Sync: None HDR: None Ports: 2x USB Type-C with Power Delivery and power pass-through Audio: None Additional features: Built-in kickstand Dimensions: 12.62 x 8.21 x 0.35 inches Weight: 1.4 pounds Price: $299.99 MSRP The monitor is priced at $299.99 MSRP. It’s not yet available at time of this writing, with the retail launch coming in the holiday shopping season. So you should expect you’ll end up paying around $300, unless you’re reading this from the summer of 2026—in which case, hey, how’s the weather? HP Series 5 Pro 514pn design The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn’s IPS Black with Neo:LED panel is unusual for a portable monitor, but it’s arguably the design that really helps the 514pn stand apart from the hundreds of alternatives on the market. It has a solid aluminum chassis that allows very little flex. Aluminum is common even among budget portable monitors, but the HP 514pn ups the ante with a unibody design. Matthew Smith / Foundry Many portable monitors, particularly those that are less expensive, have a two-piece design where a flat aluminum panel is attached to a separate bezel. Here, those two elements are one piece of aluminum, which makes the monitor rigid. Most portable monitors feel like I could snap them over my knee if I really put some effort in, but there’s no way I could do the same to the 514pn. The monitor also has a built-in kickstand with 90 degrees of movement, which translates to 45 degrees of tilt. This isn’t a rare feature: the MSI Pro MP165 E6 also has a kickstand, and it’s much less expensive. However, the HP 514pn’s kickstand is wider and made from aluminum, which makes the monitor feel planted. It’s seemingly impossible to knock the monitor over unless you yeet it straight off your desk. In horizontal orientation, at least. The kickstand also supports vertical use, but it’s less stable and doesn’t offer tilt adjustment, instead sitting at a fixed angle of about 21 degrees. This is a common downside for a portable monitor, however. Matthew Smith / Foundry HP also ships the monitor with a clever magnetic screen cover instead of a sleeve or case. The magnetic cover completely covers the display, but it’s extremely light, which keeps the monitor’s all-in weight down to just 1.4 pounds. It’s also just 0.35 inches thick. The downside? It’s possible for the screen cover to slip off if other items rub against it. I do like HP’s approach, but that’s something to keep in mind if you travel with your portable monitor stored in a suitcase alongside other items. The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn’s design and build quality is certainly a highlight. I’ve complained in the past that mid-range portable monitors, like the Dell Pro 14 Plus, don’t always do enough to stand out from budget peers. The HP 514pn is a different story. It’s attractive and light, yet functional. Most portable monitors feel like I could snap them over my knee if I really put some effort in, but there’s no way I could do the same to the 514pn. HP Series 5 Pro 514pn connectivity The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn’s connectivity is easy to explain. It has two USB-C ports, one on each side, and both provide Power Delivery. Power pass-through up to 65 watts is supported, which means you can connect a USB-C charger to the 514pn and then pass power to a connected laptop, which will also charge. Of course, that also means the monitor lacks HDMI, which is a notable omission. HDMI remains an incredibly common video standard, of course, and one you might need to use if connecting an older device. You’ll need an adapter or HDMI to USB-C cable to do it here, and neither is provided with the 514pn. HP does provide an L-shape USB-C cable, though, which is handy. This style of cable puts the cable at a 90-degree angle to the USB-C connector, which reduces the profile of the cable when it’s connected to the monitor. That keeps the cable out of your way and reduces clutter on your desk. HP Series 5 Pro 514pn menus, audio The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn has three buttons on the right flank; two for brightness and one for power. Holding down the brightness up button for two seconds opens a color mode menu, which has a few basic options like Warm, Cool, Neutral, and Night (a low blue light mode). Monitor options can also be controlled with HP Display Manager, but image quality adjustments remain limited. HP Display Manager is only available on Windows 10 and 11, so Mac users will have to make do with the on-screen menus. In a break from competitors, the HP 514pn doesn’t have built-in speakers. The speakers built in to portable monitors are often bad, so this isn’t a huge downside. Still, it’s something to keep in mind. HP Series 5 Pro 514pn SDR image quality The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn has an IPS Black Neo:LED panel produced by LG. If you’ve not heard of it before, IPS Black is a newer type of IPS panel that provides deeper, more lifelike black levels, which can improve the panel’s contrast. Neo:LED, meanwhile, appears to be a name used by LG to describe an LCD panel with quantum dots (though LG has not directly confirmed this; this is speculation based on the panel’s characteristics). The 514pn is the first portable monitor with an IPS Black Neo:LED panel, and that gives it a unique image quality edge. Matthew Smith / Foundry HP gets off to a good start in brightness with a maximum measured SDR brightness of 394 nits. As the graph shows, that’s a high level of brightness for a portable monitor, defeated only by the Dell Pro 14 Plus and Viewsonic VX-1655-4K-OLED. High brightness is important if you travel, because you’ll often lack control over the lighting in your environment. The HP 514pn can still look dim in a very bright, sunlit room with many windows, but it’s otherwise easy to view. The HP 514pn also has an anti-glare finish with a semi-gloss look. It doesn’t entirely mitigate glare, and is actually a bit more reflective than the very matte finish found on many budget portable monitors. However, the HP 514pn’s display is a lot less reflective than the glossy finish that OLED portable monitors typically use. Matthew Smith / Foundry Next up is contrast, a traditional weakness of IPS-LCD displays. The IPS Black panel helps to mitigate that with a maximum measured contrast ratio of 1710:1. Your view on that result depends on the comparisons you draw. A contrast ratio of 1710:1 is great for an IPS-LCD portable monitor, and the image looks more immersive than on many such alternatives. When placed next to OLED, though, the HP 514pn’s contrast ratio isn’t going to stand out. The image will look flat in a direct comparison to OLED. Matthew Smith / Foundry IPS-LCD displays also typically lag OLED in color gamut, but here the HP 514pn is an exception to the rule. The Neo:LED panel serves up an incredible color gamut that spans 100 percent of sRGB, 100 percent of AdobeRGB, and 99 percent of DCI-P3. As the graph shows, this is an exceptional result that really stands out in the portable monitor category. It even stands up to or defeats OLED alternatives, which typically display a similar breadth of the DCI-P3 color gamut but a bit less of AdobeRGB. The wide color gamut gives the HP 514pn a vibrant and inviting look that pops when viewing bright and colorful content. It also makes the HP 514pn a decent choice for video and photo editors, as well as digital artists (though the lack of built-in image quality adjustments could prove frustrating). Matthew Smith / Foundry Color accuracy is also a win for the HP 514pn, as it posts one of the best color accuracy scores I’ve seen from a portable monitor. In truth, a lot of mid-range portable monitors are good enough—but the HP 514pn’s accuracy is of the caliber I’d recommend for people who are serious about image accuracy including (once again) artists, photographers, and videographers. Better still, the great color accuracy result is reached with good color accuracy scores across all colors. No single color posted an error value above 2.0, which is fantastic performance for a portable monitor. The color temperature and gamma results are great too. I measured a color temperature of 6500K, which is spot on the target. Gamma came in at 2.3, a bit above the target value of 2.2. The image can appear a bit darker than it should and may lack details in very dark portions of an image, but the difference is subtle. Sharpness is a perk thanks to the HP 514pn’s 2560×1600 resolution. Though it’s not the headliner 4K resolution would be, it still packs roughly 211 pixels per inch. That’s actually a much higher pixel density than a 27-inch 4K monitor, which has 163 pixels per inch. Note, too, that the monitor has a display aspect ratio of 16:10 rather than 16:9. While 16:10 is fairly common in 2025, many portable monitors still have a 16:9 display. The added vertical display space that a 16:10 display provides makes the HP 514pn feel larger than the 14.3-inch panel size would suggest. HP Series 5 Pro 514pn HDR image quality and motion HDR is not supported by the HP Series 5 Pro 514pn. While that might seem like a downside, it’s to be expected from a portable monitor with an IPS-LCD display. Portable monitors currently struggle with HDR, with only high-end OLED models like the Viewsonic VX1655-4K-OLED providing a passable experience. Motion clarity is modest, too. The monitor has a 75Hz refresh rate, which is a minor bump over the more typical 60Hz, but an increase that small is difficult to notice. The monitor doesn’t have Adaptive Sync support, either, so PC games won’t feel as smooth as they could. Should you buy the HP Series 5 Pro 514pn? The HP Series 5 Pro 514pn is a fantastic pick if you want an attractive, lightweight portable monitor with solid sharpness and decent color performance. Though the HP 514pn’s IPS Black display can’t match the quality of OLED in contrast, the 514pn is able to meet or beat OLED alternatives in color performance. It’s also bright, which is useful when traveling. These perks more than justify the monitor’s $299.99 MSRP. Read...

TL;DR: A refurbished Apple MacBook Air for $179.97 (MSRP: $999) — 12-hour battery, 128GB storage, and Intel Core i5 performance. Need a solid laptop that can handle everyday tasks without dipping into your savings? This refurbished Apple MacBook Air delivers the perfect mix of performance, portability, and price — just $179.97 (MSRP $999) with free shipping. Powered by a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor and Intel HD Graphics 6000, this Air breezes through web browsing, email, shopping, streaming, and basic work projects. It’s paired with 128GB of flash storage, giving you plenty of space. And with 12 hours of battery life, you won’t be tethered to an outlet, whether you’re at home, at the office, or camped out at a coffee shop. The 13.3-inch widescreen display with 1440×900 resolution allows your movies, spreadsheets, and FaceTime calls to look sharp and vibrant. Meanwhile, built-in Wi-Fi capabilities and Bluetooth make it easy to stay connected and share files across your devices. With its Grade A/B refurbished rating, you may notice a tiny scuff or scratch, but inside, you’re getting a fully functional MacBook. At this price, it’s perfect as a primary laptop, a backup machine, or even a dedicated travel computer. Get this refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Air while it’s on sale for $179.97 (MSRP $999) with free shipping through Nov. 2. Apple MacBook Air 13.3? (2017) i5 1.8GHz 8GB RAM 128GB SSD (Refurbished)See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros HP Go 5G internet works great Multi-network 5G without any configuration Lots of ports (including Ethernet!) Cons HP GO 5G isn’t yet aimed at Consumers Dim display can be hard to read outdoors Middling CPU, keyboard, and webcam Slow GPU Our Verdict The HP EliteBook 6 G1q is a dependable business laptop for companies looking to roll out fleets of 5G-connected laptops to their employees. The 5G experience is premium, but the rest of the laptop doesn’t live up to that high bar. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: HP EliteBook 6 G1q Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The HP EliteBook 6 G1q is a 14-inch Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptop with a killer feature: Integrated 5G connectivity. HP Go is a built-in eSIM solution that delivers multi-network 5G connectivity, so it connects to AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile. It automatically switches depending on which one has the best signal, and you never even have to think about it. It’s a magical experience being able to set up a laptop without connecting it to Wi-Fi, taking it with you in a bag, and taking it out of your bag to use it wherever you want without connecting to Wi-Fi or tethering it to your phone. Being able to pull the laptop out of my bag — in downtown Boston, at the beach, or wherever else — and have an immediate internet connection immediately was magical. The HP Go 5G experience delivers five stars. This first version is mainly aimed at businesses. HP implied it might be looking to deliver more consumer laptops in the future when I asked. Unfortunately, the rest of the laptop experience here doesn’t stand out. Our review model had a lower-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip and a webcam that looked grainy. And the display is on the dim side, which is a real problem for a 5G laptop you may want to use outdoors. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Specs The HP EliteBook 6 G1q is a 14-inch business laptop available in a wide variety of configurations with different Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors. Our review model had a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 CPU. The model we reviewed is available from CDW for $1,695. HP also has a configurator where you can configure options, including buying models without 5G and choosing higher-end Snapdragon processors, but it gets expensive fast. Since this is a business laptop, businesses buying fleets of PCs might end up negotiating pricing closer to the CDW model. Thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon hardware, these are all Copilot+ PCs with a fast enough NPU to run the AI features Microsoft is adding to Windows. Model number: HP EliteBook G6 G1q with HP GO 5G CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 Memory: 32GB RAM Graphics/GPU: Qualcomm Adreno NPU: Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (45 TOPS) Display: 14-inch 1920×1200 IPS display with 60Hz refresh rate and 400 nits of brightness Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD Webcam: 1080p webcam Connectivity: 2x USB Type-C (40 Gbps), 2x USB Type-A (5Gbps), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo audio jack, 1x RJ-45 Ethernet, 1x nano SIM slot, 1x security lock slot Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Ethernet, 5G with HP Go Biometrics: Fingerprint reader Battery capacity: 56 Watt-hours Dimensions: 12.54 x 8.83 x 0.43 inches Weight: 3.17 pounds MSRP: $1,695 as tested The HP EliteBook 6 G1q delivers 5G connectivity that just works. It transforms how you use a laptop like this one, and I hope to see more laptops delivering seamless 5G out of the box in the future. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Design and build quality Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP EliteBook 6 G1q is a lightweight silver laptop made of a mix of aluminum and plastic, and HP is proud that it includes recycled materials. At 3.17 pounds, this 14-inch laptop isn’t heavy, but it’s not the lightest laptop either. Some thin-and-light laptop designs would shave off a half pound or more here. The build quality is good but not fancy. This is a business laptop through and through: A design made for corporations to buy in bulk for their employees, not to buy as a premium one-off machine for the CEO. It’s a solid design with a hinge that feels good, and it feels sturdy. But it doesn’t feel like a premium all-metal machine: When I run my fingers over the edges of the laptop — down from the keyboard tray, over the ports, and then to the underbody, I can feel the edge of where the aluminum keyboard deck meets the plastic bottom. It’s not going to cut me or anything, but every time I pick up the machine, I can feel that metal-meets-plastic feeling. In summary: It’s a workhorse, and not a premium machine. A more premium design would be lighter and have a unibody construction without a seam you could feel. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Keyboard and trackpad Foundry / Chris Hoffman The keyboard and trackpad on the HP EliteBook 6 G1q are serviceable. Since this is a 14-inch machine, there’s plenty of space for a large keyboard. The chiclet-style keys don’t feel mushy, but they don’t exactly feel snappy either. Key travel is a little low. That’s a tad disappointing for a business laptop, where keyboards are usually a focus. The trackpad is also fine. It’s a good size and smooth enough, but it’s not the kind of premium glass surface you’ll find on higher-end business machines. Our review model didn’t have a touch screen, only a few configurations of this laptop do. This is the kind of business laptop a company can hand out to its employees and know they’ll be able to work everywhere, but not the kind of business laptop an individual seeks out for the best typing experience. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Display and speakers Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP EliteBook 6 G1q has a display that does the job in indoor lighting conditions, but it doesn’t go above and beyond. It’s a 14-inch 1920×1200 IPS panel running at 60Hz and delivering up to 400 nits of brightness. That’s not going to win any awards, but I’m grateful I had the 400 nit display: HP also sells configurations with a dimmer 300 nit panel! For a 5G laptop, I’d say this is a real problem. The ideal 5G laptop would let me work from anywhere, whether that’s at the beach or on a park bench in downtown Boston (I tested both.) At 400 nits of brightness, this panel doesn’t have enough brightness to compete with the sun on a bright day, making it near unusable in many lighting situations. Many laptops like that, but a 5G laptop — where the goal is to use it on the go — really deserves a brighter panel than this. The speakers have enough volume, but they didn’t wow me, either. I test all the laptops I review by firing up Spotify and playing both Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. The sound is a little muffled and muddy. Instrument separation in Aja wasn’t particularly clear and bass in Get Lucky wasn’t particularly distinct. These speakers are usable in a pinch, but you’d definitely want headphones for music and media. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The HP EliteBook 6 G1q has a 1080p webcam, which sounds good on paper. But the webcam was incredibly grainy and washed out in non-ideal lighting, which is a disappointment for a business machine, where nicer webcams are often a feature. It did better in brighter lighting, but it’s not up there with many higher-end business laptop webcams. HP includes a physical webcam shutter switch you can slide to block the webcam, which is always nice to see. The microphone sounds reasonably clear with good noise cancellation. I’d say it’s better than the webcam, but neither are particularly impressive. If you need to be visible and audible in an online meeting, this machine will do the job. But it won’t deliver high recording quality. Our review model had a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello on the keyboard deck. It worked fine. But an IR camera for facial recognition would’ve been a nice option — it does appear like that is an option on some other configurations. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Connectivity Foundry / Chris Hoffman The HP EliteBook 6 G1q’s connectivity is its crown jewel. 5G just worked out of the box: I powered on the laptop, set up Windows, and started using the machine without ever connecting it to Wi-Fi or plugging in an Ethernet cable. This also enables better management of a laptop fleet. If a laptop is stolen or lost, a business can track and locate it even if it isn’t connected to Wi-Fi. From an end-user perspective, I never bothered configuring anything. It “just worked” and switched between networks as needed. At a starting price of $19 per user per month for the 5G service, that’s extremely impressive. This machine also has a lot of ports: On the left side, two USB Type-C (40Gbps) ports, one USB Type-A port (5Gbps), HDMI 2.1 out, and a combo audio jack. On the right side, a second USB Type-A port (5Gbps), an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, a security lock slot, and an optional nano SIM slot for models with cellular connectivity. This machine has both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. So the connectivity is incredible: Multi-network 5G, Wi-Fi 7, and wired Ethernet all in one machine. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Performance The HP EliteBook 6 G1q ran cool and quiet, delivering reasonable desktop performance. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 hardware here is some of the slowest hardware HP could choose, however. It’s the slowest Snapdragon X Plus chip you’ll find. The only thing slower is the Snapdragon X X1-26-100, which doesn’t even get a “Plus” in its name. It does the job for basic productivity tasks: A web browser, office tools, and communication apps. As always, we ran the EliteBook 6 G1q through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. We normally start with PCMark 10, but it doesn’t yet run on Arm laptops like this one. Foundry / Chris Hoffman First, we run Cinebench R24. It’s available as a native Arm program, which lets us compare performance across laptops. CPUs with more cores do better on this multi-threaded benchmark. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 is an eight-core CPU, so it won’t keep up with CPUs with more cores on multithreaded tasks. With a multi-threaded score of 759, the CPU here was definitely behind AMD’s Ryzen AI HX 300 series hardware, but it delivers better performance than many lower-tier power-efficient Intel chips. Foundry / Chris Hoffman Second, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3DMark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. This particular benchmark is written for traditional x86 versions of Windows and runs through the Prism translation layer, so you’ll get an idea of how traditional GPU-accelerated apps (and games) will perform on this machine. With a 3DMark Time Spy score of 1,066, this machine just isn’t suitable for GPU-accelerated workloads or gaming. Even the Qualcomm Hexagon GPUs in higher-tier Snapdragon X SKUs are significantly faster. Foundry / Chris Hoffman We also run 3DMark Night Raid. This benchmark does have a native Arm version, so we can compare the Qualcomm Hexagon GPU here and see how fast it runs when it isn’t being held back by the Prism translation layer here. The score here gives you an idea of how well the GPU will perform in apps written for Arm hardware. With a score of 16,819 on the Night Raid benchmark, this machine closes some of the gap with Intel and AMD systems. The translation layer isn’t slowing things down, but it’s still far behind other machines in GPU performance. Overall, the HP EliteBook 6 G1q we reviewed delivers serviceable performance for lightweight desktop PC tasks while running cool and quiet. But it’s no speed demon, and it will be quickly outpaced even by laptops with higher-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite CPUs. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Battery life The HP EliteBook 6 G1q has a 56 Watt-hour battery. That’s low for a laptop that weighs over three pounds. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus hardware here is power-efficient, so it’ll get you through a workday. But I didn’t see the kind of extremely long battery life — 24 hours — that I did on Snapdragon X laptops with larger batteries. Foundry / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. The HP EliteBook 6 G1q lasted for 983 minutes on average. That’s over 16 hours. It’s a lot, probably more than most people would need, but the battery size has it behind many competing Snapdragon laptops. It’s another way the laptop cuts a corner and doesn’t aim for the high-end premium experience crown. It’s a shame because long battery life matters even more on a 5G laptop, which could be used in locations far from Wi-Fi and power outlets. HP EliteBook 6 G1q: Conclusion The HP EliteBook 6 G1q delivers 5G connectivity that just works. It transforms how you use a laptop like this one, and I hope to see more laptops delivering seamless 5G out of the box in the future. For businesses, it also makes their fleet of laptops remotely trackable and manageable just like a cellular-connected phone or tablet is. The way HP has delivered multi-network 5G you don’t even have to think about is technically impressive. Unfortunately, the rest of the laptop experience is a lower-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus machine. A company that wants to deliver a fleet of connected-but-mid-range laptops to a large number of employees will love these. But I bet the CEO will use a different machine. Read...

It’s been a few months since I started using Starlink for home internet. And apart from some minor flaws and complaints—like weak upload speeds and the occasional global service outage—I have to admit it’s generally better than I expected it to be. One of the best things about Starlink is how normal it feels. Once you get it set up, it behaves just like regular internet: it’s fast, effective, and perfectly suitable for gaming and other latency-sensitive tasks. No, Starlink isn’t right for everyone. But it is good for what it is! In fact, here are some of the ways I find it even better than conventional home broadband internet (including ADSL, cable, and fiber). Starlink is available just about everywhere Jon Martindale / Foundry, Starlink While I might look enviously upon the upload (and download) speeds of my fiber-powered friends and colleagues, it’s not like everyone truly has multi-gigabit home internet. Indeed, outside most major cities, getting even gigabit fiber can be something of a challenge. If all you have access to is older-style cable or fiber broadband—or even ADSL over copper telephone lines—then Starlink’s performance is going to blow that away… and Starlink is just about everywhere. If your local internet options suck, then it can be mighty tempting. Okay, okay, Starlink technically isn’t available everywhere. But just take a look at Starlink’s US availability map. It’s ubiquitous! Across the entirety of the Americas, there are only a handful of countries where it isn’t available. (The reasons why are complex and beyond the scope of this article.) Starlink, by its satellite nature, is widely available because it doesn’t require much local infrastructure. It’s just you, your dishy, and the thousands of low-orbiting satellites that you connect to. For standard home internet, where you are dictates what kinds of internet service you can get. Not so with Starlink. As long as you aren’t living in Russia, China, Afghanistan, or North Korea, you’ve got Starlink now (or will get it at some point). Starlink goes with you when you move Evgeny Opanasenko / Unsplash Moving to another house? No problem. Just take your Starlink dish and router with you. You’ll need to update your address on your Starlink account so it’s all above board, but other than that you can maintain the same service package at the same price with no interruptions. Compare that to cable or fiber internet, which tend to lock you into contracts with termination fees (depending on how predatory your ISP is) and usually require you to return your equipment. You then need to sign up for another internet service at your next home. I love the hassle-free convenience of Starlink. I can just plug everything in, wait for the dish to connect to the satellite network, and I’m immediately online and ready to go. That means I don’t have to wait for service to be re-established or new hardware setup kits to arrive. Starlink is faster than some broadband Jon Martindale / Foundry, Speedtest Getting Starlink was a big speed boost for me. I went from an average speed of 65 Mbps with fiber to about 150 Mbps with Starlink. It’s even better during off-peak hours, as I’m able to hit 300 Mbps later in the evening and have even gotten close to 400 Mbps a few times. Although that’s still a far cry from gigabit fiber—not to mention multi-gigabit options in some major cities—it’s faster than low-tier broadband plans that cost about the same, or costs less than similar-speed broadband plans. (Your mileage may vary based on where you live, and gigabit internet may not even be worth it for you.) Furthermore, Starlink’s latency is better than other satellite internet options, making it more suitable for online games and video calls. Upload speeds do leave me wanting, though, capping out at around 45 Mbps (with an average of about 20 Mbps at the time of writing). That’s plenty for day-to-day use, but it does take a bit longer when I do stuff like uploading the odd video now and again. I can deal with that. You can use Starlink while on the go Roadpass / Unsplash For me, Starlink is a home internet solution. But for others, Starlink is high-speed internet wherever they go… and they really do go places. Check out any of the Reddit communities dedicated to remote living—think van life enthusiasts, house boaters, sailors, anyone who works in remote locations like oil rigs—and you’ll see they’re all using Starlink to get online and enjoy high-speed internet wherever they happen to be. I’ve even seen people strap Starlink to their cars just so the kids have great internet speeds on long drives and trips. Of course, Starlink’s Roaming packages are more expensive than its Residential plans on a per-gigabyte basis, and you’re capped in ways that the standard residential and business options aren’t. But for people who want to live a remote, nomadic lifestyle or need to travel often for work, Starlink is a unique solution that works fantastically well at delivering high-speed internet (almost) anywhere and everywhere. Starlink isn’t vulnerable to local outages Jon Martindale / Foundry Has your home internet ever gone down because a local substation blew or because someone cut through a buried fiber cable while renovating their yard? That simply can’t happen with Starlink. Sure, you have a cable that runs from your Starlink router (inside) to your Starlink dish (outside), but unless someone cuts that—there’s no way someone’s doing that by accident—you’re pretty much safe. That isn’t to say Starlink doesn’t have its own issues. When I first signed up, I was immediately hit by Starlink’s first major global outage in a long time. I’ve also experienced a few other spotty occasions since then, usually because a tree branch leaned in front of my dish or inclement weather got in the way of my satellite view. But on the whole? Starlink is surprisingly reliable and isn’t susceptible to the kinds of outages that most home internet users face. Starlink’s router is actually pretty good Jon Martindale / Foundry Some internet service providers send out legitimately good routers and modems with their internet service packages, but many don’t—especially when you’re on a cheaper plan. (Learn more about choosing a good router and getting started with it.) Although Starlink is very much not a cheap internet solution and absolutely should ship with a decent router, I’m pleased to report the one you get is indeed solid. Not excellent—and certainly worth replacing if you’re a power user—but if you’re just looking for a capable Wi-Fi 6 router to go with your fancy new space internet, it’s good. I have Starlink’s third-generation router and it’s plenty fast for most modern devices. Although it’s missing the newer Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 protocols, I’m okay with that because I don’t have any cutting-edge devices that could even take advantage of it. My Starlink router is tri-band, giving me plenty of network space for hundreds of devices. The router also comes with a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the Wi-Fi range is capped at 3,200 square feet. That’s enough for all but the largest of homes, although some walls and obstructions can get in the way, and the lack of external antennas can make it harder to orient for a better signal. But for most apartments and open homes, it should be plenty. Need more range? 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TechHive Editors Choice At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Impressive cleaning capabilities Epic battery life Easy waterline retrieval means you can put the pole away for good Endless configuration options available in the app Cons Heavy to lift and unwieldy to handle Relatively useless skimming feature Very expensive Our Verdict The price tag on this robotic pool cleaner might be hard to swallow, but Beatbot’s latest high-end offering has few flaws and an extensive warranty that arguably justifies it. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra Retailer Price $2,799 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The feature-rich Beatbot AquaSense Pro has been a top seller in the robotic pool cleaner space since its launch, but Beatbot hasn’t been resting on its laurels. The all-new Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra reviewed here is, to put it simply, more, and in every dimension. Is this even more expensive follow-up too much of a good thing? It all depends on how much you’re willing to shell out to escape the tedium of cleaning your pool yourself. Specifications The AquaSense 2 Ultra borrows most of its design cues from the AquaSense Pro I reviewed in October 2024 (which is still available for purchase). It’s a cetacean-inspired design, with fat wheels, treads, and two spinning brushes in between. The Ultra is also much larger and has a new, black color scheme. Weighing 29 pounds, it is also decidedly heavier than the 24-pound Pro, especially when you take it straight out of the pool, when the water-filled bot can hit 45 pounds. It’s bigger, too, in pretty much every way which (spoiler) makes maneuvering it in and out of the pool and onto its charging dock difficult. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra (right) is a beefy upgrade from the Beatbot AquaSense Pro we reviewed in October 2024.Christopher Null/Foundry All that heft comes in service of some serious firepower (waterpower?), including a boasted 27 sensors that include ultrasonic, infrared, and AI-powered video to map the pool and actively hunt for debris. It’s the first pool robot that, following a standard full-floor sweep, scans for remaining leaves with a camera the way you or I would with our eyes and a net. Beatbot says the machine can recognize 12 types of leaves by tree type, with more to come via over-the-air firmware updates. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra is an exceptional robotic pool cleaner with an extremely long-lasting battery. A 13,400mAh battery powers the unit to up to 6 hours of running time on the pool floor and 10 hours on its surface. A contact-based charging dock similar to the one that shipped with the Pro is included, so you don’t need to physically connect a cable to top up that battery. Lastly, the Ultra has a dual-band (2.4- and 5GHz) Wi-Fi adapter onboard, so you can control it with Beatbot’s mobile app. But that’s possible only while the robot is on top of the water or out of the pool, as Wi-Fi signals don’t travel far through water. Installation and setup The Beatbot Aquasense 2 Ultra features a front-mounted camera that searches your pool for any debris it might have missed while patrolling your pool. It will then go back and vaccum up whatever it found.Christopher Null/Foundry While most robotic pool cleaners require very little setup beyond an initial charging, the Beatbot Ultra has a little work for the user to do. The charging stand sets up easily, with two legs that snap into place. The more onerous work is setting up the two side brushes. These are small horizontal wheels with rubber brushes positioned in the upper front corners of the robot. They’re used primarily when it’s operating as a surface skimmer and as bumpers for when the robot hits the wall of the pool. These wheels are bare out of the box, so it’s up to the user to wrap the two rubber brush strips around them. This is achieved by stretching each strip around the wheel and affixing two loops on either end of the strip to a protrusion on the wheel. This takes a little trial and error and some patience, but I got it done in a matter of minutes. You’ll need to install these side brushes on the Beatbot Aquasense 2 Ultra after you take it out of the box.Christopher Null/Foundry You’ll also find a retrieval hook in the box (which you shouldn’t need) and a cover for the robot, which is handy for storage. This is the first time I’ve seen this as part of any robotic pool cleaner bundle. The app sets up quickly over Wi-Fi, being a matter of two button presses on the robot and walking through some basic configuration steps in the app. Using the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra Much like the AquaSense Pro, the Ultra can be configured via buttons on the device, via the mobile app, or both. The onboard controls are more basic, with four buttons for cleaning floor-only; floor and walls; floor, walls, and surface; or a custom mode configured in the app. To start the robot, just power it on, pick your mode, set it flat on the pool deck for a few seconds, and then place it into the pool. It will spin to scan the pool from the surface to get its bearings and then sink to the bottom to start its work. the AquaSense 2 Ultra has four basic control buttons on its top surface.Christopher Null/Foundry The Ultra’s specific operation depends on the mode you set, but if you’re running the most comprehensive option, the robot will do a full sweep of the floor, clean the walls, and skim the surface. After a full sweep of the floor, the robot’s AI debris detection gets to work. This uses the front-mounted camera to literally look around the pool for leaves it might have missed. And it really does that, scooting around randomly until it catches a glimpse of debris on camera, then it adjusts its course to roll over it, stop, then roll back and forward again to make sure it got it. The good news is that the Ultra is an exceptional cleaner. The unit specifies battery life of 4.5 hours, although as noted above, I easily got 6 hours with it in the water, and my pool was completely free of debris after just 3 hours (I evaluated it with both organic and synthetic test material). I also tested its AI detection mode by adding additional test leaves after the 3-hour mark, scattering them around the pool to see if the robot could find them. Of the 10 additional test leaves I added, the robot picked up all but one before its battery died—and I witnessed it just miss picking that leaf up when it veered a bit too far to one side of it. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra’s charging dock. Christopher Null/Foundry While the robot is excellent on the floor, it is not overly effective on the surface, as was the case with the AquaSense Pro. The robot’s design and its narrow profile (compared to standalone skimmers) means floating debris was often pushed out of the way by the bow wave of water in front of the robot rather than being sucked into its mouth. The new side brushes on this model are supposed to help prevent debris from escaping to the sides, but they weren’t effective at overcoming the power of the wave the bot pushed in front of it. In fact, my testing of the skimmer feature showed that it only captured about 40 percent of the test debris, with the rest being left behind or sinking to the bottom of the pool. That was about the same result I got with the AquaSense Pro. The app lets you fine-tune just about everything about how the Ultra runs, specifying 0, 1, or 2 cleanings each of floor, walls, and surface (20 possible combinations in all), or you can pick from a quick AI-only mode (a search-and-destroy as described above), a MultiZone Mode designed for pools with multiple large stepped areas, or an eco mode that cleans the floor every two days. Each of these are configurable in the app, and then selectable by pressing the custom mode button on the robot’s control panel. The AquaSense 2 Ultra has thick treads and robust scrubbing brushes..Christopher Null/Foundry Every mode offers the option to dispense a water clarifier during the cleaning process, but I don’t use this type of solution in my pool and did not test it; clarifier solution is not included with the device. Upon completion of a run, the Ultra returns to the surface and docks against the wall of the pool, where it will float for about 15 minutes. If you don’t retrieve it within that window, the robot will then float freely while remaining on the surface of the pool for easier retrieval. (The Park button on the app will call it back to the wall, provided there’s sufficient battery power.) This waterline retrieval option is one of the best features of both the Ultra and the Pro. Needing to clean debris from this two-sided basket is a minor hassle.Christopher Null/Foundry Debris is stored in a two-piece basket similar to the one on the Pro. It’s relatively easy to clean, though having to clean two different chambers adds a small amount of hassle to the process. The bigger issue is the robot’s nearly 30-pound weight, which is considerably more when it’s full of water. This, combined with its gargantuan size, means it’s difficult to maneuver into and out of the pool, and I found it virtually impossible to avoid getting my lower body wet while retrieving it. After each run, the Beatbot app pushes a mobile notification and then logs the area cleaned and the length of the run. Floor-cleaning runs also include a map of the pool that’s generated as part of the log. The map isn’t all that useful (and it is in a different orientation each time) but it does at least give you some idea of the robot’s level of intelligence. For what it’s worth, the map it generated mostly looks like my actual pool. The Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra draws a map of your pool and logs its activity.Christopher Null/Foundry Lastly, an on-demand remote control is included in the app, though this can only be used when the robot is on the surface, where it’s in Wi-Fi range. You might find this effective when there are a few wayward leaves you want to pick up and the robot is already skimming; but given this robot’s limited debris-skimming abilities, I found it easier to wait for the leaves to sink or to just grab a net instead. Should you buy the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra? With an MSRP of $3,550 ($2,779 at Amazon at the time of this review), the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra is easily the most expensive pool robot I’ve tested. Fortunately, Beatbot’s impressive three-year whole-unit replacement warranty takes some of the risk out of a purchase. But to be honest, it’s probably more robot than most pools need. It’s definitely more than I need, and I have a fairly large pool to clean. And while it’s easy to fixate on that pricey bottom line, don’t underestimate this machine’s significant weight and bulk. Owners of more petite pools might find the Ultra just too large to wrestle with—even though it will do an outstanding job of keeping the pool sparkling clean. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best robotic pool cleaners. Read...