Hardware

Swedish self-assembly furniture giant IKEA has announced that it's about to enter the city bikes market with a new two-wheeler called Sladda (Swedish for "skid sideways" or "drifting"). In the UK the bicycle will be available for £450, or £350 for IKEA Family Card holders.

A unisex city bicycle with a belt drive instead of a chain, Sladda will be available in 26-inch and 28-inch versions. It was created in partnership with design studio Veryday, and is clearly aimed at casual cyclists. It will also be equipped with an automatic gear-changing system created by Bioshift.

One week after unveiling its P9 flagship smartphone, Chinese electronics giant Huawei has now joined the throng of tech companies embracing virtual reality (VR), with a new wearable headset of its own.

Unlike Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR, Huawei is adopting a Samsung Gear VR-style approach, which means that this only works in tandem with your smartphone. But it’s actually more like the LG 360 VR, insofar as you connect your phone to the unit via a USB cable. So it merges the power and processor of the phone with a built-in screen inside the headset itself.

If you have some spare potatoes in your home, you might want to think about using them to be more than just food or your main source of carbohydrates. Rather, you might actually want to look into securing your home with smart sensors, and to have these smart sensors be powered by potatoes.

In our original reviews of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, we tried very hard to examine these virtual reality systems on their own merits without constant comparisons to the competition. But no product exists in a vacuum. After years of buildup, we’re now faced with two competitive, PC-tethered VR headsets hitting the market right next to each other. Unless you have a spare $1,400 to spend to buy both headsets (or more if you need to outfit a gaming PC, too), you’ll have to pick one or the other if you want virtual reality in your home as soon as possible.

On paper, the LG G5 seems like a great device. There's an innovative modular design that gives you both a removable battery and an aluminum unibody enclosure. It's got the usual high-end 2016 flagship specs: a Snapdragon 820, 4GB of RAM, and a 5.3-inch 1440p display. All the little extras seem to be there too: a microSD slot, a USB Type-C port, a fingerprint reader, and an IR blaster.

 The masochists at iFixit are back at it. After recently prying open the new iPhone 5SE, the teardown specialists have labored over the new iPad Pro 9.7-inch edition -- with the usual results for an Apple tablet.

It's no secret that iPads -- like many of Apple's products -- are difficult to repair, which is why iFixit exists in the first place. But the smaller iPad Pro is even less easy to take apart to fix than its bigger brother. While the original iPad Pro 12.9-inch received a result of 3 out of 10 on iFixit's Repairability Score, the 9.7-inch edition earns just a 2 out of 10.

It took me a few days with an Oculus Rift before I really felt comfortable swiveling my head around while playing a video game. Sure, I’d gotten somewhat used to the idea in years of trade show VR demos or while playing around with my own Oculus Rift development kits and Samsung’s Oculus-powered Gear VR. But those experiences were fighting with decades of gaming experiences where my head generally stayed glued to one spot, pointed at the center of a TV or monitor, and tilted only occasionally to maybe get a better view of something in the corner.

When taking photos, whether it be of sights or people, sometimes shooting through a window is unavoidable, and that means there's probably going to be glare or reflections. Turns out, researchers at MIT's Media Lab are looking to address this, as their Camera Culture Group is developing a camera that can take photos through glass without any reflections. For their latest project they used the Xbox One's Kinect motion sensor and camera, taking advantage of its depth sensor.

If there’s anything scientists know about the best type of desk for an office worker’s long-term health, it’s that they don’t really know anything, according to a new analysis of the scientific literature on the matter.

After closely examining 20 of the highest quality studies about workplace interventions to reduce sitting time, which include standing, pedaling, and treadmill desks, researchers concluded that there simply isn’t enough data to say whether any of the alternatives are better that just plopping in front of a standard desk.

Ever since Russell Crowe's kids weren't allowed to take their hoverboards on a plane, I've been wondering whether he'll ever be happy.

Many airlines ban hoverboards, as they deem them unsafe. This miffed the great actor enormously. Now along comes the designer of a new hoverboard who claims this one won't explode, as too many have before.