Gadgets

Ahead of The Mandalorian and Grogu hitting theaters on May 22nd, Hasbro has announced a new animatronic version of Grogu packed with motors, sensors, and the ability to shuffle around on its own two feet. CNET’s Bridget Carey visited Hasbro HQ for an early look at the toy including how it simulates using the Force.

The SwitchBot Bot is available for around $22.99 ($7 off) from Amazon and SwitchBot (with code FORHER25), which is $3 shy of its best-ever price. Once attached to a coffee maker, light switch, or another button-based device, you can control it using your phone, making it an easy way to add smarts to existing gadgets.

The Moto Buds 2 Plus will cost $149 — $20 more than the Moto Buds Plus released in 2024. The new buds will have Sound by Bose, two 11mm dynamic drivers with a Knowles balanced armature, support the LHDC5 low-latency audio codec, as well as Moto AI with compatible Motorola phones.

Samsung has announced the Galaxy Book 6 Edge, but so far only for France. There’s no price for the slim laptop yet, which will launch in early May with 512GB or 1TB storage, a Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite processor, and a 16-inch 120Hz OLED screen.

Toto’s high-precision ceramics business is set to account for more than half of the company’s operating profit for the first time in the financial year that ended in March. Advanced ceramics, it turns out, are well suited for producing components for semiconductor manufacturing equipment — and demand is booming.

First announced and demonstrated at CES 2026, Philips Hue’s new SpatialAware feature that better distributes the colored lighting in a preset scene around a room is now available through the mobile app. The feature requires the Hue Bridge Pro and you’ll need to scan each room using your smartphone’s camera first.

It was inevitable, but Belkin will be the first company with a case turning your tablet into Toy Story 5’s new Lily Pad character. The $49.99 case is made from EVA foam and features both a built-in carrying handle and a folding kickstand. Hopefully it doesn’t come preset to villain mode.

After suspending preorders for its $1,999 Next 2 handheld because the rising cost of storage made it too expensive to build, Ayaneo says it has been ”forced to increase prices across most product lines” as a result of the RAM shortage. It has also restocked several of its best selling handhelds including the Pocket DS, but in very limited quantities.

Spending $24.99 on Corsair’s new ThermalProtect PCIe 5.1 600W 12V-2x6 cable could save you from having to replace a GPU that cost you well north of a grand. The cable’s built-in sensor monitors and detects when operating temperatures get unsafe, automatically shutting down the GPU before any melting or burning causing serious damage occurs.

Bungie’s latest first-person shooter, Marathon, is cheaper than usual at Newegg. The Steam PC version is $26.99 (originally $39.99) when you use the code EPF4475 at checkout. It’s a great deal on a game that quickly made an impression on me and many others on staff with difficult, yet rewarding gameplay.

Buying it on its own from Framework, the GPU costs $1,199.00 — a $500 jump from the 8GB variant, which costs $699.00. As part of a full laptop order, the gap between them is $500, too.

When I was in high school, you had your choice of gray, gray, or gray, but Texas Instruments’ new TI-84 Evo graphing calculator expands the line with more colors that include raspberry, pink, and teal. The new Evo also features a faster processor, more room for graphing, a redesigned keypad, and a new icon-based menu.

Unlike the grip that Nintendo bundles with its latest console, Dbrand’s $19.95 Joy-Lock Controller Holder lets you adjust the angle of the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons using a ratcheting mechanism. You can also add a pair of beefier grips for an additional $19.95, and enhance the thumbsticks with a pair of stick-on textured caps for $9.95.

Nvidia is launching a 12GB version of its RTX 5070 laptop GPU, to go along with the existing 8GB configuration. Nvidia’s blog post explains how this will actually help supply during the RAM shortage:

Yesterday we got our first good look at the purported design of Samsung’s smart glasses, and today Samsung itself confirmed they’re on the way, though it probably didn’t mean to. SamMobile spotted a mention of support for “Glasses” in an update to Samsung’s Nearby Device Scanning app, mentioning quick pair support too.

Droid Life reports that potential buyers who’d reserved the upcoming BlackBerry-ish Android phone were just told to expect the phone to ship in Q4 this year. First announced at CES, the Communicator is a fully-fledged phone with a physical keyboard, a big step up from Clicks’ current line of keyboard cases.

To encourage breaks that focus on carbs instead of doomscrolling and texting, KitKat in Panama created a limited edition Faraday cage wrapper for your phone that blocks cell signals. The wrapper is made from layers of copper, polyester, and polypropylene and is expected to work for about a year at which point you can recycle it.

If you have any burning questions about Valve’s new gamepad after reading our reviews, Cameron Faulkner and I will be responding in the comments of this article starting at 3PM ET.

There’s still no word on when it will be out, though. And with Valve still working on getting the Steam Controller out the door next week and shipping the Steam Frame and Steam Machine sometime this year, we could be waiting a while for a Steam Deck 2.

I love Three Houses — even more now that the Nintendo Switch 2 can run original Switch games with better performance. I’m replaying it ahead of the arrival of its successor, Fortune’s Weave, coming sometime later this year. If you care to join me, the digital version is $39.99 (was $59.99) at Amazon.