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AMD's Ryzen AI Max chips came as a huge surprise at CES 2025. They're basically super-powered versions of the company's Ryzen AI hardware with up to 16 CPU cores and 50 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores, alongside a pool of as much as 128GB integrated RAM. AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max chips will deliver up to 2.6 times faster 3D rendering than Intel's Core Ultra 9 288V, as well as 1.4 times better graphics performance. Squint a bit, and you might think AMD was taking a bit of inspiration from Apple Silicon, with its powerful CPU cores, graphics and unified memory. But according to VP Joe Macri, AMD was building towards this long before Apple. "We were building APUs [chips combining CPUs and Radeon graphics] while Apple was using discrete GPUs. They were using our discrete GPUs. So I don't credit Apple with coming up with the idea." AMD also had experience stuffing gobs of memory into its Instinct data center GPUs. Still, Macri gives Apple credit for proving that you don't need discrete graphics to sell people on powerful computers. "Many people in the PC industry said, well, if you want graphics, it's gotta be discrete graphics because otherwise people will think it's bad graphics," he said. "What Apple showed was consumers don't care what's inside the box. They actually care what the what the box looks like. They care about the screen, the keyboard, the mouse. They care about what it does." With the success of Apple Silicon, Macri was finally able to get approval to spend a "mind boggling" amount of money developing the Ryzen AI Max. "I always knew, because we were building APUs, and I'd been pushing for this big APU forever, that I could build, a system that was smaller, faster, and I could give much higher performance at the same power," he said. I briefly saw the Ryzen AI Max in action while testing the latest ASUS ROG Flow Z13 at AMD's CES booth. I was able to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart in 1080p at well above 60fps, with tons of graphical flourishes. It was tough to tell on such a small tablet screen, but the overall performance looked on par with a base PlayStation 5 (albeit at a slightly lower resolution). AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max is also comparable to Apple's 14-core M4 Pro chip (which it also beats out in the Vray benchmark). Ryzen AI Max systems will roll out in the first and second quarter of the year, including the aforementioned ROG Flow Z13 as well as HP's ZBook Ultra G1a.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/amd-vp-explains-why-the-ryzen-ai-max-likely-wouldnt-exist-without-apple-220034111.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The Detroit-based company Astrohaus has been making its distraction-free writing tools under the Freewrite name for about a decade. So far, those have all been standalone, single-purpose devices meant simply for drafting text, but Astrohaus is branching out at CES 2025. The company just announced a mechanical keyboard called the Freewrite Wordrunner, a device designed specifically with writers in mind. This comes more than three years after Astrohaus quietly revealed intentions to build a keyboard, originally known as the Maestro. But the company eventually pulled the plug on its planned 2022 launch, and I hadnt heard anything about it since then it seems that theyve just been working away at it this whole time. CEO Adam Leeb said in a press release that the company had been iterating and developing it for almost four years. Freewrite Mechanical keyboards have largely become the domain of gamers; the company wanted to build a device for people who make their living writing instead. Without spending some quality time with it, I cant say if theyve hit that mark yet, but there are some fun ideas on display here. The Wordrunner has a tenkeyless design that looks familiar at first glance, but youll quickly notice that the function row has been replaced by a custom set of keys thatll make zipping around text documents faster. That includes find and replace, undo and redo, paragraph up and down as well as back, forward and reload keys. Id be upset about losing media controls from the function row, but the Wordrunner has it covered with the bright red joystick / button. It moves in all four cardinal directions and can also be pressed in vertically to skip tracks, play media or adjust volume. Freewrite On the other side, youll find three customizable macro keys with the cutesy names zap, pow and bam. Theyre programmable for anything you might want, but Astrohaus suggested using them to launch specific writing apps, converting text to title case or inserting the date. I dont yet know what Id use them for, but having customizable keys is a table-stakes feature for most enthusiast keyboards so Im glad to see them here. Probably the most visually striking thing about the Wordrunner are the two mechanical counters youll see up top. One is a timer you can use for writing sprints or just staying focused for a bit. More intriguing is the Wordometer dead-center at the top of the keyboard. Itll track your words with its whopping eight-digit mechanical counter, and since it saves your word count as long as you want, you could try and max it out someday. Of course, you can also reset it at any time or pause it if you dont want it to advance while youre chatting with friends or sending emails. Freewrite Beyond that, the Wordrunner features an aluminum body that Im looking forward to seeing in person I love the aluminum shell of the Freewrite Smart Typewriter and Im hoping that the keyboard feels similar. The mechanical keys are backlit, but Astrohaus isnt saying who is making them yet. But it also has some sound dampening built in so you can use it without subjecting everyone around to you overly loud key clacks (this may be a plus or minus depending on how you like your keyboards). As for connectivity, the Wordrunner uses Bluetooth or USB-C, and you can pair the keyboard with three different devices and quickly switch between them with dedicated hotkeys. Finally, theres the ever-present question of availability. Astrohaus is launching the Wordrunner on Kickstarter, as it has done with most of its other hardware over the last 10 years. The campaign should start in February with early bird pricing, but we dont know what that price will be yet. Fortunately, theres a pretty low-commitment way to get the best price if youre curious. Astrohaus says you can place a $1 reservation for priority access and the best possible pricing, with plans to deliver the first batch of keyboards before the end of the year. Thats a long ways out, but a buck isnt a bad investment if youre interested. Astrohaus is showing off a protoype of the Wordrunner at CES, and I'll be updating this post after I get my hands on it and see how it feels at this stage of development.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/the-latest-freewrite-device-is-a-fancy-mechanical-keyboard-built-with-writers-in-mind-220005961.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
I have to admit I used to be very skeptical of LED devices that purport to be good for your skin. When they first started being sold for home use, I felt like they were mostly expensive, ineffective appliances that were obvious cash grabs. Nowadays, though, as is usually the case with any burgeoning category of products, the technology has improved. We're seeing more sophisticated offerings that not only use better components, but are more comfortable to wear. Full face masks from the likes of Therabody, Dr. Dennis Gross and Omnilux have exploded in popularity, taking over social media and constantly selling out. After hearing rave reviews from friends and family, and undergoing more light treatments in salons myself, I have grown more convinced there's room for devices like these. Shark, the maker of vacuum cleaners, air fryers and assorted kitchen gear, has unveiled its take on the LED face mask device here at CES 2025. Launched under its three-year-old Shark Beauty arm, the new "CryoGlow under-eye cooling + LED anti-aging and skin clearing face mask" has quite a long name. I'm just going to refer to it as the CryoGlow mask from here on. At a meeting here in Las Vegas, Shark's senior vice president of global product development Danielle Lessing described a number of ways the CryoGlow is different from what's currently out there. First of all, as its name implies, there is a cooling component to this device. In addition to the 160 "interlocking tri-wick LEDs" on the mask, there are two metallic plates on the cheeks that are shaped like eye masks. This is the conduit for what Shark is calling its "InstaChill" technology and basically are a pair of cold plates that, in my brief time with the CryoGlow, felt satisfyingly soothing. In fact, that might be my favorite part of the device (and frankly its differentiating trait). After putting on the CryoGlow for maybe about a minute, and after I took several hilarious pictures and selfies with it, I really appreciated how cold it felt in my under-eye area. To be clear, the plates felt chilly immediately after I wore the mask, but it was the prolonged coolness that I enjoyed. And after removing the device, I still relished the sensation that remained, even after a few minutes. I don't feel like I had the mask on for long enough to know if it'd start to feel clunky after prolonged wear, but at least during my demo, I didn't feel strained, nor did the wired remote control get in my way. I also want to note that, unlike the Therabody option, Shark's CryoGlow does not vibrate. Lessing said "This is a skincare system and vibrating doesn't affect the skin." Lessing stressed to me the importance of the tri-wick LED bulbs each being able to produce red, blue and deep infrared light, as they differ from some other products on the market that might only use single or dual-wick bulbs instead. In those cases, manufacturers may choose to lay red-only bulbs or blue-only bulbs in alternating layouts or various arrangements that allow them to claim to provide both types of light, while effectively covering less area per bulb. Cherlynn Low for Engadget It's this sort of math that Lessing enthusiastically highlighted in our quick meeting, as she told me that the company worked hard to calculate the ideal combination of factors like distance of the bulbs from the wearer's face and apart from each other. To that end, the CryoGlow will sit in a way that the LEDs are about 15mm from your skin a good balance between effectiveness and coverage. The bulbs themselves are spaced 10mm apart, and the four programs that Shark offers also consider the duration of the lights on your face. Lessing said the company wanted to make something that was more inclusive, not just of different head sizes and types, but also of skin concerns. Most of the products that are currently available tend to target signs of aging on women, she said. Shark wants to buck that trend, and part of that effort involves making a mask that should fit people of all types from women with smaller faces to men with larger heads. When I first laid eyes on the CryoGlow in person, I couldn't help but smile. Unlike the Theraface or Dr. Dennis Gross masks, which look a little robotic or cyborg-like, the Shark device is, strangely enough, cute? The shape of its mouth cutout is slightly upturned and the whole thing just looks like it's smiling at you. I also instinctively reached out to stroke the textured sides of the mask, which look like lines raked in sand. I could see making this my pet. Cherlynn Low for Engadget The CryoGlow not only looks adorable, but also felt comfortable to wear. It was big enough for my larger-than-average head, but didn't feel too heavy. That might be thanks to the adjustable T-shaped head strap that reminds me of the Apple Vision Pro. Lessing said the team also drew inspiration from ski goggles for the design, especially for the protective guards around the eye cutouts. There's also the fact that the CryoGlow is fairly lightweight, likely due to the fact that it's powered by a battery in the attached remote control. This handheld controller is connected via a cord, which is a slightly less elegant approach than competing products that have on-mask buttons. But I do appreciate that it looks and feels like a Nokia 3310 with a much nicer screen and a dial plus two buttons below it. You can rotate the wheel to scroll through the menu, and I liked the aesthetic Shark used for the interface, too. The system offers four treatment modes: an under-eye "revive" that delivers "cryo-inspired tightening and soothing," a 6-minute "Better aging" option, an 8-minute "Skin Clearing Treatment" that targets acne and a 4-minute "Skin Sustain" maintenance mode that's meant for daily use. There are also three chill levels available, which you can control with this system. Shark says its tests indicated clearer skin can be observed in four weeks of use, while two months of consistent application might result in frmer skin. Shark Shark says its programs are all backed by clinical testing, and most intriguingly, it actually put its CryoGlow device to the test against competitors. According to Shark, this image "captures a demonstration conducted featuring light absorbing, photochromic paint to show the even coverage of CryoGlows iQLED technology vs. a competitors uneven coverage." I will point out that while it does seem like Shark's device had a more even and generally larger spread, it does leave the two patches below the eye bare. It's unclear what this competing device is or how much it might cost, but considering the CryoGlow is priced at $349 while the Theraface Mask and the Dr. Dennis Gross SpectraLite FaceWare Pro start at $599 and $455 respectively, I'm already intrigued. This feels like a sophisticated device that's at least within the range I might be able to afford. And I loved my brief experience with it, too. I will likely have to test other competing products before I can definitively evaluate how well the CryoGlow fares against what's out there, but for now, and for the price, I'm very impressed by Shark's LED mask debut. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/shark-joins-the-high-tech-skincare-mask-war-with-an-impressive-ces-2025-opening-shot-214804543.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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