Author Archives: Chris Davies

It was, conservatively, 90 seconds before I was satisfied Cadillac's Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving system wasn't going to kill me. By that point, a combination of cameras, super-accurate maps, and a fancier-than-usual GPS system were keeping me dead-center at 65 mph on California's 280, headed north toward San Francisco. As the CT6 eased its way around the corners, I spent a few moments considering that the car of the future apparently communicates not with the voice of Mr Feeny from Boy Meets World, but with a glowing green steering wheel instead.

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No good idea in the tech world goes without replication, and while eero may have started the home mesh networking segment, it can't afford to rest on its laurels. Throw open your doors, therefore, to the second-generation eero and the new eero Beacon, promising more flexibility, a more competitive price, and more speed. Indeed, performance is said be as much as twice that of the original eero, which launched back in 2015.

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Jaguar promised us a ridiculously potent sedan to blow away any preconceptions of the automaker as staid or serious, and the Jaguar XE SV Project 8 is that car. Handiwork of the Special Vehicle Operation (SVO) team at the company, it takes the four-door XE and makes it in to a 200 mph, supercharged V8 beast. Annoyingly, though, North America won't be getting the most aggressive version of the car.

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A "cheaper" Aston Martin DB11 sounds like a contradiction in terms, but a new twin-turbo V8 engine in the range does at least bring the sticker down a little. The new DB11 V8 may be smaller than the V12 with which the DB11 launched with in 2016, but that doesn't mean you're sacrificing too much on performance. In fact, the DB11 V8 will still do 0-62 mph in 4.0 seconds.

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In an increasingly competitive world of connected security cameras, Nest has turned to Alphabet-sibling Google and its facial recognition tech to make the Nest Cam IQ stand out. Not just the latest in the company's sophisticated home security camera line-up, the Nest Cam IQ represents a complete platform upgrade, with an all-new sensor, lossless zooming support, and the ability to recognize and track faces. On the downside, it also commands the highest price of a Nest camera so far, so does it deliver for $299?

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Google's Project Fi always seemed like a great deal if you wanted to avoid the complexity of traditional carriers, but one group of potential users had been inexplicably left out in the cold. G Suite customers may be some of the few to actually pay Google for a service, but they were left unable to use Project Fi with their accounts. While they might be coughing up cash for the privilege of using Google services on their own domain, the virtual carrier wasn't one of them.

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If you're of the mind that a good time is all about the girth, then the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody should satisfy. The latest iteration of Dodge's two-door muscle car, the Widebody looks to its horsepower-blessed sibling, the SRT Demon, for inspiration. No, it might not have the same potency under the hood, but it certainly looks the part.

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All eyes may be on the upcoming launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, but the phone maker's ill-fated Note 7 will beat it to shelves as it gets a post-recall rebirth. Samsung was forced to make a costly and complex turnaround and demand back every single Galaxy Note 7 sold, after a number of the flagship smartphones burst into flames. The problem was subsequently blamed on the battery design, and now Samsung has a fix.

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Listen to the critics, and Amazon's Echo Show represents be a honeypot of privacy intrusion and creepy surveillance. Though Alexa, the retailer's virtual assistant, isn't new, the addition of a camera to the Echo Show smart speaker gives her eyes in your home for the first time. It's the circumstances around when those eyes are open - and who can turn on that camera remotely - that is triggering privacy fears.

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Forget powering smartphones and tablets: NVIDIA's big target is being the brainpower behind autonomous vehicles. The chip company has announced a trio of deals today which see it push aggressively into the automotive space, inking a deal with Volkswagen to work on artificial intelligence, with Volvo to commercialize self-driving cars in just a few years time, and with some of the biggest existing suppliers to get its silicon into their ranges.

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Aston Martin is joining the EV world, confirming that it will build an all-electric car, the Aston Martin RapidE. The car will, as the name suggests, be based on Aston Martin's existing four-door model, the Rapide. However, don't expect this to be anything like a mass-market play for the electric segment, with the British car company warning that it'll be severely limited in numbers.

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When you're Alfa Romeo, and a decent chunk of your appeal is that you're not the mainstream option, building an SUV like the 2018 Stelvio presents a tricky balance to strike. After all, Alfa drivers may not want a predictable car in their garage, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles shareholders want mainstream sales. The Giulia sports sedan may have found favor among passionate drivers, but crossovers and SUVs are where the widest wallets are. Alfa Romeo had a choice, therefore, and the Stelvio is the answer, born of the Giulia but out hunting mutineers from the mainstream.

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