These are the cleaning robots, water monitors, and toys actually worth buying for pool season. This is not news to anyone who owns one, but the uninitiated may not know about the inordinate amount of daily labor and chores that lie behind a pool's clear, sparkling, perfectly chlorinated (or salted) water. Luckily, pool tech has come a long way in the past decade--gone are the hours spent scooping leaves and dead bugs out of the water with a long-handled net, laboring over pH strips, and trying to relax on floaties too small for your adult-sized behind. We've now got robots that clean your pool, apps that monitor water quality from your phone, and even a slushie machine for proper pool-party margs. With gas and plane ticket prices soaring to astronomical levels, there's never been a better time for a staycation at your own pool.

The soft, weirdly sexualized home-chore robot has been given some very tactile hands. Friendly home robots have been the dream of sci-fi for a long time. Docile, helpful machines that do your laundry, take out the trash, maybe make dinner, and clean up afterward too. But if robots are going to do all that, they're going to need some hands to make all that happen. The hands are built with actuators designed to replicate how tendons in the arms move human hands.

Thanks to the AI-driven chip shortage, prices for phones, computers, and consoles are sky-high--and still climbing. If you're in the market for anything with a memory chip in it, now might be the time to snag it. Another round of price increases for consumer electronics seems to be underway. In June, Apple announced increased prices for its MacBooks and iPads . Xbox consoles are also getting more expensive starting in August.

"We have more people voting on the app than we do in many political elections taking place across the country," says the show's executive producer. Walls of cameras so millions of Americans can watch your spicy summer flings happen in real time? The app, where levels of viewer engagement are so high that it crashed during the first vote. Fans of the real-time dating show relish controlling the action through their in-app votes, helping decide who couples up and who gets dumped. Fan votes happen around five times during each season.

This robotic surface skimmer offers an entirely different concept in pool cleaning. But does that translate to effective debris removal? Lack of solar charging makes it impractical for most pools, where skimming needs to be nonstop. Pool skimmers, which flit along the surface of the water, constitute a small but stable subsection of the pool robot world. While their effectiveness varies, all of them work more or less the same way, cruising around the pool on a catamaran-like body, scooping up leaves into a basket that sits between the two propeller-powered hulls.

Meta Is Charging a Subscription for Smart Glasses Features. Now you'll need to subscribe for "expanded access" to the most advanced features. So you paid a few hundred bucks for a neat little gadget and think you're good to go. But it turns out you'll need to subscribe to a monthly plan to unlock its advanced features. That where AI-powered consumer electronics are increasingly heading, and Meta is the latest to prove it with its smart glasses .

With these high-tech automatic litter boxes, gone are the days of scooping and smells. I can confidently say that having an automatic litter box has been the biggest game changer for me when it comes to cat ownership. I can't recommend them enough. They can be pricey, but never having to scoop poop again is priceless. We at WIRED--well, our WIRED cats--tested a dozen of the highest-rated and most technologically advanced automatic litter boxes on the market for at least a week, often more (using standard clay clumping litter unless otherwise indicated), to see if they were really worth the money--or the hype. Our new favorite automatic litter box is the Purobot Max Pro 2 because of its compact design and camera for monitoring. The Litter-Robot 4 is a close second, mostly because of its LitterHopper attachment that easily refills litter for you. Plus, we still love the more basic Petkit PuraMax 2 (and think it's a great option for most people). Check out our related guides, like the Best Automatic Feeders, Best Cat Water Fountains, Best Pet Cameras, and Best Cat Toys . We've got you covered; see our Best Dog Accessories . The Purobot Max Pro 2 is the newest model from Petkit.

This hefty but nimble and highly customizable ebike makes the journey as important as the destination. Get where you want, and have fun along the way. Bigger wheels combined with front suspension can take on anything the road throws at you. Quick-release thru axle is confusing to assemble. Quite heavy and hard to maneuver when not riding.

Daisy's First Headphones Are Premium, High-Quality--and Just a Little Bit Cheaper The California-based startup enters a crowded headphone market with a $399 chiseled-aluminum gamble. Jack Mulroe thinks the premium headphone market is boring. Too focused on black, samey-looking devices; too caught up in the "spec wars" to figure out what the very best headset is . He just wants his California-inspired headphones to help people chill. "I just saw a pattern of there being kind of a dead space, honestly, in the headphone market, where the most recent culturally relevant brand was Beats," Mulroe says.

Flipper Devices, a company that built a banned hacking device, now wants to hack your attention span. Focus and productivity apps abound, all to help you stave off the many distractions coming from your phone. Digital well-being tools can silence notifications, limit apps like TikTok and Instagram, and help you focus on the task at hand. But you can also turn them off very easily as soon as you feel like you haven't endlessly scrolled enough. This is where Flipper's Busy Bar comes in, a hardware clock with an LED screen that doubles as a clock and a dedicated timer.