How-To Geek

When I first picked up a 5070 Ti, I did so with gaming in mind. I didn't anticipate constantly running into the VRAM ceiling.

Home Assistant is packed with so many features that it can be hard to keep track of them all. Some features work smoothly in the background so that you never think about them until you need to use them, or until something goes wrong. That's exactly what happened with one of Home Assistant's best features, and it brought my whole smart home down.

I used to think that buying cheaper filament was a compromise to print quality. After testing both first- and third-party filaments, my stance has changed. Here’s why I stopped buying name-brand filament and what I do instead.

I love having a vintage CRT to watch older content and play retro video games. I love it so much, apparently, that I now have six of the darn things taking up space.

You can’t just stick a Canon lens on a Sony body, nor can you use a lot of the old glass that predates your modern camera. Doing so requires a lens adapter—one for every lens mount and camera body combination you own—which can get expensive fairly quickly.

Security cameras are great at recording what's happening inside and outside your home, but on the whole, you still need to look at the video yourself to understand what's going on. Some cameras have object recognition that can detect people, animals, cars, or packages, but there's an open-source tool that can do a whole lot more.

I spent much of the past couple years quite enamored with both the hardware and software of Samsung's book-style foldable phones. That changed with the release of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and I've since switched to the Motorola Razr Fold. I'd be lying if I said every aspect of this phone is better, but I'm quite surprised by the extent to which most of it, frankly, actually is.

Family SUVs have become the default choice for buyers who want practicality, comfort, and efficiency, but that convenience often comes at a steep price. With many new compact crossovers now pushing well past $35,000, a growing number of lightly used alternatives deliver the same everyday usability, better fuel economy, and a more refined driving experience while costing thousands less.

Backing up your files to the cloud is super convenient since you can access them anywhere and on any device. However, there is a chance that your cloud storage could become compromised. If that ever happens, you'll be glad not to have the things on this list stored in it.

Some movies are not comfort food. Some are the ones you brace for—punishingly realistic war epics that flatten you, thrillers that put your nerves through the shredder, true-crime documentaries that make you check your locks at night. You watch them once, feel all the feels, and then file the experience away for good.

If you own a Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy phone, you can enable a selection of audio features that will instantly improve the sound quality of your phone's speakers, the earbuds you're using, and more. The only catch is that most of them are hidden away, especially on Samsung phones. Even if you don't own a Pixel or a Galaxy, Android's Developer options menu hides a few handy Bluetooth audio settings every Android phone owner should tinker with.

I had used NVIDIA GPUs for about a decade until I replaced my trusty RTX 3070 with an RX 9070 XT in early 2025. The AMD graphics card was, and still is, impressive when it comes to gaming performance, but after making the switch, what surprised me most was the software, not the hardware.

3D printing is such a fantastic tool for so many reasons. However, one of my favorite things to do with 3D printing has to be creating upgrades for my office that I couldn't get any other way. Here are three office upgrades that I was able to do with 3D printing that gave me a huge quality of life upgrade.

Opening a garage door manually is no fun, but even a basic garage door opener can do the job at the push of a button. Smart garage door openers are even better, allowing you to control your garage door remotely, but they don't always come cheap. You may be able to turn your dumb garage door opener into a smart one for as little as $10.

Every few months, a new Android update shows up and promises to fix my day. A One UI 8.5 feature added expiry dates to routines. Android 16 rebuilt Do Not Disturb into Modes. Both are good additions. To be fair, Samsung's Modes and Routines already leaves Pixel's Rules far behind. But no update has ever known that my study block starts at 6 PM, or that 20% battery is already too late for me.

The Subaru Outback has long been the easy recommendation for buyers who want one vehicle to handle commuting, road trips, bad weather, and the occasional dirt road. But if most of your driving happens on pavement, its rugged versatility may matter less than the quality of the experience you get every time you climb behind the wheel.

Time is a valuable asset. As someone who writes about entertainment for a living, I spend much of my time watching the latest movies that will dominate conversation in the coming weeks. When I do have a free moment, I try not to waste my time watching poorly reviewed movies or three-hour movies.

Photoshop's "Remove background" tool is great, but it comes with a pretty steep price. To use it, you need an active subscription.

The Rock 5 family of single-board computers (SBCs) includes multiple members, four of which are built on the RK3588. The RK3588 is very capable as SBC CPUs go—it has four "performance" cores running at 2.4Ghz, another four efficiency cores running at 1.8GHz, a decent GPU, and a 6 TOPs NPU.

I've always found resume writing to be a headache, and it's only gotten worse. There are ATS (Applicant Tracking System) tools scanning for keywords, design conventions I'm no longer up to date on, endless advice about mirroring the language of the job posting—and who knows what else. It's a lot to keep track of for a document I neither enjoy writing nor have much experience creating. I also don't have much incentive to get better at it, since I land most jobs through social outreach or referrals.