How-To Geek

The subcompact SUV segment is packed with affordable options, but most of them make some pretty obvious compromises to keep their prices down. One Japanese crossover takes a different approach, pairing a relatively attainable price with an upscale cabin, strong standard equipment, and driving dynamics that feel far more sophisticated than you'd expect from something this small. It isn't the roomiest choice in the class, but it makes a compelling case for buyers who care more about quality and driving enjoyment than sheer practicality.

Despite what most tech companies will tell you, not everything needs to be smart, designed around an AI assistant, or turned into an app. Sometimes, the old bits of tech you have lurking in your closet are still the best choice.

Going on a vacation means switching off from the outside world, and in more ways than one. Your devices can be the biggest distractions when you are traveling and taking time off, especially if you are someone who drowns in a sea of notifications and alerts from your work or personal life.

Windows gets blamed a lot for high RAM usage, and sometimes that's fair. However, if you've ever watched Task Manager fill up with processes from Slack, Discord, and VS Code all running at the same time, the operating system isn't really the culprit. Those are Electron apps, and each one quietly loads an entire browser engine into memory just to run a chat window or a code editor and eats up RAM.

Apps such as Apple's Find My and Google's Find Hub make it easy for friends and family to track your real-time location. The problem is that if you use these apps, your location is exposed every second of the day. I decided to ditch always-on location sharing and use NFC tags to share my location when I wanted to.

PC monitoring usually means staring at performance graphs, percentages, and numbers. A Reddit user gave their computer an old-school way to show what’s happening under the hood. They saved a pair of analog gauges from heading to the e-waste bin and turned them into a real-time PC monitoring system. The secret to this is an ESP32 development board doing the heavy lifting between a modern PC and decades-old analog hardware.

Samsung only committed to providing four years of Android updates for the Galaxy S22, but don't worry: there's now a way to keep it relevant past its effective February 2027 expiry date. The LineageOS team has released a new version of its unofficial Android firmware that finally supports Exynos-based versions of the Galaxy S22, S22+, and S22 Ultra.

SSDs have gotten faster, but hard drives, for better or worse, haven't. There's a reason why they haven't, and that's mostly due to to the way they work. So any attempts to make hard drives faster would need to get around that.

Back in the day, buying a charger for your phone was as simple as ensuring the cable used the same port as your phone. However, as phones have evolved, so have the fast-charging protocols that come with them.

I've spent the past few weeks with Lenovo's brand-new Wildcat Lake-powered IdeaPad Slim 3i laptop, featuring Intel's latest Core 7 350 processor. While I really want to love this laptop, it feels like modern hardware housed in a design from several years ago—and I have mixed feelings about that.

A few years ago, Google introduced a cool new feature for its Pixel phone lineup and then pretty much stopped talking about it almost immediately afterward. I'm talking about the ability to output video to an external display via USB-C, allowing you to mirror your Pixel's screen to an external display with a USB-C, DisplayPort, or HDMI input. But there's more.

People love to share posts of their Home Assistant dashboards, and I've always been impressed by the 3D recreations of people's homes that people use to monitor and control their smart home devices. It's always seemed like too much effort to set up, but one Home Assistant user has created a home dashboard that's so cool that I'm sorely tempted to make one myself.

By default, Windows sets the refresh rate to 60Hz when you first boot a new PC or reinstall Windows, regardless of your monitor's native refresh rate. This is why one of the most popular pieces of advice for Windows users is to manually increase the refresh rate in Windows Settings after getting a new PC or reinstalling Windows. The catch is that Windows can revert your monitor's refresh rate to 60Hz in many other situations as well, without notifying you.

When I was forced to accept that Windows Phone was going the way of the dinosaurs, I decided LG best embodied what I adored about Microsoft’s ill-fated mobile efforts. Within a few years, LG began to show the same signs of degradation, and I begrudgingly moved on once again… with one exception.

Luxury sedans from Germany can be eye-wateringly expensive when new, but depreciation can turn them into surprisingly affordable used-car bargains. One three-year-old sedan now costs roughly the same as a mid-trim family car from a mainstream brand, yet offers the kind of upscale cabin, technology, and refinement that economy-focused automakers still struggle to match. For buyers willing to accept a few miles on the odometer, it's a compelling way to get genuine luxury without paying a luxury-car sticker price.

I know that reading the headline of this article must be pretty baffling, because hey, what's a better backup than a NAS? NAS systems were made to be backups, among other things. Their uses are endless, but pretty much everyone I know uses their NAS as a backup.

Animations have been part of the desktop experience for decades, starting with early graphical interface innovations and evolving into a staple of modern operating systems. But they’ve had a checkered history, falling in and out of fashion as tastes evolve and priorities vary.

Keeping houseplants can make being indoors feel more like being outside in nature. It only works if your plants stay alive. I used some cheap ESP32 boards and even cheaper soil moisture sensors to set up a system that alerts me when my plants actually need watering.

While it's easy to think of YouTube as just a place to watch videos, it's actually one of the biggest search engines in the world. Whether you're looking for a review, some entertainment, or trying to figure out how to fix something, YouTube is often the go-to platform when you need hands-on advice.

This week is all about intellectual property. The three thrillers on the list are part of long-running franchises. Some of them are certainly scarier than others, so if you love horror, you'll appreciate several of these picks. Our top selection is a direct sequel to a zombie movie from a beloved dystopian franchise.