When I'm asked what to buy if you want to get into making electronic music, I often recommend Elektron's budget-minded Model:Samples and Model:Cycles grooveboxes. They don't grab headlines the way Teenage Engineering's gear or the Telepathic Instruments Orchid do, and even compared to the company's higher-end and more niche musical offerings like the Digitakt, Octatrack, or Tonverk, they're often overlooked. But as my collection has grown to include fancier and far more expensive instruments, I still find myself coming back to the Model series.

Those looking to get their first groovebox are often drawn to more familiar brand names like Korg …

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I told myself I wouldn't buy an OhSnap accessory for my phone. Every one I'd tested was nice, but felt overpriced and slightly flawed. After I weighed in on the $40 Snap Grip 5 last year, I wound up sticking with my $25 Syncwire instead. But OhSnap's $50 Snap Grip Stand finally got me. To have a truly useful vertical stand and grip always attached to my phone, ready at a moment's notice? Heck yes.

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One of the big tradeoffs with Xteink's pocket-friendly e-readers is a lack of easy access to ebooks. On a Kindle or Kobo you can download tens of thousands of titles through each device's respective online bookstores, but with Xteink's devices you have to source DRM-free ebooks on your own. That's about to change, as the developers of CrossPoint Reader, a free alternative firmware for the X3, X4, and X4 Pro, are introducing support for third-party plug-ins that will expand the e-readers' capabilities. One of the first from the community will give the devices access to DRM-protected ebooks borrowed through OverDrive's Libby library app, or pu …

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It wasn't long ago that shooting with a super high-resolution camera meant making serious sacrifices for the sake of all those megapixels. Enter the A7R VI.

Sony's latest flagship high-res camera is a 66.8-megapixel spec monster. In addition to its modest bump in resolution from the last-gen A7R V, it uses a new sensor and processor that unlock nearly any kind of shooting - from sports and action to usable 8K video. It's a huge departure from years ago, when high-resolution cameras were slower, noisier, and more specialized as a result of all those megapixels.

The A7R VI's fully stacked sensor and new Bionz XR2 processor allow it to shoot …

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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 140, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, don't forget to hydrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I've been reading about Will Ferrell and Fabrizio Romano and Heather Cox Richardson, scrolling and scrolling through Ordinary Abundance, watching Avatar Aang (which is as good as you said it was), finally getting proficient in CapCut, obsessing over the latest scandal unearthed by PTFO, rewatching Tires now that the third season is out, trying Spark's AI tools for solving my inbox (so far… meh), revisiting …

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