🎮 PlayStation Portal

November 14, 2023

IN THIS ISSUE

🎮 PlayStation Portal review

📁 SanDisk SSDs may be failing due to design flaw

🟠 NASA stops speaking to its Mars robots

🕶️ My nose loves these next-gen smart specs

UP FIRST

PlayStation Portal review: PS5 handheld cuts a lot of corners

'What you see is what you get with PlayStation Portal. And it's not much'

If you are expecting that PlayStation’s standalone Remote Play device would be hiding some hidden secret that Sony was keeping close to the chest, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

As pictures have implied, it’s a screen attached to a DualSense controller. It can connect to your PlayStation 5 via Remote Play over Wi-Fi – and that’s all there is to it. If that idea hasn’t already sold you, you can climb down from the fence you’ve been sitting on and get back to gaming on the PS5 from the comfort of your couch.

Though some may find that idea baffling, it most assuredly has its own audience. A device like this is perfect for the kind of PlayStation faithful who uses Remote Play when traveling or just lazing in bed ...

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

SanDisk SSDs may have been failing due to fundamental design flaw

If it's confirmed to be a hardware issue, a software fix won't work

SanDisk has faced heavy criticism in recent months over the sudden failure of some of its external SSDs.

The situation has led to the launch of a number of class action lawsuits against parent company Western Digital.

SanDisk issued a firmware fix to resolve the issue, but a new report suggests it won’t work as the flaw is hardware-based. The claim comes from data recovery firm Attingo via Austrian website FutureZone.

After examining some of the failed SSDs, Attingo said they suffered from inadequate design and manufacturing that caused them to fail.

It noted that the soldering wasn’t strong enough to bond the components to the circuit board. It also claimed that the components are too big, resulting in irregular connections and overheating, ultimately leading to lost files ...

MARS EXPLORATION

NASA stops speaking to its Mars robots, but they haven't fallen out

During the downtime, the vehicles will continue to gather data and then beam it back once the communications link is back up

NASA’s Mars robots receive their commands from the mission team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, but for the next few weeks, the communications will fall silent.

This is due to the sun coming between Earth and Mars. The celestial event is known as solar conjunction and happens every couple of years.

The orbits of Earth and Mars mean that the two planets will once again be in sight of each other from November 25, allowing the mission team to resume normal operations.

Impacted robots include the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter, which reached the Martian surface in 2021, and the Curiosity rover, which landed in 2012.

NASA’s three orbiters – Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN – are affected, too ...

SMART GLASSES

I tried the next generation of smart glasses, and my nose loves them

Comfort is just as important as picture quality and audio

Smart glasses with displays offer a giant screen that appears in the center of your view and personal stereo sound. In practice, there have been some issues preventing this technology from going mainstream. Most notably, comfort has been a problem.

While early smart glasses often fell short with their thick and heavy designs, more recent efforts are lighter and look more like a regular pair of specs.

We’ve gone hands-on with smart glasses from Xreal, TCL, and Rokid, focusing not only on the visual and audio quality but also on the level of comfort offered by each.

We also take a look at the devices that are needed to stream the glasses' content from a phone, computer, or gaming console ...

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