While the name of our humble little site might beAndroidPolice, a whole host of devices cross our various desks for review each month. August may have been dominated bySamsung’s latest watchesand folding phones, but September has been a wonderfully diverse — and ridiculously busy — month. Tech-tober might technically start tomorrow, but between a small tidal wave ofnew Amazon devices, new awesome earbuds from both Bose and Sony, and manufacturers releasing their final devices before the holiday shopping season kicks off, we’re spoiled for choice in this month’s best reviews.
So, before next week’sGoogle Pixel 8event rolls in like a tidal wave — andAmazon Prime Big Deal Daysmonumental sales the week after that — let’s take a moment to savor our most fun toys from September.
1Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+
The Galaxy Tab S9 series was an iterative update to the extreme — although the"baby" Tab S9’supgrade to an AMOLED screen was long overdue — but there’s no denying that they are the best tablet experience you can currently find in the Android ecosystem. The base-model S9 can seem a bit expensive for its smallish size and smaller storage, but the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is gargantuan in both size and price.
Sitting in the middle, the Galaxy Tab S9+ hits the sweet spot, which is why ourTab S9+ review calls it the “Goldilocks edition.“The 12.4-inch, 120Hz touchscreen here produces vivid colors and crisp blacks, whether you’re just watching some YouTube or playing the latest and greatest Android games. AP’s Games & Apps Editor Matt Sholtz found that the 16:10 aspect ratio was especially useful for soaking in your favorite videos and digital comics, and the responsiveness of the screen is crucial for note-taking or sketching with the S Pen.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+
2Sony WF-1000XM5
This was the review I’ve been waiting months to read, personally. The Sony WF-1000XM4 has been the king of the mountain in ourbest wireless earbudsguide since its launch, and its successor lives up to the hype and then some. Sporting a smaller, more comfortable design while improving its best-in-class sound quality, theSony WF-1000XM5wireless earbuds will fit more comfortably in smaller ears compared to the XM4s.
This means you won’t have to suffer over a week of cartilage pain from forcibly shifting your tragus and antitragus to accommodate the earbuds' size as I did. (Yes, it’s crazy to do that for earbuds, but Sony’s sound and ANC were worth it.)
There are some minor quips we have with these $300 buds — such as the infuriating decision to go with harder-to-hold glossy buds rather than sticking to matte plastic — but small upgrades like a dedicated pairing button and being able to now go 8 hours with ANC on before needing a recharge more than offset them. I am now eagerly awaiting my own pair after reading this review.
Sony WF-1000XM5
3Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds
From one audio authority to another, our Gadgets Editor Taylor Kerns also reviewed theBose QuietComfort Ultra Earbudsthis month, also priced at $300 and featuring a very iterative update. They’re so similar to the QuietComfort II earbuds in size, shape, and design that they can even swap charging cases, if you actually had both on hand. That said, there are few reasons for anyone owning the QC II to upgrade, as the changes here are almost all software-based, like the gimmicky-but-impressive Immersive Audio.
I felt the urge more than once to turn my music down so it wouldn’t bother people in adjacent rooms — the way the earbuds mimic spatial sound can be that convincing.
Immersive audio mimics the way music sounds when played in an open space as if the music is coming from in front of you rather than directly in your ears. Bose did a pretty fantastic job, and it’s a more well-rounded approach to spatial audio than Sony’s 360 Reality Audio on the WF-1000XM4, but at the same time, Immersive Audio doesn’t work well with all audio types. It can make certain songs noticeably worse and get downright distracting while watching videos.
Nonetheless, Bose’s ANC and sound quality win out in the end, so long as you can accept $300 earbuds that still don’t have wireless charging.
Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds
4Sonos Move 2
While it seems everyone and their grandmother has some kind of smart speaker these days, the variety of portable smart speakers is still perilously slim. So, when the Sonos Move came out back in 2019, it didn’t take much for it to gain a loyal, if niche, following. Four years later, theSonos Move 2isn’t breaking the mold, but it is giving us the refinement and the sound quality we expect — nay, demand — from Sonos.
The battery life has been doubled for the Move 2, which means that even if you forget to plug it back into one of yourspare USB-C chargersafter an afternoon of backyard jams, the speaker will still be alive come morning. That’s important as our resident Sonos expert and Content Director Daniel Bader found himself actually carrying the Move 2 from room to room and even out of the house after never bringing the original Move outside.
One of the major pain points of the original Move — inconsistent Wi-Fi — has been fixed this generation, and the button array has been greatly expanded, adding next/previous buttons to flank the play button and a switch to disable the voice assistant while still keeping the mics enabled (should you get a Bluetooth call on it from your phone). If you’re invested in the Sonos ecosystem but still want something that can bounce around between the rooms that don’t quite justify a dedicated speaker — the laundry room, backyard, or garage — the Move 2 can be a compelling choice. Well, once you get over the sticker shock.
Sonos Move 2
5Onyx Boox Page
This review was a bit bittersweet, as theOnyx Boox Pageis a compelling e-reader from a hardware perspective, and the software is among the best we’ve seen in this segment — well, it would be if you could properly buy new books on it. Onyx’s native apps are a delight, from RSS-reader PushRead to data-syncing BOOXDrop, and thank goodness because you are going to be using that app in import most if not all of your new content. Boox’s “store” is almost exclusively public domain works, so you’ll need to suffer the awkwardness of the Amazon Kindle Android app or opt for separately purchased PDFs and audiobooks that you can manually sync to the Page
This may be a bummer for those who are used to the “all-in-one” solution of a Kindle, Nook, or a Google Play-based e-reader, but if you’re enough of a digi-bibliophile to curate your own local library of e-books, digital docs, and audiobooks, the Page can be a worthy landing pad for it. The built-in speaker works well for when you forget your headphones at home, and Page’s audio support is especially robust. The only e-books you might encounter issues with will likely be e-comics, as image rendering is still a bit of a bear on e-ink. (But you’ll want a color display for comics, anyway.)
Onyx Boox Page
Once Techtober ends, I’ll be coming back to this review to see if performance has improved, because theLenovo IdeaPad Flex 3i Chromebook (Gen 8)was my most-anticipated Chromebook this year, and it’s fallen a bit flat next to my previous budget Chromebooks. The signature feature of the Flex 3i Gen 8 — its 12.2-inch, 1920 x 1200-pixel touchscreen — was everything I’ve wished and begged manufacturers for since my first compact Chromebook back in 2015: video looks good, text looks great, and it’s just big enough to split-screen two windows when Ireallyneed to, though this laptop was never designed for full-time work.
Beautiful in blue with solid build quality, the Gen 8 appears like quite the keeper, but once you’ve used it for a few days, things go downhill a bit. For answering emails and light browsing, this Chromebook is absolutely fine, but going beyond 6-8 tabs will gum things up quickly. The Intel N100 Processor and 4GB of RAM may be budget-friendly and energy-efficient, but for as advanced as Chrome OS has gotten in recent years, they just don’t seem to quite have enough oomph. As a “throw it in my backpack and use it when I’m waiting for shows to start” laptop, it’s fine, but I don’t feel confident in how it’ll hold up in the years to come yet.
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3i (Gen 8, 12.2”)
7Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen)
First of our reviews out of Amazon’s newest crop of cameras, smart displays, and tablets, theRing Indoor Cam (2nd Gen)doesn’t reinvent the home camera, but it does bring a privacy shutter for those who might want to temporarily blind their cameras to certain acts or only wants the cameras watching when they’re not home. It’s a welcome feature, to be sure, but it’s a purely manual control, which means that if you forget to rotate it back to visible, your cameras will be sitting home useless even when they should be watching your empty apartment.
Otherwise, not much has changed: the camera has the same resolution and field of view, both support two-way audio and color night vision, and both are $60. The 2nd Gen also continues to use micro-USB, which is highly unfortunate in our increasingly USB-C-powered smart homes.
Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen)
8Casa Leo Leo’s Loo Too smart litter box
What areyoulooking at?
Finishing us out is the review that blew up the Pets channel of Android Police’s Slack, theLeo’s Loo Too smart litter box from Casa Leo. This cat-sized cement mixer rotates its inner drum to sift out your cat’s droppings into a pull-out drawer without much noise, dust, or smell. Its large litter capacity and high-sided design doesn’t need topping off as often, and because the bottom turd tub is bathed in UV lights, harmful bacteria are killed before they can fester into sickening smells between garbage days.
This litter box can be especially useful forownersstaff members whose feline overlords are on a diet or ill, as it will track the weight of your cat each and every time it comes to bury its shame. While cats are reticent to change, it only took our reviewing cat Adah two weeks to get over the initial"Human, what is this monstrosity?!” and switch over after some curious exploration. And if you’re worried it might spin with your car inside, be assured that if it detects your cat — or anything else that moves — is anywhere nearby, it refuses to rotate the drum.
Casa Leo Leo’s Loo Too
Coming in October
Techtober promises yet another month of top-tier reviews, especially with Made for Google on October 4 kicking the month off with two new phones and a smartwatch, not to mention more of Amazon’s new goodies and the last surge of new product launches ahead of Black Friday. So keep your eyes peeled as we get ready to review our tech-loving hearts out.
