While some of Skullcandy’s best-known offerings reside in the sub-$100 market, the company makes a variety of different types of headphones at a number of different price ranges. While neither the Venue nor the Crusher — both unveiled on Wednesday, August 22 — are as affordable as some of Skullcandy’s offerings, both of them are worth a look for different reasons.
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With the new Venue noise-canceling headphones, Skullcandy seems to be aiming at a more youthful market, not surprising given that this is typically the company’s focus. Saying that most noise-canceling headphones are “only seen in the business-class section of an airplane,” the company says that the Venue headphones are for everyone.
For a fairly affordable price, the Venue headphones are packed with features. The headphones feature up to 24 hours of playback, with Rapid Charge technology gaining you five hours of battery life on a 10-minute charge. While noise-canceling is intended to keep out the noise of the world around you, these feature a Monitor Mode, letting you hear the outside world with just a simple push of a button. Skullcandy has also partnered with Tile, letting you find your headphones with the Tile mobile app. The Venue headphones are available in black and white color varieties.
Following up on the Crusher Wireless, which was released in 2016 and built on the earlier Crusher, the Crusher 360 is the latest generation of the bass-booming headphones. In addition to standard features, these headphones feature a haptic engine that rumbles the headphones, letting you feel the bass instead of simply hearing it. These headphones are also wireless, providing up to 30 hours of playback time on a single charge. These will be available exclusively via Best Buy in Black/Tan and Black/Black color varieties.
The Venue noise-canceling wireless headphones will retail for $180 and are available for pre-order now, while the Crusher 360 will retail for $300 and will be available for pre-order beginning September 5. For more information or to pre-order, see the Skullcandy website. If you want to see how the competition stacks up, take a look at our list of the best headphones you can buy or our list of the best noise-canceling headphones.
There’s a rare deal on the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones today
The massively popular Sony WH-1000XM5 wireless headphones rarely appear in headphone deals, so if you've had your eye on them for quite a while, you're in luck because they're currently $51 off on Walmart. From their original price of $400, you'll only have to pay $349, but only if you hurry because we don't expect stocks to last long. You're going to miss out on the offer if you take too long, so don't hesitate -- add the wireless headphones to your cart and check out as fast as you can.
Why you should buy the Sony WH-1000XM5
The best headphones that you can buy right now are the Sony WH-1000XM5 wireless headphones, and it's not even close. At the heart is their outstanding wireless sound, supported by top-quality active noise cancellation that uses two processors and eight microphones to block all unwanted sound, as well as crystal-clear hands-free calling using four beamforming microphones and advanced audio signal processing. The wireless headphones also offer Bluetooth multipoint connection so that you can quickly switch between different devices, touch controls for functions like adjusting volume and calling your digital assistant, and Speak-to-Chat and Quick Attention features to stop your music and let ambient sound in without having to take them off.
Sony’s premium soundbars will finally get support for VRR, ALLM
It's been a long time coming, but the wait is almost over. Sony's premium home theater soundbars are set to receive a software update that will add support for variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low-latency mode (ALLM), two HDMI 2.1 gaming features that have been absent since these products launched.
The soundbars in question are the Sony HT-A5000, HT-A7000, and the multi-wireless speaker HT-A9 system. All three are scheduled to receive the update this fall, but Sony has declined to share specific timing, saying only that there will be more information closer to the rollout date.
How do you get your Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or Prime Video fix? Chances are it's through a streaming device or smart TV, and there's a good chance that it's through a Roku device or one running its pioneering streaming operating system. At this point, cord-cutting is old news, and Roku was one of the earliest companies to drive the adoption of web-based streaming with its self-contained, app-driven devices.
Today, watching something "on Roku" is standard parlance and the company's popular platform can be found baked into some of the biggest TV brands in the world as well as in its own lineup of streaming devices sticks, and set-top boxes. Even so, that doesn't mean you totally get what a Roku actually is. What is Roku? How does Roku work? Do you need a subscription to use it? Is it just a device you buy, or is it software?
