With your ever-growing collection of electronic devices, perhaps it seems your home never has enough power outlets. Power strips and their more elaborate siblings, surge protectors, offer an easy solution: one plug in the wall, many outlets for your devices. But wait! There’s more to these simple-seeming products than meets the eye.  To start, did …

It’s really not a good idea to mount your TV over your fireplace. It might center your living room in a charming way, but it can do a lot more harm than good — especially if you watch a lot of TV,  are prone to neck pain or actually use the fireplace. Yes, we know it seems like the logical …

If you’ve ever tried to set up a projector you’ll be familiar with the struggle of getting a perfectly rectangular image on the wall. This is because the lens of projector has to be perpendicular to the screen. If any corner of the projector is closer to the screen than its opposite, you’ll get some kind of trapezoid instead of …

When it comes time to connect your shiny new soundbar or AV receiver, your two main choices are HDMI or optical digital audio. The simplest advice is to go with HDMI when you can. But if you can’t then it’s not the end of the world. Here are the pros and cons of each connection type. The basics Both HDMI …

It’s the rare projector that crosses my path with an aesthetically beautiful design. There are plenty of cool projectors, some cute projectors and even some that could generously be called “neat.” The Xiaomi Mi Smart Projector 2 is as stylish as any projector I’ve seen, and would look right at home surrounded by Apple devices on an Eero Saarinen table flanked …

Transparency mode is an important feature found on many new headphones and earbuds with active noise cancellation. Noise-canceling headphones are great on planes or in a crowded office, but sometimes it’s necessary to hear the world around you for a few minutes. For example, it might be useful for letting you hear the traffic around you, ordering a coffee or …

The best TVs you can buy use OLED screens and until now, LG Display has been the sole producer of every OLED television in the world. In 2022 a new kind of OLED TV technology, called QD-OLED, finally goes on sale. The technology debuts in new 55-inch and 65-inch TVs from Samsung and Sony, as well as a new monitor by Alienware. QD-OLED uses quantum dots in …

Let’s say you and the fam are going camping. Maybe it’s a national park, maybe it’s your backyard. Watching a movie under the stars is the perfect end to a summer day, and the Anker Nebula Capsule is miniature ticket to outdoor theater bliss. Smaller than any of the portable projectors we’ve reviewed recently, it’s the size of a can …

If you just bought a new TV, you’re likely excited to get it mounted and set up. Before you rush to put it on the wall, beware your TV’s performance can be significantly reduced by mounting it in the wrong place. You don’t want to put it too high, and you definitely don’t want to put it above a fireplace …

One of the most difficult aspects of shopping for projectors is trying to compare specifications. Does Projector A’s 5,000:1 contrast ratio actually look better than Projector B’s 4,500:1? How much brighter is Projector C’s 1,000 lumens compared to Projector D’s 800? Let me tell you a little secret: These specs are largely meaningless. In broad strokes, sure, a 3,000-lumen projector …