I'm pretty religious about swapping out my HVAC filter every month. When I pay rent, I change the filter. That's just how I do it. Living in a beach town means the wind is pretty much always blowing, and in my case, it's blowing in from the Gulf. The means sand and dust are a constant. And at this particular moment, it's peak pollen season here! If I leave anything outside for a day or two, it's yellow.

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Category: Around The Home, Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: Air purifying, Air Conditioners, Filters, Home, Reviews

The Mova LiDAX Ultra 1000 was hands down the most frustrating mower I've used so far. The caster front wheels made this thing completely unusable in my sandy grass no matter what I tried. So I rage quit and took it down the street to a neighbor's house, where he and his wife spend a significant amount of time caring for their perfect lawn, perfect yard, and lovely garden. If there's any lawn this thing should, could, will, or has to work on, it'd be theirs.

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Category: Around The Home, Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: Lawnmower, Lawnmowers, Autonomous, Mower, Reviews, Garden

A lot of tiny houses nowadays are anything but. For those who think they should actually live up to their name, the Mantra Micro Cabin is an ultra-compact dwelling that ditches the bells and whistles to sleep two for just US$17,000.

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Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors

Tags: Building and Construction, House, Home, Micro-House, Tiny Footprint

California-based aerospace company Airhart Aeronautics recently completed test flights of its new cockpit avionics suite for small planes at the company's Long Beach facility. We sat down with Airhart President Nate Thuli to learn more.

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Category: Aircraft, Transport

Tags: Aircraft, Flight Tests, Interviews

I've gotten used to this camera over the last six years, but I recently learned I'm missing out on some things.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

Cameras from the last handful of years are remarkably good. Most models can produce strong images, handle challenging lighting conditions and reliably get subjects in focus. Overall, they can make it simpler to get more images you like with less work. It's easy to look at what's available today and think: what's left to improve?

That said, my job puts me in an unusual position. I regularly get the opportunity to test new cameras, which means I'm constantly comparing them against my personal reference point: a Sony a7 III, a camera I've owned for six years, and that's now an eight-year-old model. Recently, I had a few weeks with the Sony a7 V, the a7 III's successor's successor, and used it the same way I use my own camera, photographing my pets, still life setups, a baseball game and a portrait session.

What I found is that the gap I'd assumed was negligible is, in certain areas, more significant than I expected. There are things about the latest generation I didn't want to give back. Certain aspects made me aware of what my eight-year-old model lacks compared to what more recent cameras bring to the table.

Image quality gains over the past few years are only really visible in extreme situations, such as high contrast scenes, when you look closely.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

Let's start with the most subtle and, therefore, most inconsequential change: image quality. While we may no longer be seeing giant leaps in image quality as we were at the beginning stages of digital photography, companies are still striving to bring improvements to the table. Often this takes the form of slight bumps in dynamic range, giving you a bit more flexibility when editing.

As expected, my most recent experience moving from an old mirrorless to a brand-new one wasn't a massive step up in image quality. In fact, it was very, very subtle. I had a few instances of photographing high-contrast and low-light situations where I saw a tiny bit more range, enabling me to get a little more from my files than I could have with my older device. But it was something I had to look closely for, not something that slapped me in the face with its obviousness. Will it matter in the day-to-day or for most shoots? Not really. But is it nice to have for certain situations? Sure.

Autofocus is one area that shows the most drastic changes when moving from an old camera to a new one. The fact that I was able to get in-focus shots in this darkroom without much frustration was huge.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

The more substantial upgrade on modern cameras is the autofocus system. This was especially evident when moving from my DSLR to mirrorless, which uses an entirely different autofocus system. And while the jump isn't as drastic when going from a relatively old mirrorless camera, like my a7 III, to a more recent one, it still was a noticeable change that will make it a disappointment to go back to the older model.

Of course, the autofocus improvement you experience when upgrading is going to depend entirely on the model you upgrade from and to, and on what sorts of things you shoot. But broadly speaking, brands have made a handful of improvements in recent years that can make a noticeable difference in real-life situations.

First and foremost, I found the autofocus to be more reliable, especially in tricky situations. I still had misses, don't get me wrong. But I was able to use the camera in less-than-ideal conditions and still get usable shots. For example, I took photographs in a makeshift darkroom lit only with a red LED light, and still got some images in focus with relative ease. My eight-year-old personal camera likely would have struggled substantially with that, and would have at the very least been hunting for focus much more.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

Another area that made a difference for me was the added subject detection modes. In my case, I went from a measly two options (human and animal) to a healthy list that includes specific types of animals and vehicles. Even more appreciated, though, is the automatic subject detection setting.

I photograph a range of subjects, with frequent switching between human portraits, my pets and still life scenes. My personal camera requires I fiddle with autofocus settings a fair amount when switching subjects in order to get reliable results. That's far from the case on the new model I used, though, and I was able to just leave it set to automatic and not think about it again. Plus, the subject detection is generally more successful at finding a subject (even with my black pets) and of sticking on them even as they move. My a7 III consistently fails at keeping a subject in focus as they move, so this is a big win for me.

I am going to miss the smoother exposure compensation dial greatly.

Photo: Abby Ferguson

I know some people who refuse to buy the first generation of any type of product. Their thought process is that the brand has too many kinks to work out, and the later generations will show advancements that make the product actually worth using.

Cameras aren't an exception to the rule, and as each model comes along, brands iterate on its design, attempting to make the ergonomics and user interface better each time. Ergonomics are inherently personal, so new designs won't always be a win for you in particular. But refinements in these areas are generally useful and can make the camera more pleasant to hold and use, especially for long periods of time.

In my case, it came down to simple things that I only noticed after living with the camera for a few days and then going back to my older model. For example, the a7 V's exposure compensation dial rotates with much less resistance than my a7 III, making it easier to use quickly in the middle of a shoot. Because of that, I used it far more often, helping me dial in my shots more in-camera than I did previously.

On the UI front, the menus were more logical. That meant I didn't avoid them nearly as much as I had in the past. Instead of just dealing with annoying things because I didn't want to find the setting in the menus, I confidently went and adjusted what I needed to when I needed to, even if it was in the middle of a portrait session. All-in-all, the camera got in my way less, so I could focus more on the shoot.

Being able to change the rear display position beyond tilt is hugely appreciated for my workflow.

Photo: Mitchell Clark

Camera technology involves many parts that are also used in other devices, so improvements in those parts over the past few years have naturally made their way into cameras. Electronic displays, which we see on the rear screens and in EVFs of our cameras, are a great example of this.

I never thought I had complaints about the quality of the rear display on my personal camera, but after using something newer, it's one of the things I realized I was missing out on. It features a higher resolution and has a bit more contrast, making it easier for me to judge details and focus on the back of the camera. It's also brighter, which means I could see those things more easily when at a session in bright, open sunlight. The colors also look a bit nicer.

Simply put, it makes my images look a little better on the back of the camera. While that doesn't change the actual files at all, it is a confidence builder while in the midst of a shoot, and that's never a bad thing in my book.

A bigger upgrade for me, though, is the updated rear display form factor. Many companies have switched to articulating and fully tilting screens, which provide greater flexibility. I shoot a lot of vertical images, and I also put myself in awkward positions for photos on a regular basis. On my older camera, the tilt-only screen was useful for low shots, but that's really it. The newer rear displays allow me to adjust in just about any way I need to, making it easier for me to get the shots I want without fully contorting my body.

All of this isn't to say that all new cameras are inherently better than old ones. Or that you can't produce anything good with old cameras (I'd like to think my work shows that you can, but maybe that's my ego talking). I'm not here to tell everyone using an old camera that they need to upgrade as soon as possible.

And yet... using a recent camera made me aware of the (now apparent) shortcomings of my older model. There are improvements that don't really affect me because of my way of working (video specs, burst shooting features, etc.), but there are some that will be genuinely hard to live without now that I know how good it can be.

For most people, it’s hard to fathom what true speed on a motorcycle actually feels like. Even most riders have never experienced velocities that might make them question their place in the world.

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Category: Motorcycles, Transport

Tags: Steam Power, Land Speed Records, World Records, World's Fastest, Crazy

Last year, researchers at the MIT Media Lab shared preliminary research investigating the cognitive costs of using a chatbot for writing essays. Though the study hadn’t gone through peer-review yet – where other scientists check the quality of the work and help spot errors – it still hit the headlines via major news outlets like TIME.

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Category: Science

Tags: LLM (Large Language Model), chatbot, Brain, Cognitive functioning, GPT, Features

This extra-wide tiny house takes a considered approach to small living, using its increased width not to sleep more people or squeeze in extra features, but instead to create an open, apartment-like home for two. It also has lots of upgrades available and can be configured to run off-grid.

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Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors

Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home

Safety is a double-edged sword on motorcycles. Between the thrill of being on a bike and ensuring you’re safe out on the road, it’s a subtle balancing act. This unique three-wheeled electric leaning motorcycle tries to redefine the boundaries of motorcycle safety.

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Category: Motorcycles, Transport

Tags: Electric Vehicles, Electric Motorcycles, Prototype, Trike, Road Safety, urban transport, Tilting-Vehicle

Since 2017, LG's been hard at work perfecting the wallpaper TV, a screen that practically blends into your space with all of its components crammed into an impossibly thin form factor.

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Category: Home Entertainment, Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: TV, OLED, LG

Founded in 2019 in Seattle, Hest has built a reputation for crafting some of the camping market's comfiest mattresses and sleep systems. Now it unleashes that know-how in memory foam construction into the greater base camp, launching a classic folding camping chair that looks like it might just be one of the most comfortable available. Truth be told, the combination of full-size, multipurpose foam cushioning and heavy-duty frame should bring this chair's comfort level closer to cushioned patio furniture than to the average quad-folding camping chair.

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Category: Gear, Outdoors

Tags: Camping, Outdoors and Camping, tailgating, Folding, Chair

After more than 25 years, DPReview is getting a completely new website. Here's what you need to know.

When DPReview first lit up the internet in 1998, the tech world was bracing for Y2K, computers used CRT monitors, and early digital camera owners waited minutes to upload a photo over a 56k modem. In the quarter century since, a lot has changed.

One thing that hasn't changed quite so dramatically, though, is our website. We've occasionally added features or applied a fresh coat of paint, but the changes have been evolutionary rather than transformative. To a large degree, that consistency was a feature, not a bug; we've never wanted to do a major site redesign unless we were confident it could preserve the core DPReview experience.

That time has come. We're in the final stages of building a completely new DPReview from the ground up, and years of reader feedback have shaped our thinking about what the new site needs to be.

We all love nostalgia, but just like CompactFlash cards, it's time to leave some of our best-of-the-early-2000s web interfaces behind.

DPReview will be getting a new look and feel built for the modern web, designed to work great on both desktop and mobile devices. If you're a desktop user, you can look forward to faster load times, easier navigation, and a more modern experience.

If you're a mobile user, you'll no longer have to revert to our desktop site to see certain pages. Additionally, we've updated some of our favorite site tools that have never worked well on mobile devices and optimized them for mobile use, including our image comparison tool, product comparison tool and sample galleries.

Under the hood, we're leaving much of our legacy infrastructure behind. In its place, we'll be moving to a modern, widely supported codebase that will make it easier to develop new features and that we can confidently invest in well into the future.

Our editorial mandate is not changing. That means we're not going to change what we cover or how we cover it. We're committed to giving you the same camera reviews, tech explainers, opinion pieces, and photography stories DPReview is known for, written by the same people you've come to trust.

Our community forums will also remain unchanged. Many of you will recall that we had to move our forums to a new platform in 2025 to ensure their continued operation. Other than some minor cosmetic updates to align with the new site design, the core forum experience will stay the same.

We plan to roll out the new site within the next several weeks. As we get closer to launch we'll share interim updates, and maybe even some sneak peeks, so you can get a sense of what to expect.

In the spirit of keeping you informed, there's one near-term change worth flagging. Our Challenges system is built around a structured timeline with phases for announcements, submissions, and voting. Since we don't want to disrupt challenges that may be in progress at the moment we move to the new system, we will be temporarily freezing the ability to start new challenges beginning on April 25th; challenges already underway will complete normally. A new Challenges system is coming, and we'll share more details on timing as we get closer.

A lot has changed since 1998. Many of you have been part of our community for much – or even all – of that history, and have experienced that change alongside us. That kind of loyalty isn't something we take lightly, and it's a big reason why getting this right matters to us.

We also want to be realistic. This is a massive project. Not only are we building new things, we're also migrating over 25 years of history and tens of thousands of articles to a completely new system. There will be a few things that won't be ready right out of the gate, and we'll make sure to address those as quickly as possible after launch. Additionally, despite plenty of testing, there will almost certainly be some unexpected bugs when the new site goes live, and we hope you'll be patient with us as we squash them with our tripod legs.

But it's going to be worth it: a more attractive, easier to navigate, more photo-focused website, representing a huge commitment to the site's future. We're excited to launch this new chapter in DPReview's history, and we think you're going to like what's coming.

Not broken, but overdue. The site has been running on the same aging codebase for over 25 years, and maintaining it has become increasingly costly and limiting. Moving DPReview onto a modern shared platform with our sister site Gear Patrol means we can invest in new features and improvements far more efficiently than we could on legacy infrastructure while keeping DPReview's editorial identity fully intact. The old system was a ceiling. This removes it.

Our editorial mandate isn't changing. We'll continue to bring you the same authoritative, unbiased coverage of cameras and photography you've come to depend on, written by the same people.

We hope to share some sneak peeks in the weeks leading up to launch. You'll be able to see the full site on launch day.

Yes, the new site will be faster and more reliable for most things. That said, some functions are limited by factors outside our control. Downloading a large sample image, for example, still depends on your connection speed. We can make the site faster, but we can't speed up the entire internet :)

Yes. We are migrating all our existing content, including articles, reviews and the camera and lens databases.

Absolutely. While mobile is an important part of the new design, we have no intention of short-changing desktop users. We love big, beautiful photos, and if you're on a large monitor, we want you to get the full benefit of that experience.

Yes, existing bookmarks will continue to work.

The current Challenges system will not be carried over to the new site – we're building a new one that will launch after the site goes live. To avoid any challenges starting under the old system that can't be completed during the transition, we're freezing new challenge creation on April 25th. Any challenges already underway will complete normally before the switchover.

The new website will not change how our forums work. There may be minor cosmetic updates to align with the new site design, but the forum experience will remain fundamentally the same.

Yes. Advertising is one of the ways we fund DPReview's operations, and that won't change with the new site.

Yes. Your account, comments, forum posts, and history will all carry over to the new site.

This is the beginning, not the end. We'll continue to make improvements after launch, and the new codebase will make it significantly easier to introduce new tools and features going forward.

You can leave a comment below or reach us at support@dpreview.com. Once the new site is live, we'll have a dedicated area of our forums where you can ask questions, discuss the changes, and share feedback.

On April 23rd, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched several satellites into low-Earth orbit including a 10-cm (3.9-inch) "origami" cube satellite with a reflectarray antenna that unfurls, origami-like, to 25 times its size when folded.

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Category: Space Systems, Engineering

Tags: Rocket Lab, JAXA, Origami, CubeSat, Folding

Patio season is coming up in much of the world, but living in a smaller apartment shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a good steak at home. At the same time, most indoor cooking devices make you choose between convenience and real grilled flavor. Cozytime Lumo attempts to offer both by combining infrared cooking with AI automation that always picks the ideal settings for different foods.

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Category: Around The Home, Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: Kitchen, Cooking, Food, Kickstarter, xxKickbooster, Infrared, Grilling

The appearance of blocky black solar panels hasn't changed much at all in the last several years, and in the case of many buildings and roofs, they can really cramp your style.

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Category: Engineering

Tags: Materials, Solar Cell, Fraunhofer

Shipping containers can be turned into everything from tiny houses to art galleries, but they all share one issue: poor thermal performance. The Petti Restaurant mitigates this by covering the containers in mud, creating a striking building that stays a little cooler in India's intense heat.

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Category: Architecture, Engineering

Tags: Building and Construction, shipping containers, India, Restaurant

Our closest extinct relatives may have developed a very different growth trajectory from us. While modern humans follow a steady growth pattern, Neanderthals may have reached their physical and brain maturity much earlier in their lives, reports a newly published study.

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Category: Archaeology, Science

Tags: Neanderthal, Human

Harman is a name that, for many, is synonymous with black and white film. After all, it's the company behind the staple monochrome brands Ilford and Kentmere. However, in 2023, parent company Harman Technology launched Harman Photo, a color film label, with Phoenix 200 as its first completely in-house color film.

Now, the brand has released a short documentary that walks through the process of developing a new color film and its goals moving forward. It's a really fascinating look into the R&D process for film companies, and offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their equipment and lab spaces. It also is neat to see (and hear from) some of the individuals behind this work.

To start, the team walks through the difficulty of color film in particular. "For a black and white film, there's a lot fewer layers, and it's very heavily silver-driven. When we are talking about color film, there's a lot more chemicals involved because we have to get the various layers of color that we need," says Giles Branthwaite, Sales & Marketing Director of Harman Technology.

Harman Photo developed these from scratch, too. "Our emulsions for color film are nothing like what we've done before. Everything that we do, every layer that we put on, every new model of film that we do is new from the ground up. There are no recipes for what we are creating. It's all coming out of the minds of R&D as we speak," says Greg Summers, Managing Director of Harman Technology.

It was also exciting to hear about the company's long-term goals, of which there are plenty. There have been two iterations of its Phoenix film, but they won't be stopping there. "It's still not where we ultimately want to be," says Branthwaite, a sentiment echoed by others featured in the video. They also specify that some tweaks weren't quite ready for Phoenix II, but will be ready soon, citing halation, sharpness, granularity and speed as some of the areas that will see improvements.

Beyond the existing lineup, the video also teased that more films are on the way, and ones that we won't expect. "There's some very experimental stuff coming soon. It's going to shock people," says Josie Cowap, Lab Technician. Long term, they want to offer a "full range of products, full range of speeds, potentially different segments of the market," says Branthwaite. "As a brand, we want to be different. A little bit alternative, a little bit out there."

Greater availability could also be on the horizon. "We're anticipating our volumes will grow," says Branthwaite. The team walks through some of the investments made in the production facility, specifically the finishing line, where they spool all the film and package it. "These machines cannot be bought. We've had to design them, get them manufactured, put them together, so they really are bespoke," says Branthwaite.

So much investment in the facility is a good thing for us film fans. "This actually gives somebody hope that analog film will be around for the next 10, 20, 30 years going forward," says someone who works in the factory but wasn't named in the video. Indeed, as a film photographer, the whole story gives me hope for the film industry in the years to come.

A new injection developed by researchers and an Australian biotechnology company may have a life-changing impact on an estimated nine out of 10 dogs that suffer from serious respiratory issues directly tied to their breed. It has the potential to allow these flat-faced breeds to live happier and longer lives, in a far less invasive way than existing methods.

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Category: Pets, Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: RMIT University, Biotechnology, Dogs, Respiratory health, Lifespan, Health

The beginner motorcycle segment is a very interesting space – you’ve got new buyers who hardly come with any brand prejudice. They’re open to trying bikes from a number of manufacturers; they’re of course coming with a budget constraint, and most of all, they’re looking at something easy and unassuming to get them started on their motorcycling journey.

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Category: Motorcycles, Transport

Tags: qjmotor, Supermoto, Enduro, Dirt Bikes, Off-road