Today, Huawei announced the FreeClip - a truly wireless earbud with a unique open-ear design for all-day comfortable wearing.
The FreeClip is part of Huawei's wearable Fashion Forward proposition and are the answer to what Huawei says is a growing demographic of listeners who want in-ear wireless headphones that allow them to stay attuned to their surroundings.
The clip design features three parts - the Comfort Bean, the Acoustic Ball, and the C-bridge Design. The Comfort Bean uses an ergonomic bean shape that molds itself along the curvatures of the human ear. The Acoustic Ball is...
Platform reviewed: PC Available on: PC Release date: December 14, 2023
House Flipper 2 scratches the age-old itch of transforming a house into a home. As a renovator based in the fictional town of Pinnacove, you run a business that involves visiting or buying houses that have seen better days, and transforming them into something much more liveable.
You’ll never be short of work, either, as Pinnacove is to shoddy shacks what Powerwash Simulator’s Muckingham is to dirt and grime. Meaning there’s a nigh-on endless stream of buildings to rescue from tragic neglect. Granted, renovating houses doesn’t exactly sound like a thrilling time. But the way House Flipper 2 gamifies tasks like cleaning, painting, collecting trash and constructing walls allows for simple play that’s both accessible and delightfully moreish.
House Flipper 2 is a vastly improved version of the first game. Additions like voiced dialogue and a basic narrative help to further ground you in its world, sometimes making you feel like you’re helping piece together a whole picture as you complete tasks around town. While some fairly long load times do frustrate, there’s really very little to fault Frozen District’s latest renovation sim for.
The house that Jack built
(Image credit: Frozen District)
There are two main styles of play in House Flipper 2. At your home base upon starting the game, you’ll first be introduced to Tasks. These are accessed via your inbox, and will have you visiting houses with some preset goals to take care of. For example, a person may require you to simply clean out their garage by throwing away trash and cleaning up stubborn stains. Another might have you renovating an attic room for a family member, in which you’ll paint the walls and place down new items of furniture.
There’s a lot of variety in House Flipper 2’s tasks. And while they grow to become much more involving missions over time, when you’re starting out they act as fantastic tutorials that’ll allow you to gradually unlock new tools and perks through the game’s experience system. Basically, the more you accomplish certain tasks like cleaning, decorating and so on, you’ll earn perk points to make your job more efficient. Examples here include a wider paint roller, and larger garbage bags letting you fit in more trash before needing to dispose of it.
Best bit
(Image credit: Frozen District)
Buying an old, run down house and flipping it into a luxurious abode is equal parts involving and rewarding. Especially when you list your hard work on the auction house and make a huge profit.
Tasks act as the best possible preparation for that second style of play, which is where you’ll eventually be spending most of your time in the game, and this is the act of house flipping itself. From your home base - once you’ve earned enough cash by completing Tasks - you’re able to purchase rundown houses for the purpose of renovation.
House flipping is a much more involved endeavor, as there are no preset tasks or objectives for you to meet. Instead, you’re left entirely to your own devices to turn the house around. Here, it’s you who gets to choose what hue to paint the walls, what furniture to invest in. And later on, once you unlock the sledgehammer, how exactly you want the floor plan to be laid out.
It’s easy to spend countless hours on a single house. In the house flipping mode, I did initially find the whole process to be a little overwhelming given the amount of freedom you have. But once you’ve got a solid plan in mind, investing your time and hard-earned cash into creating something unique pays off when you hand it over to the auction house for a big profit. And if you want to try again with an entirely different approach, it’s as easy as rebuying the house via your in-game workspace.
Flippin' marvelous
(Image credit: Frozen District)
Another element where House Flipper 2 excels in comparison to the first game is with its overall presentation. The sequel looks much more vivid and colorful than the relatively drab palette of the first. This helps create a greater distinction between a neglected hovel and the finished product. The improved visual design makes it all the more common to step back, look at your handiwork, crack a smile and think: “yep, I did that.”
Your busywork is further helped by House Flipper 2’s wonderfully relaxing soundtrack and brilliant sound design. Wooden floors satisfyingly squeak as you clean them. Fresh paint rests on walls with a suitably sticky register. Little things like this make the experience feel more grounded and immersive.
Accessibility
House Flipper 2 doesn’t feature any notable accessibility options at launch. Subtitles are baked into voiced conversations. There’s no colorblind settings to speak of. You are able to adjust various elements of mouse sensitivity, such as when cleaning windows. But besides that, there isn’t anything particularly accommodating.
Fully-voiced phone calls add to this as well. House Flipper 2 features some excellent voice acting which you’ll get to listen to on a handful of missions. You’re able to respond to the person on the phone, too, with a set of dialogue choices to help guide the conversation. These can be a little irksome, admittedly, as they’ll briefly take control away from your renovating. You can choose to skip the call entirely if you’d prefer to just get on with it, but that does mean losing some of the game’s charm.
Lastly, load times do tend to be on the longer side, especially noticeable when you’re loading into a larger house that features hundreds of individual objects. This isn’t a massive issue, as during play there isn’t a hint of stuttering or additional load times. But do expect to sometimes be waiting upwards of half a minute when loading into those bigger maps, even with the game stored on an SSD.
Thankfully, these minor shortcomings have done nothing to halt my enjoyment of House Flipper 2. The superbly satisfying process of renovating properties lends the game such a strong ‘one more house’ element that often had me playing for much longer than I’d intended. If you’ve enjoyed the first House Flipper, or indeed other job sims like Powerwash Simulator, then this sequel is an absolutely essential play.
Explore more excellent PC titles by browsing our guide to the very best Steam games, as well as the best free games that won’t cost you a penny for entry.
The Oppo Find X7 Pro is coming soon, if we go by the intensity of leaks and rumors lately. Now Ice Universe posted an interesting schematic on X, showing a dual periscope telephoto camera setup.
The schematic shows four cameras in total, two of which sporting periscope lenses. The long telephoto unit is said to have 50 MP resolution and offer 6x zoom using a Sony IMX 858 1/2.51" imager, while the 3x zoom camera uses a considerably bigger IMX 890 1/1.56" sensor.
If we can make an educated guess, the other two cameras will be more or less the same as on the Find X6 Pro - a 1-inch...
Platform reviewed: PC Release date: December 13, 2023
A new tactical first-person shooter (FPS) from Void Interactive, Ready or Not feels like a long overdue attempt at a serious spiritual successor to the 2005 classic SWAT 4. Following an armed police unit in the fictional Los Suenos Police Department, you’re thrust into the polished boots of a Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T) commander tasked with managing a team of officers both in and out of the field.
The detailed gunplay is superb from the get-go and the wide variety of options when you’re selecting or tweaking your squad’s gear opens the door to plenty of tactical possibilities. Throw in an intuitive control scheme that allows you to perform complex actions with ease, and you have a formula that's perfect for online co-op play.
The overall package is let down by the single-player Commander Mode, however, which replaces your team of up to three other human players with four wildly inconsistent AI. These computer-controlled squadmates are mostly adequate, but there are far too many situations in which they completely bug out - which leads to unfair deaths. The same is true of the enemies who range from completely oblivious to near-omniscient, landing impossible potshots through walls with surgical precision.
Plan and execute
(Image credit: Void Interactive)
There are 18 main stages to tackle, each selected from a map screen in the briefing room of the police station hub world. Containing a basic firing range, a small training facility, and equipment boxes to change out your current loadout, this is where you prepare for your next excursion.
These missions are mostly the kinds of situations that one would expect to encounter in a S.W.A.T simulator, with many like the hospital terrorist attack or nightclub shooting especially reminiscent of some of the maps found in SWAT 4. Unlike that earlier game, however, Ready or Not does not pull any punches when it comes to its depictions of violence. Gore is frequent and the blood-chilling realism of its overall visual direction leads to some genuinely disturbing encounters.
With that in mind, the decision to include a level based around a shooting at a college is a step too far. It is deeply uncomfortable to play through and, given the almost unbelievable frequency of gun violence in schools in the United States, feels massively insensitive.
That aside, playing with friends in co-op mode goes a long way to help alleviate some of the grim atmosphere, shifting the focus instead towards team coordination and tactics. It’s in this setting that Ready or Not is at its absolute best, challenging you all to work together to overcome increasingly dire odds.
Breach, breach, breach
(Image credit: Void Interactive)
Each locked door or open entryway presents a range of opportunities depending on your equipment, the current situation, and your preferred play style. Breaching shotguns, battering rams, and C4 charges all allow a well-coordinated squad to overwhelm their opponents with sheer power and noise. Using your lockpick in conjunction with a mirror gun (a telescopic camera that can sneakily poke under doors), on the other hand, helps you gain a foothold undetected.
No matter your approach, gunfights are almost inevitable and this is another area where Ready or Not excels. The arsenal of weapons on offer is highly detailed, with plenty of options from conventional police pistols, shotguns, and SMGs to heavier assault rifles. They handle impressively realistically, with punchy sound effects and impactful animations. A handful of mechanics more traditionally found in hardcore mil-sims, like aiming stances and checking ammo counts by unloading your weapon, are also present, but bound to such convenient inputs that they quickly become second nature.
Best bit
(Image credit: Void Interactive)
Successfully pulling off a meticulously coordinated maneuver with your friends just doesn't get old. The feeling of kicking down a door and carefully clearing a room with great efficiency is a reward in itself and provides a fantastic rush of excitement every time.
When you’re selecting your loadout, it is essential to carefully consider factors like fire rate, bullet penetration, and ammunition caliber before each mission lest you find yourself wholly outgunned or at risk of causing collateral damage. This encourages you to experiment with a wide range of options rather than just sticking to a few old favorites and the ability to add a handful of weapon attachments offers even greater depth.
There is also a solid selection of less lethal options like tasers or beanbag launchers which, thanks to strict rules of engagement that massively penalize you for unnecessary violence, can be a useful way to drive enemies to surrender. Your choice of armor is also hugely important, with increased protection offering the chance to withstand more hits at the expense of movement speed - a basic but effective risk vs reward mechanic.
Clean house
(Image credit: Void Interactive)
There’s a great rhythm to keeping watch for your teammates as you methodically clear room after room. The small element of procedural generation, which spawns enemies and objectives in different locations for every attempt, does a good job of keeping you on edge. Enemy behavior can be surprisingly complex too and it’s not uncommon to encounter foes hiding underneath beds or inside cupboards.
One stand-out mission takes place in a tiny fortified house littered with traps and inhabited by a terrifying ghillie-suited man who can sneak up on your team by crawling through the vents. Enemy fire is lethal, often putting you down in a matter of seconds, which adds tension for the most part but does make the odd moment where systems go wrong incredibly apparent. In a game that demands the fastest reflexes and the most considered strategy, instantly dying to an enemy shooting right through walls due to no fault of your own is incredibly frustrating.
Accessibility
(Image credit: Void Interactive)
There are a few accessibility options in Ready or Not, including colorblind filters and the ability to highlight dropped enemy weapons in the environment. Although there is no controller support, you can also customize the keyboard control scheme to suit your individual requirements.
These frustrations are doubly apparent in the single player Commander Mode, where your squad of AI teammates is liable to similar issues. There were far too many occasions when my squad would completely freeze up, unable to respond to commands and stood blocking my way. Some of the maps are absolutely massive and, without friends to chat to, trudging around them alone can quickly become a huge drag.
It also becomes a lot easier to notice many of the crude jokes hidden throughout the levels, with gags that feel massively out of place and seem to represent a startling immaturity on the part of the developers. Bursting into the shady den of a dubious video game streamer, it was also hugely disappointing to notice what appeared to be AI generated visual assets plastering the walls. Posters of wonky-looking anime figures are abundant and there are similar assets to be found across other levels, which often undermines the otherwise impressively high-budget look of the game.
(Image credit: Void Interactive)
To top it all off, the handful of new mechanics introduced in this mode are clearly underbaked. Each officer has a trait that manifests itself after a handful of successful missions, but buffs like marginally improved armor really don’t make a tangible difference. You are also tasked with keeping the mental health of your officers in check by scheduling visits to a therapist at the station in order to avoid them quitting the force. This sounds like an intriguing mechanic, but there is little reason to ever engage with it and retain squadmates when a literally endless supply of new officers can be instantly recruited at no cost with just the click of a button.
The sloppiness here sits in stark contrast to the strength of the co-op mode and means that Ready or Not is incredibly hard to recommend to those who don’t have a dedicated team of friends to play with. If you do and are all comfortable with the gruesome subject matter, then this is a decent tactical experience that should scratch that SWAT 4 itch.
The iQOO 12 is now official in India serving as the first phone to launch with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip in the country. The device will be available in Alpha Black and Legend White colors with the latter sporting the BMW Motorsport branding.
iQOO 12 key specs and pricing in India
Open sales start on December 14 at 12 noon from Amazon India but iQOO Priority Pass users INR 999 (refundable) can snag the phone a day earlier on December 12. The 12/256GB trim is priced at INR 52,999 ($635) while the 16/512GB trim is INR 57,999 ($695). HDFC and ICICI bank cards can avail INR...
The Proscenic Floobot X1 robot vacuum combines a stylish design with plenty of useful features, such as the ability to detect whether it’s on carpet or hard flooring and apply its cleaning tools accordingly, automatic room mapping, consistent mopping action and a self-emptying dustbox.
The latter’s UV light helps eradicate germs, as well as allowing the user to avoid getting their hands dirty. There are solid scheduling options, app-based tools for marking off areas to avoid, and a LiDAR camera and sensors that assist with object avoidance.
The 15cm-tall puck design is modest enough for the Proscenic Floobot X1 to slip under furniture to access and clean awkward spaces, but the rotating brush that flicks dust to dislodge it along the edges of a room doesn’t always result in the debris then being vacuumed up.
The best aspects are the remote control, and the smooth furrows the Floobot X1 ploughs when cleaning fairly large rooms, but some of the extras, such as the app scheduling and supposedly smart room coverage, are less convincing.
Object avoidance is generally good, with no issues encountered near stairs, but low-lying items such as stray laces and a tray containing pet food were not detected at all. The consumables cost for replacement dustbags is pricey, and the app had some setup gotchas.
However, we were generally impressed with the features for the money and would be happy to marshall this robot vacuum around an open-plan home, though we would not consider it among the best vacuums around.
Proscenic Floobot X1: Price and availability
List price: $499 / £399
When is it available: Available now
Where is it available: Available in the US and the UK
It’s definitely worth shopping around to get the best deal on a Proscenic Floobot X1. While the UK Proscenic website lists the Floobot X1 at £499, matching the $499 asking price on the US Proscenic website, you can save a lot by buying through Amazon. Here, the RRP is shown as £349 but Amazon UK will sell you the X1 for a great value £299 and Amazon US asks $399.
Value score: 4 / 5
Proscenic Floobot X1: Specifications
(Image credit: Future)
Proscenic Floobot X1: Design
Smart charging station that supports self-emptying function
Straightforward remote control, on device on/off button and Proscenic app
Detailed scheduling and power options for mopping and cleaning
The Proscenic Floobot X1 arrives in a compact box that promises ‘smarter mapping, simpler mopping’. The bundled remote control delivers on this, with dedicated buttons for auto cleaning and mopping. You can operate the Floobot X1 in several ways: via the Proscenic app over Wi-Fi, via Bluetooth, using the remote control, or directly using the power buttons on the robovac itself.
Note that there are three Proscenic apps – you want the one that’s simply called ‘Proscenic’ which lists Floobot X1 in its device list. The app connects the Floobot X1 to your home Wi-Fi network as long as you have a 2.4GHz network, and then to your smartphone via Bluetooth.
The package includes a charging station-cum-dustbin with a straightforward clip-together base plus spare consumables and brushes. Setup is via the app, which also has a link to a visual ‘quick start guide’ though the branding here on and the Proscenic website designates the X1 as a Floobot.
(Image credit: Future)
Once you’ve clicked the two pieces of the charging dock base together and placed the charging dock on top you’re ready to plug in, and line up the Floobot X1 robot vacuum for its first charge. A quick glance at the schematic in the comprehensive User’s Manual reveals that the charging contacts are on either side of the dust box, and that the Floobot X1 should therefore be placed on the charging mat with the Proscenic branding facing the docking station. The correct positioning is confirmed when the vacuum’s indicator lights turn blue, which is followed by a brief musical and spoken greeting. The Floobot X1’s lights then turn green and flash to show that it’s charging. Once charged, the light turns a solid green.
Suction-wise, there are four settings which can be instantly adjusted via the detailed Proscenic app: the maximum vacuuming power is 3000pa. A Pascal rating of 2,500 to 3000 is fairly standard for vacuum cleaner suction. while the sonic mop has three soak settings and can scrub up to 3000 times a minute. A single LiDAR camera governs the X1’s journey across your floors and helps it avoid unexpected items in its path. The lack of top-mounted cameras facilitates a low-profile design, but more cameras would surely have led to a more efficient route-map.
The Floobot X1 comes with a dust bag already installed inside the charging station, with a second included in the box. When full, the Robot Vacuum will automatically wend its way to the docking station and position itself ready to empty the content of its dust box into the station’s 2.5-litre dustbin. Proscenic touts the usefulness of the self-emptying Floobot X1, which should be able to vacuum or mop up a month’s worth of dust and debris before the dustbag needs to be replaced. As well as minimising the amount of dust you need to deal with while engaged in the often unedifying process of emptying the dust bag into a larger dustbin, a UV light on the charging station deftly disinfects, neutralising pathogens and bacteria. These consumables cost just under £15 for six from Amazon or direct from Proscenic but can also be bought singly or in packs of three.
Another consumable cost is the mopping pads, two of which are provided in the box. You need to rinse and dry these pads between mopping sessions or when they become noticeably grubby, and once they’re worn out new ones cost £12 for four or £21 for a new consumables kit including a HEPA filter and new brushes. Proscenic also recommends that you tape off sharp edges that could damage the Floobot X1 – our stone hearth, for example – so factor in some preparation time for this, or price in some child-friendly plastic bumpers. You’ll also need to move anything that the X1 is likely to attempt to steer under, such as low-legged armchairs that don’t provide enough clearance for the Floobot X1 robo-puck.
Design score: 4.5 / 5
(Image credit: Future)
Proscenic Floobot X1: Performance
Automatic carpet/hard floor detection
Average 45-minute runtime
Not very smart at navigation
In auto mode the Proscenic Floobot X1 trundles up and down in rows, eventually creating a map of where it’s been and any partial roomscapes its single LiDAR camera spies along the way [it spotted the beginning of our lean-to conservatory, for example, although the hard stop of the metal threshold prevented it from investigating further.
Having first vacuumed the area we wanted cleaning, I put the Floobot X1 into mopping mode. This involved attaching its Velcro mopping pad and filling its water tank. Mopping was efficient and gave the floor a noticeable sheen. Slick stripes showed which bits had been mopped without being wet enough to slip up on.
Charging takes several hours, with the progress indicated by two flashing green icons on the top of the Floobot X1; the white Wi-Fi indicator icon nestles between these. To connect your robovac to the home Wi-Fi network you need to open the Proscenic app (iOS or Android), select your model from the prefilled options, then press and hold the two green icons on the vacuum for several seconds. The Wi-Fi icon should light up and the voice assistant announce that the Wi-Fi connection has been reset. At this point you need to select the correct network from those that appear in the app and enter your Wi-Fi password.
Once the vac is charged, you press the left button underneath the rocker pad on the remote control to initiate smart cleaning. With no indication of how much charge the Floobot X1 had before it claimed to be ready for use, it was hard to judge whether it was close to a full battery. In any case, we were surprised to find it managed only a five-minute burst of activity on our short-pile carpet before needing to orientate itself and head back to the charging pod. The charging dock dustbin has a generous 2.5l capacity, into which the Floobot X1 can discharge its collected contents for as much as a month before it needs to be emptied. Subsequent assays lasted up to 50 minutes after just 30 minutes to recharge, so we put that brief initial run down to a glitch.
(Image credit: Future)
Having not previously provided any details of the room shape or obstacles, on resuming cleaning duties we noted that the Floobot X1 began vacuuming sections of carpet it hadn’t previously tackled, living up to its ‘smart’ label. The LiDAR function thus plays its part in ensuring the room is covered in a methodical fashion, without too much overlap or gaps in coverage.
The first few times we tried the Proscenic Floobot X1 it seemed to go over the same couple of metres of carpet in a fairly erratic manner (our bumpy, ill-fitting carpet can’t have helped its navigation), abruptly changing direction 10cm or more from the edges. Subsequent forays were more successful, with the robovac deftly navigating along the skirting boards and around radiator pipes, chair legs and so on. We expected the metal door threshold to fox it, but it cleaned along its length and jauntily set off to the next room with challenges such as the stair edge to avoid tipping over. The long length of the open-plan landing suited the X1 better, efficiently vacuuming adjacent strips of carpet. I also noted that it began to consistently sweep along the carpet edges. Presumably having gained confidence about the room dimensions from its LiDAR camera it then judged it safer to nudge closer to its boundaries.
During this session the Proscenic Floobot X1 began to judder and shake, and I assumed it was getting full. A few minutes later, however, a compact fur ball of hair and grot was emitted from the underside of the robovac, after which it resumed its smooth traverse of our obviously filthy carpets. This sensible approach to expelling chunks of detritus then leaves more space for smaller debris.
Challenged with a carpet laden with crumbs, oats and sundry grot, the Floobot X1 performed well, first brushing aside many of these larger items before flicking them into its dust chamber. The four-way control pad on the handheld controller can be used to pause and turn the X1 on the spot. I found this handy when I wanted to get it to brush the edges of a kitchen cabinet where a strip of dirt had accrued. It’s also a good alternative to the spot-cleaning function, which successfully and efficiently brushed aside peanuts, biscuit crumbs and oats before sweeping them into its internal dustbin, but also distributed some of them over a broad area. In total, the Proscenic Floobot X1 dispensed with 87% of the oat mix we challenged it to vacuum up, but left to run on auto came back later and collected all but 3% of the remainder as it worked successive furrows across the room.
Progress around a narrower, more cluttered room was a little erratic, but the floor ended up much cleaner, and the Floobot X1 dealt with every obstacle, from trailing cables to rogue slippers and tricky desk undersides.
Having left the Floobot X1 to charge overnight, vacuuming time was approximately 45 minutes, with three minutes of residual power used to seek out and return to the docking station. In this instance the robovac had traversed from its original location out onto the landing and ended up vacuuming half of the neighbouring bedroom, which meant that it ran out of power before locating the charging station. A point to note is that when it comes time for the Floobot X1 to return to base to recharge or empty its internal bin, it will get hopelessly lost if you’ve switched off the charging dock at the wall for any reason – it needs this beacon to find its way back.
The Proscenic Floobot X1 will undoubtedly leave your home cleaner, neatly mopped and scrubbed. It operates reasonably quietly with an average decibel rating of 54dB (46dB in mopping mode) except when rumbling and shaking before expelling a pellet of debris, or for the few seconds when it returns to base and very loudly dumps performs its self-emptying routine. A brief 86dB interruption more than compensates for trudging round your house vacuuming by hand, of course.
This robot vacuum seemingly works better in more open-plan spaces where it can execute neat rows of cleaning and exhibits less blind man’s buff behaviour while navigating awkward corners. There is little time advantage to the promised smart functions once the Floobot X1 has mapped out your rooms but the option section off or prioritise rooms is useful. Edges are generally tackled fairly well, but we recommend using the remote control to get up close to areas that need a dedicated scrub. This wouldn’t be our first choice of robot vacuum for mopping remotely but it works well for scheduled vacuuming if you’ve first decluttered (and remembered to move the tray containing the cat’s food and bowls – yes, you can imagine what happened there!).
Performance score: 3.5 / 5
(Image credit: Future)
Proscenic Floobot X1: App
Needs dual-band or 2.4GHz router
Cannot initiate mopping remotely if Floobot X1 is docked
Strong scheduling, partitioning and power setting options
We had a few issues getting the Floobot X1 to maintain a Wi-Fi connection. When trying this in the older of the two houses in which we tested the vacuum we assumed it may have been down to an older Wi-Fi router, but at home we have a four-month-old Community Fibre gigabit broadband router and needed a few attempts to set it up, and after a few days between vacuuming bouts we also needed to reconnect to the home network.
Arguably, if you’re at home anyway and have already let the Floobot X1 go through the process of mapping out the rooms on that floor you could just as well use the remote control to start it.
The app can be used to schedule particular days, times and rooms once you’ve partitioned off areas. Mopping as well as vacuuming can be scheduled, but it’s worth noting that the Floobot X1 sees the landing pad it sits on while docked as a carpet, and will not commence mopping from there. Instead, you get an in-app message stating that it needs to be moved off the carpet in order to mop. You therefore need to charge it ahead of time, then fit the mopping pad and place the vacuum on the bare floor if you want to schedule a mopping session while you’re out.
Using the app you can define rooms and areas to be cleaned or avoided, partition areas, and set the power level, or the amount of water the mop should use. The app will also show up errors such as the Floobot X1 being offline, or detecting a carpet when the mop mode has been selected. There’s a handy ‘find’ option too, should your robot vacuum have got lost or stuck under the couch. It’s also helpful that the app shows the charging status, but we were less impressed at having to manually reconnect to the network a day after last using the Floobot X1, leading us to revert to the remote control for most uses.
App score: 3.5 / 5
Should I buy the Proscenic Floobot X1?
(Image credit: Future)
Buy it if...
Don't buy if...
Proscenic Floobot X1: Also consider
If a robot vacuum isn't for you, why not consider these other vacuum options?
After a successful launch in China last month, the iQOO 12 is finally ready for its international debut. iQOO India is broadcasting the launch which starts at 5PM local time (11:30 UTC) and you can tune in via the embedded livestream below.
iQOO 12 is one of the first phones to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. It also features an excellent LTPO AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. The phone also boasts a riple rear camera system with a 50 MP main, a 64 MP periscope telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and a 50 MP ultrawide module. It also supports 120W wired charging...
After a successful launch in China last month, the iQOO 12 is finally ready for its international debut. iQOO India is broadcasting the launch which starts at 5PM local time (11:30 UTC) and you can tune in via the embedded livestream below.
iQOO 12 is one of the first phones to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. It also features an excellent LTPO AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. The phone also boasts a riple rear camera system with a 50 MP main, a 64 MP periscope telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and a 50 MP ultrawide module. It also supports 120W wired charging...
Samsung decided not to wait until 2024 to announce its latest crop of Galaxy A-devices with the new Galaxy A15 duo and Galaxy A25 5G. Galaxy A15 is available in 4G and 5G trims with both phones sharing the same core specs apart from the chipsets. Galaxy A25 features more capable cameras and Samsung’s in-house Exynos 1280 chipset.
All three new phones share 6.5-inch Super AMOLED displays with FHD+ resolution and Infinity-U notch cutouts. The A15 models get a 90Hz refresh rate while the A25 features a 120Hz panel which also peaks at 1,000 nits of brightness compared to 800 nits on the...
Apple is now rolling out iOS 17.2 and it brings several noteworthy updates including the new Journal app, support for Qi2 charge, Spatial recording on iPhone 15 Pro series and updates to the Camera, Action Button and Weather app. The new update comes in at 1.49GB and is available on the iPhone Xs or newer devices. Apple is following a staged release so some users may need to wait a little longer before the update is available on their device.
The Journal app is Apple’s latest health and wellbeing app that allows users to reflect on their day and practice gratitude. The app can use data on...
