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Photograph: Molly Higgins

Riccar Gem Handheld Vacuum With Tools for $70: This model is very similar to the Simplicity corded model above, and although it’s portable and handheld, this big boy needs to be plugged in for power. I like how basic it is: It just has a top switch for on/off, and a button on top to release the dust canister, which is at the front of this model rather than behind. Once disengaged, you just need to pull up the semi-spherical fabric mesh filter and dump out debris. Unfortunately, lots of fur and dust get stuck to the filter, so you’ll need to make sure you wipe it with a semi-damp cloth to clean. It comes with several attachments, including a bendy hose, long crevice nozzle with detachable brush, upholstery brush, and dusting brush. Instead of twisting or snapping, each attachment fits snugly into the opening, making it easier for those with fine-motor issues. I liked that the long, flexible hose reached easily into tight spaces like between my counter and fridge and behind my automatic litter box. The corded machine is loud and gets hot quickly due to its sheer power. While I don’t think this is the best handheld vac for everyone, it’s a solid option with lots of power.

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Tineco Go Mini Cordless Hand Vacuum for $200: A lightweight vacuum that’s fairly straightforward and charges through the end of the handle, the Tineco Go must charge for five to six hours before use, which gets you 10 to 20 minutes of use time. The main things I wanted to focus on cleaning in my everyday life were cat litter and pet hair. This vacuum spit out roughly 80 percent of the litter I tried sucking up, and the pet hair just sort of rolled around on the carpet rather than being sucked back into the vac. (I’m not sure if it was the angle or shape of the mouth that aided in both of those problems.) The suction wasn’t as powerful as others tested, and it tended to work best on hard surfaces. This vac wasn’t bad, per se, but others on this list at similar price points worked a lot more effectively on a lot more various surfaces (with multiple head attachments) than this was seemingly capable of.

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Bissell AeroSlim Handheld Vacuum for $45: Not the most powerful I’ve tested, but it’s lightweight and super easy to maneuver. It comes with a multi-accessory tool that combines a long, slim crevice tool with a moveable brush (the brush moves up and down on the tool depending on need), but you can also just use the vac without the slim attachment for more general surface cleaning. The tiny 0.1-liter front of the vac twists off to empty, and a small dual filter can also be removed for cleaning/replacement. When testing, I wasn’t able to successfully pick up bigger items like wood shards or litter, and only picked up a fraction of pet hair as some of the more powerful models with a roll brush, but I wasn’t expecting it to—that’s not this cutie’s job. It’s light, simple, and easy to use—making it a great lightweight portable option (just don’t expect it to handle bigger messes).

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Hoto AutoCare Air Duster & Vacuum for $60: Looking for a lightweight (0.78 pounds) vacuum that can also blow debris/dust, inflate and deflate, and vacuum-seal? The Hoto may be a fit. It has tons of attachments: a pointed crevice nozzle, dust brush, dust cup nozzle, air nozzle, and swim ring nozzle. It can hold a little over 3 ounces, has 20,000 Pa suction, and each attachment easily twists off and on. I found that the grooming brush head tended to push around fur/hair rather than sucking it up. Like many gadgets we test here at WIRED, this one fell into the pitfall of trying to do a lot of things, rather than doing any one thing really well. This is a great deal for a device with so many capabilities (if that’s what you need), but if you’re just looking for a really great handheld vacuum, there are others that are more effective.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

Black and Decker Dustbuster Flex for $74: WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell thought this cordless handheld vacuum was great for cars and hard-to-reach spots because of its 4-foot hose. It has a crevice tool and pet hair brush attachments for a variety of messes, and runs on a 20-volt lithium-ion battery that delivers high suction power. Plus, it has a handy charging mount that the accessories clip into. However, we aren’t fans of the short 15-minute battery life.

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Q&M Dental Group is eyeing 300 clinics with a S$146M expansion plan

If you’ve walked around Singapore long enough, you’ve probably seen one: a neighbourhood dental clinic with bright green lettering and a giant tooth logo.

Chances are, you never thought much about it. But behind those familiar storefronts sits a SGX-listed company worth over S$500 million, operating 110 clinics across Singapore and now pursuing acquisitions in Australia, Thailand, China, and even of another local rival.

That company is Q&M Dental Group—and after nearly three decades of quietly dominating Singapore’s heartlands, it’s now betting big on becoming a regional dental giant.

Built for the heartlands

Q&M was established at Bukit Batok in Nov 1996 by Dr Ng Chin Siau, an NUS dental surgery graduate who had worked as a Dental Officer with the Ministry of Health before joining a private clinic at Bukit Batok—and eventually buying it over after selling his three-room Clementi flat for S$180,000. 

From the outset, Dr Ng had little interest in building a premium dental brand. Instead, he focused on something far more scalable: providing affordable dental care to everyday Singaporeans.

That philosophy was even reflected in the company’s original Chinese name, “全民” (Quan Min), meaning “for all the people.”

Demand grew quickly and outpaced what one dentist could handle.

By 1998, fellow dentist Dr Ng Jet Wei had joined the practice. A year later, together with Dr Chong Kai Guan, the trio had opened another four clinics. By 2000, Q&M was already operating 10 clinics with 20 dentists.

Rather than chasing prime shopping malls or affluent districts, Q&M planted its clinics where Singaporeans actually lived—in HDB estates, neighbourhood centres, and suburban malls.

The strategy was simple: keep prices accessible, expand steadily, and acquire smaller dental practices whose dentists and patient bases came as part of the deal.

Along the way, Q&M also built supporting businesses, including its own dental laboratory to produce crowns, bridges, and dentures in-house, giving it greater control over costs and operations.

By the time the company listed on the SGX Mainboard in 2009, it already had a proven expansion playbook. The IPO simply gave it the capital to execute it at a much larger scale.

Building the Q&M empire

In the years that followed the IPO, Q&M expanded aggressively through acquisitions, and revenue climbed from roughly S$60 million to S$155 million by 2016. 

By then, its outlet count had grown to 76 clinics across Asia—a number that would nearly double over the following decade.

This brought Q&M Dental Group’s market capitalisation to S$557.6 million that year.

Q&M’s growth has not been limited to opening more outlets. Alongside the clinic network, the group has built a set of adjacent capabilities that reinforce the core business.

In 2019, it launched the Q&M College of Dentistry at City Square Mall—Singapore’s first private postgraduate diploma programme in clinical dentistry, designed to train general dentists with an expanded range of advanced skills. The college earned a full four-year EduTrust certification from Feb 2026, allowing it to enrol international students. 

This is a crucial move with Singapore’s dentist supply constraint. Singapore’s only domestic dental school graduates around 50 to 60 dentists per year, and foreign-trained dentists must pass a rigorous licensing exam before practising. Any competitor trying to build a rival chain faces the same thin talent pool. 

Q&M’s training college gives it a head start in sourcing and retaining the practitioners it needs to keep opening clinics, a structural advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate.

When COVID-19 hit, Q&M pivoted part of its operations, acquiring Acumen Diagnostics to distribute test kits and run laboratory PCR testing in 2021—a business that briefly became a significant revenue contributor before demand evaporated as the pandemic receded.

As pandemic revenues evaporated, results retreated sharply in 2022 and 2023. But the core dental business proved its resilience: core healthcare EBITDA held steady at around S$37 to S$40 million throughout, even as the group-level numbers were distorted. By FY2025, the group had returned to profit, recording a16% growth.

In 2023, it opened a Free Dental Clinic at Chai Chee Road, offering essential dental treatment at no cost to underprivileged patients. While charitable in nature, the initiative also reinforces Q&M’s standing in the communities where its business is most deeply rooted.

More recently, Q&M has turned its attention to technology.

In 2024, the group invested in EM2AI, a dental technology firm developing AI-powered diagnostic and treatment-planning tools, including a cloud-based practice management system called EM2Clinic.

The tools are designed to reduce the administrative burden on dentists and standardise clinical workflows, which is useful as Q&M grows toward a network where consistency across hundreds of clinics matters more than before.

Why scale matters

With 110 clinics, Q&M operates roughly 8% of Singapore’s nearly 1,300 licensed dental clinics. According to the company, it also serves around one-third of all patients who visit private dental groups.

That scale creates advantages that go beyond simply having more outlets.

As Singapore’s largest private dental chain, Q&M has greater bargaining power with landlords and suppliers, while its size also allows it to spread fixed costs across a much larger network.

Government healthcare policies could further strengthen that position.

The enhanced Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) subsidies introduced in Oct 2025 expanded coverage for restorative dental procedures and extended eligibility to 1.7 million cardholders. As the country’s largest CHAS-accredited private dental chain, Q&M stands to benefit more than smaller competitors. Analysts estimated the changes lifted the group’s revenue by around 3% in the second half of FY2025.

More support is also on the way. From mid-2026, seniors will be able to use up to S$400 a year from Flexi-MediSave for dental treatment at CHAS clinics. The policy aligns neatly with Singapore’s ageing population, with one in four residents expected to be aged 65 or older by 2030. As dental needs typically increase with age—and many seniors live in the heartland estates where Q&M has built its network—the demographic trend could provide another long-term tailwind for the group.

Meanwhile, Q&M continues to consolidate its position. In Mar, the group announced plans to fully acquire an unnamed Singapore dental chain, backed by a profit guarantee of up to S$34 million over five years. The deal would further strengthen its presence in its home market even as it looks overseas for growth.

Now betting big on the region

For most of its history, Q&M’s overseas ambitions effectively stopped at the Causeway.

Over the years, the group steadily expanded its presence in Malaysia, where it now operates 38 dental clinics alongside a dental supplies and equipment distribution business. Beyond that, however, its growth remained largely concentrated in Singapore.

That is now changing.

In recent months, Q&M has unveiled plans to enter three markets almost simultaneously, marking the group’s most ambitious expansion programme to date

The biggest move is Australia. In Jul 2026, Q&M signed binding agreements to acquire Experteeth Group for A$119.64 million (S$107.83 million). The deal would add 40 clinics and around 120 dentists across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory, making it Q&M’s largest acquisition ever and its first entry into a market outside Asia.

In Thailand, it signed a deal to acquire a group of 30-plus clinics focused on cosmetic and aesthetic dentistry, a sector closely tied to the country’s medical tourism industry. 

In total, the acquisitions in both countries will amount to a combined US$113.2 million (S$146.26 million) investment to build a pan-Asian dental company. 

China forms the third pillar of Q&M’s expansion strategy. The group also owns Chinese dental operator Aoxin Q&M, which it has now fully consolidated as a subsidiary. It plans to use the business as a platform to acquire dental chains in southern China, expanding beyond Aoxin’s traditional base in the country’s northeast.

If all three acquisitions close, Q&M’s footprint could grow from over 160 dental outlets today to more than 300 within two years.

Not every growth initiative, however, has gone according to plan.

In Apr 2025, the group also proposed a secondary listing on Bursa Malaysia, which would have given Malaysian investors direct access to the stock and strengthened Q&M’s capital markets presence in its second-largest operating market. The plan was later shelved, with the company citing prevailing market conditions.

What could go wrong?

Three concurrent acquisitions in markets Q&M has limited or no experience operating in are an ambitious programme for a management team whose track record has been built almost entirely in Singapore and Malaysia. 

China is the cautionary tale here. Q&M first entered China back in 2013, and later spun that business off as a separately listed company, Aoxin Q&M, in 2017. Aoxin broke even for its first couple of years, then racked up losses for several years running—around RMB142 million (S$27.09 million) in total losses from 2020 to 2024—as it battled COVID-19 shutdowns and China’s strict lockdown policies.

It only turned a profit again in 2025, roughly six years after the losses began.

Now Q&M has folded Aoxin fully into its own accounts, and in doing so has added S$77.0 million of goodwill to its balance sheet—essentially the premium it’s paying on the bet that these businesses will earn enough in future to justify the price.

If they don’t, that goodwill may eventually need to be written down, hitting profits the same way it did for Aoxin’s own past investments. Australia and Thailand are brand-new markets for Q&M with no comparable track record to lean on, so if that expansion underperforms, the money put into it may not pay off.

Dental practices are also relationship-driven businesses, where patients follow their dentist, not the brand. When a chain acquires a clinic, the real asset is the practitioners inside it. 

If key dentists leave post-acquisition and take their patient books with them, the acquired revenue can evaporate quickly. 

Q&M has tried to address this through 15-year service agreements and long lock-up equity arrangements with acquired dentists, but such structures have never been tested at the scale Q&M is now attempting across four markets simultaneously.

Then there is the Johor-Singapore dynamic complicating profits further. The Rapid Transit System Link scheduled to open in Dec 2026, will cut the Woodlands North to Bukit Chagar crossing to around five minutes—at a fare of roughly S$5 to S$7.

Singaporeans already save 50 to 65% on identical dental procedures by crossing the Causeway, with more than 100,000 estimated to make the trip annually. A single dental implant costs S$4,500 to S$6,500 in Singapore versus S$1,200 to S$2,000 in Johor Bahru. 

When the RTS removes the main friction, being the border queue, from that equation, the maths for price-sensitive patients shifts meaningfully. 

Q&M’s 38 Malaysian clinics, including in Johor, might mean some of that outflow stays within the group. But how much of Q&M’s dental revenue holds up once the crossing becomes as easy as taking the MRT is a question nobody can fully answer yet.

From a single clinic in Bukit Batok to a listed group eyeing four countries simultaneously, Q&M’s story is, in many ways, a study in patience. Three decades of unglamorous, heartland dentistry have built toward a moment where the company is finally ready to bet big on becoming Singapore’s dominant private dental chain in the region. Whether the bet pays off will be the next chapter.

• Learn more about Q&M Dental Group here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: ⁠The price of going regional: Raffles Medical’s S$600M bet is still struggling to pay off

Featured Image Credit: National University of Singapore, Velocity @ Novena Square

Chrome‘s Reading Mode just got a new button tucked inside its settings menu. Google is quietly testing a translate option for the feature on Chrome Canary, the browser’s experimental testing channel where new ideas show up long before they’re ready for everyday use.

What does this new translate button actually do?

The option was first spotted by @Leopeva64, who shared a video demo on X highlighting the new button tucked inside Reading Mode’s dropdown menu. It exists alongside the controls for theme, font, images, and links, though it doesn’t actually do anything yet. Once this feature is live, clicking it would translate whatever page or PDF you’re reading into your preferred language, without leaving Reading Mode.

The Bavarian space-tech is reportedly aiming to raise at least $300m.

As Europe ramps up efforts to compete with US heavyweights in the space sector, Germany’s The Exploration Company (TEC) is reportedly eyeing a major raise that could value the start-up at more than $2bn.

Founded in 2021 by Hélène Huby and a team of aerospace veterans, TEC is building a full-stack space transportation system.

Nyx, the company’s reusable space capsule designed to dock with any space station is expected to go on its first flight demonstration in 2028. The company is also developing a high-thrust staged combustion rocket engine called Storm.

TEC’s website states that it aims to address the “exclusive[ity]” of space travel by building space vehicles “for humanity”. It is the first European company to have signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA.

The company operates out of Germany, France, Luxembourg, Spain and Italy, with offices in the US and the United Arab Emirates.

According to the Financial Times, the Bavarian space-tech is aiming to pool at least $300m, with the EQT-managed $5bn Scaleup Europe Fund in talks to make one of its first investments in the company.

The fund aims to close the persistent late-stage financing gap that has long pushed European scale-ups to raise capital elsewhere and, in many cases, to relocate abroad altogether. Scaleup Europe Fund is also reportedly expected to back the Paris-based Mistral AI in an upcoming round.

EQT Ventures has backed TEC since 2023. Other investors, including Bayern Kapital, Promus Ventures, Partech, Vsquared Ventures, Cherry and Red River West also back the company.

TEC did not disclose its valuation following a 2024 raise of $160m. Earlier this month, the company opened a new lab near the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston to conduct further testing on a full-scale mock-up of a Nyx crew capsule.

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A Cincinnati man says that if the fall detection feature of Apple Watch hadn’t called 911, he would have died from undiagnosed blood clotting.

Back in 2023, it was the Apple Watch heart rate monitor that saved a Cincinnati woman’s life by alerting her to a dangerous condition. Now the device’s fall detection has done the same for Mohammad Islam in the city, according to local station WKRC.

Islam was at home and taking out the trash when he said he turned around and “just collapsed.”

“I don’t know how long I was there,” he continued. “Suddenly my eyes opened up and I was on the ground and sweating like crazy.”

“I tried to get up, but couldn’t. There was a chair so I held it…,” he said. “Then I heard the sirens coming.”

Emergency medics took him to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center where he has been diagnosed with blood clots in his lungs. The cause has not yet been identified, but he has been sent home with medication.

The Apple Watch he wore was given to him by his daughters, and even before the incident, they reportedly pressed him about wearing it. “[Also they] gave a gift to their mother… an Apple Watch,” said Islam, “and every day they call me, they say ‘Are you wearing your Apple Watch?’”

“They’re overjoyed that their gift saved me,” he said.

Islam had not intentionally turned on the fall detection feature, but he is aged over 55, so it was enabled automatically. He says that he was aware of it because of getting occasional false alarms, but he did not know the extent of what the feature can do.

“Because when I work in the yard or something and I bang my hand, it says, ‘Hey, did you fall down? Should we call SOS or something?’” he said. “So, it was in the back of my mind, but I did not know that it was going to call 911.”

Apple Watch keeps saving lives

Apple and just about every smartwatch maker is currently being sued over fall detection and an allegation that it infringes on patents owned by UnaliWear. But in the meantime, it has directly saved countless lives since its introduction with the Apple Watch Series 4 back in 2018.

Fall Detection settings on Apple Watch.

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At times, that detection has been when the wearer has been involved in a car crash and the Apple Watch messaged the driver’s family. It’s helped injured mountaineers, too.

Then across its multiple health features, the Apple Watch has also alerted many users to conditions that, if not immediately life-threatening, were extremely series. It was AppleInsider managing editor Mike Wuerthele’s Apple Watch that warned him about a potential atrial fibrillation after his daughter’s passing.

It’s events like these that Tim Cook has said he is most proud of from his time as CEO.

“I remember getting the very first Apple Watch note from a user who told me that the watch saved their life,” he said in April 2026. “Now, of course, I get these on a daily basis, but that first one hit me particularly hard. It caused me to just stop in my steps.

The Clop ransomware gang (also tracked as Cl0p) is targeting Internet-exposed PTC Windchill and FlexPLM instances in a new data theft extortion campaign.

Clop has reportedly been exploiting a critical improper input validation vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-12569, which allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable Windchill and FlexPLM instances.

As cybersecurity company ReliaQuest reported on Thursday, Clop operators have been deploying JSP webshells that allow them to exfiltrate sensitive data from targeted companies’ compromised PLM platforms.

“ReliaQuest has observed threat actors actively exploiting CVE-2026-12569, a critical unsafe deserialization vulnerability (CVSS 9.3) affecting PTC Windchill and FlexPLM. Exploitation enables unauthenticated remote code execution and JSP web shell deployment for remote command execution and sensitive product data exfiltration,” the company said.

“The actor behind these attacks remains unconfirmed. however, the observed tradecraft shares characteristics with previous Cl0p campaigns targeting enterprise applications and high-value data repositories.”

Clop’s Windchill and FlexPLM attacks were also confirmed yesterday by the Ransomware Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (Ransom-ISAC), a non-profit organization dedicated to the tracking and defense against ransomware threats.

Ransom-ISAC’s Brandon Parsons from Ascent Solutions told BleepingComputer that Clop is using what appear to be previously compromised email accounts to send extortion messages to multiple employees of targeted organizations.

“The extortion emails appear to originate from randomly compromised accounts, are sent to hundreds of users within an impacted organization and include Cl0p’s latest contact information,” Parsons said. “This extortion approach is consistent with what we observed with the Oracle EBS campaign last year, except for the use of new email addresses.”

As BleepingComputer has learned, it is a common tactic for this cybercrime group to change email addresses before launching a new extortion campaign.

Flagged as actively exploited in attacks

PTC began releasing security patches for the CVE-2026-12569 flaw on June 17 and, while it didn’t confirm in-the-wild exploitation, it released remediation guidance in a private advisory and urged customers to review their environments for indicators of compromise (IOCs).

After PTC warned customers of “heightened threat activity” on June 26, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and ordered U.S. federal agencies to secure their PTC Windchill and FlexPLM instances within three days.

According to German news outlet Heise, CVE-2026-12569 also prompted emergency action from German authorities, with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) emailing and calling PTC customers in the middle of the night and warning them to patch their systems as quickly as possible.

German authorities reacted with the same urgency in March after reports that a similar critical Windchill and FlexPLM flaw (CVE-2026-4681) may be exploited or was likely to be exploited soon.

On Thursday, ReliaQuest advised PTC customers to patch Windchill and FlexPLM systems and place them behind VPNs or trusted access gateways if possible. Additionally, if they suspect compromise, they should isolate the affected servers, collect forensic artifacts, and rotate any exposed credentials before restoring service.

A PTC spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier this week.

PTC Windchill and PTC FlexPLM are enterprise software platforms in a category known as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and used to track, design, and manage products from original idea to final manufacturing.

The two PLM systems are widely popular among engineering, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain teams across high-profile companies in the aerospace, defense, automotive, heavy machinery, retail, and medtech sectors. PTC says that its products are used by more than 30,000 customers globally, including over 1,500 brand and retail customers using FlexPLM.

Clop’s data theft campaigns

The Clop extortion gang has a long history of breaching enterprise platforms in data theft attacks, with previous campaigns targeting Accellion FTA, GoAnywhere MFT, SolarWinds Serv-U FTP, Cleo, and MOVEit Transfer file-sharing servers, the latter affecting more than 2,770 organizations worldwide.

Most recently, it exploited an Oracle EBS zero-day flaw to steal sensitive files from many organizations since early August 2025, including Harvard University, The Washington Post, GlobalLogic, the University of Pennsylvania, Logitech, Estée Lauder, Korean Air, and American Airlines subsidiary Envoy Air.

After breaching their systems and exfiltrating sensitive documents, Clop publishes the stolen data on its dark web leak site, making it available for download via Torrent if victims refuse to pay a ransom.

The U.S. Department of State now offers a $10 million reward for information that could link this cybercrime gang’s attacks to a foreign government.

Update July 24, 07:42 EDT: Added more info on the attacks from Ransom-ISAC.

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