Several years ago, Jared Cooney Horvath’s interest in teaching took a scientific turn.

He entered teaching during a period he calls “the decade of the brain” — when much of the buzz around education and learning covered new theories about brain activity and information processing. Horvath believed that if he learned more about the brain, he’d become a better teacher.

But the education ideas that captured the popular imagination in the early 2000s had to do with catering to so-called learning styles — right- versus left-brain thinkers or visual versus word learners — and notions about how to hasten cognitive development through certain outside stimuli. Remember those moms-to-be with headphones on their bellies for their babies to experience the “Mozart Effect” in utero?

The gains from these methods proved to be short-lived or difficult to measure accurately.

Yet the science of learning persists. And what Horvath — today a neuroscientist and education consultant — now knows about human cognitive development has spurred him to join a cohort of researchers who are questioning the proliferation of technology and education software in schools.

His new book “The Digital Delusion” feels like a logical progression from Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 bestseller “The Anxious Generation,” which looked at how hours spent in front of screens, especially on social media, with its rapid-fire videos and toxic commentary, has damaged children’s overall mental health and learning.

In “Digital Delusion,” Horvath outlines research showing how digital devices and screen time, at the expense of playtime, interferes with children’s cognitive development. Then he argues how the ubiquitous use in schools of laptops and edtech, at the expense of traditional skills like handwriting and note-taking, alters, for the worse, how kids learn.

Horvath’s book arrives at a pivotal moment, with digital systems facing a cultural reckoning: Social media companies defend themselves in court against accusations that their platforms harm mental health, and lawmakers propose legislation that would severely restrict screen time for kids under 13. Meanwhile, school districts across the United States impose bell-to-bell cellphone bans, and parents push to opt their children out of using digital devices for school.

Horvath takes a pragmatic approach on that score, suggesting arguments parents can use with administrators and at school board meetings. He has chapters that include examples of letters and other tools parents can customize to mobilize action at state and federal levels.

Some educators maintain that schools should emphasize responsible use of technology, including AI, to prepare students for a technology-driven workforce. Horvath isn’t convinced. First, he argues, workforce preparation should not be education’s priority, particularly in younger grades. Second, it’s inefficient: “Teach someone to use a tool and they’ll be able to use that tool,” he writes. “Teach someone how to think and they’ll be able to use any tool.”

Even so, Horvath insists he isn’t anti-tech: “This isn’t a book about resisting devices,” he writes. “It’s a book about reclaiming education as a deeply human endeavor.”

EdSurge spoke with Horvath about “The Digital Delusion” and his work with schools around the globe, including in Australia, which at the end of last year banned social media for anyone under 16.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

EdSurge: You make the point that whenever a new technology is introduced to a culture, early adopters are the enthusiasts. But for any given technology to have broad acceptance, it must pass muster with skeptics. Yet that didn’t really happen with digital technology in schools, did it?

Horvath: If I invented something, I had to convince you. This [product] will get rid of that stain on your shirt. This will keep your iceberg lettuce crisp in the fridge. If you promised something you had to live up to it, because for the few people who adopted it to begin with, if you didn’t clean their stains, they’re not coming back.

Digital technology never made a claim to anything. It just kind of appeared and people just started using it. When AI came out, the developers flat-out said, we don’t know what this does. Why don’t you guys tell us what it does? And for some reason we shoved it into schools and said, instead of me telling you what it does, why don’t I let my kids tell you what it does?

Something very weird happened where they made no claims to efficacy and then we jumped in and started using it. Our job now is to start to pull some of those weeds rather than protect before planting. And unfortunately that means there’s been a lot of victims along the way.

A lot of kids have suffered due to our rush to just put things in their hands, unfortunately.

I think we have this love affair with digital technology. I don’t know if it’s because of sci-fi or “Star Trek” or what. We intuitively think this is going to be helpful.

And now we’re just scrambling back.

You explain that children need to play for optimum cognitive development, but ordinary childhood play and behavior has been disrupted by screens. Is there evidence that if we take the technology away from children whose brains are still forming that they can bounce back?

Yes, absolutely. The good thing about human biology is it is wickedly malleable.

There’s two aspects to keep in mind. One, biology is also wickedly conservative. It changes all the time, but it never forgets anything. So if you have had a habit at one point and you drop that habit, you can move your biology a different way, but if you come back to that habit even once, your biology will have held onto that entire circuit. It’s a survival mechanism. Our genes, our brain, hold everything.

So when it comes to these tech habits, if you’ve already formed them as a kid, they will always kind of be there. If you think, I’m over this, and you pick up your phone, you will move much faster back into that habit than you did before.

The other thing to recognize here is everything we know about learning, and most of what we know about biology, basically starts after the age of 5. That’s when what we call human biological learning mechanisms really kick in.

From birth to about 5, you’re in a totally different world. The brain is basically in input mode. Gimme, gimme, gimme. And I’m going to hold onto everything. This is why if a kid grows up in a house with two languages, they will easily learn two languages because the brain just says gimme, gimme, gimme.

So that’s where I think the super danger zone comes in. If you develop habits or problems before the age of 5, when you hit 5, the brain locks itself down. You won’t be able to consciously remember what happened before the age of 5, but all of that [input] forms the foundation upon which further learning is going to occur.

My fear is if you form a habit before the age of 5 and then your brain locks down, are you now stuck in a spot where it will be very hard to get that out? If you’ve already addicted your kid before age 5, be careful. I don’t know what that’s going to mean when they get older.

There is data that says around 40 percent of 2-year-olds have tablets.

Why? My question is just why? There are a lot of states right now putting forward bills to limit screen time in primary years: K through [grade] 2, 90 minutes; [grades] 2 through 5, two hours a day. To which I always reply, why any hours?

I could easily make a case they don’t need any of this at any moment. It makes no sense for learning and development why [technology] needs to interface with anything they’re doing.

But by banning, aren’t we setting up a mystique around technology — causing a different kind of distraction around the yearning to use it?

That’s what you want. By banning and building a mystique, you give kids aspirations. I think back to my generation, when we turned 16, you couldn’t stop us from driving. Why? Because with our parents, that was the hold: you want to go to your friend’s house? You got a bike, you got feet, I’m not driving you. You want to get to school? There’s a bus, you got feet, I’m not driving you. So by the time we knew we could drive, that’s the first thing we did.

If by banning tech, that makes kids say when I’m 18, I’m using tech — then, good, that means I have 18 years to train you to be ready to use that machine.

Can schools realistically go back to paper? Textbooks, for instance, are expensive and take longer to update than websites, which are dynamic.

It’s funny, this is where you get the clash between different masters. In a good rule of thumb you can only serve one master at a time. So we’ve got issues of, I want my kids to learn, but I have monetary constraints and I have administrative bureaucracy that I’ve got to wend my way through.

When you’ve got multiple masters, eventually you’ve got to settle on one because if you try and serve many, no one’s going to be happy. And I would hope that in education we choose learning as our ultimate master. If that means, look, we have to devote more of our budget to textbooks and that means we won’t be able to do X this year, then so be it.

If that means, look, we’re going to only use the website for the last two years of history, but we’re going to have the book for the rest because it’s better for learning, then so be it.

I don’t know how much more research we need on this. People learn more from hard copy text than they do from digital text. It’s done. That battle is over. So if learning is our outcome, why not go back to what we know works best for that?

Can you explain the findings around taking notes by hand?

Most students think note-taking is something they do while they learn. So [they think] if AI does it for me — cool! But they miss the point. Note-taking is the learning, not something that’s happening in parallel to learning. That is the learning. Because that’s where you’re doing your transformation: Your teacher said it. I now have to analyze it, think about it, organize it, get it out.

That requires friction. Your brain is going much faster. So the handwriting is constraining the speed with which you can think, which in turn is forcing you to focus on ideas, which in turn is transforming those ideas as you’re going along.

That is the definition of learning.

The act of handwriting is arguably the most complex thing we do. When it comes to motor skills, there might be nothing more complex than that.

We talk about the difference between gross- and fine-motor movements. Name one skill we do that is so minutely fine as handwriting and so varied as handwriting. If you’re using a pen versus a pencil versus a crayon versus a marker, you’re doing very subtly different movements.

Those develop so much more awareness and understanding of the body in a way that then translates into other fields in ways we’ve never seen from any other skill before.

If you know how to write, you will become better at reading. If you know how to write, you will become better at recognizing faces. Why? We don’t know. But everything seems to be correlated back to that skill.

So when people debate [whether] handwriting is still worth teaching? Of course. Is cursive still worth teaching? Of course. No one’s going to use cursive as an adult. That’s not why we’re teaching it, baby. It has nothing to do with what you’re going to do as an adult. ’

You were just in Australia. What is the feedback from the social media ban?

The response is overwhelmingly positive. Basically every school I worked at, the kids are fine with it. Teachers are fine with it. All of a sudden, behaviors are getting so much better in school. They said the biggest problem is with parents, oddly enough, who basically have to hang out with their kids and they don’t know what to do. If that’s our biggest problem, we’ll solve that. Hang out with your kid.

Any time you remove something from your kid’s heart, you’re going to have to fill it with something else. You’re going to have to fill it with yourself, which means you’re going to have to take some of your own tech out of your own life to devote more of your time to your kid.

OPPO engineers spent nearly three years methodically tuning every detail of the Find N6’s hinge and display component. They went back and adjusted the alignment tolerances to a very small 0.03 mm gap, resulting in a screen surface that remains flat even after repetitive folding and unfolding. Along with this ultra-precise hinge, a special type of self-healing glass layer works its magic to maintain the display flat over time, even after extensive wear and tear. Everything happens without leaving any permanent scars. In fact, the self-healing glass and titanium alloy hinge work so well together that the panel can be restored to its original flatness despite the strain.

The durability tests, which involved repetitive folding on automated machinery, put one unit through a rigorous 300,000 fold cycles. When you open it up after 170k cycles, it’s still as straight as a pin, with only a slight line along the middle. TÜV Rheinland gave the display a positive assessment, naming it one of the flattest foldables they’d ever seen. When you open the phone, you can see how flawless the inner screen seems; under regular viewing angles and ordinary use, the valley in the middle is practically gone.

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Screen sizes for book-style foldables appear to be fairly standard, with the inner screen, a 2K resolution LTPO panel, measuring 8.12 inches. The outside panel, meanwhile, is a good compact 6.62-inch size for times you only need to quickly peek at anything without having to unfold the entire device. Both panels are made of ultra-thin glass, which not only makes them light but also highly responsive, and the entire device weighs just 225 grams.

Power comes from Qualcomm’s latest 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 CPU, which is constructed on a 3-nanometer technology. That’s combined with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, giving you enough of space to run demanding apps and games. Of course, battery life is outrageously amazing, due to a 6000mAh battery and 80w rapid wired charging, as well as 50W wireless charging for speedy recharges.

Camera technology is where this phone truly shines, with a 200MP main sensor on the quad camera array. However, this time around, it has been tuned by the famed Hasselblad brand and is outfitted with some pretty high-end Danxia color lenses to achieve the desired tones. A 50MP periscope telephoto, 50MP ultrawide, and a tiny multispectral (or auxiliary) sensor complete the quad array. Meanwhile, twin 20MP selfie cameras take care of your camera needs, whether the phone is folded up tightly or open wide.

The first country to get its hands on it is China, which will introduce it on March 17, 2026. If you’re in Asia, you should be able to get your hands on it soon. The phone comes in three standard colors: purple, black, and white, all of which will be available at launch.
[Source]

The landscape of enterprise artificial intelligence shifted fundamentally today as OpenAI announced $110 billion in new funding from three of tech’s largest firms: $30 billion from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon.

But while the former two players are providing money, OpenAI is going further with Amazon in a new direction, establishing an upcoming fully “Stateful Runtime Environment” on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most used cloud environment.

This signals OpenAI’s and Amazon’s vision of the next phase of the AI economy — moving from chatbots to autonomous “AI coworkers” known as agents — and that this evolution requires a different architectural foundation than the one that built GPT-4.

For enterprise decision-makers, this announcement isn’t just a headline about massive capital; it is a technical roadmap for where the next generation of agentic intelligence will live and breathe.

And especially for those enterprises currently using AWS, it’s great news, giving them more options with a new runtime environment from OpenAI coming soon (the companies have yet to announce a precise timeline for when it will arrive).

The great divide between ‘stateless’ and ‘stateful’

At the heart of the new OpenAI-Amazon partnership is a technical distinction that will define developer workflows for the next decade: the difference between “stateless” and “stateful” environments.

To date, most developers have interacted with OpenAI through stateless APIs. In a stateless model, every request is an isolated event; the model has no “memory” of previous interactions unless the developer manually feeds the entire conversation history back into the prompt. OpenAI’s prior cloud partner and major investor, Microsoft Azure, remains the exclusive third-party cloud provider for these stateless APIs.

The newly announced Stateful Runtime Environment, by contrast, will be hosted on Amazon Bedrock — a paradigm shift.

This environment allows models to maintain persistent context, memory, and identity. Rather than a series of disconnected calls, the stateful environment enables “AI coworkers” to handle ongoing projects, remember prior work, and move seamlessly across different software tools and data sources.

As OpenAI notes on its website: “Now, instead of manually stitching together disconnected requests to make things work, your agents automatically execute complex steps with ‘working context’ that carries forward memory/history, tool and workflow state, environment use, and identity/permission boundaries.”

For builders of complex agents, this reduces the “plumbing” required to maintain context, as the infrastructure itself now handles the persistent state of the agent.

OpenAI Frontier and the AWS Integration

The vehicle for this stateful intelligence is OpenAI Frontier, an end-to-end platform designed to help enterprises build, deploy, and manage teams of AI agents, launched back in early February 2026.

Frontier is positioned as a solution to the “AI opportunity gap”—the disconnect between model capabilities and the ability of a business to actually put them into production.

Key features of the Frontier platform include:

• Shared Business Context: Connecting siloed data from CRMs, ticketing tools, and internal databases into a single semantic layer.

• Agent Execution Environment: A dependable space where agents can run code, use computer tools, and solve real-world problems.

• Built-in Governance: Every AI agent has a unique identity with explicit permissions and boundaries, allowing for use in regulated environments.

While the Frontier application itself will continue to be hosted on Microsoft Azure, AWS has been named the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for the platform.

This means that while the “engine” may sit on Azure, AWS customers will be able to access and manage these agentic workloads directly through Amazon Bedrock, integrated with AWS’s existing infrastructure services.

OpenAI opens the door to enterprises: how to register your interest in its upcoming new Stateful Runtime Environment on AWS

For now, OpenAI has launched a dedicated Enterprise Interest Portal on its website. This serves as the primary intake point for organizations looking to move past isolated pilots and into production-grade agentic workflows.

The portal is a structured “request for access” form where decision-makers provide:

• Firmographic Data: Basic details including company size (ranging from startups of 1–50 to large-scale enterprises with 20,000+ employees) and contact information.

• Business Needs Assessment: A dedicated field for leadership to outline specific business challenges and requirements for “AI coworkers”.

By submitting this form, enterprises signal their readiness to work directly with OpenAI and AWS teams to implement solutions like multi-system customer support, sales operations, and finance audits that require high-reliability state management.

Community and leadership reactions

The scale of the announcement was mirrored in the public statements from the key players on social media.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, expressed excitement about the Amazon partnership, specifically highlighting the “stateful runtime environment” and the use of Amazon’s custom Trainium chips.

However, Altman was quick to clarify the boundaries of the deal: “Our stateless API will remain exclusive to Azure, and we will build out much more capacity with them”.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy emphasized the demand from his own customer base, stating, “We have lots of developers and companies eager to run services powered by OpenAI models on AWS”. He noted that the collaboration would “change what’s possible for customers building AI apps and agents”.

Early adopters have already begun to weigh in on the utility of the Frontier approach. Joe Park, EVP at State Farm, noted that the platform is helping the company accelerate its AI capabilities to “help millions plan ahead, protect what matters most, and recover faster”.

The enterprise decision: where to spend your dollars?

For CTOs and enterprise decision-makers, the OpenAI-Amazon-Microsoft triangle creates a new set of strategic choices. The decision of where to allocate budget now depends heavily on the specific use case:

1. For High-Volume, Standard Tasks: If your organization relies on standard API calls for content generation, summarization, or simple chat, Microsoft Azure remains the primary destination. These “stateless” calls are exclusive to Azure, even if they originate from an Amazon-linked collaboration.

2. For Complex, Long-Running Agents: If your goal is to build “AI coworkers” that require deep integration with AWS-hosted data and persistent memory across weeks of work, the AWS Stateful Runtime Environment is the clear choice.

3. For Custom Infrastructure: OpenAI has committed to consuming 2 gigawatts of AWS Trainium capacity to power Frontier and other advanced workloads. This suggests that enterprises looking for the most cost-efficient way to run OpenAI models at massive scale may find an advantage in the AWS-Trainium ecosystem.

Licensing, revenue and the Microsoft ‘safety net’

Despite the massive infusion of Amazon capital, the legal and financial ties between Microsoft and OpenAI remain remarkably rigid. A joint statement released by both companies clarified that their “commercial and revenue share relationship remains unchanged”.

Crucially, Microsoft continues to maintain its “exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products”. Furthermore, Microsoft will receive a share of the revenue generated by the OpenAI-Amazon partnership.

This ensures that while OpenAI is diversifying its infrastructure, Microsoft remains the ultimate beneficiary of OpenAI’s commercial success, regardless of which cloud the compute actually runs on.

The definition of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) also remains a protected term in the Microsoft agreement. The contractual processes for determining when AGI has been reached—and the subsequent impact on commercial licensing—have not been altered by the Amazon deal.

Ultimately, OpenAI is positioning itself as more than a model or tool provider; it is an infrastructure player attempting to straddle the two largest clouds on Earth.

For the user, this means more choice and more specialized environments. For the enterprise, it means that the era of “one-size-fits-all” AI procurement is over.

The choice between Azure and AWS for OpenAI services is now a technical decision about the nature of the work itself: whether your AI needs to simply “think” (stateless) or to “remember and act” (stateful).

Other Wireless Chargers We Tested

There are a lot of wireless chargers. Here are a few more we like, but for one reason or another don’t warrant a place above.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Krafted Couch Wireless Charger for $52: I thought this wireless charger that’s designed to be draped over the arm of your couch was a great idea when I saw it, but the ridges failed to keep it in place on my velvety couch, so it kept slipping down the side. The silicone finish with the Krafted logo is also a bit ugly. It’s just a silicone mat with a magnetic charger inside, though there is a fairly generous 6.6-foot (2-meter) cable, and it is Qi2 rated. If you’re always rooting around for a charger and one of the colors blends well with your furniture, it might be a good solution for you.

Einova Eggtronic Charging Stone for $70: Made with 100 percent solid marble or stone—you can choose from a variety. Every single pick in this guide looks very much like a wireless charger, but I’ve had visiting friends ask if this one is a drink coaster. (I’m still figuring out whether that’s a good or bad thing.) It has zero LEDs, perfect for bedrooms; just try to hide the cable to truly make it blend into your home. We recommend putting a case on your phone when using it with this charger, as there’s a risk of scuffing up the back with these harder surfaces.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Baseus Nomos 5-in-1 Charging Station for $100: If you liked the PicoGo W2 above but need more gadget-charging power, this 5-in-1 could be worth a look. It also has a tilting pad and retractable USB-C cable, but adds two more USB-C ports and one USB-A, along with a stats-filled display. It’s perfect for your desktop. I also tried and quite liked the Baseus Nomos 8-in-1 Magnetic Charging Station ($70), which combines a similar folding Qi2 pad with three US AC outlets, three USB-C ports, and one USB-A.

Rapport London Formula Wireless Charging Tray for $475: Yes, this is an obscene price for a Qi wireless charger. You can probably make a version for a fraction of the cost. But Rapport’s build quality is quite nice, with a lacquered grey box and a soft-touch fabric to keep your watches and phone scratch-free. It reliably recharged several Android phones without making them too warm, all while offering storage for a few watches. It’s attractive, but you have to have cash to burn at this price.

iOttie iOS Wireless Duo for $50: This dual-charging system looks pretty—I like the fabric-wrapped stand—and you can charge another device on the rubberized charging pad next to it. The stand can be used in portrait or landscape, though in the latter orientation it’ll block the pad. I use the pad to top up my wireless earbuds, but I wouldn’t use this iOttie on a nightstand, because the LED on the front can be glaring. A cable and adapter are included, which makes it a good value. It can charge Pixel phones at up to 15 watts, iPhones at 7.5 watts, and other Android phones at 10 watts.

Journey Alti Play Performance Desk Mat for $120: This is a desk mat that doubles as a wireless charging pad. On the left side is a plasticky rectangle with a Qi2 magnetic puck for your smartphone. Above it is a little area to charge wireless earbuds (5 watts). Naturally, there’s RGB all over, and there are two buttons you can press to cycle through patterns and colors. It’s a smart-looking system, though the quality of the actual mat leaves a bit to be desired. I didn’t have issues gliding my mouse on it, and it stays put thanks to the rubber underside, but I just didn’t like the look and feel of the Lycra surface. Journey has some other versions of this mat that use different materials, so take a look if you like the overall aesthetic.

Courant Catch:2 Essentials for $75: Wireless chargers should look nice. You shouldn’t settle for anything less! This Courant dual charger oozes luxury with its Belgian linen-wrapped surface (especially in the camel color). I’ve used it by my front door to recharge my partner’s and my wireless earbuds for two years. The rubber feet prevent it from shifting around, but even if there are five coils in this pad, you should try to be precise when you put your device down to charge and make sure the LED lights up to double-check. It comes with a color-matching USB-C cable.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Zens Liberty Wireless Charger for $150: I tested the Glass Edition of this wireless charging pad, and it looks stunning with the 16 overlapping copper coils on display (the standard version has a woolen fabric top). It can charge two devices simultaneously at up to 15 watts apiece, and there’s an optional Apple Watch add-on ($19). As stylish as it is, the price is too high. Because you can see the coils, placement is never an issue, but it’s a bulky charger; the fan is audible at times, and while I had no problem charging my iPhone or AirPods, my Pixel 6 Pro got very warm on this pad.

Xiaomi Mi 80-W Wireless Charging Stand for $50: By far the fastest wireless charger we have tested, this stand is only worth considering for Xiaomi phones (it seems to charge most other phones at 10 watts or below). I tested with the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, which tops out at 50 watts (some Xiaomi models can go higher). The unusual sail shape combines a white triangular section with a clear acrylic base that has a subtle groove to hold your phone in place and a gap underneath for the exhaust grill from the noisy fan. The USB-C port and LED indicator are on the back.

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The snow is melting, the days are getting longer, and I can almost smell the springtime ahead. Soon, we’ll be cruising around town on ebikes and electric scooters instead of burning fossil fuels. For now, the weather hasn’t quite caught up, which is great for markdowns. Many of the best electric scooters are still seeing significant discounts. If you’ve been thinking about buying one, now’s the best time: prices are low, and sunny commuting days are just ahead.

Gear editor Julian Chokkattu has spent five years testing more than 45 electric scooters. These are his top picks that are also on sale right now.

Apollo Go for $849 ($450 Off)

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

This is Gear editor Julian Chokkattu’s favorite scooter. The riding experience is powerful and smooth, thanks to its dual 350-watt motors and solid front and rear suspensions. The speed maxes out at 28 miles per hour (mph), which doesn’t make it the fastest scooter on the market, but it has a good range. (Chokkattu is a very tall man and was able to travel 15 miles on a single charge at 15 mph.) Other Apollo features he appreciates: turn signals, a dot display, a bell, along with a headlight and an LED strip for extra visibility.

Apollo Phantom 2.0 for $2099 ($900 Off)

The Apollo Phantom 2.0 maxes out at 44 mph, with plenty of power from its dual 1,750-watt motors. It’s a gorgeous scooter, designed with 11-inch self-healing tubeless tires and a dual-spring suspension system for a smooth riding experience. But with great power comes great weight. At 102 pounds, the Phantom 2.0 is the heaviest electric scooter Chokkattu has tested, so I would only recommend this purchase if you don’t live in a walkup and/or have a garage.

More Discounted Electric Scooters

Traveling typically necessitates traveling light, so a mouse that adds bulk or requires constant charging can be a real hassle. Logitech’s G309 Lightspeed, priced at $49.99 (was $90), avoids these concerns by clever engineering, allowing it to function for hours on a single AA battery while being heavy enough to feel substantial in your hands.

You can even remove the battery entirely and use Logitech’s PowerPlay charging mat, which costs a little more but reduces the weight to 68g. That’s the type of lightness that a few dedicated gamers seek, without losing usability.

Battery concerns vanish in both setups, as one AA provides a whopping 300 hours of continuous wireless use in the rapid Lightspeed mode, or over 600 hours in the slower but still adequate Bluetooth mode. Most people won’t have to alter it in months, whether they play games every day or merely browse. If you’re travelling, you may either bring an extra AA battery or utilize Bluetooth and store the wireless receiver neatly inside the mouse to avoid losing it in transit.

The performance is also strong, as the HERO 25K sensor tracks your movements well even at high speeds of up to 25,600 DPI, and it does so without any fancy (and obnoxious) smoothing or acceleration. Clicks are nice and sharp with the optical Lightforce switches, a bit of a blend of the best of both worlds, so whether you’re gaming or performing precise work, you’ll get a rapid and solid reaction. There are also six customizable buttons for creating shortcuts or simplifying tasks, and the symmetrical design fits well in a variety of hands.

It’s also built tough, with the mouse being approximately 4.7 x 2.5 inches, and the design is simply utilitarian enough to get the job done. At around $49.99, it’s a really robust wireless gaming mouse without the expensive price tag.