Like the Phone 3a before it, the Nothing Phone 4a offers a very appealing option for those in the market for a more affordable device. The design and software are unique, and offer an experience that won’t leave you feeling you’ve got a budget device. While performance hasn’t improved all that much over last year, the solid battery life and reliable camera systems and better zoom lens all add up to a slightly more mature device.
Attractive, unique design
Lightweight but delightful software experience
Reliable battery and camera performance
Affordable price – There’s a pink one!
Not the most powerful phone around
Display is a little dark at times
Glyph Light bars are gone
Not a big jump on the Phone 3a
Key Features
Review Price: £349
Design
Distinctive Nothing design with transparency
Unique software approach
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Software matches the style of the phone
Big battery and fast charging
50w charging and sizable battery
Introduction
Nothing is taking a slightly different approach in 2026 than it did last year.
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The company has said we’re not getting a ‘proper’ flagship model to replace the Nothing Phone 3. Still, because it’s been so popular – and because the 3a was such a good phone – the brand opted to upgrade that series and give us a new model.
Enter the Nothing Phone 4a. Still very much a Nothing phone, but with a few changes and upgrades under the hood. But is it closer to being a flagship like Nothing says it is?
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Design
Four colour choices, including pink
Classic Nothing looks
Glass back, plastic frame
Since its inception, Nothing has been a company with a very clear design philosophy. And unlike most other tech companies, it is one that clearly cares quite deeply about the aesthetic of its products. They all tend to have that same retro futuristic look, that wouldn’t look out of place anthropomorphised as a character in Portal 2.
The phones have long had character to them, and while the transparent back doesn’t technically allow you to see the internals of the phone, the layers of texture, patterns and exposed screws all help create a very distinctive look.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
With the Nothing Phone 4a in particular, it’s not that far off the look and feel of the Nothing Phone 3a that came out last year. There are some different colours, though. Or, at least one new colour. Alongside the black, white and blue models this year is a pink one, which is the best looking of the bunch. It almost reminds me of the transparent-backed iMacs from the turn of the century.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
It’s glass on the front and back this year too, with the only plastic being the frame around the edges.
As for the elephant in the room, or at least the obvious change to any Nothing phone, or anyone familiar with Nothing’s first few phones: yes, the Glyph Light bars are gone. And with that, it appears those LED strips have been consigned to history.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
That doesn’t mean there are no lights at all, but the makeup of them is very different. Instead of several curved strips, there’s one vertical stacked line of square LEDs that make up one pulsing, flashing light system to the right of the camera.
Just like before, you can have it pulse and animate when notifications come in, or use it as a visual countdown timer, and the bottom, red LED will light up when recording video or audio. It even has integration with third-party apps like Uber and Google Calendar, to act as a live visual for updates and events.
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Display
6.78-inch OLED display
Gorilla Glass 7i
30-120Hz adaptive
For the most part, the display on the 4a offers a solid experience. There are ways in which it’s beaten by the much more expensive devices, but for a screen in this price category, it’s solid.
It doesn’t have the super-bright display you’d find on something like the Pixel 10 Pro XL, or the superb anti-reflective qualities of the Galaxy S26 Ultra. But for a device that’s half the price, you wouldn’t expect it to.
What that means is that at times it feels as though the display is a little dark, especially when not viewed directly head-on and watching HDR shows and movies.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
Still, it’s generally quite a vibrant and colour-rich display with deep contrast that offers a solid media experience with the brightness cranked up and viewed directly.
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On that note, there were a few times during travel and phone testing where the bright sun was glaring and reflecting off the screen, and the Nothing Phone’s auto brightness kicked in to ramp it right up, making it clear, vivid and easily visible in harsh daylight. There was no awkward jumping or a delayed response. It was quick and smooth.
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Software
Software follows the look of the hardware
Deep integration with Nothing’s audio products
AI features don’t get in the way
Nothing’s software and the way it’s integrated into the phone, the themes, the widgets, haptic feedback and smart features are some of the biggest reasons to buy the Phone 4a. Just like it was the phones that came before it.
It’s rare to find a company with such a clear, distinct and laser-focused software approach. All the layers, widgets, icons and elements are not only consistently applied through every part of the interface, but also look like it belongs with the hardware. The font styles, stylised widgets and graphics all match the hardware aesthetics perfectly.
The fact that it feels both light and feature-rich is great. It’s not cluttered or bloated with additional apps and features. Nothing, unlike other companies, hasn’t gone down the route of copying Apple’s ‘Liquid Glass’ transparencies and effects random parts of the software like Oppo, Honor and Vivo have.
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Because it’s light, it gives it the feeling that it’s responsive and effortless to use, but does it in a way that’s not plain or boring.
I enjoy the little things, like when you tap on the virtual keyboard to type. There’s a subtle tap from the haptic engine, not a cheap buzzy vibration that you often get on the more affordable devices. That just helps elevate the experience somewhat and means I actively keep that feedback on instead of switching it off.
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You get deep integration with Nothing’s audio products with custom widgets for headphone battery levels, and a fun music player window widget which shows album art and play/pause/skip controls on your Home Screen. This effectively is just mirroring the music player notification widget.
There are a few AI features loaded, but they don’t feel like they’ve been overloaded or shoehorned in just because it’s 2026 and it must have lots of AI features. And, you can largely ignore them if you want. But there is a custom ChatGPT widget designed to match Nothing’s OS design and make it easier to interact with OpenAI’s popular agent.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
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Essential space is there again this year, with its dedicated button that allows you to quickly capture voice notes or screenshots and save them directly to what is effectively a digital corkboard to help you remember things that have inspired you. I quite like it, but I never found myself using it all that often.
Cameras
50MP main camera
50MP periscope zoom
8MP ultrawide
Being a mid-range phone means it’s always best to temper expectations somewhat for how good the cameras are going to be. And while it’s true that Nothing’s triple camera system won’t match up to the best camera phones, it’s an all-round solid system that is more than good enough for daily use and is pretty good at night time too.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
What I like most about the camera is actually the experience of shooting with it. You can just point, tap to focus and shoot, and your image will be captured quickly with the appropriate exposure and the right area in focus.
In the daytime, if this phone cost more, I would criticise the overall texture and treatment of colours, highlights and shadows. But it’s hard to find too much fault with it. Sure, sometimes the HDR treatment of bright colourful spots leaves it looking a little artificial, but for the most part, I’m pleased with how well it contains those super bright points in the photos.
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I sometimes found the blues were a little unrealistic, not quite matching what I saw with my eye, especially when looking at blue skies. But again, it wasn’t horrendous, and the treatment and saturation of colour meant most pictures had a pleasing vibrancy that I’d be happy to post on social media without any filters.
There’s a new zoom lens this year, the same one that’s in the Nothing Phone 3, which means better light capture and stabilisation when you kick into 3.5x zoom, adding a bit more zoom range but at the same time adding to that consistent, solid camera performance across multiple focal lengths.
Nothing also has a bunch of its own preset filters loaded, which can be fun to play with if you want to get creative with looks. You can shoot black and white, or add a cool, grainy texture, add soft focus for portraits, and all manner of other presets.
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At night, shooting urban scenes in the lit streets of Barcelona, I was pretty happy with the results from all three cameras for the most part. Clearly, the primary lens is the one that captures cleaner, crisper images with better detail and colour, but the others aren’t awful.
That main sensor is also more sensitive to light than the other two and more capable of drawing it in quickly, and so when using the night mode setting, it usually takes less than a second to capture the scene, whereas the ultrawide might take a second and a half, or two seconds.
The perk of that delay though, is that if you just happen to catch a moving vehicle at just the right moment, you can get a pretty effective motion blur that adds a bit of movement to the picture, without needing to dive into any manual controls or needing a tripod.
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Being critical, the zoom lens often produced results where you can tell that machine learning or image processing is doing a lot of work to smooth it out. To the point where, at times, surfaces lose natural texture and detail, and so don’t quite look like a faithful reproduction of the real thing.
So clearly, the main camera is still the best one – particularly in low light, with the second and third lenses not quite matching it in terms of ability to capture light, or reproducing detail quite as cleanly.
Performance
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip
8 and 12GB memory
LPDDR4X RAM, UFS3.1 storage
Whether or not you’d be happy with the performance of the Phone 4a very much depends on how you use your phone. But if you’re after the best phone in this section of the market, it’s safe to say the 4a is not it.
For the most part, doing casual tasks and swiping around, moving between different layers of the interface is pretty responsive and smooth. But if you were to try to load demanding games with high visual fidelity and fast frame rates, it would soon start to struggle if you put those games into their highest settings.
It’s just not the super-powerful type of phone. But I suspect those people who buy the phone aren’t buying it to crunch through hours of Call of Duty or Genshin Impact in ultra visual settings. You can get more powerful devices in and around this price range, but it typically means compromising on things like good software, camera performance and getting a good-looking device.
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Test Data
Nothing Phone 4a
Nothing Phone 3
Nothing Phone 3a
Geekbench 6 single core
1236
2073
1164
Geekbench 6 multi core
3312
6531
3273
Still, cranking through more casual games like Mario Kart Tour is a breeze thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip and up to 12GB RAM. It’s responsive and quick enough to cope with the less demanding, but still fast-paced games. And if there’s any resolution dropping to keep frame rates smooth, that’s kept to a minimum.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
It doesn’t seem to struggle with poor download speeds too much either, which is often a telltale sign of a cheaper device. I was never left waiting ages for news pages and images to download and game/app downloads were about the same as usual.
In short, I think the performance is fast and efficient enough that virtually anyone but the most demanding of users is well catered for.
Battery Life
5080 mAh battery, although in India it is 5400mAh
50w fast charging
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The battery capacity might not completely blow you away when read on a spec sheet. Especially not with brands like Oppo and Vivo pushing towards the 7000mAh mark.
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Still, there was never a concern for me that I wouldn’t make it through the day. In fact, it was virtually a two-day phone for me in most of my testing. And this was including a day when I did some of the stress testing benchmarks and camera tests we perform for all of our reviews.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
Even on that day, having taken it off charge at around 7 am, I started the next morning with 54% left. Included in those tests was an hour-long session watching Sweet Tooth on Netflix at 50% brightness, which only drained 5% of the battery.
Just guessing based on my experience and what I know about the device – I suspect the battery efficiency has a lot to do with the fact that the Snapdragon chipset inside isn’t the most power hungry on the market. That helps the phone easily get through days. And I suspect that even power users should at least make a full day on a full battery quite comfortably.
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Should you buy it?
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You want a fun, unique Android phone
The design here is great, and in a sea of fairly dull phones the Phone 3a looks great. Nothing has also done a great job of keeping the software and hardware uniform.
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This is an affordable phone, and as such it doesn’t with a chipset that can rival even the better mid-range phone.
Final Thoughts
I think in the end, the feeling I’m left with about the Nothing Phone 4a is that it’s a very usable phone. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. At all.
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It’s one of those phones I love to have in my daily life, that I can pick up and use, and its software doesn’t get in the way, it looks good, works well and has solid battery life.
There’s not much more you can ask from a phone that costs less than half what the very best phones on the market would set you back.
How We Test
We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry-standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Used as a main phone for a week
Thorough camera testing in a variety of conditions
Tested and benchmarked using respected industry tests and real-world data
This is one of those simple deals that’s hard to argue with. The Roku Streaming Stick HD is down to $15.99 from $29.99. If you’ve got an older TV in a bedroom, kitchen, dorm, or guest room that’s missing apps (or just runs painfully slow), this is the quick fix. You plug it in, connect to Wi-Fi, and you’ve got a modern streaming setup without buying a whole new TV.
It’s also a great “keep in a drawer” gadget. If you travel, bounce between rentals, or visit family and end up stuck with a clunky TV interface, a cheap Roku stick can save the night.
What you’re getting
This is an HD streaming stick that plugs into your TV’s HDMI port and comes with a Roku voice remote. Roku’s big advantage is that it’s simple and consistent. You get access to the usual major streaming apps, plus free and live TV options through Roku’s platform.
No fancy specs here, and that’s fine. The point is getting reliable streaming with minimal hassle for very little money.
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Why it’s worth it
At $15.99, you’re basically paying impulse-buy pricing for something you’ll probably use for years. This is perfect if:
your TV is older, and the built-in apps are outdated or slow
you want streaming in a second room without spending much
you’re setting up a kid’s room, dorm, or guest space
you just want a clean interface that doesn’t fight you
If you’ve got a 4K TV and you care about the highest resolution, you’d look at a 4K streaming stick instead. But for basic HD streaming and a smoother experience on an older set, this is a great deal.
The bottom line
For $15.99, the Roku Streaming Stick HD is an easy upgrade that fixes a lot of annoyances fast. If you’ve got any TV in your house that feels “behind,” this is the cheap, simple way to bring it up to date.
The CPRight team, from left: Shubham Bansal, Deeya Sharma, Prisha Hemani, and Atharv Dixit with their Holloman Health Innovation Challenge winnings at the University of Washington in Seattle this week. (UW Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship Photo / Matt Hagen)
A team of students from the University of Washington took home the top prize in the Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge on Wednesday as the UW swept the 11th annual competition.
CPRight won the $15,000 Holloman Family grand prize as well as the $2,500 Naturacur Wound Healing Best Idea for a Medical Device prize in the student competition.
CPRight is a real-time CPR feedback device that provides data on compression rate and depth to ensure bystanders perform high-quality, life-saving chest compressions during an emergency.
The company was co-developed alongside ReviveHer, the 2025 Best Idea for Patient Safety prize winner.
The team consists of Shubham Bansal, a neuroscience undergraduate student; Deeya Sharma, a graduate student in the UW School of Medicine; Prisha Hemani, a computer science and engineering undergrad; and Atharv Dixit, an engineering undergrad.
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The Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge, hosted by the UW’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship in the Foster School of Business, gives students the opportunity to create meaningful solutions to big health-related problems. The competition is open to undergrads and grad students at accredited colleges and universities across the Cascadia Corridor — Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia, as well as Alaska.
Other prize winners:
$10,000 WRF Capital Second Place Prize:
TheraT, a drinkable, non-invasive therapy that removes toxins in the gut before they reach the bloodstream, allowing chronic kidney disease patients to lower their reliance on dialysis.
$5,000 Scale LLP Third Place Prize
LegUp Prosthetics, a low-cost system that uses smartphone-based 3D scanning to enable accurate fitting from home, reducing costs and expanding access to prosthetic care for underserved and rural patients. Developed by a UW team of molecular engineering, bioengineering, biochemistry, and mechanical engineering students. They also won the $2,500 Population Health Initiative Best Idea for Addressing Health Access and Disparities prize for their focus on expanding care to underserved and rural patients through a point-of-care healthcare service.
$2,500 Mindful Therapy Group Best Idea in Digital Health Prize
ShiftSpark, a workflow-embedded support platform that helps nurses process stress in real time during a shift. Developed by a team of UW public health students who became the first-ever to win the digital health prize in the challenge after also winning the pitch contest as part of the Buerk’s Digital Health Workshop series.
SoundBio Lab Ignite Prize
TPT-Finder, a handheld, AI-powered surgical tool that helps surgeons instantly distinguish parathyroid tissue during thyroid surgery to prevent costly and life-altering complications. Developed by a UW team of computer science and electrical and computer engineering students. The prize is a six-month membership to the SoundBio Lab biomakerspace in the U-District.
$1,000 Connie Bourassa-Shaw Spark Award
ColoGuide, an AI-powered colonoscopy navigation system building its proprietary data set to automate scope insertion with real-time visual guidance. Developed by UW Medicine students.
This year’s competition attracted 67 participants, two shy of the record set in 2025. Students represented seven schools in the opening round: UW, UW-Bothell, Edmonds College, UW Global Innovation Exchange, University of Idaho, Portland State University, and Seattle University.
There have been 509 participating teams and more than 1,725 students over the 11 years of the challenge and $424,000 awarded.
A €345,000 employment grant from Údarás na Gaeltachta will support the recruitment.
Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht Dara Calleary, TD has approved €12m in funding from his department and its agencies for a range of projects. Calleary also revealed plans for 23 new jobs at Net Feasa, a technology company based in Daingean Uí Chúis, Kerry.
The 23 new full-time positions will double the company’s workforce over the course of the next three years and will be in software development and engineering, artificial intelligence engineering, wireless network operations and customer support. A €345,000 employment grant from Údarás na Gaeltachta will support the recruitment.
Net Feasa, which comes from the Irish language for “network of knowledge”, is a digital transformation company dedicated to “revolutionising” the global supply chain landscape.
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“Our mission is to enhance safety, security and visibility, ensuring that every link in the chain is connected and performing seamlessly,” read a statement on the company’s website.
Commenting on the jobs announcement Calleary said: “I am delighted to be here to celebrate this success story. The jobs at Net Feasa are high-quality well-paid roles in an exciting technology company. Net Feasa was founded in a rural Gaeltacht town, but it has a global reach with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States.
“With the wealth of talent available in rural areas and the support of my department, and agencies like Údarás na Gaeltachta, we are working hard to create more opportunities like this.”
Calleary today (5 March) began a two-day visit to Kerry where he is opening and visiting projects that have been approved for funding.
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Among other engagements, he will also visit the site of the new housing project in Baile an Fheirtéaraigh that seeks to address the accommodation shortage for Irish language summer colleges in the area and attend the official opening of GTEIC, a working hub which has had investment of more €2.5m.
The Cathaoirleach of Kerry County Council, Cllr Michael Foley said: “I warmly welcome Minister Dara Calleary to Kerry for a series of important engagements. The Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht has supported many projects and initiatives in Kerry in recent years, and I am pleased that the Minister will have the opportunity to see first-hand the very positive work being done across the county.”
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The end table was built from scratch, with [Peter] going through all the woodworking steps required to assemble the piece. The three-legged wooden table is topped with a tiny N-scale model railway layout, and you get to see it put together including the rocks, the grass, and a beautiful epoxy river complete with a bridge. The railway runs a Kato Pocket Line trolley, but the really neat thing is how it’s powered.
[Peter] shows us how a small gearmotor generator was paired with a bridge rectifier and a buck converter to fill up a super capacitor that runs the train and lights up the tree on the table. Just 25 seconds of cranking will run the train anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes depending on if the tree is lit as well. To top it all off, there’s even a perfect coaster spot for [Peter]’s beverage of choice.
People are losing their minds over Apple’s decision to put an iPhone chip in the MacBook Neo. All it shows is that they really don’t understand the engineering of Apple Silicon.
Apple’s A18 Pro is more than an iPhone chip
After years of rumors, the budget MacBook was revived on March 4, 2026. The MacBook Neo is its name, and people are already losing their minds over one key cost-cutting decision. The MacBook Neo has the A18 Pro at its heart, the same chip that powered the iPhone 16 Pro. It’s something that had been rumored, yet still seems to have blindsided some of those looking to create a fuss on social media. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
SunBriteTV has launched the Veranda 4, a full-shade outdoor 4K smart TV series that takes direct aim at the covered patio market where Samsung’s Terrace line has established the dominant commercial presence over the past several years.
The outdoor TV category has expanded steadily as homeowners invest in permanent alfresco entertainment setups, with weatherproofed screens becoming a standard fixture in residential outdoor living spaces alongside dedicated outdoor audio systems and covered kitchen installations.
The Veranda 4 enters that market with 600-nit brightness driven by a direct LED backlight, a figure SunBriteTV claims sits 58% higher than its previous generation, giving the panel the output needed to hold picture quality in partially shaded environments without washing out in ambient daylight.
An IP55-rated aluminium exterior handles rain, heat, and humidity, while internal components carry additional protective coatings, and SunBriteTV’s Eco Bright Outdoor Technology prevents backlight failure at operating temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius, covering the range of conditions a permanently mounted outdoor screen would face across summer months in most North American climates.
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LG’s WebOS powers the smart platform, supporting access to a wide variety of third-party streaming apps such as Netflix and Disney+. There’s also a redesigned media bay tucked discreetly within the chassis, giving users flexibility to run their own streaming devices without visible cable clutter behind the screen.
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Connectivity covers built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and voice control, with two integrated 8-watt loudspeakers handling audio for everyday viewing without requiring a separate outdoor sound system for basic use cases.
The Samsung Terrace, which similarly targets covered outdoor environments and carries comparable weatherproofing credentials, starts at a higher price point than the Veranda 4, giving SunBriteTV a potential cost advantage in the residential installation market where budget often determines product selection alongside brand recognition.
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The Veranda 4 is available now in 65-inch and 75-inch sizes, priced at $3,198.95 and $4,648.95 respectively, with additional screen sizes launching later in 2026.
At MWC 2026 this week, TCL expanded its personal audio lineup with the new CrystalClip open-ear wireless earbuds, including a premium CrystalClip with Crystals by Swarovski edition. While TCL is best known globally for its televisions, the company has steadily built a presence in the true wireless category with models such as the MOVEAUDIO S600, Neo, and S180.
The new CrystalClip series signals a deeper push into the fast-growing open-ear clip-on earbud segment, combining air conduction audio technology, AI-driven features, and extended battery life with a design focused on all-day comfort.
Air Conduction vs. Bone Conduction: What’s the Difference?
Open-ear clip-on earbuds rely on air conduction to deliver sound into your ears, directing audio toward the ear canal without sealing it off. This approach has gained traction because it tends to provide a more natural fit, greater long-term comfort, and fuller sound layering with more balanced bass, mids, and treble compared with most bone-conduction designs. At the same time, the open design keeps your ears unobstructed, allowing you to remain aware of your surroundings—an important advantage for commuting, exercising outdoors, or everyday listening where safety and environmental awareness still matter.
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TCL CrystalClip Wireless Earbuds with Charging Case
Clip-on Design Prioritizes Awareness and All Day Comfort
The clip-on form factor of the TCL CrystalClip is designed to keep listeners aware of their surroundings while enjoying music, podcasts, or calls. Because the earbuds rest outside the ear canal, users can still hear approaching traffic, public announcements, or nearby conversations without removing the earbuds. This open design supports everyday situational awareness while maintaining continuous playback.
To balance comfort with stability, TCL integrates an ergonomic clip structure engineered for consistent contact without excessive pressure. The CrystalClip applies approximately 43 grams of clamping force to help maintain a secure fit across different ear shapes. A titanium arch bridge reinforces the clip mechanism, contributing to durability and shape retention over extended use.
Each earbud weighs just 5.5 grams, minimizing fatigue during long listening sessions. With an IPX4 water resistance rating, the CrystalClip is built to withstand sweat and light splashes, making it suitable for office use, workouts, commuting, and daily mobility.
TCL CrystalClip with Crystals by Swarovski
Blending Technology & Style
Beyond comfort and stability, the TCL CrystalClip combines practical audio engineering with a design intended to complement everyday style. The earbuds feature a streamlined clip-on silhouette that sits close to the ear, allowing them to function not only as a listening device but also as a subtle accessory. The compact shape and balanced proportions help maintain a clean, understated appearance suitable for commuting, office environments, or casual use.
For users who prefer a more fashion-forward option, TCL also offers a CrystalClip with Crystals by Swarovski edition. This version incorporates decorative crystal elements that add a subtle visual accent while maintaining full functionality, including charging and wireless connectivity. The result is a design that blends personal audio technology with a touch of jewelry-inspired styling.
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Immersive Audio Experience
Inside the TCL CrystalClip, a 10.8 mm dual-magnetic dynamic driver forms the foundation of its audio performance. The driver is paired with 3D spatial audio processing, designed to create a wider and more layered listening presentation for music, podcasts, and video content while maintaining clarity across highs, mids, and bass.
TCL also incorporates enhanced bass tuning to add greater depth and presence to everyday listening. While the open-ear design prioritizes comfort and environmental awareness, the tuning aims to maintain a balanced and engaging sound profile suitable for a wide range of content.
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For connectivity, Bluetooth enables wireless playback from smartphones, tablets, and other compatible devices. During calls, dual microphones with ENC (Environmental Noise Cancellation) help reduce background noise so voices remain clearer in busy environments such as cafés, public transit, or crowded streets.
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TCL CrystalClip Clip-on Wireless Earbuds with Crystals by Swarovski
Smart Interaction Powered by AI
Beyond audio playback, the TCL CrystalClip is designed to support communication and everyday productivity through a range of smart features. Touch controls on the earbuds allow users to manage playback, answer calls, and activate additional functions directly from the earbud surface. When paired with compatible TCL smartphones and supported apps, users can also access simultaneous interpretation features, enabling real-time multilingual communication for travel, meetings, or everyday interactions.
CrystalClip also provides quick access to popular voice assistants, including Siri, Google Assistant, and Google Gemini. This allows users to check information, manage schedules, control smart devices, or send messages using voice commands, keeping interactions hands-free while on the move.
All-Day Listening
TCL’s CrystalClip provides up to 36 hours of total battery life and fast charging that delivers hours of playback in just minutes. Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity and dual-device seamless switching further enhance convenience, enabling seamless transitions between smartphones, tablets, and other connected devices.
Black White Smoke Sunset Iridescent Carbon Blue Chilled Lilac Sandstone Lunar Blue Midnight Violet Driftwood Sand Moonlight Grey Diamond 60th Edition
TCL CrystalClip with Crystals by Swarovski
The Bottom Line
TCL has made significant progress in the television market over the past year, highlighted by flagship displays such as the TCL X11L SQD Mini LED TV and expanded manufacturing partnerships that have strengthened its global presence. With the introduction of the CrystalClip line at Mobile World Congress 2026, the company is clearly looking to extend that momentum into the highly competitive wireless earbud category. Although TCL has previously released models such as the MOVEAUDIO S600, Neo, and S180, its presence in personal audio has remained relatively low profile until now.
The CrystalClip series stands out by combining open ear clip-on design, air conduction audio, spatial sound processing, and AI-driven features at a price that undercuts many established competitors. In addition with CrystalClip with Crystals by Swarovski edition, TCL is leaning into the growing overlap between personal audio and wearable style. On the feature side, the earbuds compete with products such as the Sony LinkBuds Clip and Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, both of which offer similar open-ear concepts but at significantly higher prices.
What ultimately makes the CrystalClip unique is the combination of affordable pricing, fashion-forward styling, spatial audio support, and open-ear situational awareness in a lightweight clip-on design. The addition of a low-latency gaming mode broadens the appeal even further for mobile gamers who want wireless convenience without added delay.
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For listeners curious about open-ear earbuds but unwilling to spend premium prices, the CrystalClip may offer an accessible entry point. Commuters, casual listeners, and style-conscious buyers looking for something different from traditional in-ear buds will likely find the concept appealing. Whether TCL can carve out meaningful market share in an already crowded wireless earbud space remains to be seen, but the CrystalClip lineup suggests the company intends to compete on features, design, and aggressive pricing rather than brand legacy alone.
Price & Availability
Availability is expected across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America beginning March 2026.
Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Today’s NYT Strands puzzle has an unusual topic. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.
If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: I’m cheering you on.
Clue words to unlock in-game hints
Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:
These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:
STAN, LOVER, DEVOTEE, FOLLOWER, ENTHUSIAST
Today’s Strands spangram
The completed NYT Strands puzzle for March 6, 2026.
NYT/Screenshot by CNET
Today’s Strands spangram is YOURBIGGESTFAN. To find it, start with the Y that’s three letters down on the far-left vertical row, and wind down, up and over.
It’s one thing to create your own relay-based computer; that’s already impressive enough, but what really makes [DiPDoT]’s design special– at least after this latest video— is swapping the SRAM he had been using for historically-plausible capacitor-based memory.
A relay-based computer is really a 1940s type of design. There are various memory types that would have been available in those days, but suitable CRTs for Williams Tues are hard to come by these days, mercury delay lines have the obvious toxicity issue, and core rope memory requires granny-level threading skills. That leaves mechanical or electromechanical memory like [Konrad Zeus] used in the 30s, or capacitors. he chose to make his memory with capacitors.
It’s pretty obvious when you think about it that you can use a capacitor as memory: charged/discharged lets each capacitor store one bit. Charge is 1, discharged is 0. Of course to read the capacitor it must be discharged (if charged) but most early memory has that same read-means-erase pattern. More annoying is that you can’t overwrite a 1 with a 0– a separate ‘clear’ circuit is needed to empty the capacitor. Since his relay computer was using SRAM, it wasn’t set up to do this clear operation.
He demonstrates an auto-clearing memory circuit on breadboard, using 3 relays and a capacitor, so the existing relay computer architecture doesn’t need to change. Addressing is a bit of a cheat, in terms of 1940s tech, as he’s using modern diodes– though of course, tube diodes or point-contact diodes could conceivably pressed into service if one was playing purist. He’s also using LEDs to avoid the voltage draw and power requirements of incandescent indicator lamps. Call it a hack.
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He demonstrates his circuit on breadboard– first with a 4-bit word, and then scaled up to 16-bit, before going all way to a massive 8-bytes hooked into the backplane of his Altair-esque relay computer. If you watch nothing else, jump fifteen minutes in to have the rare pleasure of watching a program being input via front panel with a complete explanation. If you have a few extra seconds, stay for the satisfyingly clicky run of the loop. The bonus 8-byte program [DiPDoT] runs at the end of the video is pure AMSR, too.
Yeah, it’s not going to solve the rampocalypse, any more than the initial build of this computer helped with GPU prices. That’s not the point. The point is clack clack clack clack clack, and if that doesn’t appeal, we don’t know what to tell you.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem misled Congress on Tuesday about the powers of her controversial top aide Corey Lewandowski, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and four current and former DHS officials.
Lewandowski has an unusual role at DHS, where he is not a paid government employee but is nonetheless acting as a top official, helping Noem run the sprawling agency. For months, members of Congress have asked the agency to detail the scope of his work and authority.
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At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked Noem whether Lewandowski has “a role in approving contracts” at DHS. Noem responded with a flat denial: “No.”
But internal DHS records reviewed by ProPublica contradict Noem’s Senate testimony. The records show Lewandowski personally approved a multimillion-dollar equipment contract at the agency last summer.
That was not a one-off. Lewandowski has approved numerous contracts at DHS and often needs to sign off on large ones before any money goes out the door, the current and former department employees said.
Last year, Noem imposed a new policy that consolidated her and her top aides’ power over all spending at DHS, requiring that she personally review and approve all contracts above $100,000. Before the contracts reach Noem, they must be approved by a series of political appointees, who each sign or initial a checklist sometimes referred to internally as a routing sheet. Typically, the last name on the checklist before Noem’s is Lewandowski’s, the DHS officials said.
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Under federal law, it is a crime to “knowingly and willfully” make a false statement to Congress. But in practice, it is rarely prosecuted.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson reiterated Noem’s claim. “Mr. Lewandowski does NOT play a role in approving contracts,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Lewandowski does not receive a salary or any federal government benefits. He volunteers his time to serve the American people.” Lewandowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Several news outlets, including Politico, have previously reported on aspects of Lewandowski’s involvement in contracting at DHS.
There have been widespread reports of delays caused by the new contract approval process at the agency, which has responsibilities spanning from immigration enforcement to disaster relief to airport security. DHS has asserted that the review process saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
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A similar sign-off process exists for other policy decisions at DHS. One of the checklists, about rolling back protections for Haitians in the U.S., emerged in litigation last year. It featured the signatures of several top DHS advisers. Under them was Lewandowski’s signature, and then Noem’s.
An internal Department of Homeland Security policy document from February 2025 shows agency officials, including top aide Corey Lewandowski and Noem — referred to as “S1,” signing off on a policy change. U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Scrim added by ProPublica for clarity.
Lewandowski is what’s known as a “special government employee,” a designation historically used to let experts serve in government for limited periods without having to give up their outside jobs. (At the beginning of the Trump administration, Elon Musk was one, too.) Special government employees have to abide by only some of the same ethics rules as normal officials and are permitted to have sources of outside income.
Lewandowski has declined to disclose whether he is being paid by any outside companies and, if so, who.
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