Modi has inaugurated commercial production at CG Semi’s $870m OSAT plant in Sanand, Gujarat, which will initially package 200 million chips a year and scale to 500 million. It is the third packaging plant to come online under the India Semiconductor Mission, after Micron and Kaynes Semicon.
TL;DR
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated commercial production at CG Semi’s chip assembly and testing plant in Sanand, Gujarat. The facility will initially turn out 200 million chips a year, according to ANI, with plans to scale to 500 million.
The plant is an outsourced semiconductor assembly and test, or OSAT, facility. That covers the packaging and testing end of the chip supply chain rather than fabricating silicon from scratch.
CG Semi is a joint venture between Mumbai-listed CG Power and Industrial Solutions, Japan’s Renesas Electronics, and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics. CG Power holds 92.3% of the venture, which is investing INR 7,600 crore (around $870m) over five years.
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New Delhi is covering as much as half the eligible capital expenditure through a subsidy worth up to $404m under the India Semiconductor Mission. The same programme recently pulled in Intel and 3DGS for a $3.3bn glass-substrate plant in Odisha.
Chips packaged at Sanand will go into cars, scooters, and industrial equipment, with a significant share exported to Japan, the US, and Europe. The plant is expected to create around 5,000 direct and indirect jobs over the next five years, according to local reports.
CG Semi is not India’s first packaging plant to fire up. Micron’s Sanand facility began operations in February and Kaynes Semicon followed in March.
Six semiconductor projects worth a combined $14.7bn have now been approved in Gujarat, including ventures from Tata Electronics and Suchi Semicon. Sanand is emerging as the country’s first chip packaging cluster.
At full ramp, CG Semi has said the site could handle 15 million units a day, a peak annual capacity of roughly 4.7 billion chips. It will produce legacy packages such as QFN and QFP alongside advanced FC BGA and FC CSP formats for automotive, consumer, industrial, and 5G customers.
The launch fits a broader charm offensive. Modi has courted tens of billions in AI infrastructure commitments from Amazon, Google, and Reliance, and India has joined the US-led Pax Silica alliance on chip supply chains.
Governments everywhere are subsidising local chip capacity, from the EU’s flagship fab in Dresden to Washington’s CHIPS Act, in an escalating global race for tech supremacy. India’s bet is on mastering packaging first and fabrication later.
Speaking at the inauguration, Modi called semiconductor growth the next phase of “Make in India” and pledged to build out the entire electronics value chain. Whether Sanand’s packaging lines can anchor that ambition is the question the next few years will answer.
America has spent 250 years telling itself stories about freedom, reinvention, courage, money, violence, and who gets included in the national picture. These films do not all agree with one another, and that is precisely why they belong together. They show the country at its most hopeful, cruel, inventive, delusional, funny, ambitious, and occasionally impossible to defend.
Because nothing says “understanding America” like sitting in the dark for two hours watching cowboys, capitalists, the underdog, and Cold War freakouts.
This isn’t just a list of essential films made in America. It is a lineup of films actually set in the United States that dig into what it means to live, dream, scheme, survive, fail, reinvent yourself, or simply spiral here.
From manifest destiny and racial reckoning to suburban dread, war, ambition, greed, Hollywood fantasy, and the more questionable corners of capitalism, each film captures a different piece of the American experience—for better, though usually for worse.
And before anyone starts clutching their vintage film reels about Citizen Kane or The Wizard of Oz not making the cut, they’ve been on every list since the dawn of time. We know. They’re legendary. But honestly? We’re so over it. Back of the bus, Dorothy!
And let’s get this out of the way too: we’re huge fans of the ‘80s. We’ve watched The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off about 40 times each. But let’s be real—essential? Nah. We love ‘em, but they’re not making this list.
Honorable mentions? Of course. I’m not a monster, although the medication they put me on might speak otherwise. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington gave us the original idealistic meltdown back when filibusters were dramatic instead of just depressing. Ahem…Senator Booker.
The Apartment and Some Like It Hot reminded us that Americans used to flirt with wit and cross-dressing before Elon Musk and X ruined nuance. Jaws made everyone afraid of swimming, boating, or doing anything remotely fun near the ocean—and basically invented summer panic.
Gettysburg is four hours of facial hair and cannonballs for the History channel crowd.
Rocky? It’s the American Dream in sweatpants. Stallone turned a mumbling meatpacking palooka into a national icon who not only punched out Mr. T, but also singlehandedly ended the Cold War by outlasting a 6’6″ steroid-fueled Soviet science experiment. #Imustbreakyou
Oh, and Bonnie and Clyde: America’s original sexy criminals, armed with great outfits, worse ideas, and enough slow-motion bloodshed to earn permanent residency in cinematic legend.
Then there’s The Philadelphia Story, where the problems of the American rich are so charmingly presented that you almost forget you’re rooting for people who have never done laundry, faced a utility bill, or checked their narcissism at the front foyer.
These 25 essential American films span silent comedy, noir, Westerns, musicals, war dramas, political satire, horror, and the darker corners of the American dream. Each is set in the United States and offers something to say about the country’s history, ambition, class divides, race, violence, celebrity, capitalism, and enduring talent for turning disaster into spectacle.
They are also films worth owning. A proper 4K UHD or Blu ray release preserves the cinematography, sound, and detail that streaming services too often compress into submission. Our friends at The Criterion Collection would agree with that point rather strongly.
Directed by Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
Why it’s essential: King Kong is a giant metaphor for exploitation, ambition, spectacle, and New York’s enduring habit of turning everything into a show until it comes crashing down, literally.
Released during the Great Depression, the film turns Manhattan into both a dream factory and a place of brutal decline, where desperate people chase money, fame, and survival beneath skyscrapers that suddenly feel less permanent than advertised. Kong is exploited, commodified, paraded before a paying audience, and then blamed when the whole arrangement goes predictably sideways. America has repeated that business model with impressive consistency.
It also helped create the modern giant monster movie, proving that visual effects, scale, terror, and genuine pathos could share the same screen. The Empire State Building finale remains one of cinema’s great images, and somehow still feels more honest about New York than half the city’s luxury condo brochures.
Where to buy: $19.99 at Amazon
Directed by Victor Fleming
Why it’s essential: Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind remains one of Hollywood’s grandest and most technically impressive spectacles, even as it asks the audience to mourn a version of the Old South built on selective memory, wealth, and the erasure of slavery’s brutality.
That contradiction is precisely why it still matters. The film is beautiful, romantic, deeply problematic, and impossible to separate from America’s long habit of turning history into pageantry when the truth gets uncomfortable.
It also lands differently now, as Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Lexington, Raleigh, Richmond, and Charlotte reshape the economic and cultural map of the South. Money, companies, and people are moving into a region that is no longer content to play supporting character to New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. But the new South still carries the old one with it, including the mythology, inequality, ambition, and unresolved history that Gone With the Wind dresses up in curtains and calls tradition.
Where to buy: $23.74 at Amazon
Directed by John Ford
Why it’s essential: John Ford’s Stagecoach did not invent the Western, but it gave the genre a working engine. Cowboys, redemption, class anxiety, danger, and a bumpy ride through Monument Valley all arrive in one compact, thrilling package. It also made John Wayne a star and showed Hollywood that the frontier could hold an entire country’s worth of arguments.
The film is still great fun, but its larger importance is how much it helped define the American West on screen. The genre may have largely wandered away from movie theaters, but television has kept the frontier myth on life support with Taylor Sheridan’s endless range of ranches, oil fields, lawmen, and wounded men staring at mountains. Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, The Madison, Marshals, and Landman all work different corners of the same territory.
Ford’s version is cleaner, faster, and more mythic than most of what followed. But the basic machinery remains the same: land, money, violence, class, family, and people trying to outrun the country they helped build.
Where to buy: $39.99 at Amazon
Directed by William Wyler
Why it’s essential: William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives is a quietly devastating film about three World War II veterans trying to return to jobs, marriages, families, and a country eager to celebrate them without fully understanding what they have brought home.
Fredric March and Dana Andrews are extraordinary, but Harold Russell gives the film its most unforgettable performance. A real World War II veteran who lost both hands during the war, Russell plays Homer Parrish with a directness and vulnerability that no amount of studio polish could fake. His performance was so powerful that the Academy gave him both an honorary Oscar for bringing hope and courage to fellow veterans and the competitive Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
The film is compassionate without becoming sentimental and honest without turning suffering into spectacle. America loves a victory parade. This film asks what happens after the marching band goes home.
Where to buy: $21.99 at Amazon
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Why it’s essential: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is not merely a gangster film. It is an American family saga about power, immigration, loyalty, capitalism, and the ugly price of treating love as another business arrangement.
Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton give the film its soul, but Gordon Willis gives it its shadows. Every darkened room, amber glow, and half concealed face makes the Corleone world feel both grand and suffocating.
It remains essential because it understands that the American dream can look remarkably noble from across the room, right up until someone closes the door and starts taking meetings. Do not settle for streaming. This one deserves a 4K UHD disc with Dolby Vision and Atmos, preferably watched with the lights down and nobody asking why Michael seems so quiet.
Where to buy: $25.99 at Amazon
Directed by Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
Why it’s essential: Buster Keaton’s The General is one of the great silent comedies and one of the most astonishing action films ever made. Keaton turns a Civil War train chase into a machine of perfect timing, impossible stunts, collapsing bridges, and physical comedy so precise that most modern blockbuster directors should be required to watch it before being allowed near a green screen.
Its Confederate point of view deserves context, particularly because the film turns a brutal chapter of American history into an adventure built around loyalty, romance, and locomotives. But as filmmaking, it remains extraordinary. Keaton does not need dialogue to sell danger, heartbreak, or a man trying to save his train, his girl, and whatever remains of his dignity.
Find the best restoration you can, preferably with a strong musical score. The film moves like it was made yesterday, which is more than can be said for most action movies with a budget large enough to purchase a small country.
Where to buy: $16.31 at Amazon
Directed by Spike Lee
Why it’s essential: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is a blistering, funny, frighteningly alive portrait of race, community, policing, pride, and the pressure that builds when nobody feels heard. It does not offer a tidy lesson or a safe villain. It shows a neighborhood under a brutal summer heat, with every insult, misunderstanding, and act of disrespect adding another degree.
Along with films like Juice and Boyz n the Hood, it forced audiences to look at inner city America without the usual suburban filter or a reassuring studio ending. These were stories many people preferred not to acknowledge because they made poverty, anger, police violence, and racial tension impossible to treat as somebody else’s problem.
A great deal has changed since 1989. Black actors and actresses now lead blockbuster franchises, prestige films, major television series, and command serious power in Hollywood. But progress does not hand anyone a lifetime exemption from prejudice. Some of the people who made careers exposing America’s uglier instincts have later shown blind spots of their own, which should raise an eyebrow or two. Empathy is not supposed to stop at the edge of your own group.
That is part of why Do the Right Thing endures. It is not a sermon. It is a warning about what happens when people stop seeing one another as human beings and start treating every disagreement as a reason to burn the whole block down.
Where to buy: $39.95 at Amazon
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Why it’s essential: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho did not merely change horror cinema. It taught audiences that the rules could vanish halfway through the film, that a motel shower was no longer a safe place, and that checking into a roadside motel was perhaps not the carefree adventure it once appeared to be.
Anthony Perkins makes Norman Bates one of cinema’s most unsettling characters because he is so polite, awkward, and quietly broken. Janet Leigh does remarkable work before Hitchcock pulls the rug out from under everyone watching. The film remains a tightly constructed exercise in dread, black humor, repression, and terrible decisions, with its stark black and white photography looking especially vicious in 4K.
Where to buy: $13.99 at Amazon
Directed by Billy Wilder
Why it’s essential: Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is a dark, funny, and deeply unsettling autopsy of old Hollywood, fame, vanity, and what happens when an industry decides you are no longer useful but forgets to tell you.
Gloria Swanson is magnificent as Norma Desmond, a silent era star living inside a mansion sized for an empire and a fantasy sized for an entire studio lot. William Holden is no innocent either, which is part of the fun. The film understands that Hollywood will build you a palace, turn you into a legend, and then leave you there with the lights off.
It remains one of the great films about celebrity and self invention, with enough shadows, bitterness, and quotable cruelty to make most modern Hollywood satire look like a polite memo from Human Resources.
Where to buy: $15.99 at Amazon
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Why it’s essential: Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove is a razor sharp Cold War satire about nuclear politics, military incompetence, sexual panic, and the terrifying possibility that the people with the biggest buttons are also the least qualified to touch them.
Peter Sellers is magnificent in multiple roles, but he is hardly carrying the lunatic asylum alone. George C. Scott turns General Buck Turgidson into a masterpiece of red faced military hysteria, Sterling Hayden makes precious bodily fluids sound like a matter of national survival, and Slim Pickens rides into history with one of the most indelible endings in American cinema.
The film remains funny because Kubrick understood that power often looks ridiculous right before it becomes catastrophic. Sellers is at his absolute best, with The Party running a close second, although that film is considerably less likely to end civilization.
Where to buy: $26.99 at Amazon
Directed by Miloš Forman
Why it’s essential: Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a furious, funny, and deeply uncomfortable battle between individuality and institutional power. Jack Nicholson’s Randle McMurphy arrives ready to charm, provoke, and generally make everyone’s life more difficult, then discovers that Nurse Ratched and the system behind her have no intention of playing fair.
The film remains a counterculture landmark because it understands how easily rules, routines, and bureaucracy can become tools for crushing people who do not fit neatly into the approved box. It is America in a padded room, with worse lighting and a much stricter dress code.
Where to buy: $38.63 at Amazon
Directed by John Ford
Why it’s essential: John Ford’s The Searchers is one of the great American Westerns, but it is far too unsettled and angry to be mistaken for simple frontier nostalgia. John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards moves through Monument Valley like a man possessed, carrying grief, racism, violence, and a very personal version of manifest destiny wherever he goes.
The landscapes are magnificent, the compositions remain staggering, and the film’s influence on generations of directors is impossible to miss. But its real power comes from the way it questions the mythology it helped create. The Searchersunderstands that the American West was built on beauty, brutality, and people who rarely came home unchanged.
Where to buy: $9.99 at Amazon
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Why it’s essential: Alfred Hitchcock turns a single apartment, a courtyard, and one bored man with a broken leg into a masterclass in suspense, voyeurism, loneliness, and the dangerous things that happen when curiosity stops minding its own business.
James Stewart spends the film watching his neighbors as though cable television has not yet been invented, while Grace Kelly arrives looking so impossibly elegant that even murder seems briefly beside the point. Rear Window is tense, witty, and endlessly rewatchable, with Hitchcock using every glance, window frame, and suspicious late night trip across the courtyard to remind us that America has always enjoyed watching other people’s lives a little too much.
Where to buy: $12.99 at Amazon
Directed by Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen
Why it’s essential: Singin’ in the Rain is Hollywood looking back at its own panic during the shift from silent films to sound and somehow turning professional terror into one of the most joyful musicals ever made.
Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen give the film its impossible energy, but the real trick is how sharp it remains about vanity, image, talent, and an industry terrified that the next technological change might leave half its stars unemployed. It is funny, romantic, technically dazzling, and still one of the best reminders that Hollywood has always been in the business of reinventing itself before the audience notices the scaffolding.
Where to buy: $24.25 at Amazon
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Why it’s essential: Sidney Lumet’s Network is a savage, funny, and increasingly uncomfortable portrait of television, corporate power, public outrage, and the moment entertainment decides it no longer needs to pretend it serves the public.
Paddy Chayefsky’s script saw the coming circus with frightening clarity, while Peter Finch turns Howard Beale into more than a man having a breakdown on television. He becomes a product, a ratings weapon, and eventually a warning label nobody bothers to read. The fact that it now feels less like satire and more like a staff meeting is not especially reassuring.
Where to buy: $49.95 at Amazon
Directed by Billy Wilder
Why it’s essential: Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity is the defining film noir, a perfect storm of lust, greed, bad judgment, and people making catastrophic decisions in rooms with very poor lighting.
Barbara Stanwyck is all sharp edges and ankle bracelets as Phyllis Dietrichson, while Fred MacMurray spends the film discovering that murder for profit sounds far more efficient before you actually try it. It is stylish, poisonous, and darkly funny, with every shadow suggesting that someone is about to make things much worse.
Where to buy: $49.95 at Amazon
Directed by D.W. Griffith
Why it’s essential: D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation helped establish the language of feature filmmaking through its scale, editing, camera movement, and narrative ambition. Its influence on Hollywood is undeniable.
So is its racism. The film glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, distorts Reconstruction, and turns white supremacy into spectacle. It belongs in any serious discussion of American film history, but not as a casual recommendation or a nostalgic monument. Watch it with context, criticism, and a clear understanding of the damage it helped normalize.
Where to buy: $39.48 at Amazon
Directed by D.W. Griffith
Why it’s essential: D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance is a technical and structural landmark, interweaving four stories across different eras to examine persecution, violence, religious extremism, and the human habit of treating cruelty as a civic duty.
Its enormous sets, restless editing, and ambitious crosscutting helped expand what feature filmmaking could attempt in 1916. But it cannot be separated from the racist legacy of The Birth of a Nation, which makes this less a straightforward celebration than a complicated historical artifact. The achievement is real. So is the stain.
Where to buy: $39.48 at Amazon
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Why it’s essential: Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve remains one of the sharpest and funniest dissections of ambition, celebrity, aging, and professional jealousy ever put on film. Bette Davis is magnificent as Margo Channing, a Broadway star watching a younger woman inch closer to her spotlight with a smile sharp enough to draw blood.
The film understands that American success often comes with a waiting room full of people hoping you will lose your grip on it. It is glamorous, vicious, wildly quotable, and still has one of the greatest warnings in movie history: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Where to buy: $39.95 at Amazon
Directed by Orson Welles
Why it’s essential: Orson Welles’ follow up to Citizen Kane was famously mauled by the studio, with a large portion of his original cut lost to history. And somehow, The Magnificent Ambersons still remains one of the most beautiful and quietly devastating films ever made about old money, family decline, and America’s appetite for progress even when it runs over everyone in its path.
The Ambersons believe their wealth and social standing will protect them forever. Then modern life arrives, the automobiles get louder, and the family discovers that history has no particular interest in preserving anyone’s drawing room. It is a sad, elegant reminder that American dynasties rarely disappear gracefully.
Where to buy: $39.95 at Amazon
Directed by Robert Mulligan
Why it’s essential: Robert Mulligan’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel remains one of Hollywood’s clearest statements about moral courage, racial injustice, and the obligation to do the right thing when the room would prefer you kept quiet.
Gregory Peck gives Atticus Finch the decency, restraint, and moral authority that made the character an American ideal for generations. The film does not solve the racism at its center, nor should it, but it understands that justice is often less about winning than refusing to look away when everyone else has decided not to see.
Where to buy: $29.96 at Amazon
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Why it’s essential: Paul Thomas Anderson turns the American dream into an oil soaked fever dream about ambition, faith, greed, and the kind of loneliness that can only be cured by owning everything in sight.
Daniel Day Lewis is magnificent as Daniel Plainview, a man who sees every human relationship as either leverage, competition, or an inconvenience standing between him and another barrel of crude. There Will Be Blood is a modern American epic that understands capitalism as both a religion and a contact sport.
And for all of its brutality, the film does not argue that capitalism is a failed system. It argues that it works remarkably well, right up until the people most gifted at winning it decide everyone else is collateral damage. The Mayor of New York City may have some notes, but the rest of us still need to live in the world as it is.
Where to buy: $9.99 at Amazon
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Why it’s essential: John Frankenheimer turns Cold War anxiety into a nightmare of political manipulation, conditioned violence, personal trauma, and naked ambition. The Manchurian Candidate is not just a thriller about enemies abroad. It is about what happens when power treats people as tools and patriotism becomes something to exploit.
Its influence on political thrillers is enormous, but its real strength is how controlled and unsettling it remains. Frank Sinatra is excellent, Angela Lansbury is terrifying, and the film understands that the most dangerous people in America are often already in the room.
Where to buy: $59.95 at Amazon
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Why it’s essential: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci deliver the most quotable, cocaine fueled crash course in climbing the capitalist ladder, assuming that ladder is built from stolen goods, threats, and the occasional meat slicer.
Scorsese does not merely romanticize mob life. He seduces you with the clothes, money, music, and manic velocity of it all, then reminds you that the bill eventually comes due. Usually at 3 a.m. in a parking lot, or just before someone gets fed to the pizza oven.
Where to buy: $15.95 at Amazon
Directed by Frank Capra
Why it’s essential: A heartwarming classic that blends optimism, personal sacrifice, and the power of community in a way that resonates with audiences year after year. It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t just a Christmas movie—it’s a timeless exploration of what truly matters in life. James Stewart’s portrayal of George Bailey, a man questioning his purpose, has become emblematic of the everyman’s struggle. A cinematic triumph that proves sometimes the most wonderful thing you can be is simply human.
Where to buy: $25.99 at Amazon
Not sure where to begin? Start here.
For the American dream gone rancid: There Will Be Blood
For race, community, and a country at the boiling point: Do the Right Thing
For media, politics, and public insanity: Network
For war and the complicated business of coming home: The Best Years of Our Lives
For the American West and the myths we still cannot quit: The Searchers
Subsea cables. Ukrainian power stations. Russian oil refineries. Even airports, water-desalination plants and Amazon data centers.
They’ve all become targets in wartime, notes the Wall Street Journal, and around the world now arguments “are already brewing between companies and governments over new regulations and potential costs.”
In Germany, powerful associations representing private companies and municipal utilities have pushed back against new standards for physical protection, warning they could spell financial ruin. New Zealand’s government has faced resistance from industry groups over a proposal to fine critical-infrastructure companies and their directors for cybersecurity breaches… A sign of how lines are blurring: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 32 countries last year agreed that as part of a pact to spend 5% of economic output on defense and security, 1.5% would go to military-adjacent needs including protecting critical infrastructure and networks. Spending targets range from cybersecurity and industrial capacity to railroads, bridges and ports needed for military logistics… “We need a wide concept of defense — defense is no longer just military,” said Italian Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, NATO’s top military adviser.
Adding to the complexity, companies now need to protect the data networks that serve as gateways to critical infrastructure. Hackers increasingly target not just computer files to steal information but also systems managing vital functions like building access and factory control, remotely causing physical damage or enabling espionage. U.S. authorities in April warned that Iranian hackers were trying to disrupt American drinking-water systems by targeting computer equipment that connects hardware with software. A year earlier, suspected Russian hackers remotely manipulated valves on a Norwegian hydroelectric dam…
Another challenge will be parsing jurisdictions and liability for assets that cross international waters or are damaged in combat — such as subsea data cables or energy pipelines. Turf battles between law enforcement and militaries are already complicating efforts… “The private owner can invest in redundancy, monitoring, and repair capacity, but only governments and militaries can really deter, patrol, attribute, or respond to hostile state activity,” said Marc Glasser, who worked on cybersecurity and infrastructure security for three decades at the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security…. Companies say they need greater clarity from governments on what protections they will provide and subsidies to help them defend privately owned assets that provide a public good. Most governments don’t provide incentives for companies to invest more than the minimum legal resilience requirements.
The article notes that in May the chief executive of California’s Port of Long Beach “launched a cyber-defense operations center to thwart tens of thousands of cyberattacks daily, which jeopardize computer systems and all equipment connected to them.”
The article also points out that the EU adopted new regulations requiring countries to reduce vulnerabilities, and new laws proposed in the U.K. now “seek to increase penalties for subsea sabotage, updating codes that date to when telegraph cables were first laid in the 19th century.”
Chinese aerospace startup Z-Trak Space is exploring an unusual launch system using carbon dioxide (CO₂) commonly associated with fizzy drinks rather than rocket exhaust.
The proposal centres on supercritical CO₂, a state achieved when the gas remains above specific temperature and pressure thresholds simultaneously.
Developers believe the approach could lower infrastructure requirements while supporting faster launch schedules for China’s expanding commercial space sector.
The technology ejects rockets using rapidly expanding high-pressure gas before igniting engines only after reaching a predetermined altitude overhead.
That sequence differs sharply from conventional hot launches where engines ignite directly on launch pads before the vehicle begins climbing skyward.
Because combustion occurs later in flight, scorching exhaust gases never strike the launch platform or surrounding support infrastructure below.
Traditional launch facilities require extensive protection systems because exhaust streams exceeding 3,000°C can damage structures rapidly during operations.
Launch towers and deep flame trenches therefore require substantial repairs and maintenance after missions involving repeated exposure to extreme temperatures.
According to the company, those requirements increase costs and slow launch frequencies whenever operators pursue swift response commercial missions.
“In commercial space launch scenarios requiring high frequency and rapid response, this incurs high time and financial costs, directly affecting launch pacing and response speed,” the company said.
Z-Trak Space believes eliminating those burdens could increase launch pacing while reducing dependence upon permanent launch infrastructure considerably over time.
The initiative combines efforts from Hunan based Zhiyu Aerospace Technology and Chiyang Space Power Technology Company through a recent collaboration agreement.
Z-Trak Space founder Zhang Zihan, who studied aerospace engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, described the concept as potentially transformative.
Zhang said the method would “fundamentally change the model for small liquid-fuel launch vehicles” if implemented successfully at commercial scale.
The company also argued that supercritical CO₂ launches could reduce fuel use during lower altitude portions of flight operations.
Because supercritical CO₂ is non-toxic, developers also claim launches would avoid generating harmful emissions near ground facilities locally.
Z-Trak described the system as offering “high safety, low costs, clean environmental performance and low ablation” during launch procedures.
China’s commercial space industry recorded 50 launches during the previous year, representing more than half of national missions completed overall.
Whether CO₂ launches become commercially practical remains uncertain, although the proposal reflects experimentation occurring throughout China’s rapidly changing space industry.
Via SCMP
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To get the most out of an AI chatbot these days, you have to pay up. The free tiers of the most popular chatbot options are decent, but those looking to take advantage of all the features will be forced to pay a premium. A couple of years ago, the idea of actually paying for AI seemed absurd, but that’s not the case now.
A recent CNET survey revealed that US adults pay an average of $111 on subscriptions per month and lose up to $252 annually on unused subscriptions annually, with millennials and Gen Z wasting the most. The AI chatbot you once hoped to get more out of — but may no longer use — could be one of them.
If you’re looking to pay for an AI chatbot, you have options, and not all subscriptions are equal. Some just give you higher access to better models, where others offer a lot more. Paying for AI also doesn’t guarantee an ad-free experience. Below, we’ll break down what you actually get when you pay up for some of the most popular chatbots.
Here’s a price breakdown of the most popular chatbots.
Chatbot premium pricing
Chatbot
Tier
Monthly | annual price
ChatGPT
Go
$8 | No annual pricing
ChatGPT
Plus
$20 | No annual pricing
ChatGPT
Pro
$100 | No annual pricing
ChatGPT
Pro
$200 | No annual pricing
Gemini
Plus
$8 | $80 per year
Gemini
AI Pro
$20 | $200 per year
Gemini
AI Ultra
$100 | No annual pricing
Gemini
AI Ultra
$200 | No annual pricing
Claude
Pro
$20 | $200 per year
Claude
Max
$100-$200 | No annual pricing
Perplexity
Pro
$20 | $200 per year
Perplexity
Max
$200 | $2,000 per year
Copilot
Personal
$10 | $100 per year
Copilot
Family
$13 | $130 per year
Copilot
Premium
$20 | $200 per year
Grok
SuperGrok
$30 | $300 per year
Grok
SuperGrok Heavy
$300 | $3,000 per year
ChatGPT’s premium pricing is straightforward and is easy to understand what its features and limitation are.
OpenAI’s first paid tier, Go, is its newest plan. For only $8 a month, you’ll get higher limits and more access across the board. That said, if you’re looking to avoid ChatGPT’s ads, you won’t be able to do so with this plan and will need to bump up to the next tier to go ad-free.
The second premium plan is ChatGPT Plus, which opens the doors to extended GPT-5.5 access and higher limits on messaging, uploads, data analysis and image generation. You’ll also get advanced voice mode with video and screensharing and the ChatGPT agent.
If you want more, you can opt for one of ChatGPT’s Pro plans, which cost $100 or $200 a month. The $100 plan will net you 5x usage, and the $200 plan gives you 20x more usage. The Pro plans will provide Pro reasoning with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro, Maximum Codex tasks, and unlimited file uploads and image generation. The plans also give users maximum memory, deep research and agent mode. Those on the Pro plans will also get first dibs on trying out new features for ChatGPT.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Google’s Gemini may be the most accessible chatbot of them all, and its premium pricing tiers fall in line with the competition.
With Gemini, Google is integrated at the heart of the chatbot experience, making it a great option for Google users.
Despite the abundance of features in the Google AI Pro plan, Gemini’s free tier offers plenty for most people. Like ChatGPT, Google also introduced a $8 plan. The Plus plan offers 200GB of storage and more access to the latest Gemini models. Once you start shelling out some cash for Google’s AI plans, higher usage access and more features follow.
Google’s AI Pro offers more features across the board than the free and Plus version, unlocking Gemini in Google Workspace apps, 1,000 credits for the Flow filmmaking tool and more advanced models in Search’s AI Mode. It doesn’t stop at Gemini, though. You’ll also get 5TB of storage for Google Photos, Drive and Gmail, along with a YouTube Premium Lite plan. This plan also includes a 10% credit on purchases from the Google Store.
During Google I/O 2026, the AI subscriptions got shaken up once more. There are now two AI Ultra plans that unlock different features and higher usage limits.
The newest plan is AI Ultra ($100), offering 5x higher usage limits compared to the AI Pro Plan. The $100 option gives access to Gemini 3.5 Flash, priority access to Google Antigravity and a YouTube Premium Individual plan. Google says this plan was specifically tailored for developers, technical leads, knowledge workers and advanced creators.
The highest tier of Google’s AI subscriptions is the now-$200 plan, down $50 from when it was introduced. This plan offers 20x higher usage limits compared to the $100 plan.
Both AI Ultra plans offer access to Gemini Spark, Google’s 24/7 agent that can act on your behalf and perform tasks for you. It can tap into other Google products and get things done for you in the background — as long as you’re willing to give it even more of your data.
Lastly, the $200 AI Ultra plan gives subscribers access to Project Genie, an advanced generative AI model that can build 3D worlds for just about anything you want.
Microsoft’s Copilot has the advantage of being preinstalled on a ton of Windows computers, making it incredibly accessible (like Gemini on Android). Although it’s based on ChatGPT models with Microsoft Graph, Copilot feels different enough to be its own thing.
To my surprise, Copilot produced the most interesting images when I compared it to the other chatbots. Sometimes Gemini and ChatGPT generated similar images, but Copilot nearly always produced something more distinct. Even if I don’t do it all that often, I still consider it a go-to feature.
Much like Google, Copilot integrates well with Microsoft 365 apps, though some of its features are locked behind Microsoft 365 for Business, like its NotebookLM competitor, Copilot Notebooks. Without jumping into 365 for business, Copilot offers three plans that give you access to higher limits and allow you to use it in select Microsoft 365 apps. The upgraded plans will also give you access to Deep research models and Actions, which allow Copilot to fill out forms for you or assist in shopping.
Higher tiers of Perplexity’s premium bundles in its AI Comet browser
Perplexity is our favorite chatbot for research, but the free version limits you to three Pro searches and Research uses per day. That might be fine for casual users, but those really trying to tap into Perplexity’s capabilities will want a bit more of everything, and you’ll need to pony up $20 a month to really get going with it.
Perplexity Pro will give you unlimited Pro Searches and unlimited file uploads, and more file uploads per Space. It will also unlock image generation and access to more advanced models than the standard “best” model in the free version.
Perplexity also has Comet, its limited-access web browser with AI baked right in. Pro and Max subscribers receive Comet Plus included in their subscription.
Premium Claude plans have vague limitations.
The paid version of Anthropic’s Claude is in line with the competition, costing $20 a month, and it boasts a 5x boost in usage per session versus the free version during peak hours, though limits are still in place. Basically, if you send basic inquiries of up to 200 English sentences, each roughly 15 to 20 words, you’ll be able to send about 45 messages every 5 hours with Claude Pro.
Despite taking the top spot on our best chatbot list, Anthropic’s pricing page for Claude’s Pro and Max plans feels a bit dry compared to others on the list. The $20 Pro plan’s first feature with “more usage” is immediately followed by an asterisk that references the limits in place for the Pro plans. Such limits are to be expected for anything that’s not the top plan, but they seem to depend on how you’re using Claude. In addition to more usage, the Pro plan will unlock Claude Code, unlimited Projects, access to Research mode and more Models.
The Max plan offers even more usage than the Pro plan, increases the output limits on all tasks, provides priority access during peak traffic times and offers early access to new Claude features. This bump is likely helpful for the Claude power users out there and costs $100 per person per month.
One note on usage here: Anthropic was just sued for being intentionally misleading about how much usage its users actually get. The lawsuit filed in June alleges that the usage cap for its more advanced models is significantly less than advertised. It might be something to consider before shelling out $100 or $200 for its most expensive plans.
Grok is the most expensive chatbot of the lot.
Grok’s premium tiers are the most expensive for personal use, whether on a monthly or annual basis. The first premium tier, SuperGrok, will increase access to both Grok 3 and 4, extend token limits to 128,000, give you priority voice access, and include the Imagine image model. It costs $30 a month, or $300 for a year. This tier also opens access to Ani and Valentine AI companions.
The next tier up is SuperGrok Heavy, and is mostly “more” of what you get from SuperGrok for $300 a month or $3,000 per year. This tier will give you preview access to Grok 4 Heavy, extend access to Grok 4, and provide unlimited access to Grok 3. SuperGrok Heavy has a higher token count and early access to new features.
If you’re interested in trying Grok, you might be able to get it at a discount. At the time of this writing, both SuperGrok and SuperGrok Heavy are at a 67% discount for the first three months. This makes SuperGrok $9.90 a month for three months, and SuperGrok Heavy $99. If you don’t mind spending at least some cash and want to see if Grok is worth it to you, the discounted price is definitely a good time to consider it.
Looking at the ingredient labels on foods lining supermarket shelves, it’s common to see names such as “potassium sorbate,” “citric acid,” and “L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C).” These substances are food additives used to prevent spoilage and preserve quality, and they are widely incorporated into industrially produced processed foods. According to Open Food Facts, the world’s largest open food database, more than 20 percent of the processed foods and beverages in its database contain at least one preservative.
Against this backdrop, a research team led by scientists at Sorbonne Paris Nord University and Université Paris Cité analyzed data from the large-scale NutriNet-Santé cohort study, which followed 112,395 participants for a median of 7.9 years, to investigate the relationship between dietary preservative intake and the risk of developing hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
“Experimental studies suggest that some preservative food additives may be harmful to cardiovascular health, but we have not had enough evidence on the impact of these ingredients in humans,” said Anaïs Hasenböhler, the doctoral researcher who led the study, in a press release. “As far as we know, this is the first study of its kind to investigate the links between a wide range of preservatives and cardiovascular health.”
The researchers divided preservatives into two broad categories. The first consisted of non-antioxidant preservatives, such as sorbates, nitrites, and sulfites, which inhibit the growth of mold and bacteria. The second consisted of antioxidant preservatives, including ascorbic acid, citric acid, and erythorbates, which prevent oxidation and discoloration in foods. According to the researchers, nearly every participant (99.5 percent) consumed at least one preservative during the first two years of the study.
The analysis found that participants with the highest intake of non-antioxidant preservatives had a 29 percent higher risk of developing hypertension than those with the lowest intake. They also had a 16 percent higher risk of overall cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke, and angina. Participants with the highest intake of antioxidant preservatives likewise showed a 22 percent higher risk of hypertension.
The researchers also examined the 17 most commonly consumed preservatives individually. Of these, eight were associated with an increased risk of hypertension: potassium sorbate (E202), potassium metabisulfite (E224), sodium nitrite (E250), ascorbic acid (E300), sodium ascorbate (E301), sodium erythorbate (E316), citric acid (E330), and rosemary extract (E392). Among these, ascorbic acid was also associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
During the follow-up period, researchers recorded 5,544 cases of hypertension and 2,450 cases of cardiovascular disease, including 1,142 cerebrovascular events and 1,308 cases of coronary artery disease. The study also found that approximately 16 percent of the association between non-antioxidant preservatives and cardiovascular disease was mediated indirectly through hypertension. In other words, the findings suggest that preservatives may contribute to hypertension, which in turn may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
The researchers emphasize that these findings come from an observational study and do not establish a causal relationship between food preservatives and hypertension or cardiovascular disease. The study also has important limitations. Women accounted for 78.7 percent of participants, and the cohort included a relatively high proportion of highly educated individuals, meaning it does not perfectly represent the general population.
Even so, the statistical models accounted for a wide range of potential confounding factors, and the results remained consistent across multiple sensitivity analyses.
“These results suggest we need a reevaluation of the risks and benefits of these food additives by the authorities in charge, such as the EFSA in Europe and the FDA in the USA, for better consumer protection,” said Mathilde Touvier, research director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, in a press release. “In the meantime, these findings support existing recommendations to favor nonprocessed and minimally processed foods, and avoid unnecessary additives.”
The possibility that preservatives long regarded as safe could affect cardiovascular health raises important questions about current regulatory approaches. For additives that are consumed continuously through multiple foods without numerical limits on their use, the findings suggest it may be time to reopen the debate over whether existing regulations are adequate.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese.
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.
Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google’s “help me visualize” AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III’s document access request.
The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point, Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over beers?”), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google commercial in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one shies away from any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eye has the uncanny glow of AI-generated video.
While viewer comments on YouTube and Instagram appear to be mostly positive, you may not be surprised to learn that the response on Bluesky has been far more critical. Posters declared the commercial “cringey” and “stunningly tone deaf,” and the AI angle was the biggest target — even as many users, including historian Angus Johnston, noted that it’s “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”
“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it’s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,” Johnston said.
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Although there’s probably no good reason to want to run image editing software from 1996 other than for nostalgia’s sake, if you ever wanted to run the GIMP version 0.54 from back when Windows 98 was still called Windows 97, you can do so now from the comfort of a modern-day Linux desktop. What enables this is a Flatpak version of a beta release, assembled by [balooii] for everyone’s enjoyment.
It wasn’t a simple matter of compiling the old software’s code and packaging it up, with the repository for the project containing a series of patches that were required to make this possible. Also of note is that this is the first version of GIMP with full surviving source code. Back then, GIMP used the Motif widget toolkit. Later on, it switched to the GIMP Toolkit (GTK).
Bundled with this Flatpak release are a lot of plugins and tutorials that were created at the time, making it a veritable time capsule of a more innocent era. As noted by [balooii], this version of GIMP was very much Beta software, with all of the UI quirks you’d expect. It also features the multiple unconnected windows (not MDI) approach to its UI – dropped in more recent GIMP releases — that has enraged proponents of the single window approach, as used by all commercial competitors, including Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.
Imagine if you could bring 250 people together in a massive room and have them discuss and debate an important issue, arguing the points and counterpoints, and converging on answers that accurately reflect their collective knowledge, wisdom, values, and sensibilities.
Now imagine that you convened this debate on America’s 250th birthday and asked 250 randomly selected Americans to come up with the top three innovations that America has contributed to the world over the last 250 years. What would they come up with?
I know – this all sounds impossible.
After all, you can’t get more than a dozen people to have a productive conversation on anything. At large scale, nobody would get enough airtime to express their views or respond to others. This is why typical business meetings or focus groups never have more than 8 to 10 people. Thoughtful real-time conversations just don’t scale.
To solve this, a new category of AI technology called “hyper-communication” is greatly expanding the size, scope, and efficiency of large-scale deliberations. It uses specialized AI agents to connect groups in real-time, allowing people to discuss and debate issues at any scale. The goal is to enable hundreds or even thousands of participant to hold thoughtful discussions where they can express their views and argue the merits of any issue.
I first wrote about this emerging technology in VentureBeat two years ago in an article about “Collective Superintelligence.” In that piece, I explain how large human groups can be hyper-connected by AI agents in ways that greatly amplify the group’s collective intelligence. You can check out the science behind hyper-communication in that prior VentureBeat piece. Here I am focusing on the debate among 250 Americans on America’s birthday.
To do this, I asked the team at Unanimous AI to field a randomly selected group of at least 250 Americans (with a broad distribution from every region in the country and diverse mix of political and social demographics) and invite them to a twenty-minute online debate inside a hyper-communication platform called Thinkscape that enables massively scalable discussion by text, voice, or video.
Once connected, we asked the group to come up with the top three contributions that America has made to the world over the last 250 years – not a survey of opinions, but deliberation of ideas, arguments, evidence, and reasoning. The group converged on a set of top answers that surprised me – but on reflection, they were sensible and well-reasoned.
Before getting into the answers, let me show you what the debate looks like behind the scenes. There were 277 people, each of them debating the issues with four or five other people in parallel discussion spaces. The magic is the swarm of AI agents that connect all the small groups together into a single real-time deliberation.This is what it looks like at high speed:
In the debate above, the group of 277 people came up with 94 different ideas and then narrowed it down to a top 10, then a top 3. In the gif above, we just plot the top ten ideas as they emerged and battle for support during the live conversational debate.
The most interesting part of a large debate like this is not the answers, but the reasons that emerge to justify the answers. Here is the group’s reasoning behind the “top three innovations” that America has given to the world over the last 250 years:
#1: The Internet: “Our collective perspective is that America’s greatest contribution to the world over the past 250 years is the internet. It was born exclusively in the U.S. through academic and government research and was scaled globally with profound impact. It transformed communication, democratized information and education, enabled commerce, medicine, research and cultural exchange, and amplified soft power and civic organizing. We also acknowledged significant harms (misinformation, addiction, privacy loss) and arguments that it’s recent, global, or not uniquely American.”
#2 Advances in medicine: “Our collective perspective is that the United States has saved and prolonged hundreds of millions of lives worldwide. American-developed vaccines have successfully eradicated or controlled once-deadly diseases, significantly extending life expectancy and enabling broader societal and technological progress. From major breakthroughs in cancer research and treatments to cutting-edge medical technologies that have revolutionized hospital safety and procedures, U.S. ingenuity has redefined healthcare. Ultimately, while the global diffusion of affordable medicines and vaccines has extended these benefits across borders, the U.S. remains a premier medical destination where people from around the world travel to receive the most advanced treatments.”
#3: Spreading democracy: “Our collective perspective is that one of America’s most significant global contributions is the nation’s system of governance. The US has long demonstrated democracy in practice as an enduring global model. The U.S. Constitution provided a vital blueprint for representative government, inspiring democratic movements and revolutions worldwide while actively promoting human rights and individual liberties internationally. By empowering citizens with the fundamental power to vote and choose their own leaders, this framework has served as a foundational framework for broader societal advances and directly helped establish thriving democracies around the world.”
It’s important to remember, this is 100% human intelligence — a pure reflection of the collective knowledge, wisdom, and values of 277 randomly selected Americans. That’s because the role of the AI agents in a hyper-communication system is to connect people, not replace them. The agents work to enable scalable human deliberation in which every participant is given optimized ability to express their views, respond to others, and converge on solutions based on their merits. The only question left is — what should we ask next?
Louis Rosenberg earned his PhD from Stanford University, was a professor at California State University (Cal Poly) and has been awarded over 300 patents for his work in human-computer interaction, AI, and collective intelligence.
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It’s called Assistive Access. Introduced with iOS 17, Apple designed it for those with cognitive disabilities. If you’ve never encountered or stumbled across it, it’s a distinctive iOS experience: fewer options, more focused features, easier to navigate. The aesthetic is ideal for kids: large, friendly tiles for the apps replace the smaller icons of the “normal” Apple interface.
Here’s how you set it up: Head into Settings, tap Accessibility, scroll down to the General section at the very bottom, and tap Assistive Access. Now, tap Set Up Assistive Access, then Continue. It will then ask you to select your preferred appearance: rows or a grid. I suggest choosing a grid. This is how you get those super-large tiles. Now the OS will ask you to select allowed apps—tap the green plus icon next to the apps you want to allow.
Crucially, this is where, unlike with Apple’s standard child screen-time restrictions, you can choose to completely block internet browsing by simply not allowing Safari, Chrome, or any other similar app. And, unlike with those screen-time restrictions, if someone texts your child a link, it won’t work. Why? Assistive Access is designed to prevent accidental navigation, so the system restricts unexpected web browsing.
Even though Assistive Access on Apple devices allows internet access, it is heavily restricted by design, and it’s turned off by default. In this mode, the phone treats any link in a message as plain text, preventing the user from accidentally leaving the simplified interface.
Made for caregivers or trusted supporters, the user must specifically add internet-enabled apps like Messages, Safari, or third-party web apps to the Assistive Access interface. And once you add, say, Messages or Calls, you then choose whether your child can contact or be contacted by everyone, their contacts only, or just selected favorites.
Building your ideal hi-fi setup is no small task. Depending on your specific goals, you could be in for buying a lot of different gear to perfect your sound and make sure you have everything you need to listen to what you love, how you’d love to. That’s an expensive endeavor — and sometimes, a confusing one. It’s sometimes difficult to tell what different devices can do, or how they differ from one another.
Deciding how to play vinyl is similarly difficult, yet vital. If you’re interested in vinyl, then there’s a good chance that you’re already committed to achieving the best sound you can at home. So, naturally, you’ll want to make sure you pick up the most suitable gear possible. There’s a great turntable out there at almost any budget, but there’s a crucial difference to be aware of before you splash the cash: whether you need a record player or a turntable.
Although the two phrases are used interchangeably, they’re actually different equipment. Generally speaking, a record player is an all-in-one device that has everything you need to play vinyl, including built-in speakers. Turntables, on the other hand, only play records themselves, with no speakers. That means you need to hook turntables up to amps and speakers if you want to hear anything. That offers invaluable flexibility if you’re an audiophile crafting your dream listening experience, even if it can be a little inconvenient.
When you pick a turntable, you’re just choosing the device that spins your records and the stylus that translates the grooves into electrical signals, not your speakers, amplifier, subwoofer, or anything else. As a result, you can build the exact setup you want by picking up a turntable instead. Think of it as a modular system, where the turntable makes up one part of the wider hi-fi setup. Meanwhile, when you pick a record player, you’re also often picking the amplifier, speakers, and anything else it comes with.
For many audio lovers, selecting the equipment to get the sound they want is a big part of the fun. Audiophilia is a hobby, after all. With that in mind, using ready-out-of-the-box audio equipment — like a record player with a built-in amplifier and speakers — can take some of the joy out of the process. Using a turntable, on the other hand, opens up a world of possibilities, since you can use it with other components you may be interested in.
While it’s convenient to grab a record player and be able to use it straight away without needing other equipment, that convenience comes with a compromise: you’re generally restricted to the components it comes with, at least to some extent. That’s not always the case, though, as some record players do essentially double up as turntables, allowing you to hook them up to other equipment like speakers. But you’re still going to be somewhat restricted by the player’s internals and overall capabilities.
Being stuck with the amplifier and speakers that your record player comes with isn’t only a problem of limited customizability. Unfortunately, sometimes whatever’s built into your all-in-one record player just doesn’t sound that good to start with. These decks have to spin the records, amplify the sound, and push it through the built-in speakers, and this all-in-one nature can lead to sonic compromises. If you can’t enjoy the sound, it defeats the purpose of investing time and money into your setup.
Generally speaking, all-in-one record players don’t offer the best sound quality. They can sound tinny and lack clarity, stopping you from getting the most out of your collection’s potentially high-fidelity capabilities. Instead, you run the risk of getting a listening experience you could just as easily get from a small radio, speaker, or even your phone. For that reason, some opt to skip all-in-one options in favour of turntables designed to work with proper hi-fi equipment.
Interference is also a common problem with all-in-one record players. That happens when the stylus picks up vibrations from the built-in speakers as it’s playing a record. Usually, this happens with a slight delay, which can lead to a messy, discordant, and even distorted sound. This can happen with any vinyl setup, but the proximity of the speakers to the turntable’s stylus means it’s much more common with record players.
When a record player breaks, you could be looking at anything from a duff speaker to a busted amplifier and a good few things in between. That’s because of all the functions they perform. In some cases, a broken part could even be the end of the line for that record player altogether, leaving you to pick up an entirely new one.
Turntables, on the other hand, are typically a little more straightforward. Sure, there is still plenty that can go wrong — including the belt (or drive motor), cartridge, arm, or power supply — but it’ll be something specific to the vinyl-spinning process itself. Pretty much everything else that makes up your setup is separate, meaning that replacing a busted speaker is a matter of buying some new speakers rather than opening up your player to see what’s inside, or replacing the player altogether.
One related area where record players are at a significant disadvantage compared to turntables is the stylus or needle. Styluses wear down over time, and you should replace them to reduce the risk of damaging your records. However, some record players are designed in a way that means you can’t replace the stylus. So, that means that when your needle reaches the end of its life, your record player does as well. That’s a lot of waste, and a fair amount of risk for your records.
Even with all their faults, an all-in-one record player might still tempt some with its ease of use and affordability. However, that convenience and cost could quickly turn into an expensive and awful ordeal if it ends up damaging your records. There are a couple of culprits behind this, but one of them is down to the placement of your record player’s speakers.
All sound is vibration. That means that when your record player’s speakers blare out whatever you’re spinning, your deck is also vibrating. Your record spins on top of the deck, while it’s being read by the player’s needle. Except that the vibrations will cause all of it to move slightly. In turn, the player’s stylus might move around more than it should, and it may skip across the record and scratch it. Some slight scratches on records can go unnoticed, but damage builds up over time, and deeper scuffs can cause audible imperfections or even skips. Nobody wants that, audiophile or otherwise.
That isn’t the only time that needles can cause damage to your records. Records can wear down over time, and this can happen on any system, regardless of whether it’s a record player or turntable. However, budget all-in-one record players may also have budget needles, which could cause more damage in the long-term compared to a finer needle. Another thing to keep in mind is that you won’t have much room to adjust settings like the tracking force.
All-in-one record players are at a particular disadvantage compared to turntables when it comes to the tonearm. The tonearm is a crucial part of any record deck, as it holds the cartridge in place, allowing it to follow grooves on a vinyl record and for the turntable to produce sound. It also ensures the needle is stable and that the pressure (or tracking force) is consistent, reducing the risk of damaging your records while reproducing the music as clearly as possible. Overall, being able to adjust the tracking weight is important for playback, ensuring your records sound great, don’t skip, and don’t wear out too quickly. Despite that, it’s not an option on many popular all-in-one record players.
In some cases, the arm is set to the wrong weight altogether, so the tonearm places far too much pressure on the record. That’s no big deal if you can adjust the weight, but if you can’t, you’re stuck with a significant risk of your LPs getting damaged over time. That’s the last thing anyone would want, but it’s probably going to be a deal-breaker if you’re especially invested in enjoying the highest fidelity sound possible, or if you collect rare records. As a result, any gear that doesn’t offer tonearm adjustability is inherently less appealing than gear that does.
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