Despite its ferocious popularity, people still tend to swear off anime entirely. These are usually the people whose reference of the medium pertains to a certain stereotype or to the few seconds of anime they once saw on a computer somewhere in the early 2000s.

But Japan has been producing some of the most emotionally resonant and visually audacious storytelling in contemporary media for half a century, and a great deal of it looks nothing at all like the stereotype it holds.

So here’s a case for the uninitiated. Start with self-contained films you can knock out in a single evening before graduating to series worth committing wholly to. The common thread, if you’re keeping score, is that not one of these requires you to know anything about anime, or Japan for that matter, going in.

Note that many of these picks are available in both the original Japanese audio with subtitles or as “dubs” with dialog dubbed by English voice actors. Dive in however you’d like.

Solo Leveling

Between reviewing tech for a living and spending most of my day in front of a screen, free time is a luxury. Yet almost every evening, I somehow find myself queueing up for two or three ranked Valorant games. My peak rank is Ascendant 1, and while I’m far from going pro, competitive FPS titles are where I put hundreds of hours every year.

For the longest time, my trusty Logitech G502 X Plus LIGHTSPEED was always waiting on my desk. It wasn’t the lightest mouse around, but it felt dependable. I’d flirt with lightweight esports mice now and then, only to come crawling back a few days later. Most of them either felt too hollow, too small, or simply lacked the reassuring heft I had grown accustomed to. Then the Logitech PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE showed up, and for the first time, my G502 has been gathering dust.

Lightweight doesn’t have to feel… light

At around 61 grams, the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE couldn’t be more different from the G502. On paper, it sounds like exactly the kind of ultralight mouse I’d normally abandon after a week. Instead, it struck a balance I didn’t know I was looking for.

The shape fits naturally in my hand, making long Valorant sessions surprisingly comfortable, while the weight feels almost tailor-made for my low-DPI playstyle. Wide arm movements, quick flicks, and frequent mouse lifts require very little effort, but the mouse never feels flimsy or toy-like. There’s a surprising solidity to the chassis that makes it feel premium, even though it’s one of the lightest mice I’ve used. That’s probably the biggest reason it stuck around. It finally delivered the speed benefits of an ultralight mouse without making me feel like I was holding an empty plastic shell.

HITS made me relearn how to click

However, as much as I appreciate the weight and shape, they’re not why this mouse deserves attention. That credit goes to Logitech’s Haptic Inductive Trigger System, or HITS.

If there’s one comparison that immediately clicked in my head, it was Hall Effect keyboards like the Wooting. Just as those keyboards let gamers adjust actuation points and use features like Rapid Trigger, HITS applies the same philosophy to mouse buttons. Instead of relying on traditional mechanical or optical switches, the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE continuously tracks button movement using inductive sensing and recreates the click using haptic feedback. The actuation point, reset point, and even the strength of the tactile feedback can all be adjusted through software.

The first time I switched the mouse off, I genuinely thought something had broken. The buttons suddenly felt lifeless, with almost no tactile click to speak of. Turn it back on, though, and the haptics instantly trick your brain into believing there’s a physical switch underneath.

It’s weird. It’s clever. And for the first couple of days, it’s surprisingly difficult to trust.

Years of muscle memory had taught my fingers exactly how a mechanical switch should feel. HITS delivers a softer, more refined tactile pulse instead. It doesn’t try to imitate a traditional click perfectly, and honestly, I’m glad it doesn’t. It ends up creating its own identity rather than pretending to be something else.

Of course, the best part is that there’s plenty of customizability underneath too. While the Logitech G Hub isn’t the most lightweight application out there, I will give credit to it for seamlessly transitioning my profile from the G502 to the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE. That said, since it’s a new mouse in itself, I didn’t find my ideal settings immediately. After almost every ranked session, I’d tweak the actuation point by a notch, lower the haptic strength, play a few more matches, then change it all over again the next evening. It became part of my routine.

Eventually, I landed on a setup that felt completely natural. That’s when it hit me. We’ve spent years obsessing over DPI, polling rates, and sensor performance, yet the mouse click itself has remained surprisingly primitive. HITS finally changes that. Instead of adapting to a fixed switch, I was gradually shaping the mouse around the way I play.

No, it didn’t magically make me Radiant

Whenever new gaming hardware pushes input technology forward, the internet inevitably starts arguing about whether it’s “cheating.” We’ve seen it with Rapid Trigger keyboards, Snap Tap, SOCD discussions, and now HITS. Personally, I think that misses the point.

The PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE didn’t suddenly improve my aim or carry me through Ascendant lobbies. It didn’t start winning my Sheriff duels or fix my questionable decision-making when I inevitably dry peek an Operator. What it did change was how connected I felt to every click. Knowing I could fine-tune the actuation point instead of living with a fixed mechanical switch made the mouse feel uniquely mine. It wasn’t about finding an unfair advantage. It was about removing one more layer between my hand and what happened on screen.

The mouse that finally retired my G502

After more than a month of playing ranked Valorant almost every day, I can confidently say the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE is the first lightweight gaming mouse that has permanently replaced my G502 X Plus LIGHTSPEED. Not because it’s lighter. Not because it’s faster. And not because HITS suddenly transformed me into a better player.

It’s because, for the first time, I felt like the mouse adapted to me instead of the other way around. Once I stopped thinking about the technology and simply enjoyed playing, going back to a traditional mechanical switch started to feel strangely limiting. Mechanical switches aren’t disappearing anytime soon, and plenty of gamers will still prefer that familiar tactile snap. But after living with HITS for over a month, I’m convinced Logitech has stumbled onto something genuinely exciting.

It’s been a long time since a gaming mouse made me rethink something as fundamental as clicking. HITS did exactly that, and now every time I pick up a traditional mouse, a tiny part of me wonders why its clicks are still stuck in the past.

You’ve almost certainly heard of the Xerox Alto, the machine that pioneered the desktop-mouse-keyboard interface and inspired Steve Jobs to produce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers. It wasn’t just having a desktop, though– so much of our modern computing paradigm was invented on these machines. Given that, why aren’t we all using Xerox clones instead of Apples or PCs descended from the IBM compatibles? [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] has a video that answers the question: whatever happened to the computer of tomorrow, anyway?

It goes through the whole story of the Alto, from its introduction at Xerox PARC in the 1970s to its demise. At the introduction, the engineers showed of the What You See Is What You Get word processor, networked the machines together to show off e-mail and that anyone could use the office laser printer. It all seems very familiar now, but at the time, it was a revolution. An expensive one. The monitor sitting on the desk wasn’t the computer, after all: that was a large filing-cabinet sized desk sitting underneath. Only about 2000 were ever built, so what happened?

It wasn’t just that the first units cost twelve grand USD to build in 1973 money– about 90 large today by CPI, or for the gold bugs that’s 96 oz or 2.7 kg. It wasn’t worth its weight in gold, but it was close. Still, that wasn’t the problem: later models would be cheaper. The problem was that Xerox refused to sell the thing in the 70s. They saw the potential of a paperless office, and it scared them. Sure, they could sell a computer, once. They wouldn’t get a monthly service fee, nor the cost of the toner, drums and other consumables the Alto wouldn’t need. So they sat on it, and let others like Steve Jobs who didn’t have an existing business empire to lose take their ideas and run with them.

It seems shortsighted, but Xerox had already lost millions on big iron computing around the same time the Alto came along, and every business decision after that was carefully weighed on its projected revenue. Compared to a copier that printed money for Xerox as surely as it printed paper, the Alto just didn’t look like it could pay for itself. It looked likely to lose them a lot of money, which, in fact the adoption of the personal computer ultimately did. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback and say these developments were inevitable and Xerox should have run out in front, but [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] does a good job of explaining the logic from the Xerox boards’ point of view, which makes the video very much worth a watch.

If you can’t get enough Alto, we can also point you to what it takes to restore one, what almost killed one, and why you shouldn’t mine bitcoin with one.

• Synology lowers NAS entry costs without removing future hardware upgrade flexibility
• Four new NAS models arrive with expandable memory and familiar hardware
• Lower default memory creates cheaper starting prices across the new lineup

Synology has introduced the DiskStation neo+ Series, a new lineup built to give buyers more flexibility over cost and performance from the outset.

The series includes four models — the DS1825neo+, the DS1525neo+, the DS925neo+, and the DS725neo+ — each sharing hardware with existing Plus units.

• Chinese research vessel lingered above critical Pacific undersea communications infrastructure
• Taiwan’s Coast Guard warned the vessel to turn away from the Pacific Light Cable Network
• Windward linked slow vessel movements with recognized intelligence-gathering behavior

A Chinese-flagged research vessel was recently observed loitering directly above an undersea cable system connecting Taiwan to the United States.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard filmed the encounter and warned the 200-foot ship to alter its course away from the cable route.

Another month, another stacked list of 4K Blu-rays. August 2026 looks to have some big releases coming, but I’ve decided to narrow it down to my top four picks, all of which I’ll be hoping to get in to test as part of our monthly Blu-ray Bounty feature. This is where we test the best 4K releases from each month, looking at each disc’s picture and audio quality to see how it can give your home theater a chance to flex its muscles.

4K Blu-ray is my most used source for testing the best TVs and best soundbars. It offers uncompressed audio and a higher bitrate over 4K streaming, resulting in better picture quality. Not only that, but I’m a collector myself and I’m always adding new discs to my personal collection.