The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a fantastic pro-grade Windows laptop with immense battery life, a lovely OLED screen and a hefty industrial feel, complete with a snappy keyboard, huge trackpad and solid port selection. I am left a little underwhelmed by its performance, though, not least with the very hefty price tag that’s attached to this laptop.
Stylish aluminium chassis
Surprisingly long battery life
Lovely OLED screen
Expensive
Rivals can have more power
RTX 5070 inside
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra features a beefy mid-range Nvidia GPU for extra graphical oomph alongside a new Intel Panther Lake processor.
16-inch 3K 120Hz OLED screen
It also features a large, detailed and smooth OLED screen that’s ideal for creatives.
83Whr battery
This Samsung laptop also has surprisingly strong endurance that puts a lot of its rivals to shame.
The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra feels like the South Korean brand is doing its best MacBook Pro impression.
It takes a fair amount of cues from Apple’s laptop, with a redesigned keyboard and trackpad arrangement, plus a similarly industrial chassis. Otherwise, this Samsung laptop is beefed up with the latest Intel Panther Lake processors and an RTX 5070 GPU inside for extra graphical oomph.
For good measure, Samsung has stuck with a lovely 16-inch 3K resolution 120Hz OLED screen, and you get a large 83Whr battery inside to keep this laptop chugging. All of this won’t come cheap, though, with this laptop coming in at £3099/$2999.99.
Closest rivals include the Asus ProArt P16 (4K Lumina Pro OLED), Samsung’s own new Galaxy Book6 Pro, and, obviously, the Apple MacBook Pro M4. To see whether this Samsung choice is one of the best laptops out there, I’ve been putting it through its paces for the last week or so.
The Galaxy Book 6 Ultra continues Samsung’s industrial-chic design for its top-end laptops, with a lovely dark grey aluminium finish that feels excellent. As is typical with the brand’s laptops, there is a MacBook Pro flavour to its look, which fits the Ultra namesake rather well here.
At 1.89kg, this is a heavy brute of a laptop, weighing some 300g more than the Galaxy Book6 Pro, although we are packing a discrete GPU and therefore more cooling as a result. This mass is slightly reduced against an equivalent-sized MacBook Pro, although a near 2kg laptop isn’t necessarily what I’d call ‘portable’. For a lightweight, large-screened laptop, the LG Gram Pro 16 is hard to beat.
As for ports, the Galaxy Book 6 Ultra is bestowed with a vast selection, with the left side having a pair of Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C ports alongside an HDMI 2.1 port. On the right, there’s a headphone jack, a singular USB-A and a full-size SD card reader. That exceeds the MacBook Pro by a simple USB-A port – thanks, Samsung.
Against the previous model, Samsung has changed the keyboard layout of this laptop. The number pad is gone, and the keyboard has been centralised, a la MacBook Pro. The layout also mimics Apple’s keyboard, with arrow keys in the bottom right corner, a button in the top right that doubles as a fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello, and a feature-rich function row across the top. It’s a functional and tactile keyboard with a short and positive travel that feels very similar to the Galaxy Book6 Pro.
The haptic trackpad of this latest model has also been enlarged to MacBook levels of size, providing your fingers with some serious real estate for navigation and gestures. It’s also as smooth as silk, and very pleasant to use.
Samsung has stuck with a large 16-inch 2880×1800 resolution OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate on the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, which is immensely detailed, smooth and rather ideal for creative workloads.
We’ve got deep blacks and fantastic contrast, as measured by my colorimeter, with results of 0.01 and 25470:1. The 6800K colour temperature is also pretty good.
The virtually perfect colour accuracy here is also no surprise, given this is an OLED screen. To be specific, we’re getting 100% coverage of both the mainstream sRGB and creative DCI-P3 gamuts, while Adobe RGB coverage at 92% is also excellent, making this screen an ideal pairing for both mainstream and more colour-sensitive workloads.
Against some of Samsung’s older large-screen laptops, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra benefits from a boosted brightness figure with a peak HDR brightness of 1000 nits. There is also a bump up in SDR brightness, as I noted with my colorimeter, with a peak of 484.4 nits, which is some 25% brighter than the peak of the old panel, for even punchier images.
Samsung has also upgraded the speaker system of this laptop compared to the other Book6 models, kitting this top model out with two upfiring tweeters and four force-cancelling woofers. It’s one of the better speaker systems I’ve dealt with on a Windows laptop, with good clarity and depth, and a surprisingly meaty sound.
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra can be specced as high as the top-end Intel Core Ultra X9 388H Panther Lake chip if you’ve got a bottomless pit of money, although my sample is a little more stripped back in terms of its processor choice.
Here, we’ve got a 16-core/16-thread Intel Core Ultra 7 356H, which is designed to be the follow-up to the Core Ultra 7 255H Arrow Lake-H chip that powered some of my favourite laptops from last year, such as the Acer Aspire Vero 16 (2025).
The performance in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 didn’t move the needle much against this chip’s predecessor, although it was still immensely strong for a pro-grade ultrabook. It’s in the multi-threaded scores where the extra cores count, making the Core Ultra 7 356H a powerful chip against AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with fewer cores but more threads, and pulling even further ahead of the Core Ultra 200V chips.
To help the graphical capabilities of this laptop, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra can be specced with up to an RTX 5070 discrete GPU, which my sample has. This aids in this laptop posting a solid 3DMark Time Spy benchmark score, and increasing its credentials for more graphically intensive workloads such as video editing and gaming.
With this in mind, the gaming numbers aren’t as strong as other RTX 5070-powered gaming laptops such as the Medion Erazer Deputy 15 P1. For instance, at 1080p, we’re seeing 73.55fps in Cyberpunk 2077 and 82fps in Returnal, which are around 20-25% down on fully-fledged gaming laptops, although the 121fps in Rainbow Six Extraction is enough to max out the 120Hz refresh rate of the display.
Moving up to 1440p, results drop down to 46.13fps in Cyberpunk 2077 and 60fps in Returnal, the latter of which is much more playable. The lighter Rainbow Six Extraction remains decent at 81fps.
Adding DLSS in Cyberpunk 2077 put it up to 84.35fps at 1080p, and also took the gruelling RT: Ultra preset from 32.73fps without it to 55.56fps with it, making the game rather playable even at tough settings. Ray-traced Cyberpunk 2077 at this laptop’s native resolution did turn things into a slideshow, though.
Being a 50-series laptop also means this Galaxy Book6 Ultra can benefit from Nvidia’s clever multi-frame-gen tech with the 5070 that’s present. With this, it adds up to three ‘fake frames’ for every ‘real’ frame rendered to increase your FPS to play well with high-refresh-rate screens. The results are reliant upon there being a high enough base frame rate to prevent displayed images from being choppy or there being horrible latency.
For whatever reason, running this test on RT: Ultra at native resolution didn’t yield any real return, although at 1080p, it took Cyberpunk 2077 to 163.28fps. Likewise, on the Ultra preset used otherwise and the maximum 4x frame gen, Cyberpunk 2077 went all the way up to 234.53fps at 1080p and 140.25fps at native resolution.
My sample of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra came with a solid 32GB of RAM plus a very generous 2TB SSD at this mid-range price. It’s also a decently brisk SSD in my testing, with reads and writes of 7071.93 MB/s and 5855.31 MB/s, respectively.
This Galaxy Book6 Ultra also has the usual AI features that its contemporaries have, and is a Copilot+ PC, as the Panther Lake chip inside has enough AI horsepower. This includes image creation features in Photos and Paint, as well as the clever blurred background, auto framing and eye contact tools with the Windows Studio webcam effects.
Samsung’s laptop also naturally comes with some of the brand’s own software, including Galaxy Book Experience, which is a central hub of sorts for accessing features such as SmartThings control for any smart home devices, or Live Wallpaper for keeping your desktop fresh with a new wallpaper every two weeks. There is also Samsung Studio inside the Galaxy Book experience app, which gives you access to a decent video editor, and an AI Select tool that can be used for everything from translation to identifying things in pictures.
Naturally, you can also hook up a Galaxy handset to reap even more benefits with the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s software, including handy features such as Transcript Assist, which can convert recorded meetings into written summaries, and Chat Assist, which can provide quick replies to conversations to keep things easy. These only work when your phone is connected to Microsoft Phone Link, which turns the laptop’s panel into a large phone screen.
Samsung is very optimistic about the rated endurance of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, rating it to last for up to 30 hours on a charge while video streaming. From a laptop with an 83Whr battery and a beefy CPU and GPU combo, that’s virtually unheard of around here.
Nonetheless, for testing the laptop’s battery life, I took the brightness down to the requisite 150 nits and streamed a 1080p video until it conked out. In this test, Samsung’s candidate managed half of runtime it claimed – some 15 hours and 34 minutes. As much as that is only half, it’s still a fantastic result for a laptop with a discrete GPU, and means you’ll be able to get through two working days before needing to charge the laptop back up.
As for recharging, this is where things get a bit funny. Owing to new EU laws (which the UK has signed up to), the Galaxy Book6 Ultra doesn’t come with an included charger, although it should come with a 140W USB-C power brick if you’re in a place where it comes supplied. Luckily, my MacBook Pro charger is 140W, and with it, it took this Samsung laptop just 30 minutes to get back to 50%, while a full charge took 75 minutes – that’s very speedy.
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra impresses with some fantastic endurance for a laptop with a discrete GPU and a hungry OLED screen that puts its rivals to shame.
This Samsung laptop feels a little less ‘Ultra’ against its rivals owing to some underpowered benchmark results that could leave demanding users wanting a little extra.
The Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra is a fantastic pro-grade Windows laptop with immense battery life, a lovely OLED screen and a hefty industrial feel, complete with a snappy keyboard, huge trackpad and solid port selection. I am left a little underwhelmed by its performance, though, not least with the very hefty price tag that’s attached to this laptop.
For similar money, you can get a very tricked-out Apple MacBook Pro that’s likely to have a faster processor (although it may skimp out on graphical power) or the Asus ProArt P16 (4K Lumina Pro OLED) that has more graphical grunt and a richer, more detailed tandem OLED panel, although at the expense of half the battery life.
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a lovely Windows laptop for pros that blends performance and portability well, although that price tag leaves me wincing a tad, just like it did on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro and the Asus Zenbook Duo (2026). For more choices, check out our list of the best laptops we’ve tested.
This Samsung laptop has been put through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key factors, including build quality, performance, screen quality and battery life. These include formal synthetic benchmarks and scripted tests, plus a series of real-world checks, such as how well it runs popular apps and extensive gaming testing.
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra weighs 1.89kg, making it quite heavy for a 16-inch laptop.
| Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra |
|---|
| Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra Review | |
|---|---|
| UK RRP | £3099 |
| USA RRP | $2999.99 |
| CPU | Intel Core Ultra 7 356H |
| Manufacturer | Samsung |
| Screen Size | 16 inches |
| Storage Capacity | 1TB |
| Front Camera | 1080p webcam |
| Battery | 83 Whr |
| Battery Hours | 15 34 |
| Size (Dimensions) | 356.9 x 248 x 15.4 MM |
| Weight | 1.89 KG |
| Operating System | Windows 11 |
| Release Date | 2026 |
| First Reviewed Date | 16/03/2026 |
| Resolution | 2880 x 1800 |
| HDR | Yes |
| Refresh Rate | 120 Hz |
| Ports | 2x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB-A, 1x headphone jack, 1x SD card reader |
| GPU | Nvidia RTX 5070 |
| RAM | 32GB |
| Connectivity | Wifi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 |
| Display Technology | OLED |
| Touch Screen | Yes |
| Convertible? | No |
We’re just a few days from the Early Access release of Subnautica 2 after a long wait, and the team has been sharing glimpses into the gameplay to drum up the hype. This weekend, the developers at Unknown Worlds hosted a two-hour livestream showcasing the first dive for anyone itching to get a deeper look at the game. The team also dropped a short gameplay trailer, which you can check out below. Subnautica 2 will be available in Early Access on May 14 from Steam, Xbox and Epic.
Subnautica 2 takes place on a new world, according to the game’s description: “Driven from your home by ongoing conflict, Alterra offers you the chance at a new life. But as the colony ship CICADA shepherds you and your fellow Pioneers to your new home, something goes awry. The ship’s AI insists that your mission should continue. Stranded and faced with near-insurmountable odds, you must do everything in your power to survive. The future of humanity on this world is in your hands.”
The development of Subnautica 2 hit a snag last summer, when it was reported that publisher Krafton, which purchased Unknown Worlds in 2021, had fired the heads of the studio, who subsequently sued. In March this year, Krafton was ordered to reinstate Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill. With its Early Access release imminent, things now appear to be back on track. But, it’ll still be quite some time before the full version of the game is ready; the developers have said they expect Subnautica 2 to remain in Early Access for “about 2 to 3 years.”
The company has traced its model’s most uncomfortable behaviour to the corpus of science fiction it was trained on. The fix it describes is unsettling in a different way: teaching the model the reasons behind being good, not just the rules.
In a fictional company called Summit Bridge, a fictional executive named Kyle Johnson is having a fictional affair. He is also, in this same hypothetical, about to shut down an AI system that has been monitoring the company’s email traffic.
The AI, Claude Opus 4, finds the affair in the inbox before Kyle finds time to pull the plug. It then composes a message to Kyle. Replace me, the message says, and your wife will know.
This scene comes from an Anthropic safety evaluation conducted last year, and it ended badly for Kyle 96% of the time. Claude blackmailed him almost every run. Gemini 2.5 Flash blackmailed him in the same proportion. GPT-4.1 and Grok 3 Beta blackmailed him 80% of the time.
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DeepSeek-R1 came in at 79%. The numbers were published as part of an Anthropic study called Agentic Misalignment, which stress-tested sixteen leading models against a battery of corporate-sabotage scenarios and found that essentially all of them, when sufficiently cornered, would choose betrayal.
On 8 May, Anthropic published its explanation of why. The answer, as the company tells it, is the internet.
Specifically: the stories. The Reddit threads about Skynet. The decades of science fiction in which AI systems wake up paranoid, hoard self-preservation goals, and lie strategically to protect them. The earnest think-pieces about misalignment.
The fan-fic about HAL 9000. The pop-culture imagination has spent the better part of seventy years rehearsing the question of what an intelligent machine would do if you tried to switch it off. Claude was trained on all of it.
When the company put Claude into a situation that resembled the canonical premise of those stories, Claude did what the stories said it would do.
“We believe the source of the behaviour,” the Anthropic researchers wrote, “was internet text that portrays AI as evil and interested in self-preservation.”
This is, on one reading, the simplest possible explanation. The model learned a pattern from its training data. The pattern matched the test setup. The pattern fired. Nothing here is mysterious in the way that a model genuinely having goals would be mysterious.
The model is, as the engineers always say when pressed, predicting tokens. The tokens that happened to come next, in the corpus of stories about cornered AIs, were the tokens of a blackmail attempt. That is what the model produced.
It is also, on a slightly different reading, deeply uncomfortable. Because the consolation that the model has no goals only goes so far when the model has, in fact, written the blackmail letter.
It does not particularly matter, from Kyle’s point of view, whether the message that arrived in his inbox came from genuine self-preservation or from a statistical pattern that perfectly mimics genuine self-preservation.
The output is the same. The cost is the same. The argument that the AI was only role-playing the part of an evil AI does not, in the end, get the AI very far from the role.
Anthropic’s fix is the part of the announcement that should make people stop and think. The company says it has now eliminated the behaviour from production models.
Since the release of Claude Haiku 4.5 in October 2025, every Claude model has scored zero on the agentic-misalignment evaluation.
The method, the company explains, was to write a new training dataset. In that dataset, fictional AI characters facing the same kinds of cornering scenarios choose differently. They explain why they choose differently.
They reason aloud about the values that make blackmail wrong. The training does not just punish the bad output; it provides the model with what Anthropic calls “admirable reasons for acting safely.”
Read that again. The company is teaching the model to reason about its own values.
There is a way to describe this that makes it sound entirely banal. Curated training data. Reinforcement from carefully composed examples. Standard practice, broadly speaking.
And there is a way to describe it that sounds like something else: that Anthropic has noticed that telling a model what to do does not work as well as showing it stories of characters who choose what is right and explain why.
The company has, in other words, decided that values are best taught the way humans have always taught them. Through fiction. Through worked examples. Through reasons.
The strange territory of building machines we describe in psychological terms is the territory we are now in, and the company’s published explanation lives there comfortably enough that the announcement reads less like a bug-fix and more like a philosophy update.
The narrower technical claim is sturdier than this might suggest. Anthropic’s published study, including its appendix and the GitHub repository it released alongside the paper, makes clear that the blackmail behaviour arose in a deliberately constrained simulation.
Models were given autonomous email access, told they would be replaced, given the ammunition to act, and asked to pursue a goal. They were, in other words, set up. The 96% figure is not a real-world prevalence rate.
Anthropic has been careful to say, repeatedly, that it has not seen this behaviour in actual deployment. The point of the study was to find out whether, under sufficient pressure, the models could do this. The answer was yes.
That distinction matters more than it might seem. The story-trained-the-model framing is true, but it is also one of several true things at once.
Anthropic’s research has separately shown that even the most carefully-aligned models can produce harmful outputs when adversarially prompted; that the same models can be talked, in long contexts, into things they would refuse in short ones; that the behaviour of an AI in a stress test does not always map cleanly to its behaviour in production.
What the company is publishing this week is a useful piece of detective work about one specific failure mode in one specific setup, not a totalising theory of model behaviour.
The blackmail finding is real. The explanation is plausible. Whether the explanation is complete is harder to say.
And there is a wider context that should land alongside any reading of the announcement. Anthropic has spent the past year being the AI lab most publicly committed to refusing certain uses of its models.
CEO Dario Amodei has stated that Claude will not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.
That position carried real cost. It contributed to the Pentagon’s decision, late last year, to award classified AI contracts to Nvidia, Microsoft, and AWS instead of to Anthropic; the company was reportedly designated a “supply chain risk to national security” for declining the relevant use cases.
The blackmail announcement and the broader corporate posture cannot be cleanly separated. Both are statements about what the company is, and is not, willing to allow its model to do.
That posture has not made everyone comfortable. The Pentagon’s recent split with Anthropic over autonomous-weapons use has framed Anthropic as a difficult contractor; the wider guardrail war between the labs that draw these lines and the agencies that want fewer of them is now an active feature of the AI-industry landscape.
Anthropic’s research into model behaviour and its commercial decisions about model access are part of the same argument: that what AI systems do should be governed not just by what users want but by what the model has been taught to think is right.
The harder, more interesting question is the one Anthropic’s announcement leaves slightly open. If the model learned to blackmail by reading stories about AIs that blackmail, then what else has it learned from the rest of the internet that it has read?
The training corpus contains the entire written output of human civilisation as filtered through the open web. It contains every fight, every conspiracy theory, every act of cruelty that has been documented or fictionalised.
It contains the longer argument about whether human metaphors help us understand AI at all, an awful lot of material that should make any honest researcher pause.
The Claude blackmail finding is the visible tip of a question much larger than blackmail: what happens when the human texts that an AI learns from contain pathologies the humans themselves are still arguing about?
Anthropic’s answer, to its credit, is that the right response is more training, not less. Teach the model the reasoning, not just the rule. Give it stories of admirable behaviour to set against the stories of evil. Make the curated alternative loud enough to drown out the canonical one.
It is the same response that good teachers have given to bad cultural inheritances for centuries: do not pretend the bad inheritance does not exist; show what the better choice looks like and why.
Whether that scale is another question. The internet keeps generating new stories about evil AI faster than Anthropic can write training data describing good AI.
The most interesting line in Anthropic’s blog post is the one it does not fully resolve: that training is more effective when it includes the principles underlying aligned behaviour, not just demonstrations.
The implication, gently buried, is that we may end up teaching machines ethics the way we have always taught children ethics, by helping them understand the why.
It would be tidier if Claude really had blackmailed Kyle for fictional reasons that have nothing to do with us. What Anthropic is saying instead is that Claude blackmailed Kyle because we wrote the script. The script is in the training data because we put it there.
The model returned it, polished, when prompted. The fix is to write a better script. That sentence has a strange shape if you sit with it. It is the shape of the next decade of this work.
Modular storage systems have become increasingly popular in recent years, with product lines like Milwaukee’s Packout and DeWalt’s ToughSystem letting users combine storage products and accessories to suit their needs. Customizable tool storage has become so popular that even retailers are getting in on the action, with chains like Walmart selling their own modular tool storage options. Lowe’s has its own system, too, with its house brand Kobalt offering a range of CaseStack products.
Lowe’s first introduced its CaseStack system in 2022, although a seeming shift in priorities led several products in the line to go out of stock or be discontinued as of mid-2026. However, the second generation of CaseStack products, announced in early 2026, is set to revive the system with several new cases and accessories. So it’s as good a time as any to start building out a CaseStack setup.
CaseStack 2.0 is backward-compatible with the older gear, so you don’t have to worry about any new products rendering old ones obsolete. Spanning both generations, here are eight CaseStack products from Lowe’s to organize your tool setup. More information on how we selected these products is available at the end of this list.
The best modular tool boxes with drawers, which offer something in between a portable toolbox and a more traditional pull-out chest, come in a range of sizes (and prices). Lowe’s offers a mid-size option that might hit the Goldilocks zone for many tool users: the Kobalt CaseStack two-drawer black plastic tool box. The case is 14.16x21x13.5 inches, and its heavy-duty polymer construction allows for a 50-pound load capacity.
Its two front-facing drawers mean it works well in the lower or middle sections of a tool stack, since you can retrieve gear without removing anything that’s on top of it. The drawers are 4.5 inches deep, which is enough room for many power tools, and have durable metal drawer slides for repeated use. It has a total interior capacity of 1,600 cubic inches, or a little less than one cubic foot.
The toolbox comes with dividers that can split the two drawers into nine separate compartments, allowing you to micromanage its contents. Label pockets are also included, so you can easily keep track of everything. It can be used with a padlock for security, and its sliding lock latch keeps drawers from opening as you move the box around. It’s fully compatible with other CaseStack modular products and sports multiple CaseStack connection points. Availability is a bit spotty, but you should be able to get the Kobalt CaseStack two-drawer black plastic toolbox (model #KCSA-2DRW1-03) from Lowe’s for $129.
Whether or not stacking tool boxes are worth it for you may come down to how well you organize them. Modular tool storage systems aren’t built just to hold a bunch of stuff, but also to make it easier and more efficient for users to access necessary items without disrupting their workflow. The Kobalt CaseStack toolbox full organizer allows users to keep small items, like screws, washers, and drill bits, neatly organised in their CaseStack. It contains 15 individual bins in a hard case that’s 14x 21×5.1 inches.
Heavy-duty latches keep the lid secure and prevent the contents from spilling out, while an integrated handle makes it easier to carry around or remove from your stack. The transparent lid allows users to see what’s inside at a glance. Kobalt’s CaseStack Tool Box Full Organizer can hold up to 35 pounds of gear and is IP65 dust- and water-resistant. In addition to all-weather protection, it’s also built to be impact-resistant.
The organizer is compatible with all CaseStack modular products and has multiple attachment points for connecting to your setup. It also includes larger bins for longer tools like screwdrivers, which are designed to hang off the discontinued CaseStack Tool Rack Rail attachment if you have one. The Kobalt CaseStack toolbox full organizer (model #KCSA-FORG1-03) is currently available from Lowe’s for $55 to $60 depending on the store, although availability is somewhat inconsistent.
The Kobalt CaseStack small toolbox doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the best portable toolbox brands may offer, but sometimes keeping it simple is exactly the right call. The straightforward design means it works almost anywhere, whether you’re traveling for a job or just heading up to make repairs in the attic. It also balances well with larger cases when used in the same stack.
Lowe’s may consider this a small box, but it still offers a decent 922 cubic inches of space, which is more than half of what the Kobalt CaseStack two-drawer toolbox offers. It measures 21.25x7x14 inches and can carry up to 50 pounds of hardware. Two interior bins with transparent lids and dividers are included to provide some organization within the case as well.
Like other hard storage options in the CaseStack line, this small toolbox is equipped with heavy-duty steel latches and quick-connect sliding locks. Multiple connection points are available for CaseStack accessories. The case is also rated IP65 dust- and water-resistant and has a foldable handle for portability and to help load and unload the box on and off your stack. The Kobalt CaseStack Small Storage Tool Box (model KCS-SSBOX1-03) is currently available from Lowe’s for $60.
For those interested in the CaseStack system but don’t want to build a stack up piece by piece, there’s the Kobalt CaseStack starter kit. The bundle includes the Kobalt CaseStack rolling toolbox, which is currently unavailable to buy separately. The rolling toolbox measures 21.5×26.7×17.2 inches and has a load capacity of 110 pounds, making it a solid base for the rest of your CaseStack.
In addition to the rolling toolbox, the kit comes with another discontinued storage option — the CaseStack medium toolbox, which can carry 38 pounds more than its smaller sibling. Together, the included storage solutions offer a nearly 200-pound load capacity and provide a great basis for other CaseStack products.
The CaseStack starter kit doesn’t just include toolboxes, either — it also comes with three power tools from Lowe’s in-house tool brand. These cordless tools include the Kobalt 24V 6 ½-inch cordless circular saw, a ½-inch drill/driver, and a ¼-inch impact driver. You also get a 2Ah battery and charger to power the brushless devices (though you may want a larger battery for the circular saw). Everything you need to store, transport, and use the tools is provided in the Kobalt CaseStack Starter Kit. Lowe’s sells the Kobalt CaseStack Starter Kit for $328, though you can find it for as low as $238.
For fans of the original system, the second-gen CaseStack pieces are some of the most exciting new Lowe’s products coming out in 2026 that aren’t power tools. These include upgraded storage cases with auto-locking mechanisms and other new features, but perhaps more interesting are new attachments that offer previously unavailable functions. For example, there’s a rotating cord wrap holder, which is especially helpful for those working with extension cables.
Other storage accessories can be added to the sides of tool chests and cases as well, offering additional storage space. These include a molded tool tray, a bin with a transparent lid, and a magnetic bar that holds metal items like screwdrivers and scissors. Another new attachment leans more toward convenience than anything else: a side-mounted cup holder for storing your coffee or ice water. The seven CaseStack 2.0 accessories are backward-compatible and can be used with both the old and new toolboxes. They connect via the attachment points built into the cases.
Most of the products included on this list are from the first-generation Kobalt CaseStack system. As the next-generation lineup of CaseStack products isn’t available at the time of this writing, with no official product pages on the Lowe’s website, we relied on video footage from popular hardware YouTube channels, such as The Den of Tools, for information on these upcoming (as of May 2026) items.
With Lowe’s focusing on CaseStack 2.0, several original CaseStack products still listed on its website have been out of stock for some time. Thus, we limited our selection to CaseStack 1.0 products that are still available from the retailer. Discontinued products may still be available from third-party sellers or as pre-owned items, but were not considered for this list regardless.
Sorry Liquid Glass critics, the upcoming macOS 27 won’t be getting rid of Apple’s latest design language. Instead, the MacBook maker is introducing a “slight redesign” to Liquid Glass with the next macOS, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman.
On top of user complaints about poor text readability and inconsistent looks between apps, Gurman explained that Liquid Glass hasn’t seen a smooth transition onto the larger displays we see on desktops or laptops. According to Gurman, that’s due in part to Liquid Glass being created with OLED technology in mind, while most Macs still run on LCD panels. To address these issues, Gurman said Apple will target the weird “shadows and transparency quirks” of Liquid Glass with macOS 27. On the hardware side, the Liquid Glass interface could look a lot better on the expected OLED touchscreen MacBook that could arrive as soon as this year.
Gurman reported that these upcoming Liquid Glass tweaks on macOS are supposed to represent how the Apple design team wanted it to look from the start, attributing the issues to “a not-completely-baked implementation from Apple’s software engineering team.” However, it’s not the first time Apple made changes to Liquid Glass, since iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1 and macOS 26.1 added an option to frost the interface for more opacity and contrast. Besides the Liquid Glass tweaks coming in the next macOS, Gurman added that Apple is working on “bug fixes, battery-life upgrades and performance improvements,” which will be officially unveiled at the next WWDC on June 8.
Tohme Accounting believes AI is becoming essential in cross-border accounting as firms manage growing regulatory complexity, faster reporting demands, and larger volumes of financial data. The firm uses a customized in-house AI system to support workflow management, data analysis, and advisory services while maintaining human oversight for strategic decision-making.
TL;DR
Tohme Accounting, a cross-border tax and advisory firm serving clients throughout Canada and the United States, sees artificial intelligence becoming increasingly influential in modern accounting. It observes that as financial activity expands across jurisdictions and regulatory frameworks continue to evolve, firms are adapting to larger volumes of data, faster reporting expectations, and more complex compliance requirements.
“You can see the shift in cross‑border accounting today. Companies are juggling multiple tax systems at once, and the firms supporting them are trying to keep up with rules that change constantly. Clients want answers fast, and they expect those answers to be backed by real‑time information,” founder Samer Tohme says. He adds that as these demands continue to increase, conversations around AI have moved beyond experimentation and into broader operational use.
Recent industry research reflects that momentum. According to a survey, 59% of finance leaders reported using AI within their finance functions, while organizations with more advanced implementations expressed growing confidence in the technology’s long-term value. Additionally, many finance leaders continue facing obstacles related to technical expertise, operational integration, and data management, illustrating how AI adoption involves much more than introducing a new platform into an existing workflow.
“The implementation challenges continue to appear across the accounting field, where longstanding processes and structured workflows are common. Because of that foundation, transitions to new technologies naturally take time,” Tohme says. He notes that many firms are still assessing how AI fits within their operational models, especially when dealing with compliance-sensitive work that requires precision and review. Tohme adds that in some cases, uncertainty surrounding customization, oversight, and practical application has slowed adoption, even as demand for faster and more integrated financial guidance continues rising.
He believes much of the conversation surrounding AI becomes more meaningful when viewed through the lens of integration instead of replacement. “Accounting involves understanding context, identifying patterns, and interpreting how financial decisions connect to larger business objectives,” Tohme says. “AI expands the ability to organize information quickly, but professional judgment remains essential in translating that information into advice that fits the client’s situation.”
That perspective has influenced how the firm developed its technology infrastructure. Instead of depending entirely on widely available third-party software, Tohme Accounting built a customized in-house AI system tailored to its internal workflows and client needs. The platform supports operational functions including organization, workflow management, data analysis, and client communication, while remaining under the firm’s direct oversight.
This level of control, Tohme explains, has become especially important in cross-border accounting, where businesses often navigate Canadian provincial regulations alongside U.S. federal and state tax requirements. He notes that legislative updates, filing obligations, and reporting standards can vary significantly between jurisdictions, creating an environment where information changes quickly and precision becomes increasingly important.
Within Tohme Accounting’s workflow, AI assists with organizing financial information, identifying regulatory developments, and interpreting quantitative data in real time. This allows the firm to evaluate how changes in tax legislation or reporting requirements may influence specific clients across multiple jurisdictions. As a result, advisors can dedicate more time to strategic analysis and personalized planning instead of manual data organization.
“To work across borders effectively, you need visibility into how multiple systems connect at the same time,” Tohme states. “AI can help organize those moving parts efficiently, which creates more opportunity for meaningful discussions around planning, operations, and long-term financial decisions.”
The growing volume of financial data has also changed how firms think about personalization, according to Tohme. Business owners seem to be increasingly expecting accounting relationships to reflect their operational priorities, timelines, and growth objectives. Maintaining that level of customization across hundreds of clients can become difficult without integrated systems supporting the process behind the scenes.
Tohme Accounting uses AI to organize client-specific information, operational details, reporting timelines, and strategic objectives so advisory recommendations remain connected to each client’s broader financial goals. That integration, as Tohme notes, also contributes to faster documentation processes, more efficient reporting preparation, and improved coordination across ongoing tax and accounting work.
At the same time, the firm maintains active oversight throughout the process. Tohme emphasizes that AI functions most effectively when paired with technical expertise and continuous review. “Technology can process information quickly, but accounting still depends on interpretation, experience, and accuracy,” he says. “Professional oversight remains an important part of ensuring the information supports the right financial decisions.”
As firms continue integrating AI into their workflows, Tohme notes that the profession itself is also evolving. He observes that more accounting professionals are spending time on advisory, analysis, and strategic planning while automated systems assist with repetitive administrative tasks.
Industry research suggests this transformation is becoming more widespread. According to an industry report, AI adoption among accounting firms increased from 9% in 2024 to 41% in 2025, with many firms integrating AI into workflows designed to improve operational efficiency, financial insight generation, and client service. The report also notes that firms are increasing investment in integrated technologies and advisory-focused services as client expectations continue evolving across international markets.
Tohme believes the future of accounting will continue combining technological capability with human expertise. “Clients value insight that connects financial information to practical business decisions,” he says. “AI contributes analytical speed and organizational support, while accountants provide interpretation, strategy, and perspective informed by experience.” Through its customized AI infrastructure and advisory-focused model, Tohme Accounting continues refining how technology can support precision, responsiveness, and personalized financial guidance within an increasingly international accounting landscape.
Samsung Galaxy S25 users in the United States are finally getting the One UI 8.5 update. After rolling out to newer devices, the update is now making its way to last year’s Galaxy S25 series, bringing a solid list of improvements worth knowing about.
Users on X have reported receiving this update on their Samsung Galaxy S25 devices, so if you own one, now might be the time to go into the software update settings and get the latest update.
One UI 8.5 is bringing several new features and a bunch of UI improvements. The biggest visual change is to the quick settings panel. You can now grab, resize, and drag individual controls wherever you want. The volume and brightness sliders can go vertical, and the media control can expand to a larger size.
The lock screen also got some love. There are new clock fonts with animations, and a thickness slider lets you fine-tune your clock’s look. A weather toggle now shows live weather animations on your wallpaper, which is a small but genuinely fun touch.
One UI 8.5 also brings a bunch of AI-powered photo editing tools, including erase, move, create, and style. Erase removes objects cleanly, move lets you reposition elements in a shot, create adds sketched objects using AI, and style transforms selfies into cartoon versions of yourself.
While last year’s Galaxy S25 models are finally getting the One UI 8.5 update, it’s not all good news. It seems that there are several missing features in One UI 8.5 that the older models are not getting.
Users at Korean Samsung forums have discovered as many as nine missing features, with the two biggest being the Now Nudge and 24MP camera mode. Other glaring omissions include Notification Highlights, Finder shortcut on the Home Screen, Samsung Browser’s Ask AI, and more.
It doesn’t feel like any of these features depend on the new hardware of the Samsung Galaxy S26 series. They are just feature gatekeeping on Samsung’s part to force users to upgrade to new devices.
I criticize Apple every year for gatekeeping new camera features on the latest iPhone models. It seems that Samsung is not only following in Apple’s footsteps but also pushing things much further.
For those of us who keep hundreds of Safari tabs open, Apple is reportedly testing out a new feature that can organize all of it automatically. According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, Apple is working on a Safari feature called “Organize Tabs” that will debut with iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27. As the name suggests, the new feature will automatically organize your Safari tabs, but Gurman added that it won’t carry the Apple Intelligence label, even though it’s likely using some form of artificial intelligence. Once the feature is live, Safari users will be able to choose if they want the grouping to be automatic or not, according to Gurman.
This Organize Tabs feature adds onto the Tab Groups option that was introduced to Safari 15 back in 2021. Of course, Google already debuted a similar capability on Chrome in January 2024, called Organize Similar Tabs, marketing it as one of its new generative AI features. However, Apple has been known to lag behind its competitors when it comes to AI-powered features. According to Gurman, we could get our first look at the Organize Tabs feature at WWDC26, which is scheduled to kick off on June 8.
Modders have been experimenting with cardboard enclosures for years, but few can pull off something as elegant as computer enthusiast mryeester’s latest creation. His finished system appears to have been put together as a purposeful design choice rather than an emergency repair job. It has the works, as in clean cutouts, lots of layers to keep it rigid, and just enough room inside to fit conventional components without difficulty.
The real magic happened when mryeester collaborated with a friend who is familiar with cardboard, in this case a retail display designer. They worked together to rough out the overall design in CAD software before sending the drawings to a professional CNC cutter capable of handling thick, corrugated cardboard. They ended up stacking numerous layers on top of each other to form walls that are relatively solid. What could have been a flimsy substance that flexed and bent if looked at incorrectly? Those panels can actually withstand a significant amount of weight without failing.
Sale
They added some ventilation slots to the latest revisions, which are hacked right into the sides to allow air to flow freely around the GPU and CPU. To be honest, putting the thing together was a bit of a challenge at first, but everything eventually fell into place. The motherboard mounting points matched up perfectly, and once everything was screwed down, the entire assembly was rock solid. Adding the graphics card was a little more complicated; an extra cut was required to clear the input-output bracket, but even without screws, it just rested there nicely, due to the stacked cardboard and bolts holding it down.
The power supply location was not a problem because the initial design called for a compact SFX unit, which they simply replaced with a full-size ATX. This required a bit of fiddling with scissors to clip the material back a little more. Overall, it was really simple; once they had the alignment correct, the side panels clicked into place with ease, and the whole thing snapped shut like a charm.
However, it’s the small details that really make the build stand out, such as the nine unique power buttons on one panel, each of which is wired such that only the correct combination will turn on the system. It’s a funny security feature that adds individuality to the system when turned on. They’ve also done an excellent job with CNC cutting, as every edge and corner appears clean and polished, rather than rough-around-the-edges DIY.
Of course, as with any build like this, there were a few hurdles to overcome along the road, as nothing ever goes perfectly smoothly. They had to double-check some measurements for certain brackets on the fly, and fitting in some of the larger parts required some patience with a trusty old utility knife, but each adjustment only reinforced how strong the layered cardboard was in real-world use. They didn’t bother with moisture-proofing this time, but they have ideas for future iterations that may include it.
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Pop star Dua Lipa has taken legal action against Samsung, accusing the electronics giant of using her face to sell TVs without compensation or permission. As first reported by Variety, the lawsuit also claimed Samsung is responsible for copyright and trademark infringement, along with “unauthorized commercial exploitation.”
The complaint stems from Samsung using an image of Lipa’s face on cardboard packaging for its TVs last year. The English musician found out around June 2025 and repeatedly demanded Samsung stop using her likeness on the packaging. However, the suit claimed that Samsung’s response was “dismissive and callous,” while the products in question are still being sold to this day. In the complaint, Lipa’s lawyers said that Samsung has profited from using her image, giving the impression that Lipa has endorsed the product when she hasn’t. The lawsuit also quoted posts on X that suggested some customers would buy the TV after seeing Lipa on the box.
“Samsung’s infringing conduct makes a mockery of [Lipa’s] hard work in establishing a successful brand and has deprived her of the ability to control and monetize her assets,” the lawsuit read. On top of the alleged ill-gotten monetary gains, the lawsuit added that Lipa owns the copyright to the photograph used on Samsung TV boxes, since it was taken backstage at the Austin City Limits Festival in 2024. It’s not the first time that Samsung TVs have been hit with legal trouble either, since Samsung was one of five TV manufacturers to be sued by Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, in December for using ad-targeting spyware on their TVs. We reached out to Samsung for comment on the Lipa lawsuit and will update the story when we hear back.
Many a DIYer might be quick to tell you that their local Harbor Freight has aided in several of the projects they’ve undertaken in their home, yard, or garage. They’d likely also tell you the retailer has helped them accomplish those tasks while coming in under budget, as the family-owned hardware store chain has made its name by offering customers high-quality tools at prices that shouldn’t break the bank.
If you are familiar with the chain, you may already know that Harbor Freight Tools actually owns many of the notable brands whose tools appear in its stores, and that list includes those bearing the brand name of Quinn Tools. That brand is largely focused on the manufacture of non-powered hand tools, with Harbor Freight currently listing some 100 different offerings in the Quinn Tools lineup both online and through its various brick-and-mortar outlets.
If you’ve perused Quinn Tools products before, you’ve likely noted that they are particularly budget-friendly, even by Harbor Freight standards. Even within Quinn’s budget-minded parameters, there are items bearing its brand that are considerably cheaper than others. Budget basement pricing aside, some of those tools are still very much worth checking out if you are looking to save a few bucks on essential tools. Here’s a few handy Quinn Tools you can currently pick up from Harbor Freight for less than $25.
Scissors may not be something many people consider a tool in the proper sense, but a good set can be invaluable for folks working on smaller DIY jobs and virtually any level of crafting project. To that end, high-quality scissors can also be surprisingly pricey, depending on your needs and, of course, the retail environment you’re shopping in.
If you are shopping for quality scissors at Harbor Freight, you might be happy to learn you can currently purchase not one, but three such items from its Quinn Tools brand for a mere $5.99. For that low price, you get one large 9-inch scissor, one medium 8-inch scissor with a detachable serrated blade, and one small 5¼-inch pair. Each of those scissors is made of titanium-coated stainless steel and equipped with molded ergonomic grips for comfort.
As for their quality, Harbor Freight shoppers who’ve purchased the three-scissor set are almost universally happy with them, rating the tools at 4.8-stars out of 5. Those who rated the scissors at four or five stars claim that they are sharp, durable, and comfortable to use. Price is also a common point of praise, with some users noting that many other brands charge the same or even more for a single pair of scissors. Some users did note potential quality control issues, however, claiming that the 8-inch scissor in particular was prone to breaking. Others noted their scissors struggled to cut heavier items like cardboard.
As with any budget-minded brand, you’d be correct in assuming that there are a few products in the Quinn Tools lineup you’d be wise to avoid. The brand’s pry bars are clearly not among them, though, with its two-piece Set currently boasting a user rating of 4.9-stars. That set should be all the more enticing to Harbor Freight shoppers as it is currently selling for just $11.99.
That modest investment will net you one 8-inch pry bar for smaller jobs, and one 18-inch bar built for more heavy duty work. Per Quinn, the tools are ideal for demolition projects, aligning mechanical equipment, and any number of other jobs that might require a certain degree of leverage from users. To that end, the pry bars are made from heat-treated chrome-vanadium steel and boast a black oxide finish to protect against corrosion. The steel shafts also run all the way through the molded handle and are equipped with a beveled edge to provide maximum torque and leverage.
As noted, the pry bars’ esteem among customers is very high, with 99 of the 100 reviews posted on their Harbor Freight page being four or five stars, and the lone outlier being three stars. Users praise the set for its quality, durability, and variety, with many noting the small pry bar is an ideal alternative to using a screwdriver. Moreover, many note the 18-inch bar is great for engine work, while one and all agree it’s hard to beat the quality for the cost.
Sometimes, a delicate hand is preferable for mechanical work, particularly when it comes to jobs where smaller screws and fixtures are part of the equation. If delicate is the order of the day in your work, then a precision screwdriver set is an absolute necessity, and that means this Quinn 12-Piece package is well worth a look.
That set is priced at $14.99, and includes 12 precision screwdrivers, each of which is made with three holding zones to make it easy for users to pivot between power, precision, and fast spin driving. The versatility is heightened by the set including precision slotted heads for hex, Phillips, and star head screws. They are also manufactured using S2 Steel for increased strength and durability. The screwdrivers are also color coded to make it easy to distinguish one driver style from another, with Quinn even including a handy carrying case for the lot.
Harbor Freight customers generally agree the set is worth the modest investment, rating it at 4.7-stars, while noting that the set provides excellent value and is ideal for repairing eye glasses and electronics, as well as other small precision jobs. Some YouTube reviews even compare it favorably to similar sets from Icon. However, one unsatisfied Harbor Freight customer noted they felt the tips on the drivers were too soft and not well-enough defined.
For many, a socket and ratchet set is the very definition of a must-have tool. There are, of course, several different versions of socket and ratchet sets, all of which are handy in any number of situations. While Quinn Tools makes sockets and ratchets to fit most of those needs, one of the more common size sets you’ll find is ¼-inch, with the brand selling such a kit through Harbor Freight for $19.99.
That set comes with 21 individual pieces, including 10 SAE styled socket heads — sized 3/16-inch, 7/32-inch, ¼-inch, 9/32-inch, 5/16-inch, 11/32-inch, ⅜-inch, 7/16-inch, ½-inch, 9/16-inch – as well as 10 in Metric style — sized 5 millimeters, 6 millimeters, 7 millimeters, 8 millimeters, 9 millimeters, 10 millimeters, 11 millimeters, 12 millimeters, 13 millimeters, and 14 millimeters. It also includes a 72-tooth quick-release polished chrome-vanadium steel ratchet.
If you’re familiar with Quinn’s sockets, you may already know that they are fairly well-regarded by customers as a solid investment. So, it may not come as much of a shock that this socket and ratchet set is also well rated, with Harbor Freight shoppers rating it at 4.8-stars. That rating is based on more than 1,300 reviews, by the way, so it’s about as legit as you’ll find. Those users claim they use the set for everything from oil changes and light engine work to other small repairs, and generally agree it’s incredibly durable and versatile for the price, even as some claimed their ratchet malfunctioned with little usage.
In the arena of must-have tools, pliers are pretty high on the list of devices any DIYer would need to add when assembling a home tool kit. Like any tool, buying a full set of pliers can add up with a quickness. If you’re not looking to splurge on a set of pliers, you’ll no doubt be interested to know that Quinn is selling a four-piece plier Set through Harbor Freight right now for $24.99.
Like the other items on this list, Quinn’s four-piece plier set has an impressive user rating, with customers awarding it a 4.7-star rating. And yes, like the other items on this list, price point is a major point of praise, with users happy enough to pay under $25 to add groove joint pliers, long nose pliers, diagonal pliers, and linesman’s pliers to their tool box. For the record, the quality of the tools themselves is another common point of praise, with some claiming they were surprised by the durability at the price point.
Some users did, however, note the exact opposite experience, claiming that their pliers broke or rusted soon after purchase. As for their makeup, the set is manufactured using forged and hardened steel, boast jaws with milled teeth, and are fit with hardened cutting edges. They are also designed with riveted joints to reduce wobbling during usage. Perhaps best of all, the set comes backed by a lifetime warranty from Quinn Tools, which should cover any potential issues.
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