Month: January 2017

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Sometimes the dice just roll the right way. I had been scheduled to spend a week kicking the tyres of Kia’s new Niro at the end of August but a mixup with the booking and then the theft of a press fleet car meant that I didn’t actually get my hands on it until the last week of September, which happened to be a week before the UK press launch of the Hyundai Ioniq.

So I decided to tackle them all at once. The Ioniq (that’s "ionic" rather than "ion-eek") will eventually be available in three guises: pure electric, hybrid—which I’m reviewing here—and a plug-in hybrid due to arrive in Blighty next spring. As it happens, the Ioniq hybrid drivetrain is also found in the Kia Niro (pronounced like the actor rather than the pen), while a plug-in version of the Niro will also appear down the line.

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LAS VEGAS—Garmin has updated its Fenix line of high-end multisport watches annually for the past few years, and 2017's update will be welcomed by all those with smaller wrists (myself included). This week Garmin announced the new Fenix 5 line of fitness watches, including the Fenix 5, 5S, and 5X, all of which were redesigned to be more compact than the existing Fenix watches. The new offerings should be easier for women and people with smaller wrists to wear.

Garmin's Fenix line combines the widest feature set with arguably the most inoffensive design out of Garmin's wearable family. However, Fenix watches are big watches—so big that whenever I put one on, the gigantic face weighed down my wrist and the metal band would leave a gap so large around my wrist my index finger could fit through it. The company is tackling that issue with the Fenix 5 line (no, there were no Fenix 4 models, you're not missing anything), which measure 42mm (Fenix 5S), 47mm (Fenix 5), and 51mm (Fenix 5X).

The Fenix 5X may be the size of a typical Fenix 3 HR, but the other two models are made to be compact and take up less wrist real estate. They all come in a variety of colors and finishes, and they all have sapphire versions that use scratch-resistant lenses. All of the watches are waterproof up to 100 meters and can be interchanged between leather, metal, and silicone bands depending on how you're wearing them.

Enlarge / Alexa, how do I create something that combines AI with a creepy 1980s toy? (credit: Sean Gallagher)

Update, 1/2/21: It's New Year's weekend, and Ars staff is still enjoying some necessary downtime to prepare for a new year (and a slew of CES emails, we're sure). While that happens, we're resurfacing some vintage Ars stories like this 2017 project from Ars Editor Emeritus Sean Gallagher, who created generations of nightmare fuel with only a nostalgic toy and some IoT gear. Tedlexa was first born (err, documented in writing) on January 4, 2017, and its story appears unchanged below.

It's been 50 years since Captain Kirk first spoke commands to an unseen, all-knowing Computer on Star Trek and not quite as long since David Bowman was serenaded by HAL 9000's rendition of "A Bicycle Built for Two" in 2001: A Space Odyssey. While we've been talking to our computers and other devices for years (often in the form of expletive interjections), we're only now beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible when voice commands are connected to artificial intelligence software.

Meanwhile, we've always seemingly fantasized about talking toys, from Woody and Buzz in Toy Story to that creepy AI teddy bear that tagged along with Haley Joel Osment in Steven Spielberg's A.I. (Well, maybe people aren't dreaming of that teddy bear.) And ever since the Furby craze, toymakers have been trying to make toys smarter. They've even connected them to the cloud—with predictably mixed results.