Month: April 2023

Enlarge / In this image, the 16-meter-long Radar for Icy Moons Exploration is seen in stowed configuration. (credit: ESA)

It has now been two weeks since the on-target launch of the European Space Agency's 1.5 billion euro probe that is bound for the moons of Jupiter.

This process had been going well until the space agency attempted to extend a 16-meter-long antenna that is part of its radar instrument. The Radar for Icy Moons Exploration, or RIME, is an important scientific instrument on the spacecraft because its ground-penetrating radar will allow for examinations of the interior of intriguing moons such as Europa and Ganymede.

On Friday, the European Space Agency said the long antenna remains stuck to its mounting bracket and is only extended about one-third of its full length. Engineers at the spacecraft's mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, are working to solve the issue.

Enlarge / The Vitamix 5200 is widely considered the best blender on the market.

Today's best deals include a range of Roomba robot vacuums, internal SSDs from Samsung and SK Hynix, one of the best blenders money can buy, and LG's well-reviewed 48-inch C2 4K TV. LG's C series TVs have been widely praised for delivering inky blacks, excellent contrast, wide viewing angles, smooth motion, and gaming-friendly features.

Compared to the C1, the 2022 C2 improves peak brightness (specifically in the 55-inch size, not the 42- and 48-inch models) and supports 48Gbps of bandwidth (up from 40Gbps) to the four HDMI 2.1 ports. The C2 also natively supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, as well as a variable refresh rate for smoother gameplay. The 48-inch C2 is currently just $20 shy of the lowest price we've ever tracked, about $650 off MSRP and at least $100 off the typical street price.

• LG C2 (2022) 48-inch 4K OLED TV for $849 ($1,499) at Amazon, Walmart (price in cart)

Samsung's 980 Pro internal SSDs have been a crowd favorite for building high-performance gaming PCs or upgrading the storage on a PS5. Samsung rates its write speeds at up to 7,000MB, and it comes with or without a heatsink. It has been on sale for the past few weeks at lower prices than usual. So, although it's not currently at the lowest price we've tracked, it can still be a nice pick up. If you do nab one, make sure to update the device's firmware to the latest version. Samsung's 980 and 990 SSDs have recently been suffering some reliability and data loss issues, but Samsung says it has addressed the problems via updated firmware.

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  The OnePlus Pad. It's got a keyboard. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Android tablets are supposed to be making a comeback, and along with Google's push for new software, which started in 2021, we're also getting waves of new Android tablet hardware. One of the most anticipated is probably the OnePlus Pad, a mid-range tablet that, at $479, looks squarely aimed at the entry-level iPad. OnePlus was probably hoping the headline-grabbing 144 Hz LCD at this price would convert some buyers, but it's not possible to get a good 144 Hz display at this price point. The OnePlus Pad's display is smeary and ugly, and it made me want to put it down about as soon as I picked it up.

The display looks fine if nothing is moving, but the second you have to scroll anywhere, everything turns to mush. Text on the display is a streaky, blurry mess in motion to the point where it's pretty hard to read smaller text sizes until scrolling stops. Smaller text gets noticeably thinner and lighter colored during scrolling, usually going from a solid black to a shimmery gray. It feels like either the display has a weird subpixel layout that doesn't look good in motion, or OnePlus' software uses a strange anti-alias effect during scrolling that looks different from a stationary picture.

Whatever happened here, the point is that scrolling a page with text on the OnePlus Pad is difficult to read and often physically uncomfortable to view. As one of the primary uses of a tablet, this is a total deal-breaker and completely negates whatever else is going on here. Apple's scale usually gives it better component prices. Considering that the base model $449 iPad still ships with a smaller (10.9-inch), lower resolution (2360×1640) display, the OnePlus cranking the spec sheet up to a 144 Hz, 11.61-inch, 2800×2000 panel seems to have involved completely throwing image quality out the window. Big displays are expensive, and I don't think this display stat line works at this price right now.