All the Gear We Loved in November

Amazon's easy-to-use security camera lets you peek inside your home from anywhere. It can send you alerts when it detects moving objects or actual humans, comes with infrared night vision to give you a clear picture when it's dark, and, naturally, it works with Alexa. The Cloud Cam can also be used along with Amazon Key to keep an eye on those friendly gig economy workers placing your Amazon prime deliveries in your entryway. Nothing creepy going on here! Read the review here.

Microsoft’s new revved-up Xbox One X packs a faster CPU, beefier graphics cores, and zippier GDDR5 memory. The X’s spec sheet reads like a gamer took the old Xbox One and modded it with a bounty of parts from Newegg. Sure, it’s smaller, but it’s not a typical mid-cycle refresh after all—like the competing PS4 Pro, the Xbox One X is a faster, better version of the Xbox that already exists. Read the review here.

The closest thing to robotic friends we have right now are the growing number of smart speakers, like the Amazon Echo, each with an voice assistant inside them. Instead of a faceless, static speaker, social robot Jibo looks like a cartoon. The robot has no legs, but its shiny white plastic body is a curvy cylinder with a head on top that can move so naturally it looks like a Disney animator sketched it. At $900, adding this bot to the family is a serious investment—but he’s just a seed of what the future of robotics has in store. Read the review here.

Amazon’s updated Kindle Oasis seems to have been designed for people who want to read anywhere and everywhere. It has a larger battery than the last model, so you’ll never be stuck sans reading material. It’s waterproof, so you can read in the shower. (Try it! It’s fun.) The $249 reader even syncs with Audible. This is certainly the most useful Kindle ever, but with an extra inch of screen size and a higher price tag, it's not quite the most usable one. Read the review here.

We know what you’re thinking: Firefox? That browser sucks. But that’s the old Firefox. The new Firefox actually manages to evolve the entire browser experience, and is designed for the mobile-first world. It’s better than Chrome, faster than Chrome, and smarter than Chrome, and should be your new go-to browser. Read the story here.

No matter your personal feelings on kids and screen time, most parents will admit that a screen is a fast and effective way to pacify and angsty toddler. The Fire 7 Kid’s Edition is rugged and can summon kiddo-friendly content in a pinch, and it does so at the reasonable price of $100. It even comes with a year’s subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. This spaghetti-proof tablet is portable and durable enough to shove into a diaper bag on your way out the door. Read the review here.

It’s been five years since Microsoft first debuted the Surface tablet. At the time, a slim slate that could also replace your laptop was a crazy idea. But the thinking around that concept—and the PC industry—has changed. Yes, the Surface could use some smoothing. But when it comes to 2-in-1 devices that can switch modes between drawing and typing, between work and play, the 2017 Surface Pro is just about as good as it gets. Read the review here.

Razer’s first phone, as you’d expect, is built for gamers. It’s stuffed with all the high specs a gamer could want, and its display has the smoothest scrolling we’ve seen on an Android phone. Whether you’re snapping pictures, churning through the day’s news, or crunching away in Hearthstone, this phone’s got you covered. Read the story here.

Back in 2013, we said we’d hit “peak Bluetooth speaker” when we reviewed Ultimate Ears' first Boom speaker. This year, we’ve hit peak Alexa. The Boom and Megaboom now have two more explosively-named Alexa-powered siblings: the Blast and Megablast. They look and feel almost identical to their older brethren, but these Bluetooth bombs come packed with Wi-Fi, microphones, and everything else Alexa needs. Read the review here.

Smart watches are good for fitness tracking and feeding smartphone notifications to our wrists, but smartwatches remain more of a computing side dish than a main course. But as side dishes go, the 2017 Samsung Gear Sport comes with all the trimmings. It has one of the best smartwatch interfaces around with a fantastic rotating bezel, it’s waterproof up to 50m, has offline Spotify support, and has battery life for days. Read the review here.

Together with Gore-Tex, Converse is diving into the tech market with Urban Utility, a new line of weatherproof mens shoes and outerwear. The shoes and jacket have Converse's casual DNA on the outside and Gore's technology on the inside, and Converse’s first crack at truly technical products is a promising entrance into the streetwear market. Read the story here.

Want an easy way to get a straightforward, no-nonsense look at the state of the art in smartphones? Just check out the OnePlus 5T. It’s a lot like the OnePlus 5, but it packs a bigger 6-inch screen, facial recognition, and a dual camera setup for all your holiday portraits. You'll be able to get a 5T with 64 gigs of storage for just $499. If you're counting, that's half the iPhone X. Read the story here.