The best Bluetooth speakers still have a place near and dear to our hearts, even as we’ve seen better (and more portable) smart speakers creeping into the universe. It’s fun and easy to ask an Amazon Echo or Google Nest speaker to play your favorite track or tell you the weather, but smart speakers require stable Wi-Fi and updates to work. By (mostly) forgoing voice assistants and Wi-Fi radios, Bluetooth speakers are more portable, with the ability to venture outside of your house and withstand rugged conditions like the sandy beach or the steamy Airbnb jacuzzi. They’ll also work with any smartphone, and they sound as good as their smart-speaker equivalents.
We’ve tested hundreds of Bluetooth speakers since 2017 (and many before that), and we can happily say they are still some of the best small devices you can listen to. Here are our favorites right now. Be sure to check out all our buying guides, including the Best Soundbars, Best Wirefree Earbuds, and Best Smart Speakers.
Updated December 2023: We’ve added the JBL Authentics 200, Urbanista Malibu, Sonos Move 2, Sennheiser Ambeo Mini, and Ultimate Ears Epicboom.
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If you’re looking for a long read to while away your weekend, we’ve got you covered. First up, WIRED senior reporter Andy Greenberg reveals the wild story behind the three teenage hackers who created the Mirai botnet code that ultimately took down a huge swath of the internet in 2016. WIRED contributor Garrett Graff pulls from his new book on UFOs to lay out the proof that the 1947 “discovery” of aliens in Roswell, New Mexico, never really happened. And finally, we take a deep dive into the communities that are solving cold cases using face recognition and other AI.
That’s not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy stories we didn’t report in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there.
For years, mercenary hacker companies like NSO Group and Hacking Team have repeatedly been the subject of scandal for selling their digital intrusion and cyberespionage services to clients worldwide. Far less well-known is an Indian startup called Appin that, from its offices in New Delhi, reportedly enabled customers worldwide to hack whistleblowers, activists, corporate competitors, lawyers, and celebrities on a giant scale.
In a sprawling investigation, Reuters reporters spoke to dozens of former Appin staff and hundreds of its hacking victims. It also obtained thousands of its internal documents—including 17 pitch documents advertising its “cyber spying” and “cyber warfare” offerings—as well as case files from law enforcement investigations into Appin launched from the US to Switzerland. The resulting story reveals in new depth how a small Indian company “hacked the world,” as Reuters writes, brazenly selling its hacking abilities to the highest bidder through an online portal called My Commando. Its victims, as well as those of copycat hacking companies founded by its alumni, have included Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Malaysian politician Mohamed Azmin Ali, targets of a Dominican digital tabloid, and a member of a Native American tribe who tried to claim profits from a Long Island, New York, casino development on his reservation.
The ransomware group known as Scattered Spider has distinguished itself this year as one of the most ruthless in the digital extortion industry, most recently inflicting roughly $100 million in damage to MGM Casinos. A damning new Reuters report—their cyber team has had a busy week— suggests that at least some members of that cybercriminal group are based in the West, within reach of US law enforcement. Yet they haven’t been arrested. Executives of cybersecurity companies who have tracked Scattered Spider say the FBI, where many cybersecurity-focused agents have been poached by the private sector, may lack the personnel needed to investigate. They also point to a reluctance on the part of victims to immediately cooperate in investigations, sometimes depriving law enforcement of valuable evidence.
Denmark’s critical infrastructure Computer Emergency Response Team, known as SektorCERT, warned in a report on Sunday that hackers had breached the networks of 22 Danish power utilities by exploiting a bug in their firewall appliances. The report, first revealed by Danish journalist Henrik Moltke, described the campaign as the biggest of its kind to ever target the Danish power grid. Some clues in the hackers’ infrastructure suggest that the group behind the intrusions was the notorious Sandworm, aka Unit 74455 of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, which has been responsible for the only three confirmed blackouts triggered by hackers in history, all in Ukraine. But in this case, the hackers were discovered and evicted from the target networks before they could cause any disruption to the utilities’ customers.
Last month, WIRED covered the efforts of a whitehat hacker startup called Unciphered to unlock valuable cryptocurrency wallets whose owners have forgotten their passwords—including one stash of $250 million in bitcoin stuck on an encrypted USB drive. Now, the same company has revealed that it found a flaw in a random number generator widely used in cryptocurrency wallets created prior to 2016 that leaves many of those wallets prone to theft, potentially adding up to $1 billion in vulnerable money. Unciphered found the flaw while attempting to unlock $600,000 worth of crypto locked in a client’s wallet. They failed to crack it but in the process discovered a flaw in a piece of open-source code called BitcoinJS that left a wide swath of other wallets potentially open to be hacked. The coder who built that flaw into BitcoinJS? None other than Stefan Thomas, the owner of that same $250 million in bitcoin locked on a thumb drive.
The Apple TV+ series For All Mankind is an alternate history story in which the Soviet Union beats the United States to the moon, leading to a greatly intensified space race. Screenwriter Rafael Jordan was excited to see another science fiction show from Ronald D. Moore, creator of the hit series Battlestar Galactica.
“I’ve been saying for two or three years that this is probably the best show on TV, and it’s not the first time we’ve said that about a Ron Moore show,” Jordan says in Episode 556 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley thinks that For All Mankind will appeal to a wider audience than most outer space shows, since its first season revolves around the familiar and relatable world of the Apollo program. “It starts off with this fairly realistic world of the ’70s, so if you’re someone who’s put off by super science fiction stuff, it kind of eases you into it,” he says. “And then by the time you’re hooked, then the fusion reactors and all that kind of stuff starts coming in.”
For All Mankind also features top-notch dialogue and characterization. Writer Sara Lynn Michener thinks the show will appeal to anyone who likes the knotty domestic drama of shows like Mad Men. “Very few characters, if any, ever feel like they’re just there to provide filler and there to provide something else for the main characters,” she says. “Every time you think that you’re going to write them off as some sort of caricature, you’re wrong, and they’re going to come back around and be real again in a new way, in a refreshing way, and I absolutely love that about this show.”
For All Mankind is currently airing its fourth season, out of a planned seven. Lightspeed magazine editor John Joseph Adams hopes the show becomes one of the rare science fiction series to last that long. “I think this is one of the best science fiction shows probably ever, certainly the best alternate history show,” he says. “Everybody watch it and get your friends to watch it, because we’ve got to get those seven seasons.”
Listen to the complete interview with Rafael Jordan, Sara Lynn Michener, and John Joseph Adams in Episode 556 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Rafael Jordan on alternate history:
For once my background as a musician ties into this, and there’s really nothing they can do about this, but as the timelines start to diverge from reality, they use a lot of specific songs from certain years to create the mood. And I dig that, but also those songs wouldn’t exist any more. They would be different. “Come As You Are” by Nirvana. That song wouldn’t exist in this new timeline. It would be slightly different, because music is a reflection of the times and culture. … In the perfect version of this show they would have had the extra money to hire bands to make fake songs in the style of the times.
John Joseph Adams on the Season 2 finale:
What they figure out is that they can basically cover every inch of them with duct tape. So they basically make spacesuits out of duct tape, because that’s what they have, and they have some kind of face masks that they can put on them. And they explain in excruciating detail, “Any bit of your skin that’s exposed is just going to balloon.” It sounds completely awful, and you can see the angst on their faces as it’s explained what’s going to happen to them. And they have 15 seconds to get from where they are to this control panel on the outside, and it’s so intense. It’s just incredible.
David Barr Kirtley on astronaut Garrett Reisman:
Ron Moore calls [Garrett Reisman] and says, “I have an idea I’d like to bounce off you.” So they meet up, and Ron Moore says, “I’m thinking about doing a show about NASA in the ’70s, or maybe make it an alternate history thing, where we start off that way but then it diverges from actual history. One or the other.” And Garrett Reisman says, “Well, when I was in Russia I saw their lander”—their lunar lander that they built that they never used. And he’s like, “Most people don’t realize how close the Russians actually came to beating us to the moon.” And so they started talking about, “Whoa, what if that had happened? Then this would have happened, and this would have happened.” So that’s where the show’s origin was.
Sara Lynn Michener on Apple TV+:
I remember being very worried when this show came out, because I was literally pleading with people to watch it. Because I desperately wanted it to have all of the seasons, and I had read somewhere that they have a whole planned seven-season arc. And I want to see every bit of it. So I remember when it came out I was just like, “Why am I the only person talking about this show?” … I think Apple TV+ is smart enough to look at the long game and say, “Hey, if we finish this show, we can keep making money off of it in perpetuity,” and that is such a smarter way of doing stuff like this, because they’re aware shows go through ebbs and flows of popularity.
A little over three years have passed since McDonald’s sent out an email to thousands of its restaurant owners around the world that abruptly cut short the future of a three-person startup called Kytch—and with it, perhaps one of McDonald’s best chances for fixing its famously out-of-order ice cream machines.
Until then, Kytch had been selling McDonald’s restaurant owners a popular internet-connected gadget designed to attach to their notoriously fragile and often broken soft-serve McFlurry dispensers, manufactured by McDonalds equipment partner Taylor. The Kytch device would essentially hack into the ice cream machine’s internals, monitor its operations, and send diagnostic data over the internet to an owner or manager to help keep it running. But despite Kytch’s efforts to solve the Golden Arches’ intractable ice cream problems, a McDonald’s email in November 2020 warned its franchisees not to use Kytch, stating that it represented a safety hazard for staff. Kytch says its sales dried up practically overnight.
Now, after years of litigation, the ice-cream-hacking entrepreneurs have unearthed evidence that they say shows that Taylor, the soft-serve machine maker, helped engineer McDonald’s Kytch-killing email—kneecapping the startup not because of any safety concern, but in a coordinated effort to undermine a potential competitor. And Taylor’s alleged order, as Kytch now describes it, came all the way from the top.
On Wednesday, Kytch filed a newly unredacted motion for summary adjudication in its lawsuit against Taylor for alleged trade libel, tortious interference, and other claims. The new motion, which replaces a redacted version from August, refers to internal emails Taylor released in the discovery phase of the lawsuit, which were quietly unsealed over the summer. The motion focuses in particular on one email from Timothy FitzGerald, the CEO of Taylor parent company Middleby, that appears to suggest that either Middleby or McDonald’s send a communication to McDonald’s franchise owners to dissuade them from using Kytch’s device.
“Not sure if there is anything we can do to slow up the franchise community on the other solution,” FitzGerald wrote on October 17, 2020. “Not sure what communication from either McD or Midd can or will go out.”
In their legal filing, the Kytch cofounders, of course, interpret “the other solution” to mean their product. In fact, FitzGerald’s message was sent in an email thread that included Middleby’s then COO, David Brewer, who had wondered earlier whether Middleby could instead acquire Kytch. Another Middleby executive responded to FitzGerald on October 17 to write that Taylor and McDonald’s had already met the previous day to discuss sending out a message to franchisees about McDonald’s lack of support for Kytch.
But Jeremy O’Sullivan, a Kytch cofounder, claims—and Kytch argues in its legal motion—that FitzGerald’s email nonetheless proves Taylor’s intent to hamstring a potential competitor. “It’s the smoking gun,” O’Sullivan says of the email. “He’s plotting our demise.”
It’s that time of year again. The holidays? Nope! Winter solstice? Try again. OK, I’ll just tell you: It’s Samsung’s quarterly Discover event. I know, I know—it’s less exciting than wintry festivities, but if you’re in the market for any Samsung products (for yourself or others), this event is big news. Samsung is running discounts not only on some of its older products but also on its latest and greatest flagships. Here’s a curated list of some of the highlights, which run through the week—and we found the same deals (if not better) at other retailers too. Each and every one of these picks has been tested, vetted, and put through the paces by the WIRED Gear team.
We’ve also got some Samsung coupons worth checking out, including an exclusive 30 percent off code that comes with lots of strings but could save you money depending on what you’re buying. Dyson also currently has many of its cordless vacuums on sale at prices at or below what we saw on Black Friday, including the Dyson V15 Absolute at $500 and the Dyson V11 at $400. You can scan our coupon page for more savings.
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Samsung Deals
Samsung Galaxy S23
Photograph: Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy S23 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is the quintessential flagship phone. It’s the no-compromises, every-feature-included, latest-and-greatest from Samsung. All three phones in the S23 range (the S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra) feature brilliant and fluid 120-Hz AMOLED displays and over a day of battery life on a single charge. During testing, WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu found that the real star is the triple camera system. Delivering stellar low-light quality and maybe the most stable video capture on any Android phone, it’s a camera cluster well worth the extra cash. This is the lowest price we’ve seen to date. Just remember that Samsung is poised to announce the Galaxy S24 series in January.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra
Photograph: Samsung
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is a fully featured tablet with some of the best hardware on any Android device. It features an ultrabright display with a liquid-smooth 120-Hz refresh rate, and cutting-edge internals that make the most of the hardware. Did we mention the 14.6-inch screen? There aren’t many tablets around at that massive size. The stylus feels responsive and fluid, and apps and games run beautifully on this gargantuan display.
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5
Photograph: Samsung
The Z Flip5 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) isn’t the phone for everyone, it’s got some quirks (less-than-stellar battery life, for one), but it’s an adorable little phone. It folds up to about the size of a stack of Post-Its and fits into even the smallest of pockets. Plus, it has an external touchscreen display, so you don’t have to snap it open every time you get an alert. Samsung only has the 512-GB model discounted, but it’s cheaper on Amazon for $970. The base 256-GB model is a better deal, though it has dipped as low as $800 during Black Friday.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5
Photograph: Samsung
The fifth iteration of Samsung’s folding flagships, the Galaxy Z Fold5 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) remains one of the best folding phones on the market. The cameras take great photos, and the displays (internal and external) are bright, colorful, and responsive. It’s still kind of a thick chunky phone when it’s closed. According to WIRED editor Julian Chokkattu, the external screen is still a bit narrow compared to the competition, leaving some apps feeling squished. You can save some extra by going for the 256-GB model.
Samsung Galaxy Watch6 Classic
Photograph: Samsung
Samsung’s Galaxy Watch6 Classic (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is a responsive smartwatch, and the mechanical bezel makes it fun to scroll through the interface. It’s best paired with Samsung phones if you want the full set of health features, but it works with any Android phone. It’s comfy to wear, and you get better battery life than on an Apple Watch or Pixel Watch. The non-Classic model, which ditches the mechanical bezel, is even cheaper.
Samsung S95C QD-OLED
Photograph: Samsung
Samsung’s S95C QD-OLED TV (8/10, WIRED Recommends) boasts a dazzling display capable of rendering both super-bright and super-dim scenes with ease. There’s a level of clarity here that WIRED editor Parker Hall says makes it feel like you could fall into it, like an open window. The display is capped off by razor-thin bezels that only add to this TV’s ability to fully immerse you in whatever you’re watching.
Samsung QN900B
Photograph: Best Buy
There’s not much content out there for 8K TVs just yet, but if you have the cash to burn and you want the absolute biggest and best TV on the market, you can’t do much better than Samsung’s QN900C TV (8/10, WIRED Recommends). Backlit by an array of mini-LEDs, the TV produces some of the most beautiful colors and image processing we’ve ever seen.
Photograph: Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra (6/10, WIRED Review) is a great productivity laptop, and despite its 16-inch display, it’s surprisingly portable. It’s lightweight, coming in at almost a pound less than the M2 Max version of the MacBook Pro 16-inch. It packs a lot of power too, thanks to the Nvidia RTX 4050 inside. According to former WIRED contributor Adam Speight, that portability doesn’t mean you’re missing out on power either. This thing can be configured to have some absolutely killer (and gaming-worthy) internal hardware. It’s a shame the battery life, speakers, and keyboard are lackluster.
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