Month: January 2022

Tech is an essential part of our everyday lives, but finding the right gadgets for your needs — whether it’s for working, staying fit or having fun — can be overwhelming. That’s why we spend countless hours rigorously testing the latest technology, from measuring how fast the top smartphones and laptops actually are to living with headphones and earbuds for weeks on end. We’ve tried out lots of great gadgets this year, but here are the ones that truly stood out in every category.

Smartphones

Best smartphone overall: iPhone 13 (starting at $699; apple.com)

Apple’s iPhone has long been …

CNN Underscored is constantly testing products — be it coffee makers or office chairs — to find the absolute best in each respective category.

Our testing process is rigorous, consisting of hours of research (consulting experts, reading editorial reviews and perusing user ratings) to find the top products in each category. Once we settle on a testing pool, we spend weeks — if not months — testing and retesting each product multiple times in real-world settings. All this in an effort to settle on the absolute best products.

This year, we tested hundreds of home products — from office furniture to vacuums …

Throughout the year, CNN Underscored is constantly testing products — from coffee makers to computers to sheets to shower heads — to help our readers find the absolute best things.

Our testing process is rigorous. We spend countless hours of research, consulting experts, reading editorial reviews and perusing user ratings to identify the products we want to bring in for testing, be they things that have stood the test of time or the most promising new contenders. Then we spend weeks or months testing and retesting each product multiple times in real-world settings, putting everything through the sort of use …

Two new preprint papers add to growing evidence that the Omicron coronavirus variant may be less likely to cause severe disease and hospitalization compared to the Delta variant.

Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization compared with Delta, suggests one study, released online Wednesday as a working paper by researchers at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. That research was based out of Scotland.

The other paper, posted Tuesday to the online server medrxiv.org, suggests that people with Omicron infections have had 80% lower odds of being admitted to the hospital compared with Delta infections. But once …