Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, ROG Ally X, and more

Summary

• The July lineup featured foldables, earbuds, and gaming handhelds, but also low-cost gadgets and productivity accessories.
• Motorola’s Razr+ 2024 offers improvements in display, camera, and software, but falls short in software longevity.
• The CMF Phone 1 impresses with midrange hardware, photography capabilities, and unique design at an entry-level price point.

July isn’t exactly famous for tech conferences and launch events (although Samsung did flesh out its premium lineup at the Galaxy Unpacked event), but we put a full stable of awesome new devices through the ringer last month nonetheless.

Flagship foldables, wireless earbuds, and high-end gaming handhelds get extensive press — and we dug into some great ones — but we also had the pleasure of evaluating some trendy, low-cost gadgets and fancy, productivity-focused accessories. These are our favorite products of July, in some semblance of order from coolest to slightly more niche.

1 Motorola Razr+ (2024)

Last year’s best flip phone caught us by surprise, and Motorola upped the ante by improving the 2024 Razr+ in all the right ways. A bigger, brighter outer display makes it one of the most versatile clamshells today, and it’s packed with the hardware you’d expect from a longtime maker of flagship devices. While its camera isn’t up to par with the best Android picture-takers, it works better than ever, the telephoto lens in particular.

Motorola’s even continued its resurgence with a highly capable software implementation that’s intuitive, powerful, and more customizable than average. Unfortunately, software longevity is one of the few areas it falls short compared to the front-runners, as the actually acceptable 3 full Android updates don’t match the 7-year promises of Samsung and Google.

That said, the excellent construction, fit, and finish, complete with bold colors of vegan leather, make this a hard foldable to pass up.

2 ROG Ally X

Handheld entertainment’s come a long way since Pokémon Red and Blue (and Flappy Bird, for that matter), with the Asus ROG Ally X taking the crown as the most mature, enthusiast-oriented gaming slate ever.

Asus made subtle, but critical, upgrades to its extremely well-received 2023 tablet, including shored-up thumb stick precision, squashed microSD bugs, an extra charging port, and more, addressing even some of the most demanding gamers’ desires.

It’s not cheap, Windows on a tablet doesn’t quite flow just right yet, and the plastic could be a little more high-quality, but those are relatively minor quibbles compared to this high-end gaming tablet’s refined design and outright premium experience.

There’s also only one SKU, with a Ryzen Z1 Extreme system-on-a-chip, 12GB of RAM, and a 120Hz refresh rate, but it’s rounded out by top-shelf features like Hall Effect triggers, PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage, and a UHS-II microSD card reader. Basically, it will continue to perform swimmingly for years to come.

3 Samsung Galaxy Watch 7

Samsung’s latest smartwatch embodies the no-nonsense, highly refined, user-friendly experience its mobile electronics have developed. It doesn’t jump out on the surface, and heavily resembles its predecessor, but received updates from the inside out that make it hard for other wearables to top.

Not least of its major selling points, we’re big fans of Wear OS 4, which underpins most of today’s best smartwatches, and for good reason: It’s streamlined, effective, and loaded with features.

Samsung’s latest is lighter, brighter, and equipped with more precise sensors than anything not made by Apple. It looks and feels fancy, without being gaudy or otherwise overdone. It — and other Wear OS devices — could stand to adopt some super-useful features from competitors, but the hardware and interface frameworks are already there. Samsung and its refined user experience have set the bar for smartwatches in 2024.

4 CMF Phone 1

A sub-brand of envelope-pushing lifestyle electronics manufacturer Nothing, CMF brings stylish, capable, low-cost devices to the masses with models like the CMF Phone 1.

Let’s start by framing this interesting slab with its $200 price, something that normally nets you a boring, slow hunk of plastic and silicon. The first CMF Phone looks simple, but eye-catching, and sports replaceable backplates, so you can achieve your own style without a bulky case.

Despite its essentially entry-level price, it boasts decidedly midrange hardware, including a Dimensity 7300 SoC that delivers a frustration-free, day-to-day experience. CMF went all-in on a single primary camera lens and depth sensor, a focus that results in a refreshingly above-average photography experience.

As a whole, you won’t mistake the CMF Phone 1 for a flagship phone, due to its middling battery life, mediocre loudspeaker performance, and modest IP52 exposing some cut corners. However, those are forgivable for the price — just don’t forget the less-than-perfect American network compatibility.

5 Jabra Elite Active 8 Gen 2

Jabra earbuds are dead, long live Jabra earbuds! With the industry telecommunications accessory giant deciding to step away from the consumer audio space, it left with a final “hurrah” in the form of exceptional true wireless earbuds.

Everything you want high-earbuds to do, these do great, including clear and natural noise-canceling and HearThrough ambient modes. The sound quality is fantastic, and apparently not held back at all by the SBC and AAC codecs it’s limited to. Battery life’s off the chart, too, with a 14-hour lifespan and 56-hour case capacity.

The only issues you might notice are with the controls. Jabra’s earbuds use large, tactile buttons instead of capacitive touch sensors, which many people prefer, since they’re harder to press accidentally. Jabra doesn’t let you customize its unusual control scheme, but it’s not too hard to learn.

Add in the Elite Active 8’s military-grade, IP68-rated construction, and novel Bluetooth-transmitting case with auxiliary input, and you’ve got the nicest and last earbuds Jabra may ever produce.

6 Logitech Keys-To-Go 2

The Logitech Keys-To-Go 2 meets, and largely exceeds, any expectations you might have of the leading input device manufacturer. It’s as compact and lightweight as can be, and doesn’t sacrifice in terms of materials or build quality. A soft-touch folio cover keeps it safe and clean when not in use, and fast, reliable connectivity lets you get to work right away, every time.

Possibly most impressive, it’s just a few centimeters thick, but delivers a surprisingly good typing feel that leads to impressively precise, fast output for even half-decent typists.

Its premium feel and industry-leading manufacturer mean it’s not cheap, but it’s one of the most portable keyboards to sport premium construction. The prospect of eventually replacing the non-rechargeable coin cell batteries (and their Torx security screws) is a little preemptively annoying, and the lack of a backlight is disappointing, but you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with any major complaints about this svelte input device.

7 Onn Google TV 4K Pro

Against all odds, none other than Walmart has entered the advanced electronics with its unexpectedly capable Onn TV 4K Pro streaming box. Built around the reasonably powerful Amlogic S905X4 SoC and 3GB of RAM, it has no problem handling the moderately resource-intensive task of driving Android TV 12 and navigating your library of owned media and streaming services.

With Dolby Atmos and Vision support, USB-expandable storage and input, and HDMI, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, this streaming box has nearly all the connectivity it could ever need. Its use of the refined Google TV interface showcases Google’s expertise, and overall, it’s impossible to beat the $50 price tag for its performance.

The only potential negative is that, as a Walmart device, it’s not clear how quickly or for how long it’ll receive software updates, but Onn’s already good long-term commitment to its streaming boxes offers plenty of reassurance.

8 Galaxy Buds 3 Pro

More than just Samsung phones are starting to resemble Apple’s lifestyle-forward design. The third-generation Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro sport a similar stem configuration to what Apple helped make famous, with the white colorway extremely visually similar to the AirPods Pro. Samsung’s premier earbuds also work far and away best with its own devices, again similar to Apple’s.

If you’re the proud owner of a Galaxy device, you’ll love their unbeatable user-friendliness and extensive feature set.

But the Buds Pro 3 do stand out from similar-looking competitors in a big way. Inside, a 6.1mm planar magnetic driver serves as each earbud’s tweeter, in addition to a more traditional 10.5mm dynamic driver.

Splitting the work in two, with the incredible precision and cleanliness of planar magnetic technology up top, puts these at the top of the sound quality rankings for Galaxy phone users. What’s more, they utilize the proprietary, essentially lossless Samsung Seamless Codec.

They’re pretty expensive, but also among the best. In both respects, they resemble Samsung’s high-end phones and tablets.

What’s coming in August

We may or may not have such an extensive slate of recognizable brands and gadgets to praise this month (although you never know ’til it’s over), but there is one big launch coming up. August 13 marks the Made By Google event, where we’ll get down to the nitty gritty of the Pixel 9 family. So, stay tuned for our in-depth analysis of Google’s big phone changes, plus reviews of some game controllers, battery packs, and other accessories.