Intro
The three Waveform hosts are back in one room for the opening of gadget season, working through the Pixel 11 lineup, Google's Highlight notification light, Gemini Intelligence's proactive chips and the first leaked render of the Galaxy S27 Ultra. The second half covers Apple's surprise Mac Mini and Mac Studio launch, YouTube's recounted view metric, Nothing OS 5, a Fitbit Air collaboration with Pokemon Sleep, China's humanoid robot games and two rounds of trivia.
Hosts: Marques Brownlee, Andrew Manganelli and David Imel
Also on: Adam Molina, producer, who runs the trivia round; Ellis Rovin, producer
Published: 28 August 2026 on Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast · recorded 26 August 2026
Watch on YouTube | 1 hr 25 min
Key Takeaways
Highlight ships as a five-color, call-only light on hardware that could do far more
A teardown found every LED in the ring is RGB, and red still is not one of the choices
Someone sideloaded a vibe-coded app that lit it up for notifications in any color
The Pixel 11 Pro is a phone Brownlee likes and will not recommend
"It's another one of those phones that I really like and will not be recommending to almost anyone ever."
The Pro now has less RAM than last year's Pro, narrowing the gap to the base phone
The base Mac Mini has gone from the best deal in tech to $900
"They update it to M6. Now the base Mac Mini costs $900." — Marques Brownlee
YouTube's recounted view metric barely moved the public number
On one Waveform video, Brownlee: "So it only added about 50,000 views to the view counter on a 2.3 million view video."
Gemini Intelligence works only inside a set of conditions Google does not publish
Reservations need OpenTable installed, switched on by hand, and a text naming both the place and a date or time
A Google Keep grocery list only triggered the feature once it was renamed after Instacart
Tensor's GPU is still the weak point, and it showed up in ordinary use
Google Maps stuttered while scrolling "On a brand new $1,000 phone."
The leaked Galaxy S27 Ultra trades its camera bar for a mesa with half the plateau bare
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is built for people running local models and 3D renders, not editors
"64 core GPU, 30 core CPU, 32 core neural engine, and starting at 96 gigs of unified memory"
Apple cleared its September event by launching the Macs early and moving the base iPhones out
The event lands on a Wednesday, 9 September, under the tagline "surprise and shine"
Nothing OS 5 is a cleanup release with one genuinely new idea
A collector widget cuts an object out of any photo and sticks it on the home screen
Gadget Season Opens Before Techtember Does
All three hosts are in one room for the first time in a few weeks, and Brownlee frames the episode as the start of the hardware run
"And right on time for Techtember. Technically, it's not yet Techtember as we record this" — Marques Brownlee
The slate he reads out is the episode: Pixel 11s, Apple's M6, M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Nothing OS 5, and a first render leak of the Galaxy S27 Ultra
One host joked that the run-through was the most search-optimized intro the show has ever done
The hosts expect a stretch of very low scores as the products land: a lot of one-out-of-tens over the next few weeks
The segment that opens the show is the recurring "Did they even test this?" complaint
The YouTube Subscriptions Tab Bug That Only Some Pixels Have
The complaint is the padding in the YouTube subscriptions tab on Android: the shorts row at the top was touching the thumbnail of the video underneath, and channel names were running into the next video
One host described the spacing as "zero pixels" and said it was bad enough on a Pixel that he checked with a colleague before raising it
The bug is not consistent across devices: it showed on two of the room's Pixels, was absent on another, and was fine on both iPhones, and it came and went between app launches
A related oddity: opening YouTube sometimes reopens straight into a short, and the app treats shorts and long-form as separate instances, so a long-form video resumes the moment a short is closed
The hosts agreed the resume behavior is inconsistent enough that it clearly is not intended
Everyone in the Room Watches YouTube Differently
The hosts compared habits and found almost no overlap: one watches almost nothing but shorts on the phone and long-form on a TV, one watches on a projector, one plays videos with the screen off in the car
"Every video is a podcast. I don't do any of those."
One host said he barely watches shorts at all, and another pointed out how hard that is given how much the app pushes them
One host opened his YouTube app part-way through an uninterrupted broadcast of the 1995 American League ALDS game five, Yankees at Mariners
On downloading before a flight: one host said he had downloaded videos even though the aircraft has Starlink, and the room agreed the download is still worth doing
Starlink Made Plane Wi-Fi Free, and Broke the No-Calls Rule
The pricing is inverted: where a flight has no Starlink the Wi-Fi costs $8, and where it does the Wi-Fi is free
"So, it's $8 for the worst pretending you have internet."
"It's phenomenally fast."
One host said he had a file blipped to him mid-flight by a colleague and it went through fine, though he assumed at first it was a stranger
A running joke: the room decided a file blipped from one plane to another would somehow cause a crash, and that the flights would have to sync up and fly the same direction
The hosts noted RuneScape is now playable in the air, and that they had seen someone FaceTiming on a plane
They landed on the rule being no audio or video calls at all, not just no speakerphone, and agreed Starlink has made people break it
The Pixel 11 Pro Is a Phone Brownlee Likes and Won't Recommend
Brownlee has been daily driving the Pixel 11 Pro in matte black for close to three weeks with a full review still in progress, and said he went back to the regular Pro this year after usually using the XL
"It's another one of those phones that I really like and will not be recommending to almost anyone ever." — Marques Brownlee
His reason is that the base phone has closed the gap: "The Pro phones have less RAM than last year's Pro phone. So, they start at the same amount of RAM as the regular phone." — Marques Brownlee
That leaves roughly an extra $200 buying matte black rails and a slightly better set of cameras
One host countered that the Pro also gets faster night sight, and the room half-seriously argued the color options were a better reason than Highlight
On the colors: the standard Pixel 11 comes in a bright fuchsia the hosts split over, and one wanted the matte rails from the black Pro on the green and dune colors too
On the Pro Fold: Brownlee called it back to being fine, because all folds are expensive and it has the IP68 rating and the Google software experience going for it
The hosts liked the new camera bar on it and said it is pleasant to use closed
Gemini Intelligence Ships With Its Parameters Hidden
One host said he pressure tested Gemini Intelligence hard for a review while Brownlee used it no more than on any other phone
The feature is the chip that appears when Gemini thinks it can act — a suggestion to make a restaurant reservation when a text asks about one
The restrictions are the story: "You have to have OpenTable installed. It only works for OpenTable.", the integration is off until switched on manually, and the text has to name the place plus a date or a time
"So everything's off by default, which generally I'm like opt-in is better in this case."
The host's complaint is that Google publishes no list of what the integrations are or what triggers them
The grocery integration is narrower still: the shopping list has to live in Google Keep and be named after the store app
"we had it just called grocery shopping list and it didn't work and we changed it to be called Instacart shopping list and then it did work"
The feature the host actually wanted — reordering a list by the aisle numbers of the store he is walking into — is not what it does
"We have to narrow it down to the smallest idea possible where we hope we can nail a demo of it."
The contrast the hosts drew was with Tesla, which they characterized as promising a car that drives anywhere at any time and dealing with the exceptions later, where Google is doing the opposite
On the gap between the pitch and the product: Gemini has been sold as a system that reads what is on your screen and works it out, rather than one needing the app hooks Apple builds for Siri
One host said the shipping experience feels like a personal assistant on a permanent first day
"every AI that I've seen has felt like you hire the personal assistant and it is their first day every single day where they're way too scared to do anything"
A colleague said it reminded him of his own first week at the company
Best Take Merged Two Photos Without Being Asked
One host said Google combined a stack of his photos and swapped a face without telling him first — "I thought best take was an option."
He took two quick shots of two children where each had one of them looking, and a small popup appeared saying it had built a third from two photos before disappearing
"I did not want you to do that." — the objection was to it happening unprompted, not to the feature existing
The result now sitting in his gallery is the composite, with one child's head blurred by movement
The hosts pointed out that the unprompted merge is precisely the demo Google gave when it announced the feature, except the demo let the user choose
The Cameras and the 5x Lens Are What Actually Improved
Brownlee rated the Pixel 11 Pro cameras highly after the eclipse, a trip to Spain and a week in Ireland
"I just left on a 50 megapixel mode and I just haven't really had any issues and it's just been crushing photos all the time" — Marques Brownlee
The trade-off is processing time: "Although every time you take a 50 megapixel photo now, it has a little thing that's like processing high-res image that lasts like 5 seconds."
Brownlee said it does not bother him because he snaps and pockets the phone, so the images are ready when he looks later
The hosts also singled out the selfie camera, which they believe is the same sensor as last year, and said the 5x lens is much better than the previous generation
Pixel Pricing in a RAM Shortage, and a $49 Pro
Brownlee's framing has flipped since the last time he made this argument: back then the base phone was such a good deal it made a genuinely good Pro look bad, and he says he got criticized for it
"the base Pixel is such a good deal that it makes the also good deal Pro look like not a good deal" — Marques Brownlee
"this base Pixel is the only one that I could theoretically call a good enough deal" — Marques Brownlee, on 2026
At $899 for the base Pixel 11, he said the competition at that price is strong, and the reason to buy a Pixel is the software rather than the hardware
On the wider market: "phones in 2026 are probably just not a good deal in the first place with this RAM shortage" — Marques Brownlee
He has heard people conclude the 10A is close enough to the 11 to buy instead
"People need to buy more used tech by the way." — with the argument that seven years of software updates makes an older phone viable
On how Google is actually selling it: "I haven't found a single place that just lists it as $899. It always says from $399 with $899 crossed off."
The trade-in offers are aggressive enough that "Adam got the 512 GB Pro for $49" by trading in a Galaxy S26 Ultra, on top of a pre-order discount
The room joked that a 256 GB trade would have had Google paying him cash
Highlight: Five Colors, No Red, and a Vibe-Coded App That Did More
The first side effect nobody mentioned is a dimmer flash: "Did you notice how the flash is way less bright because of highlight?"
A host discovered it using the flashlight in the dark and found it would not go very bright
The hosts put it down to the heavy diffusion needed to spread the light for Highlight, rather than fewer LEDs
"It's dimmer and highlights completely and totally useless." — the show's verdict, with the caveat that it works for anyone who keeps a phone face down and takes a lot of calls
The hardware is not the limit: "Well, there was a tear down and they found that all of the LEDs inside it are RGB."
"So I don't know why Google is so against red."
"Somebody vibe coded like a highlight app that makes it light up for notifications and stuff." — with any color the user wants, including red
The app has to be sideloaded through Shizuku and one host said it took him an hour and a half of testing with a colleague texting him from the next desk
The hosts' point was that a trillion-dollar company shipped less than a hobbyist did in a day
On the theory of why: "I think they're saving it for a pixel drop." — a color wheel held back to be announced as a new feature later in the year
What the hosts would have shipped instead: messages, calls, a wide set of apps and full color customization at launch, then more creative uses added in later drops
The room noted the feature leaked around six months early, and that Google's own I/O footage set expectations for a glow around the whole camera bar rather than a single dot
At the hands-on event, Google had a giant camera bar on the wall with a button that made Highlight glow in the Gemini colors, which one host credited to the prop designer
The Pixel as a Vessel for Gemini, and a Tensor GPU That Stutters
"They don't want LED notifications. Nobody does that." — the reading being that the light exists to show Gemini is listening, not to show a message arrived
"Maybe this is the proxy for exactly how Google thinks about the Pixel, which is it's just a vessel for Gemini."
The hosts tied it to Google's ambient computing push and the new smart speaker: more surfaces to talk to Gemini through
Their objection is that a face-down phone is not a natural way for people to use one
One host argued the sequencing is backwards: ship the customization people will use, and the Gemini behavior gets discovered by users who are already in the settings
A theory about why the feature is shaped this way: a Pixel feature may need a Gemini tie-in to get approved internally, after the company restructured Android around Gemini
On silicon: the hosts accept that Google is optimizing for AI rather than single-thread speed, and note the TPUs have improved even as the benchmark results have not
The consequence showed up in ordinary use: Google Maps stuttered while scrolling during the review
"I haven't experienced this on a phone in a while."
"On a brand new $1,000 phone."
The Galaxy S27 Ultra Leak and the Camera Mesa
The leaked render is very early and the commentary has centered on the camera housing changing from a bar to a plateau
"Now it's just a big camera mesa"
The layout as the hosts read it: two cameras left-aligned, then a pill holding what may be a time-of-flight sensor, a flash and a camera, with the right half of the plateau bare
One host suspects the bare area exists to stop the phone wobbling on a table — "it's because they don't want it to wobble anymore. The wobble was crazy." — while another argued a lens that protrudes far enough will wobble anyway
The hosts' main relief is that it is different at all, after years of an Ultra that barely changed
On the credit for the design: the room pointed out Xiaomi shipped a full-width camera plateau years before Apple did, and that the people comparing the Samsung render to an iPhone are Android users rather than iPhone users
A digression on geology settled the naming: "a butte is a flat topped hill similar to a mesa but typically smaller and taller than it is wide", so the room went with mesa
The Under-Display Selfie Camera Nobody Shipped
One host asked what happened to moving the selfie camera under the display, a change that was supposed to end in an invisible cutout
Samsung did ship it on a fold and then reverted to a hole punch, which the hosts put down to the image being too hazy
"The screen to body ratio died." — the hosts' view is that nobody cares about the metric anymore and everyone has accepted the hole punch
The counter-argument: selfie cameras got important enough that nobody was willing to take the image-quality hit, and once nobody was shipping them nobody invested in making them good
Viewflation: YouTube's Recount Barely Moved the Counter
Brownlee returned to the change in how YouTube counts views — "Viewflation as I've been calling it in the office." — and put the actual numbers from a Waveform video to the other hosts as a guessing game
The guesses assumed a large gap: one host went to "I think that video probably has like 1.6 million" engaged views, and another said he had seen the real figures already and the difference was small
The hosts' working definition of an engaged view: YouTube deciding a real person watched more than a split second, with no published threshold
They recalled the old bar being seven seconds and noted YouTube has always said there was never a specific number
The result: "The public view counter is 2.391 million views." against 2.354 million engaged
"So it only added about 50,000 views to the view counter on a 2.3 million view video." — Marques Brownlee
"So hardly a fraction of what we thought at least in this one case. We have a very small sample size of one single video." — Marques Brownlee
On the other metric he shared: "My click-through rate is 8%.", on 22 million impressions for a video two days old
Where Brownlee expects the two numbers to diverge is older videos and genres that get suggested heavily, where hover autoplays pile up
One host raised clickbait channels specifically: hovering a thumbnail long enough to decide against watching now counts
The M6 Mac Mini Doubles the Price of the Best Deal in Tech
"we did get some new products from the fruit company in Cupertino" — a surprise launch of a new Mac Mini and Mac Studio that Brownlee called mostly a chip story
The chips: a base M6, described as "It's a 2 nanometer chip.", plus an M5 Pro Mac Mini and a new M5 Ultra that goes only into the Mac Studio
The price is the headline: "that used to be like the deal of the century for a solid 6 months or however long it was. You could get one for $500."
"They update it to M6. Now the base Mac Mini costs $900." — Marques Brownlee
"Again, we're in the era of cost inflation of like everything costs more now" — Marques Brownlee, who still expects it to be a phenomenal machine and probably Apple's fastest single-thread chip
The specs the hosts read off: 170 gigabytes per second of unified memory bandwidth, a 12-core GPU and a doubled neural engine, with Apple comparing back to M1 rather than to last year
"1.2 times faster multi-threaded performance compared to M5.", which the hosts translated to about 20% faster multi-thread
One host noted the press release leaned much harder on LLMs and AI than on the students and creators the Mini used to be pitched at, and read that as part of why the price moved
How the launch was spotted: Brownlee stopped listening mid-conversation with a colleague because the new Minis had appeared on his screen, then posted it in Slack, a few hours after a rumor suggested Apple might announce before the September event
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio, and the Chase for Real-Time Export
The Ultra had gone stale: the hosts said M3 Ultra was the last one, in a Mac Studio, while the Mac Pro was still on M2 Ultra
The new part fuses two M5 Max chips: "64 core GPU, 30 core CPU, 32 core neural engine, and starting at 96 gigs of unified memory", configurable to 512 gigs
"I think the number was like 1.2 terabytes of unified memory bandwidth"
Who it is for: one host said the unified memory is aimed at people running massive local models, and Brownlee added that the GPU side is for 3D rendering and heavy color work, with video editing at the low end of what it is designed for
"I've been chasing realtime video exports my entire 8K career." — Marques Brownlee, who has pre-ordered one
His current benchmark: "So like a 10-minute video will take 20 minutes to export, which is awesome." on 8K RED RAW with graphics, transitions, color and sharpening
On the top of the configurator: "You can spend $18,300 on a Mac Studio. That does not include the 512 gigs of unified memory." — that build tops out at 256 gigs and 16 TB of internal storage
On the naming: one host said his script had the chip names wrong throughout and asked for an explainer, and Brownlee defended the ladder as clear apart from the release order
The counter from the room is that the words do not ladder — max already means the maximum, and ultra is two of them
Skipped generations, such as the absent M4 Ultra, make it worse
The machines are pre-orders that "they come out September 22nd, I believe.", after the September event
Apple's Event Calendar, "Surprise and Shine", and a $9 Polishing Cloth
Brownlee's read on why the Macs launched early is that both autumn events are already full: September is heavy on the Pro iPhones and the fold, and the base iPhones have been moved out of it entirely
He expects the base models in spring or early next year
October is expected to be the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro event, which is why the Mini and Studio were cleared out of it
His reasoning is that Apple needs stage time for explanation, not just product: a folding iPhone and a touchscreen MacBook Pro both need the company to justify a category it has never sold
The event date was announced live during the recording: "It'll be September 9th. It's Wednesday this year, which never happens.", which the hosts attribute to the Labor Day Monday
"So, the tagline this year is surprise and shine." — the hosts described a glowing Apple logo with a displacement effect and a lens flare, and were surprised there was no nod to the fold
The best theory in the room was that it is a play on rise and shine, and that a fold has to rise open
The other announcement: "the polishing cloth at Apple is now $9.", down from $19, with the hosts assuming a smaller cloth even though the store page lists a compatibility list of more than 50 models and no dimensions at all
"My hot take was always that it was worth $19 cuz it's really good." — countered with the argument that it is only good on a surface that is already clean, and picks up grit permanently
"If this was a bid to make people less mad about the prices of everything else going up. It's working."
The Fitbit Air and Pokemon Sleep Band
"There is a Pokemon Sleep collaboration with the Fitbit" — a band, in a deep blue the hosts liked
On what Pokemon Sleep is: "It's an app that is mostly made for kids to like help them go to bed.", tracking sleep so that a better score earns and levels up Pokemon
The argument the collaboration set off: "Just because something is targeted at kids doesn't mean only kids can enjoy it."
"It's targeted at kids, but I love Pokemon and I'm 31."
One host recalled playing a Nintendo 3DS through a weekend of illness and only realizing the buttons felt small because the console is built for children
On the band itself: the word mark is the weak point — "It's weird to have a Pokemon Sleep word mark on a band that you're going to wear all day." — unless it is meant only as a bedtime strap
A claimed advantage of four Velcro notches was walked back live once a host checked the standard band, and the conclusion was that the band is simply blue
The app would not yet pull data from Apple Health, Fitbit or Google Health on the host's iPhone, which he put down to an update not being out at the time of recording
A tangent on whether a Whoop can be charged in the shower ran through the segment without resolution
Nothing OS 5 Is a Cleanup Release With One New Idea
"It's mostly a cohesion and sort of spring cleaning in the summer update that makes the animations better." — smoother animations, refreshed typefaces, new icons and two new lock-screen clocks
The hosts approved of the type of release, comparing it to Android 17 clearing out inconsistencies that had piled up
The practical changes: a dedicated Glyph app instead of buried settings, and a QR code link that stays fixed instead of moving with the code as the camera shifts
One host liked a new clock face widget that combines time, date, weather and calendar in one comic-styled block that still reads as one thing
The one genuinely new feature: "you can create a sticker out of anything that you take a photo of. It will cut out the object and you can just stick that sticker on your home screen."
"It's just like whimsy for no reason, which I really appreciate."
On the launch video: the hosts thought the explanation was buried several minutes into a video the presenters spent playing pool and taking fake phone calls
"They also released it on both the Nothing YouTube channel and Carl Pei's YouTube channel, which I did not know existed."
The open beta started for the Nothing Phone 3 on the day of recording, with other devices on a published rollout calendar
A Waveform Fantasy League, and Ellis Rovin's Hull City
The show is running a Waveform Premier League fantasy league again after listeners asked, with the link in the episode description
"I picked Hull City the week before the league began and I've been riding nothing but highs ever since." — Ellis Rovin
The host running the league predicted his side would have lost again by the time the episode aired
The hosts explained the format for anyone expecting a draft: rosters are picked, not claimed, so everyone can theoretically hold the same players, and there were hundreds of entrants last time
The Humanoid Robot Games in China
One host said his feeds across YouTube, X, Threads and Instagram were full of the humanoid robot games, and each clip was "a slightly different disaster"
The recurring question was about lane discipline: the robots do not stay in their lanes in a 100 meter race, which would be a violation for a human
The robots also cannot stop: "They all run past the finish line and then 12 yards later slam into a wall." into a large padded barrier, with many breaking apart on impact
"The funniest thing is that after they crash and break their legs, they carry them away on stretchers." — carried by humans, which the hosts found funnier than robots doing it
The games also include boxing, soccer and weightlifting — "There is one that did a clean and jerk and it's just a robot picking up a weight."
"If you ever had any doubts about China being really far ahead in humanoid robots, just watch some of these videos."
The hosts recalled a Tesla bot being reassuringly described as able to deadlift only about 40 pounds, and noted the reassurance did not really land
Trivia: WD-40, and the Two Pixels With a Top-Left Camera
Adam Molina runs the round, and opened by relaying a message from Brownlee — "his response to where is Texas Instruments headquarters was going to be Shenzhen, China"
The room decided the guess was defensible: "If I was a Shenzhen manufacturing company, I would name my company Texas Instruments."
The first question was what the WD in WD-40 stands for, with a hint that it was the original manufacturing purpose
The guesses on the whiteboard included Western Digital, water deterrent and wet drying, which set off an argument about whether drying something wet is a distinct process
The answer is water displacement — "It was originally a coating for rockets to make sure they did not rust or corrode in their silos." — Adam Molina
On the number: "there's no like real confirmation on this, but allegedly it was the 40th iteration of the formula" — Adam Molina
The second question was which Pixels put the hole-punch front camera in the top left corner, with foldables excluded and both answers required for the point
Wrong answers included the Pixel 6, which had it in the middle, and a Pixel 4 that never had it at all
"No, he got both. Five and 5A. They both have top left." — Adam Molina
Brownlee closed the episode promising coverage of everything landing through Techtember, and "I promise I'll get one right." on the trivia
A post-credits exchange picks up an earlier tangent about watching most of the F1 movie on a plane and finishing it later, and whether that counts as an anime
The show's bottom line is that the interesting hardware this season is being held back by decisions made around it: a notification light with the LEDs for any color and permission for five, an AI assistant that will only act inside conditions the maker will not publish, and a Mac Mini that got better at nearly double the price.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Google Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL and Pro Fold (Brownlee's review verdict: only the $899 base model is a deal, because the Pro now starts on the same RAM as the base phone)
Highlight, the Pixel's rear notification light (Five colors, calls only, on a ring a teardown found is full RGB — the episode's main complaint)
Shizuku (The sideloading route for the community app that gave Highlight notifications and any color the user wants)
Gemini and Gemini Intelligence Proactive Assistance (Reservations via OpenTable only, groceries via a Google Keep list renamed after Instacart or Costco, with no published list of triggers)
Google Photos Best Take (Merged two shots and swapped a face without being asked, on a host's own family photos)
Google Tensor (The GPU that the hosts blame for stuttering in Google Maps on a new $1,000 phone, even as the TPUs improve)
YouTube (Both the broken subscriptions-tab padding on Android and the recounted engaged-views metric the hosts call viewflation)
Apple M6, M5 Pro and M5 Ultra, Mac Mini and Mac Studio (A surprise launch, a 2 nanometer base chip, and a Mini that went from $500 to $900)
Apple polishing cloth (Cut to $9, with the store page listing compatibility for more than 50 models and no dimensions)
Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra (The leaked render that replaces the camera bar with a mesa, half of it bare)
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra (Traded in against a 512 GB Pixel 11 Pro that ended up costing $49)
Nothing OS 5, Nothing Phone 3 and Carl Pei (A cohesion update whose one new idea is a photo-cutout sticker widget, launched in a video the hosts thought buried the news)
Fitbit Air and Pokemon Sleep (A collaboration band in deep blue whose only real feature, the hosts concluded on air, is the color)
OnePlus 15 (The phone one host keeps returning to for speed, and what he expects to be the last true OnePlus flagship outside India)
Starlink on United flights (Free where it is installed, against $8 for the older service, and fast enough that the hosts argue about whether to download anything)
Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra and Poco (Cited as having shipped a full-width camera plateau years before the iPhone got credit for the idea)
Tesla and the Tesla bot (The comparison case for over-promising an autonomous feature, and for a robot marketed on how little it can lift)
WD-40 (The trivia subject: water displacement, originally a rocket coating, allegedly the 40th formula)
Texas Instruments (The previous week's trivia answer, and the setup for Brownlee's Shenzhen joke)
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