Consumer Reports

Sometime your phone rings at the most inconvenient times. If you had a smartwatch, you could see who is calling without digging for your phone. Consumer Reports recently tested six new smartwatches that all work easily with smartphones phone via Bluetooth – alerting you to phone calls and messages. But to go beyond the basics, Carol Mangis with Consumer Reports recommends considering a watch that uses the Android Wear operating system. “Android Wear is a real game-changer for smartwatches,” she said. “Not only can you use voice commands to do searches, but it also pushes relevant information to the...

Last week, the Internet erupted with photos of bent iPhone 6s, and a very-viral video of a guy creasing an iPhone 6 Plus with his bare hands. It seemed like a serious concern, yet everything about the uproar was highly unscientific. We don’t like unscientific, so we promised then that we would use our lab equipment to find out just how delicate the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus really are. We also promised to run the same tests on comparable smart phones. We’ve done that now, and our tests show that both iPhones seem tougher than the Internet fracas...

Apple’s iPads were the hottest gift of the year, with sales topping 15 million during the Christmas holiday, but there is one thing that many users complain about – the virtual keyboard. To solve the problem, companies have created iPad-specific keyboards with real buttons. Consumer Reports tested several costing between $70 and $100. “We found most of these keyboards have pros and cons,” said Consumer Reports’ Paul Reynolds. Testers said the Menotek keyboard is lightweight and can be rolled up, but they found its’ small, soft keys hard to use. “The RocketFish and Belkin keyboards we tested have convenient,...