Technologies

I Have a Flashlight Fetish and My Favorite New Olight Is 20% Off for Black Friday

Olight’s sleek new pocket flashlight, the ArkPro, is normally $100. But it’s down to $80 for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Truth be told be told, I have a thing for flashlights. Not a bad thing, just a certain appreciation for a well-designed torch, as the Brits might say.

Bright flashlights are good, naturally, but a small, sleekly designed rechargeable everyday carry flashlight that puts out a decent amount of light is high on my list of flashlight favorites, and the new Olight ArkPro and its slightly brighter sibling, the ArkPro Ultra, fit the bill. They’re both on sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday for 20% off. The ArkPro is down to $80 ($100 list) while the ArkPro Ultra’s price has dipped to $104 ($130 list).

The flashlights are upgraded versions of Olight’s Arkfeld Pro ($70) and Arkfeld Ultra ($84), with higher brightness ratings. Both new models have similar flat, IPX7 waterproof designs with sturdy metal bodies and a magnetic base that allows you to attach the flashlight to anything metal. There’s also an integrated clip-on mount, and they come in cool white and neutral white color temperature versions.

You get three lighting modes: a 1,500-lumen floodlight mode (1,700 lumens for the ArkPro Ultra), an 800-lumen, 205-meter reach spotlight mode (it’s the same for the Ultra) and a UV light mode. You can also activate a green beam laser pointer.

The flashlights come with a wireless charger that magnetically attaches to the base, but you can also charge them via USB-C, which I found more convenient.

I mainly tested the flashlights while walking my dog at night in a pretty remote rural area in New York. The floodlight mode works better for dog walking, but I’d sometimes switch to spotlight mode when I wanted to gauge what was further ahead of us or check whether anything was lurking in the trees or bushes.

These smaller EDC flashlights are well-suited to a variety of activities, including camping and anything you’re doing where you’d like to have a flashlight handy that you can easily carry around in a pocket. You can find similar flat flashlight designs from other brands on Amazon — some of them for significantly less money. However, Olight is considered a premium EDC flashlight brand, though some flashlight enthusiasts are less enthusiastic about the brand for a few reasons. That said, I’m just fine recommending these new ArkPro models when they’re discounted like this. And they do make for nice gifts this time of year.

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Technologies

Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case.

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed.

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.

Technologies

The FCC Just Approved Charter’s $34.5B Cox Purchase. Here’s What It Means for 37M Customers

Technologies

Spotify Expands Into Audiobook Rankings With Weekly Charts

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

If you’re a Spotify user, you may be familiar with features like the year-end summary Wrapped, as well as your daily usage stats. Now, the service has a new popularity chart tracking audiobooks.

Spotify’s audiobook charts are now available to free and Premium users within the service’s Audiobooks hub. While only Premium users receive 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, the company offers a larger selection of titles you can buy.

US charts and UK charts are both available now.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services for 2026

Spotify says that the audiobook charts will help customers discover new and popular titles in real time.

«As we’ve proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows,» said Duncan Bruce, Spotify’s director of audiobook partnerships and licensing, in a statement on Friday.

Spotify launched audiobooks in 2022, and has since added features such as the AI catchup tool Recaps and PageMatch, which lets you swap more easily between a printed book and the audio version.

Spotify Premium currently costs $13 a month and includes more than 100 million songs, as well as audiobooks. Spotify Premium is currently CNET’s Editors’ Choice for best music streaming service.

The current US audiobooks chart lists Emily Brontë’s romantic classic Wuthering Heights as the top listen, followed by James Clear’s self-help book Atomic Habits and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Audiobook popularity is also broken down by genre, with charts for romance, mystery and thriller books, self-help, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoir, business and careers, teen and young adult, religion and spirituality, history, and parenting and relationships.

Powered by its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Wuthering Heights also leads the overall chart for the UK.